Today I would like to talk about something that completely changed my life, the Optimize Coach Program. I want to share my experience because it had such a huge impact on my life. I also hope some people will find value in this program as well.

I started following Optimize in August 2018 and immediately fell for it. Brian Johnson, the man that became one of my first mentors, created one of the most powerful libraries of wisdom that exists. To be clear, I had explored a lot of self-development books at this point. But Optimize was on a whole other level.

Here was a man that had dedicated his life to teaching the highest form of wisdom in the most practical way. Brian literally spent every day working on his craft to help us grow into the best versions of ourselves. He had distilled a plethora of ancient and modern books to make them accessible to everyone.

As soon as I started watching his masterclasses, my life took a big shift. In a few weeks, I watched all 40 modules that were available and did all the worksheets. Here is the thing about Optimize. It is not about intellectual wisdom. Brian teaches practical wisdom. And if you give it a shot, it’s a transformational journey.

In the months that followed, I started to incorporate everything I had learned into my life. My relationships, energy, and work capacity all increased. I felt much more confident and capable of living a purposeful life.

At the end of the year, Optimize announced they were launching a Coach program. My heart bounced as I read the email. But as much as I was excited, I thought I didn’t have the money or time to go through it. Still, I convinced my mother to take the program and she did.

A few months later, as the program was beginning, I had a flash of insight. I had to do this program no matter what. I contacted Optimize and asked if they did scholarships. To my greatest joy, they did.

I wrote down the most compelling motivation email I could and sent it. But life has a manner of helping you when you least expect it. At the same time, my mother sent also an email without telling me anything, vouching for me. And I got the scholarship. I am deeply grateful to Optimize for this.

Now let’s go into detail about the program itself — 300 days, live classes almost every week, and practices to incorporate into our lives. The ending ceremony would conclude with a Spartan race. A testimonial that we had reached our energetic best and that we were willing to face our fears.

We were also paired up with swim buddies and I picked my mom. It was a really fun experience to share this journey together and to support each other every week.

But I’ll be honest, the program was tough. The demands were simple: “show up every day at your best and be a radiant exemplar.” This was a high standard for everyone in the program. But as the months went by, we all so this manifest into reality. We showed up, worked hard, and applied all the wisdom directly into our life.

The results were staggering. Everything improved in my life. I opened more to others and became a better boyfriend. I started loving myself to a greater extent. My days became very intense — I started waking up earlier every day and pushed myself into limits I had never explored. My energy became astonishing and I felt like I could lift the world on my shoulders.

The greatest value of Optimize is that Brian and his team were not encouraging us to do this just for ourselves. We were becoming the greatest version of ourselves in greater service to the world. And this changed everything.

You are far stronger and capable when you do things with other people in mind. Sure you need to secure your foundations and reach a certain level of mastery first. But as you take on this journey, not only you become an inspiration for others. You are also capable of supporting them in a way that really helps them.

I transformed into a very different person in 2019. I owe a lot of this to Optimize and to the community that was in the program. We weren’t trying to learn wisdom for the sake of it, we tried as hard as we could to apply it into our lives.

Reaching new levels of mastery opens many perspectives in life. Sure you sometimes fall back into your old patterns, but far less than before. During that year, I learned how to show up every day and to stand up to whatever hit me in the face.

For instance, in August my girlfriend left me. It was a huge blow. I fell down and hit the floor really really hard. My dreams for the future had all been washed away. What did I do? I used the tools we had learned. It was all I could think of.

I continued practicing and moving forward. I dealt with the grief upfront by bringing more self-compassion into my life. I passed the driving license I was afraid of. I finished my graduate degree successfully. And step by step I continued to get better.

Sure, these were not an easy few months. But I knew I could do it because I had been training for this during the program. I had learned to use any challenge in my life as fuel for growth.

To cut down to the end of this adventure, my mom and I went to LA for the graduation ceremony in December 2019. It was one of the most heartfelt moments of my life. I met other very inspiring individuals and got to see the man who had changed my life in person.

The most exciting part was the Spartan Race. It was such a fun adventure and also much harder than I had expected. On the second mile of the race, my sandals broke and I had to the rest of it completely barefoot. I laughed and reminded myself that this was what we trained for.

But what marked my heart the most, was the spirit of community and the feeling of belonging to a tribe. All the people there were showing up as the best versions of themselves in their lives. We all supported each other. Some even carried fellow teammates to the finish line. It was unbelievable.

On the last day, Brian reminded us of something crucial. We were graduating, but this was only Day 1. The journey to mastery would never end. We would never be exonerated from showing up. That got engraved into my soul.

So what does it mean to be an Optimize Coach? It means that you show up and do the work every day. Sure, you still have some bad days and work to do on yourself. But you are doing your best as much as you can, for your own good, and for the good of others.

Thank you to Brian and all the Optimize team that made this possible. I hope many more will follow this program and become the best versions of themselves. It is such a rare gift to ourselves and to the world.

Let’s do this!