Philosopher's Notes Primal Intelligence

Primal Intelligence

You Are Smarter Than You Think

About the Book

Brian's take

Angus Fletcher opens this book by taking us inside classified training he helped design for the most elite Special Operations forces in the U.S. Army to test a radical thesis: we’ve misdefined intelligence. Fletcher is a professor of story science at Ohio State and his work has been called "life-changing" by Brené Brown and "mind-blowing" by Malcolm Gladwell, but what makes this book so compelling is how practical and real it is. He argues that intelligence is not just logic, data, or IQ, it’s primal. It’s intuition that detects the exceptional, imagination that defines a clear strategy, emotion that acts as a compass for growth, and commonsense that helps you act wisely under uncertainty. This was one of my Top 5 books in my 101 books in 101 days sprint because it challenges how we think about thinking and gives us a concrete way to perform better when it matters most. Big Ideas we explore include The Four Powers, Intuition as noticing the exceptional, Imagination and your ONE Thing, Emotion as fuel and guidance, and Commonsense as Now +1.

“Antifragility contradicts logic.”

How can victory come from its opposite? But history abounds with tales of people turning loss into growth and disappointment into inspiration.

Angus Fletcher

“While logic is infallible at math problems, story can thus outperform it at life problems. It can drive innovation, resilience, and commonsense decision-making.”

Angus Fletcher

“The path to coaching excellence isn’t control.”

It’s trust. Trust in your own coaching experience. To coach your best, you have to believe: Whatever the rookie mucks up, you can unmuck. The more you trust, the more you relax, and the more you relax, the more you unleash your intuition, adapting to the unknown like a Special Operator.

Angus Fletcher

“If you do a hard thing, congratulations.”

If you attain greatness, congratulations. But if those congratulations mean something to you, you’re still dependent on outside voices to tell you that you’re on track. To discover your inner compass, you need to keep defining your strategy: What’s the goal that sets you apart from the people around you? What’s the destination that you would choose above any other? What’s the possibility that you would sacrifice anything to achieve?

Angus Fletcher

“If you take fear as an opportunity to push your eyes toward your primary purpose, you bolster not only your confidence but also your competence, generating a positive loop between courage and ability that will propel you to your destiny.”

Angus Fletcher

“Optimism is widely understood as the belief ‘This will succeed.’ But that’s not optimism.”

It’s wishful thinking…. Optimism is much, much stronger than that. Optimism is ‘This can succeed.’ Optimism is the first secret to antifragility.

Angus Fletcher

“Commonsense acts commonly in common circumstances and uniquely when life gets unprecendented, mirroring the nature of the times.”

Angus Fletcher

The Four Powers

28:41

Introduction

From the book

“At a clandestine site made from bronze rock and gunmetal beams, protected by satellite jammers and radar-guided Vulcan cannons, U.S.

Special Operations mastered the Fletcher’s lab theory. With the colonel’s guidance, they turned it into practical training. Then they ran the training on the Army’s most elite units, their names secret, their missions classified. The training worked. The Operators saw the future faster. They healed quicker from trauma. Faced with life-and-death situations, they chose wiser. In 2023, the Army awarded the Fletcher lab a medal for ‘groundbreaking research,’ formally recognizing the existence of Primal. This book tells the story of the training that Project Narrative and Army Special Ops created. The training is simple, not easy. It is not an optimization hack or a cheat code. It is a different way of using your brain. It will activate intuition, imagination, emotion, and commonsense, awakening the powers of van Gogh, Tesla, Angelou, Jobs, and all the rest. So that you can use the know-how you forgot you knew. Your lost nature. Your Primal Intelligence.”

Brian's Notes

Primal Intelligence.

The title alone gets me leaning in and fired up.

Then we have the sub-title: You Are Smarter Than You Know.

Now I’m *really* ready to go! Then… We have the introduction in which Angus Fletcher walks us through the Top Secret (literally) training he did with THE most elite special forces operators in the U.S. Army to validate the practical efficacy of his ground-breaking approach to excellence.

This book is a fascinating look at that research and how we can tap into our hidden intelligence to transform our lives by answering the question posed on the inside cover:

“How are some people so much smarter than the rest of us? Where do visionary creatives and savvy decision-makers like Vincent van Gogh, Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Wayne Gretzky, Warren Buffett, and William Shakespeare get their extraordinary mental abilities?”

If that sounds like a good time, I think you’ll love the book as much as I did. It was one of my Top 5 favorites in my 101 books in 101 days reading-fest last year. (Get a copy here.)

Angus Fletcher is a professor of story science at Ohio State University’s Project Narrative. His research has been called “life-changing” by Brené Brown and “mind-blowing” by Malcolm Gladwell.

I was introduced to Angus by a mutual friend. Shortly thereafter I read this book. Within a few weeks, we met in person in Tampa at the retirement ceremony of my friend, 4-Star General Bryan P. Fenton—the former Commander of all US Special Operations Forces.

Note: That’s the same position Admiral William H. McRaven held before he wrote the FIVE books of his we’ve featured: Make Your Bed (which he published after his commencement address went viral), Sea Stories (his autobiography), The Hero Code, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog, and Conquering Crisis.

The book is PACKED with Big Ideas on how to tap into our Primal Intelligence. I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!

BIG IDEA

The Four Powers

From the book

“In this chapter and the three previous, we’ve covered four interconnected ways of thinking in story: 1.

Intuition. This fuels story, like data does for logic. 2. Imagination. This is how story invents flexible tactics and long-term strategies. 3. Emotion. This creates a feedback loop between story and personal growth. 4. Commonsense. This indicates which story is best for what situation. Each process has its own mental action. Intuition latches onto exceptional information, uncovering hidden rules that stimulate new whys and what ifs. Imagination sharpens and extends those whys and what ifs, enabling our brain to overcome problems and capitalize on opportunities. Emotion assesses our performance, signaling when we’re struggling to process hard events—and identifying personal goals that give us direction. Commonsense assesses our environment, allowing us to accelerate confidently in familiar situations and adapt quickly to emergent threats and opportunities…. As I put it in a report to U.S. Special Operations Command: Intuition sparks plans. Imagination shapes plans. Emotion sustains plans. Commonsense selects plans. These four powers are our Primal Intelligence.”

Brian's Notes

That’s from the concluding pages on Part I in which we get introduced to the “four powers of our Primal Intelligence.”

Angus tells us: “Once you go full Primal, you can incorporate your whole intelligence into everything you do. To get you started, part II will translate imagination, intuition, emotion, and commonsense into six practical applications: leadership, resilience, communication, coaching, decision-making, and first of all, innovation.”

Let’s recap those four Primal Intelligence powers then we’ll look at some practical ideas on how to implement them across the most important domains of our lives.

First, we need to step back and talk about how we think about INTELLIGENCE.

Angus tells us: “My theory is that the modern world has incorrectly defined intelligence.”

He continues by saying: “The logical view of the brain is absurd. It defies basic biology. It seems sensible only because it is repeated endlessly from the moment we set foot in school. We are brainwashed to believe it, to our own detriment….

The brain has nonlogical intelligence that isn’t arbitrary. That intelligence evolved millions of years before AI’s data-dependent circuits, investing our primordial ancestors with the ability to succeed in the unknown. At first, the ability was simply accepted as the way of life. But as our ancestors self-reflected, using their intelligence to examine itself, they parsed it into four primal powers: intuition, imagination, emotion, and commonsense.

Intuition perceives the world’s hidden rules.
Imagination makes the future.
Emotion knows the path of personal growth.
Commonsense decides wisely in uncertainty.”

I repeat… The FOUR primal powers are: Intuition, Imagination, Emotion, and Commonsense. Now… Let’s explore each in a little more detail…

BIG IDEA

Intuition

From the book

“Intuition means to know without consciously thinking.

What intuition knows is a hidden rule of life. That rule enables us to act in ways that no one has previously envisioned. We can solve old problems in fresh ways. We can climb upward on original ladders. We can reinvent ourselves and our world, driving growth—and even revolution. Intuition arrives in a flash of insight. In fact, it arrives so fast that it can feel supernatural.”

Brian's Notes

Intuition.

If we want to tap into our Primal Intelligence, we MUST understand it, know how to create the conditions for it to be recognized, and embrace it. The primary source of intuition? Exceptional information.

Angus tells us that “Exceptional information is defined by the U.S. Army in the manual Mission Command:

There is information that results from an extraordinary event, an unseen opportunity, or a new threat. This is exceptional information—specific and immediately vital information that directly affects the success of the current operation…. Identifying exceptional information requires initiative.

In other words, exceptional information is an exception to a rule.”

Throughout the book, Angus works hard to differentiate our “logical” definition of and orientation to intelligence with a more dynamic, nuanced, and accurate definition of and orientation to intelligence.

He continues by saying: “This seeing beyond precedent is the opposite of how intuition is logically defined by behavioral economists such as Daniel Kahneman. Following the lead of AI pioneer Herbert Simon, Kahneman states in Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow that ‘intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.’ Recognition is a pattern match, a visual precedent reiterated in the present. As construed by logic, intuition is thus identification of a nonexception.

Exceptional information demonstrates the contrary: Intuition detects a rupture in a standard narrative, driving a break with the past. To make that break, we need what the Army manual calls initiative, which is another way of saying running ahead of data.”

Later in the book, Angus walks us through stories of brilliant creators and how they leveraged their intuition. For now, I want to focus on Steve Jobs.

As you may know, at his funeral he gave all his friends a parting gift: a copy of Yogananda’s The Autobiography of a Yogi.

Why did he do that? Because he was DEEPLY influenced by the great man. If you want to find the source of Steve Jobs’s intuitive brilliance, you’d be wise to study Yogananda.

You may want to check out my Notes on: Living Fearlessly, How to Be a Success, The Law of Success, How to Awaken Your True Potential, and To Be Victorious in Life.

When you do, you’ll find passages like this one (from Living Fearlessly)…

“Many people come to me to talk about their worries. I urge them to sit quietly, meditate, and pray; and after feeling calmness within, to think of the alternate ways by which the problem can be solved or eliminated. When the mind is calm in God, when the faith is strong in God, they find a solution to their problem. Merely ignoring problems won’t solve them, but neither will worrying about them.

Meditate until you become calm; then put your mind on your problem and pray deeply for God’s help. Concentrate on the problem and you will find the solution without going through the terrible strain of worry.

Remember, greater than a million reasonings of the mind is to sit and meditate upon God until you feel calmness within. Then say to the Lord, ‘I can’t solve my problem alone, even if I thought a zillion different thoughts; but I can solve it by placing it in Your hands, asking first for Your guidance, and then following through by thinking out the various angles for a possible solution.’

God does help those who help themselves. When your mind is calm and filled with faith after praying to God in meditation, you are able to see various answers to your problems; and because your mind is calm, you are capable of picking out the best solution. Follow that solution, and you will meet with success. This is applying the science of religion in your daily life.”

P.S. Another guy DEEPLY influenced by Yogananda? The brilliant sage Michael Singer. He dedicated his first book (Three Essays on Universal Law) to Yogananda. When you read Singer’s books, you can feel the inspiration of his guru. Check out our Notes on The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered for more of Singer’s *brilliant* wisdom.

BIG IDEA

Imagination

From the book

“So it is that most of us waste our lives aspiring to ascend many heights with one climbing technique, falling prey to what Operators call undefined strategy, limited tactics.

Strategy is your long-term narrative. Tactics are the short-term plots you hatch along the way. To consistently reach your goals, your strategy must be precise and your tactics flexible. Which is why Special Operators strive for defined strategy, unlimited tactics. To define strategy, Operators push themselves to prioritize a single objective. They know that the brain cannot plan effectively if it has fifteen primary objectives—or even two primary objectives. It’s fine to have multiple things you’d like to accomplish but don’t try to summit two mountains at once. Rank your objectives before you depart, establishing a clear number one. If you don’t, then the moment that pressures hit or resources thin, your priorities will come into conflict. The result will be hesitation, second-guessing, disorganization, divided focus, haphazard decisions, and quitting.”

Brian's Notes

That’s from the chapter on our second Primal power: Imagination.

I’m reminded of a number of things when I read that.

First, I think (yet again) about my five-hour chat with Ben Hardy as we discussed Heroic’s strategy as it related to implementing the wisdom from his book, The Science of Scaling.

The RELENTLESSNESS with which he pushed me to define the ONE THING (!) we were going to focus on was extraordinary.

He wasn’t the only one who pushed me to do that. Weeks before, I reached out to a friend and mentor of mine named Jim Huling. Jim is one of the leading executive coaches in the world. For 14 years, he was the Global Managing Consultant for Franklin Covey where he coached over 70,000 (!) leaders around the world.

With Chris McChesney and Sean Covey, he distilled that wisdom into a GREAT book called The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

Now… When I reached out to Jim as I was wrapping my brain around what we should do for the next phase of Heroic, the RELENTLESSNESS (!) with which he demanded I simplify and focus was almost even more intense than Ben’s.

If you’re familiar with Jim, you know he’s a pretty laid-back Southern guy with a drawl that can hypnotize you. And… He was almost YELLING (!) at me (lol—true story!) as he DEMANDED I do the hard work to FOCUS on THE ONE THING that I thought would give us the best shot at activating our Heroic movement.

I told him I knew it was Philosopher’s Notes.

He walked me through a meditation in which I calmed my nervous system (Yogananda would approve), then I was to imagine a light on a hill. That light on a hill represented THE THING that should be my guiding star. THE ONE THING.

I got tears in my eyes as he guided me through the meditation because I could LITERALLY see the “light on the top of the hill.”

It was a picture of the Acropolis I had taken at night on our Heroic community quest to Athens the prior year. That picture (check it out here along with one of my son and I in front of a temple for the god of craftsmanship) was THE picture I shared with our branding genius to create the new brand for Philosopher’s Notes.

Let’s just say that I have that picture printed out and hung up in several places in my house.

One more thing about the importance of having ONE Thing… You need to check out the Notes on Gary Keller’s book by the same name: The ONE Thing.

Gary reminds us that, just like you can’t summit two mountains at once, you also want to remember the proverb that if you try to chase two rabbits, you’ll catch none.

As he tells us: “If you try to do everything, you could wind up with nothing. If you try to do just ONE Thing, the right ONE Thing, you could wind up with everything you ever wanted.

The ONE Thing is real. If you put it to work, it will work. So don’t delay. Ask yourself the question, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do right now to start using The ONE Thing in my life such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

And make doing the answer your first ONE Thing!”

With all that in mind…

WHAT’S YOUR ONE THING?

The ONE Thing you’re *most* fired up to achieve that, when you achieve it, will MOST positively impact your life? Could be a health goal. A business goal. A relationship goal.

What is it? Get clear. Go get it. TODAY.

P.S. The other part of that wisdom from Angus is all about the UNLIMITED TACTICS we need to be willing to deploy to hit that one target—which is EXACTLY what The Psychology of Hope tells us we need to do.

Have a clear goal. A sense of agency. And unlimited pathways.

BIG IDEA

Emotion

From the book

“We’ll cover other positive emotions—including hope, wonder, and optimism—in later chapters.

But you’ve now got the basics of why emotion is smart…. Emotion is smart because it sees inward. It’s a tool for diagnosing when your own life plan is faltering. If you feel irritable, aggressive, or angry, that’s your brain warning: Your plan is breaking. If you feel fear, that’s your brain warning: Your plan is broken. If you feel regret or sadness, that’s your brain warning: You do not have a plan, because you do not know exactly who you are—or what world you’re living in. And emotion doesn’t only tell you when things are going wrong. It also points you to a fix. The fix comes from dumb pride and maverick gratitude, which reveal your overall life purpose. That purpose gets you moving when you are paralyzed with panic or worry. It expands your options when you are stressed or angry. It guides you to find growth in grief and shame.”

Brian's Notes

Emotion.

That’s our third primal (super) power.

Know this: We’d be wise to pay attention to our emotions!

At the end of the book, Angus has a quick little self-assessment you can take to get a snapshot of your four powers. (Take a version of that quiz in about a minute here!)

My power? Emotion. I’m VERY (!) attuned to when things are on and when they’re off.

As Angus advises us, we need to step back, notice our emotions and USE THEM as a compass to point us in the right direction.

With that in mind, let’s shine a light on YOU…

Are you feeling any intense emotions these days? How can you use that emotion as a guide to more effective action?

P.S. Joseph Campbell comes to mind here. Of course, he told us that a key to living a noble, Heroic life is to “Follow our bliss.” As we’ve discussed many times (and as I discuss in the documentary Finding Joe!), Campbell got that wisdom from the ancient scriptures of India.

In The Power of Myth he tells us: “Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: Sat, Chit, Ananda. The word ‘Sat’ means being. ‘Chit’ means consciousness. ‘Ananda’ means bliss or rapture. I thought, ‘I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.’ I think it worked.”

Although I haven’t referenced their work in years (I might have an allergy to “channeled” wisdom!;), in Ask and It Is Given, Esther and Jerry Hicks have a *brilliant* frame on using our emotions as a guidance system that parallels the wisdom Angus is sharing here.

They tell us: “When the fuel gauge on your vehicle indicates that the tank is empty, you do not criticize the indicator. You receive the information that it has offered you, and you do something about adding more fuel to your tank. Similarly, a negative feeling is an indicator that your current choice of thoughts has you offering a vibration that is so out of harmony with your Source Energy that you are currently disallowing your full connection to that Energy Stream. (You could say your tank is reaching empty.) Your emotions do not create, but they do indicate what you are currently attracting. If your emotions are helping you know that your choice of thoughts is not taking you in the direction that you desire to go, then do something about that: Replenish your connection by choosing better-feeling thoughts.”

BIG IDEA

Commonsense

From the book

“To maximize commonsense, you need to dial down your future anxieties, concentrating your attention on the most valuable.

You can do this by taking the third and final step: Finish tuning anxiety by focusing on your upcoming objective—without peering any further down the road. Don’t, in other words, look too far into the future. The future is the embodiment of an unknown unknown, so the more you gaze at it, the more what ifs will proliferate—and the higher your anxiety will climb. This is counterproductive. The events of the distant future will be changed by the events of the intermediate future, which will in turn be changed by the events of the near future. Far-off challenges that seem probable now will vanish in the tide, while others will arise. So focus your anxiety where it belongs: on the part of your mission that happens next…. Operators call this Now +1. It’s fixing your gaze one action ahead, to the what ifs that you can most effectively detect—and most powerfully affect.”

Brian's Notes

That, as you probably guessed, is from the chapter on our fourth Primal power: Commonsense. Now +1. <- That’s absolutely brilliant.

Aurelius would agree. In his Meditations, he told himself (and us!): “Never confuse yourself by visions of an entire lifetime at once… remember that it is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone.”

We just talked about this in our Notes on Darrin Donnelly’s Think Big to Win Big: “Big thinkers know that big goals are only accomplished through small, incremental, and consistent actions…. You don’t win a game by worrying about what the score will be sixty minutes from now. You win a game one play at a time, with all your focus on your effort and attitude during that one single play. That’s all you can control.”

Ben Hardy echoes this in Be Your Future Self Now where he tells us: “Rather than attempting to define your life’s purpose, define a contextual purpose that you believe to be the absolute most important thing you could do right now*.”*

Here’s to activating your Primal Intelligence via your Intuition, Imagination, Emotion, and Commonsense. One Now +1 followed by another.

All day. Every day. Especially… TODAY!