Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / The Most Eye-Opening 10 Minutes of Your Life: Jordan Peterson’s Game-Changing Wisdom

Transcript

The Most Eye-Opening 10 Minutes of Your Life: Jordan Peterson’s Game-Changing Wisdom · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The first thing I would say is that if you're
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dealing with someone who's depressed, and they're really depressed, you
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: should try giving them antidepressants, because if they die, you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: can't help them. Okay, So if you're suffering, you are
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: obligated in a sense to hold on to whatever rope
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: someone throws you. And one of the things I do
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: with my clients all the time, especially if they're really
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: in trouble, is to tell them, look, I don't know
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: exactly what's going to happen, help you, but don't arbitrarily
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: throw out any possibilities because you might not have that luxury.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Antidepressants help a lot of people, and there are technical.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Reasons why that's the case. So that's a simple answer.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: It's not relevant to what I already described, except that
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: if you're offered a gift by your society and it works,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: try it.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I don't care what your presuppositions are.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Apart from that, Lots of time, lots of the time
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: you see people who are suffering with depression, for example.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: There's a multitude of reasons, but I'll take one common reason.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: You can think about it as associated with the story
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of Peter Pan. Peter Pan is someone who won't grow
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: up right now. The problem with Peter Pan is he
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: gets to be king, but it's king of neverland. Neverland
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't exist, so being king of nothing isn't that helpful.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: One of the things that you often see with people
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: who suffer from depression, and I'm not making a blanket
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: statement about the cause of depression because there's lots of them,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: is that people who don't have enough order in their
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: life tend to get overwhelmed.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: So, for example, if someone.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Comes into me and see to see me and they
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: say they're depressed, I always ask them a very standard
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: set of questions, do you have a job. If you
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: don't have a job, you're really in trouble in our society.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: First of all, your biological rhythms tend to go off
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the rails right away because there's no reason to go
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to bed at any particular time and there's no reason
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to get up. And for many people, if they don't
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: get up at the same time, they follow up the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: functioning of their circadian rhythms, and that's enough to make
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: them depressed right off the bat, especially if they start
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: napping during the out. They also don't have a purpose.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: People aren't good without a purpose. And this isn't this
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: isn't hypothesizing. We absolutely understand the circuitry that underlies positive emotion.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: We know how it works.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Almost all the positive emotion that any of you are
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: likely to experience in your life will not be a
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: consequence of attaining things. It will be a consequence of
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: seeing that things are working as you proceed towards a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: goal you value. That's completely different, and you need to
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: know this because people are often stunned. For example, they
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: finish their PhD thesis and their presupposition is that they're
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: going to be elated for a month, and often instead
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: they're actually depressed.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And they think, what the hell, I've been working on
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: this for seven years and I handed it in, and
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: what do I do now? And that's what depresses them, right,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: it's the what do I do now?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Well, they are fine if they enjoyed it pursuing the
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: thing as long as it was working out. They get
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of enthusiasm and excitement out of that, because
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: that's how our nervous systems work.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Most of your positive emotion is goal pursuit emotion.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: If you take drugs like cocaine or amphetamine, the reason
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: they're enjoyable is because they turn on the systems that
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: help you pursue goals.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: That's why people like them. So, if you don't have
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: a job, you got no structure. That's not good.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Plus you tend not to have a point, so you're
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: overwhelmed by chaotic lack of structure and you don't have
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: any positive emotion.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Well, do you have any friends? So sometimes you see
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: people who are depressed.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: They have no job, they have no friends, they have
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: no intimate relationship, they have an additional health problem, and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: they have a drug.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: And alcohol problem.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: My experience has being if you have three of those problems,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: it's almost impossible to help you. You're so deeply mired
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and chaos that you can't get out because you make
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: progress on one front and one of your other problems
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: pulls you down. So one of the things I tell
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: people who are depressed is like, don't sacrifice your stability.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Get a job, even if it's not the job you
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: exactly want. Get a damn job.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You need a job, Find some friends, get out in
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the dating circuit, see if you can establish an intimate relationship.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Put together some of the foundation items that are like
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: pillars that your life rests.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the practical thing to do.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So that's one example with regards to depression. Well, the
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: thing is you don't just launch it on them. You know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: you got to negotiate with the person and you also
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: got to teach them to negotiate with themselves.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: And this is something that's very useful to know.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: You know, you can tyrannize yourself into doing things, but
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend it. What I would recommend it instead
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: is that you ask yourself what you're willing to do.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: It's a really effective technique. It's like a meditative technique.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So for example, you can get up in the morning
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: and you can think, well, you know, I'd like to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: have a good day to day, So I'd like to
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: go to bed tonight without feeling guilty because I, you know,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: didn't do some things I said I was gonna do,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and I, you know, I'd like to have kind of
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: an interesting day, so you got to fulfill my responsibilities
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and I want to you know, enjoy the day.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Then you can ask.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Yourself, well, okay, what would I have to do in
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: order for that to happen that I would do? And
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the probability if you practice this for three or four days,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: is your brain will just tell you. You'll say, well,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: you know, there's that piece of homework that you haven't
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: done for like three weeks. You should knock that sucker
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: off because it would only take you ten minutes and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: you've been avoiding it and torturing yourself to death for
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: you know, like like seventy two hours straight. And if
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you do that, here's a little interesting thing you can do.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And you know, maybe this is a little obligations you
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: should clean up.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: And so what you do in a situation like.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: That is you teach the person to negotiate with themselves.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Say well, let's figure out what your aims are. You
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: got to have some aims, whatever they are. And they
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: might say, well, I'm so depressed, I don't have any aims.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And then I say, well, pick the least objectionable of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the aims and act it out for a while and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: see what happens. Because sometimes your emotions, your emotional systems
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: are so followed up that you have to pretend you
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: have to act the thing out before you can start
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: to believe it. I mean, people always assume they have
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: to believe and then act, but that's sometimes that's true,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and lots of times it isn't. So the trick if
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you're doing therapeutic work with someone and you're helping them
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: establish the structure is to find out what they'll do
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: now if they want to get better, which is not
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: a given, because there are often payoffs for not getting better.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: That's basically the payoffs of being a martyr, or maybe
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the payoffs of doing what your entirely pathological family members
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: want you to do because they actually want you to fail.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Assuming you want to get better, there's usually something you
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: can figure out that would constitute a step towards some
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: sort of concrete goal. And my presumption, it's a behavioral
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: presumption fundamentally, is that small accruing gains that repeat are
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: unbelievably powerful. So you know, this is another thing to
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: know about in your own life. It's something I learned
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: in part from reading the writings of Alexander Soltanez and
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: who's a great Russian philosopher and novelist.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: You know, he said, you can look at your life
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: and you can see what isn't right about it. I mean,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: all you have to is look, and then you can
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: start to fix that.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And the way you fix it is by noticing what
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: you could in fact fix. You know, people are often
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: trying to fix things they can't fix, which I would
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: not recommend, because if you try to fix something.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: You can't fix, you'll just ruin it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Like you can find all sorts of undergraduates, they are
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: perfectly willing to restructure the you know, the international economic system,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: cannot keep their room clean, and there's actually a gap there,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: which and it's surprising.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: That people don't actually notice.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: So I would say, if you pay attention, you can
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: see things that you could fix.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: They yell at you, they really do. We even know
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: how that happens.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Let me give you example, because rooms are full of stories,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and the stories have effects on you.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: So here's a classic experiment. So you take two groups undergraduates.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: You bring them into your lab, and you give one
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: group a multiple choice test that has a bunch of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: words in it that are associated with being old, and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: you give the other group the same multiple choice test,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: except the words are associated.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: With being young.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: This is independent of the content of the test, it's
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: just descriptions.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: And then you time the undergraduates as they walk back
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: to the elevators.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: The ones who read the ones who completed the multiple
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: choice test that had more words associated with aging walk slower.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Back to the elevators. And they don't know that, and
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: they don't know they're doing it.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: And that study has been replicated in various forms, many,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: many times. You're unbelievably sensitive to the story that you're
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Ronment's telling you because your environment is not made.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Out of objects. That's just wrong.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Your environment is basically made out of something like tools
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and obstacles. You're a tool using creature. You're a tool
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: perceiving creature.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: The things you like.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: If I take you out of this room and I say, well,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: what was in the room, You're not going to say,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you know, random patterns in the carpet, because they're they're real, just.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: As good an object as anything else.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: You're gonna say chairs because you can sit on them,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna say handrails because you can hold them.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: You're gonna say stairs because you can walk down them.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: That's what you see, and that's what you interact with.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And if you pay attention to your environment, which is you,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: by the way, extended all of your experiences you, it
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: will tell you all the time what you should do.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: All you have to do it, but then you have
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: to decide if you want to do it. One of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: the things I've noticed about people because I've wondered. Once
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I started studying these mythological stories and I got this
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: idea about the fact that life can be meaningful enough
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: to justify its suffering. I thought, God, that's such a
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: good idea because it's not optimistic exactly. You know, some
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: people will tell you what you can be happy. It's
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: like those people are idiots. I'm telling you they're idiots.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: There's gonna be things that come along that flatten you
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: so hard you won't believe it and you're not happy then.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And so if life is to be happy, well in
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: those situations, what are you doing?
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Why even live? But that isn't life isn't to be happy.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: If you're happy, you're bloody fortunate and you should enjoy it.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: You should because it's the grace of God.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: So to speak. With regards to.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: To meaning, I thought, well, people know when they're doing
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: something meaningful, they can tell, So why the hell don't
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: they do meaningful things all the time.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: It seems obvious you could do it.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard, you know, because other people want
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: you to do other things, and it's a struggle. But
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: everything's a struggle. And then I thought, well, oh, I
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: get it. I see why it took me about ten
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: years to figure this out. People have a choice Choice
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: number one. Nothing you do means anything. Well, that's kind
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of a drag, right, meaninglessness of life and all that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: existential angst.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: You know, that's kind of a pain.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: But the opside of nothing that you do be mean
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: is meaningful is you don't have to do anything. You've
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: got no response. Now you have to suffer because things
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: are meaningless. But that's a small price to pay for
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: being able to be completely useless. The alternative. The alternative
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: is everything you do matters.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: If you make a mistake, it's a real mistake. If
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you betray someone, you tilt the world a little more
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: sharply towards evil rather than good.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: It matters what you do.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Well, if you buy that, then you can have a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: meaningful life. But there's no mucking around. It means responsibility.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: It means that the decisions you make are important. It
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: means that when you do something wrong, it's wrong. Well,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: do you want that