Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Don’t Waste Your Life: Take Action and Make Every Moment Count

Transcript

Don’t Waste Your Life: Take Action and Make Every Moment Count · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Sit on your bed one day and ask yourself, Ah,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: what's what remarkably stupid things am I doing on a
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: regular basis to absolutely screw up my life? And if
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you actually ask that question, but you have to want
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to know the answer, right, because that's actually what asking
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the question means.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean just mouthing the words. It means you
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: have to decide that you want to know. You'll figure
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: that's out so fast it'll make your hair curl. There's
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: no better pathway to self realization and the ennoblement of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: being than to pause it the highest good that you
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: can conceive of and commit yourself to it. And then
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: you might also ask yourself, and this is definitely worth asking, is.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Do you really have anything better to do? And if
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: you don't, well, why would you do anything else?
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: If you orient yourself properly and then pay attention to
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: what you do every day, that works. And I actually
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: think that that's in accordance with what we have come
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: to understand about human perception, because what happens is that
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: the world shifts itself around your aim. Because you're a
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: creature that has an aim. You have to have an
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: aim in order to do something you're an aiming creature.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: You look at a point and you move towards it.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: It's built right into you. And so you have an aim. Well,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: let's say your aim.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Is the highest possible aim. Well, then so that sets
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: up the world around you.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: It organizes all of your perceptions, It organizes what you
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: see and you don't see. It organizes your emotions and
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: your motivations. So you organize yourself around that aim. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: then what happens is the day manifests itself as a
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: set of challenges and problems, and if you solve them properly,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: then you stay on the pathway towards that ape and
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: you can concentrate on the on the day. And so
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: that way you get to have your cake and eat
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: it too, because you can you can point into the distance,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: the far distance, and you.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Can live in the day.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: And it seems to me that that's that makes every
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: moment of the day supercharged with meaning. That that's because
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: if everything that you're doing every day is related to
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: the highest possible aim that you can conceptualize, well, that's
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the very definition of the meaning that would sustain you
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: in your life. Well, and then the issue is well,
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: back to Noah, Well, all hell's about to break loose
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: and chaos is coming. It's like, when that's happening in
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: your life, you might want to be doing something that
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: you regard as truly worthwhile, because that's what will keep
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: you afloat when everything is flooded, and you don't want
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: to wait until the flood comes to start doing that,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: because if your ARC's half built and you don't know
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: how to captain it, the probability is very high.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: That you'll drown. Ask and it shall be given.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: You seek and you shall find, knock and it shall
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: he that seeketh findeth, And to him that knocketh it
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: shall be opened. That sounded pretty optimistic again, but again
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: I think it's a description of the structure of existential reality.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: When I'm in my clinical practice and I observe, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: this is also the case with my students, is let's
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: say people's lives aren't what they would like them to be,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: and so then you ask why, Well, forget about tragedy
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: and catastrophe, because that's self evident and we're not going
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: to discuss that. Although the degree to which you bring
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: about your own tragedy is always indeterminate. But I would
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: never say that every terrible thing that is visited on
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: a person is something they deserved. I think that that's
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: a very dangerous presupposition, especially because everyone gets sick and
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: everyone dies. But one of the main reasons that people
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: don't get what they want is because they don't actually
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: figure out what it is and the probability that you're
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: going to get what would be good for you, let's say,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: which would even be better than what you want, right,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: because you know you might be wrong about what you
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: want easily, but maybe you could get what would really
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: be good for you.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Well, why don't you Well because you don't try.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: You don't think, Okay, here's what I would like if
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: I could have it. And I don't mean I don't
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: mean you know in a way that you manipulate the
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: world to force it to deliver you goods for status
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: or something like that.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: That isn't what I mean.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I mean something like, imagine that you were taking care
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: of yourself like you were someone you actually cared for,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: and then you thought, okay, I'm caring for this person.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I would like things to go as well for them
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: as possible. What would their life have to be like
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: in order for that to be the case. While people
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: don't do that, they don't sit down and think, all right,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: you know, let's figure it out. You've got a life.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: It's hard, obviously, it's like three years from now. You
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: can have what you need. You got to be careful
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: about it. You can't have everything. You can have what
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: would be good for you, but you have to figure
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: out what it is and then you have to aim
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: at it. Well, my experience with people has been is
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: if they figure out what it is that would be
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: good for them and then they aim at it, then
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: they get it. And it's strange because they don't. Necessarily
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: it's a strange thing. It's not quite that simple because
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: you know, you may formulate an idea about what would
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: be good for you, and then you take ten steps
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: towards that and you find out that your formulation was
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: a bit off, and so you have to reformulate your goal,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: you know. So you're kind of going like this as
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: you move towards the goal. But a huge part of
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: the reason that people fail is because they don't ever
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: set up the criteria for success.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: And so since success is a very narrow line and
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: very unlikely.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: The probability that you're going to stumble on it randomly
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: is zero. And so there's a proposition here. In the
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: proposition is if you actually want something, you can.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Have it now.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: The question then would be, well, what do you mean
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: by actually want what? And the answer is that you
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: reorient your life in every possible way to make the
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: probability that that will occur as certain as possible.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: And that's a sacrificial idea, right.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: It's like, you don't get everything obviously, obviously, but maybe
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you can have what you need, and maybe all you
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: have to do to get it is ask. But asking
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: isn't a whim or today's wish. It's like you have
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: to be deadly serious about it. You have to think, okay,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: like I'm taking stock of myself and if I was
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: going to live properly in the world, and I was
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: going to set myself up such that being would justify
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: itself in my estimation, and I don't mean, as a
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: harsh judge, exactly what is it that I would aim at?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: And so the issue is not so much the blindness
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: of others, even though there's as much blindness among others
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: as there is for you. But the issue here, the
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: advice here, the description here is you should be concerned
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: about what's interfering with your own vision first, and you
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: should leave other.
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: People the hell alone in relationship to that.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And so if your mode of being in the world
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: is if you would just act better, things would improve
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: for me, Or if you identify the evil and the
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: catastrophe as something that's outside that someone else needs to
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: fix or that someone else is responsible for, then you're
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: not going to fix that, and you're going to remain
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: blind to the things that you're doing and not doing
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: that make things not go well. And so it's just
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: better to think, all right, I'm probably blind in many,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: many ways, and maybe there are some ways that I
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: could rectify that, because it's highly probable that you're blind
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: in all sorts of ways. I mean, it's in fact,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: it's virtually certain, and so it's just more useful to think,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: how is it that I'm wrong in this situation? How
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: do we come to know ourselves in terms of our
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: personalities and more importantly potential One of the first ways
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: to come to know yourself is to understand that you
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: don't you know, you can learn to kind of watch
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: yourself like you're watching a stranger.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: So you have to understand that you don't know who
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: you are.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And that's not easy to understand because you think you know,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: but then you know your member. You can't control yourself
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: very well, you're not very disciplined, you're full of flaws.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe you don't.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Know yourself as well as you think, but it's hard
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: to get low enough to understand how deeply it is
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: the case that you are ignorant about who you are.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Now there's an upside to that too, which also is
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: that you're also ignorant about who you could be, and
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: so the discovery of that, you know, is some reward
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: for the horror of determining who you actually are. Then
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: you watch yourself, You watch yourself like you're watching a stranger.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: You watch what you say, and you listen, and you think, well,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: what sort of person would say that? And how am
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: I reacting emotion when I'm communicating in that manner?
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: You know? Is that making me feel stronger? Weaker?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Is it filling me with shame? Is it helping my confidence?
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Am I laying out a lie? Am I deceiving myself
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: and other people? Am I adopting this personality at parties
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: that is designed to impress and to amuse, and it
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: comes across as nothing but self centered narcissism. What are
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: my dark fantasies? What are my aggressive fantasies? What is
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: it that I'm willing to do? What am I interested
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: in so that I'll spontaneously pursue it? What do I
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: procrastinate about and why? What am I unwilling to do?
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: What do I think is good? What do I congratulate
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: myself for accomplishing? And what do I beerate myself for
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: failing to confront and to implement? Those are all incredibly
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: complicated questions and you don't know the answers to them.
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  Speaker 3: So that's a start.
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  Speaker 2: And then in terms of potential, well, you'll discover a
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: little bit more about your potential as you discover who
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: you are, especially the darker parts of yourself, because then
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: you discover your potential for mayhem.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: There's some real utility in that.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: You know, a discovery that you're dangerous, it's such a
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: useful discovery. It's actually something that strengthens you because the
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: first thing that a realization like that can in fact
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: produce is the ambition to incorporate that danger into a
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: higher order personality, and that can make you implacable. I
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: can make you someone who can say no when you
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: need to say no. You know, that can make you
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: someone who won't avoid necessary conflict. And so that's unbelievably useful.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: And so that's one of the potentials that you might discover.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: The other thing you do to discover your potential is
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: to well, you challenge yourself.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: You know. It's like take a.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Bit of a look at yourself and think about what's
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: not so good that you could improve, that you should
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: improve by your own standards, and that you would improve,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: you know, and set yourself a little goal. You know,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: maybe you're not studying at all that at your university,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: or maybe you're maybe you're at work and you've got
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: this stack of paper there, you know, and you haven't
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: looked at that damn stack for like a month, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: you know that you should be, and you're bothering yourself
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: at night because you're avoiding that. It's like, maybe, think,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: I've avoided that stack of paper completely for one month.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: I'm quite a coward when it comes to whatever snakes
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: might be hidden in that stack of paper. How about tomorrow,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: I just like, put that stack of paper in front
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: of beyond my desk, and I like, I glanced through
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: it for fifteen seconds, See if I can do that.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, you set yourself a goal of improvement.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: You know, it's a humble goal.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: There's things you could do to improve and you know
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: what they are, and there's small steps that you could
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: take that you might take that would put you in
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: that direction. And then the question is are you big
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: enough to take those small steps? You know, are you
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: capable of grappling with the fact that you're fundamentally flawed
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: to the point where you have to break things down
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: into almost childlike steps in order to manage them. And
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: the answer to that is, yeah, you are. Most people
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: have things they avoid, you know, and they're afraid of,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: So I would say, to some degree, it's the law
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: of everyone.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: People vary in the degree to which they've conquered that.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: And you do meet people from time to time who
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: are extraordinarily disciplined, but most of the time they've got
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: disciplined in exactly this manner. It's through slow, incremental improvement.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: And then you challenge yourself. It's like, well, could I
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: do this that would be better? And you find out,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: and then you think, well, is there something slightly larger
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: and more challenging that I could do that would be better?
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: And you try it and you find out.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: And as you try it and you find out, generally
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: you get better at it and you can take on
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: larger and larger challenges. You know, you take responsibility for yourself.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: That's part of standing up straight with your shoulders back.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: It's like take on the world, man, but only at
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: the level that you can manage. When you're ignorant and
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: biased and deeply flawed and immature. It's where everyone starts.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: You don't want to take You don't want to bite
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: off more than you can chew. But it doesn't mean
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: that you can't wrestle with. It's part of reality, you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: some part that's small enough so that you have a
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: good shot at victory. Then you attain victory over some
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: small part of the chaos, and then you're the person
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: who's victorious over chaos. You're just a beginner, but that's
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: who you are. And then maybe you can get unbelievably
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: good at that. And you do that by challenging yourself
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: humbly at the level that you're able to function. It's
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: easier to understand if you think about a child that
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: you're trying to rear properly, and you want to make
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: that child, help that child reveal their highest potential, whatever
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: that is, whatever that means, And what you do is
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: you don't set them a series of impossible tasks in
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the hope of undermining their self confidence. You form a
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: relationship with them that is predicated on your interest in
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: their highest mode of being, and then you offer them
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: challenges that are precisely optimized to their ability.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Right, so they can do them, but they have to stretch.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: The two elements of their ability would be what they
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: can do and what and how much they're capable of
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: transforming what they can do, And an optimal challenge is
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: stretches you to the end of what you can do
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: and then into the domain of how you can transform.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: You have to be humble and wise enough to understand
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: that you might have to aim pretty damn low, especially
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: in those places where you're not functioning well, and it
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: might be so embarrassing that you can't that you can't
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: bring yourself to fathom that that's actually who you are.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: You need the loss of that irgot ego because it's
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: precisely what's interfering with your movement forward. You know it's
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: part of the adversarial process logically speaking, that stops moral progress.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: You're too proud of who you think you are to
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: notice what you're like so that you could change properly.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: You don't want to sacrifice that part of yourself.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: It's probably associated with some delusion that helps you maintain
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: a positive, although very fragile self image.