Latest / Motivation Mindset Podcast / Jordan Peterson: 40 Minutes to Transform the Next 40 Years of Your Life

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Jordan Peterson: 40 Minutes to Transform the Next 40 Years of Your Life · Motivation Mindset Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: You say you are morally obligated to do remarkable things.
0:05
Speaker 1: Why Well, I think partly because life is so difficult
0:10
Speaker 1: and challenging that unless you give it everything you have,
0:14
Speaker 1: the chances are very high that it will embitter you,
0:17
Speaker 1: and then you'll be a force for darkness and not good.
0:21
Speaker 2: And so you know the fact that life is short
0:24
Speaker 2: and can be brutal can terrify you into hiding and avoiding.
0:30
Speaker 2: You can flip that on its head and understand that
0:33
Speaker 2: since you're all in anyways, you might as well take
0:36
Speaker 2: the risks that are adventurous. There isn't anything more adventurous
0:40
Speaker 2: than the truth. So why is that a moral obligation. Well,
0:43
Speaker 2: if you hide and you don't let what's inside of
0:46
Speaker 2: you out, and you don't bring into the world what
0:48
Speaker 2: you could bring, and you become cynical and bitter, you
0:52
Speaker 2: will start doing very dark things. Not only will you
0:55
Speaker 2: not add to the world what you could add, but
0:58
Speaker 2: you'll start being jealous of people who are competent and
1:02
Speaker 2: doing well and work to destroy them. So that's the
1:05
Speaker 2: pathway to hell. Really, we need to separate out the
1:14
Speaker 2: distinction between fantasy and delusion. You do have a fantasy
1:18
Speaker 2: about the future. So you have to provisionally map the future.
1:21
Speaker 2: That's what a plan is. That doesn't make it a delusion,
1:24
Speaker 2: like it becomes a delusion when the map bears no
1:27
Speaker 2: relationship to the underlying territory. So if you have a
1:30
Speaker 2: strategy for the future, you know, maybe let's say that
1:33
Speaker 2: your strategy for the future is that you have five
1:35
Speaker 2: million YouTube subscribers in three years. Well, you have no
1:39
Speaker 2: evidence of the strict sort that that's how it's going
1:42
Speaker 2: to be, because anything could happen between now and three
1:45
Speaker 2: years from now, let's say. But there's no reason to
1:48
Speaker 2: call that a delusion. It's one hypothetically possible path of potential,
1:53
Speaker 2: and then you can make the sacrifices necessary to bring
1:56
Speaker 2: that about. So even though it's a fantasy because it
1:59
Speaker 2: maps something it isn't there, it's not a delusion. It's
2:02
Speaker 2: a delusion when you're ignoring elements of your own experience
2:06
Speaker 2: that would inform your fantasy more effectively. You're ignoring them
2:10
Speaker 2: so that you can live in a positive representation of
2:13
Speaker 2: the future without having to pay the appropriate price for it.
2:16
Speaker 2: The ultimate ideal is also the ultimate judge, because the
2:20
Speaker 2: ultimate ideal is something against which you fall far short,
2:24
Speaker 2: and that might be so painful that you can barely
2:27
Speaker 2: stand it. But then what you do is you two things.
2:29
Speaker 2: I suppose is you lower the ideal and you raise
2:32
Speaker 2: your estimation of your potential. And what do I mean
2:35
Speaker 2: by lower the ideal? Well, if you're comparing yourself to
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Speaker 2: someone or even to a futureself, and the gap is
2:42
Speaker 2: so painful that it paralyzes you, then you've created a
2:46
Speaker 2: dragon that you don't have the tools to master. And
2:49
Speaker 2: so what you have to do is you have to
2:50
Speaker 2: scale the dragon down to size. And you want to
2:53
Speaker 2: scale the dragon down to size until it's a size
2:56
Speaker 2: that you are willing to move to, however small that is.
3:02
Speaker 2: Now you know, if you're here and your ideal is
3:05
Speaker 2: here and that gap is unbearable, then you reduce the gap,
3:09
Speaker 2: and you reduce the gap. And you're going to have
3:11
Speaker 2: to do that anyways, because you're not going to move
3:13
Speaker 2: from where you are to perfect in one fell swoop, right.
3:16
Speaker 2: There's going to be incremental steps. So you have to
3:18
Speaker 2: fill in that hierarchy of progression with a high enough
3:23
Speaker 2: resolution representation so that you can start to move forward.
3:27
Speaker 2: There's another gospel comment that's very interesting. It's called the
3:30
Speaker 2: Matthew principle, and the Matthew principle is to those who
3:33
Speaker 2: have everything, more will be given, and from those who
3:36
Speaker 2: have nothing, everything will be taken. Now, it's brutal because
3:40
Speaker 2: it implies that reality works like this. When you're moving up,
3:43
Speaker 2: you go like this, right, and that's pretty nice. That's
3:46
Speaker 2: a lot better than this. But when you're going down,
3:49
Speaker 2: you go like that, right. It's like downhill, downhill cliff. Okay,
3:54
Speaker 2: so you want to avoid the downhill path. Well, if
3:58
Speaker 2: the uphill path is like this, which is like exponential,
4:01
Speaker 2: let's say, are geometric, then what that means is that
4:05
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how big the first steps you take
4:08
Speaker 2: uphill are, even if they're trivial, even if they're shameful
4:12
Speaker 2: in their size, because you're so useless. If you're disciplined
4:16
Speaker 2: in that, you'll speed up extraordinarily rapidly. And so that's
4:21
Speaker 2: the good news, you might say, is that you can
4:23
Speaker 2: take very small steps, even ones that might be shameful
4:26
Speaker 2: in their size, and you have to admit that to yourself.
4:29
Speaker 2: But once you get the ball rolling, it doesn't roll
4:32
Speaker 2: in a linear fashion. It rolls in a geometric fashion.
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Speaker 2: And this is a really good thing to know, because
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Speaker 2: it can take the sting out of the realization of
4:39
Speaker 2: your own stupidity. It's like, yeah, you know, everybody has
4:43
Speaker 2: their weak sides. Let's say things they're embarrassed about. When
4:46
Speaker 2: I first started going to the gym, I was like
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Speaker 2: twenty three and I think I weighed one hundred and
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Speaker 2: thirty five pounds and I was six foot one, very
4:54
Speaker 2: very thin, twenty seven inch waist something like that, and
4:57
Speaker 2: I smoked like mad, and I drank too much, like
4:59
Speaker 2: I wasn't good shape. The first attempts forward I took
5:03
Speaker 2: in the gym, I went to this swim sercize class. Jesus,
5:07
Speaker 2: it was me and this like really fat guy, young
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Speaker 2: guy probably not any worse shape than me, and like
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Speaker 2: seven old women over seventy and they could outswim me like.
5:18
Speaker 2: It was pretty damn humiliating. And so I did a
5:20
Speaker 2: semester of that, got myself in somewhat better shape. And
5:23
Speaker 2: then I started to go to the gym to work
5:25
Speaker 2: out to lift weights, and that was also rough, because
5:29
Speaker 2: you know, I'd be underneath the bloody bench press trying
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Speaker 2: to lift seventy five pounds off the rests, and you know,
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Speaker 2: some muscle headed bastard would come over and tell me
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Speaker 2: how to do it, and it's like, yeah, thank you,
5:40
Speaker 2: but you know, it's embarrassing, and lots of times people
5:43
Speaker 2: won't do things like go to the gym because they're
5:45
Speaker 2: so embarrassed about how they look or what sort of
5:47
Speaker 2: shape they're in. And it's a pain to start at
5:50
Speaker 2: the bottom. But you start at the bottom where you're weak,
5:53
Speaker 2: and if you want to rectify what's weak, you have
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Speaker 2: to accept the fact that you're at the bottom and
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Speaker 2: that the first steps are going to be painful. You know,
6:00
Speaker 2: it took me about three years, but I stopped smoking
6:04
Speaker 2: and then I stopped drinking, and I gained forty pounds
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Speaker 2: muscle in like three and a half years something like that.
6:10
Speaker 2: I basically had to stop doing that because I had
6:11
Speaker 2: to eat like six times a day. It was crazy,
6:16
Speaker 2: but I got a lot more physically confident and a
6:18
Speaker 2: lot more coordinated. But the point of all this is,
6:21
Speaker 2: if you're going to rectify your weaknesses, you have to
6:24
Speaker 2: admit your insufficiency to your own shame. Now, if the
6:28
Speaker 2: gap between you and your ideal is so great that
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Speaker 2: it paralyzes you, you shrink, that things will beckon to
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Speaker 2: you and call to you, and you'll have intuitions about
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Speaker 2: which pathway to take, and you will in all likelihood
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Speaker 2: follow those because what else do you have. You have
6:43
Speaker 2: these orienting instincts. This is another reason why you don't lie,
6:47
Speaker 2: because if you lie and you practice lying, you pathologize
6:51
Speaker 2: your instincts, and then your intuitions lead you wrong. And
6:55
Speaker 2: so there's a sin that's laid out in the Gospels.
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Speaker 2: It's the sin against the Holy Ghost unforgivable, and people
7:01
Speaker 2: have been debating for like two thousand years about what
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Speaker 2: this particular sin is, but it's something like the pathologization
7:08
Speaker 2: of the instincts that orient you. If you sacrifice your
7:12
Speaker 2: relationship to the truth, you warp your vision and then
7:15
Speaker 2: you can't see. And then one day it'll be dark
7:18
Speaker 2: and there'll be sharp things in the fog in front
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Speaker 2: of you, and you'll wander right into them because you've
7:24
Speaker 2: pathologized your own vision. You don't want to lie, because
7:28
Speaker 2: you program yourself falsely, and then you automatically see what
7:33
Speaker 2: isn't there, and then of course the world will slap
7:36
Speaker 2: you in the face continually, and you'll think, oh my god,
7:39
Speaker 2: the world's such a pathological place. When the truth of
7:42
Speaker 2: the matter is is that no, you just keep running
7:45
Speaker 2: into things that you refuse to see, and then you think, well,
7:49
Speaker 2: the world's made of nothing but obstacles. It's like, well,
7:52
Speaker 2: you put the obstacles in your own path, and you
7:54
Speaker 2: did that by developing these complex, self serving delusions, a
8:00
Speaker 2: story that you tell other people about who you are
8:02
Speaker 2: that isn't true. You're trying to lay out a map
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Speaker 2: that bears no relationship to reality, and you keep wondering
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Speaker 2: why you wander off the path and into a pit.
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Speaker 2: It's like, well, how could it be otherwise? People have
8:15
Speaker 2: commented to me many times about my bravery, and I
8:18
Speaker 2: don't like that. It's not right. I'm afraid of different
8:23
Speaker 2: things than the typical person. Maybe that's a good way
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Speaker 2: of thinking about it. I'm way more afraid of the
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Speaker 2: consequences of saying something that's false or wandering off the
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Speaker 2: appropriate path than I am of whatever consequences might come
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Speaker 2: for saying what I believe and doing what I believe
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Speaker 2: to be the case. I'm way more afraid of that.
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Speaker 2: You know, I've been reading the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
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Speaker 2: I'm writing a book at the moment called We Who
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Speaker 2: wrestle with God. And one of the things Christ says
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Speaker 2: to people continually is to not damage their vision, is
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Speaker 2: to not put that's the best way of putting it.
9:00
Speaker 2: Don't occlude your eye. You can see what's in front
9:04
Speaker 2: of you if you're willing to see it. And if
9:06
Speaker 2: you're willing to see it, many of the terrible obstacles
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Speaker 2: in life you can just walk around. But if you
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Speaker 2: blind yourself purposefully to follow your own narrow, self serving delusion,
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Speaker 2: you're going to run into terrible things and terrible people
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Speaker 2: and the terrible part of your own soul all the time.
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Speaker 2: That's what you should be afraid of. You can't be
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Speaker 2: isolated alone without responsibility and pursuing your hedonistic nonsense and
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Speaker 2: not be insane and miserable. Those are all the same thing, right,
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Speaker 2: And so you know, it's got to the point I've
9:47
Speaker 2: said things that have made me somewhat unpopular, Like it's
9:49
Speaker 2: very difficult for people to mature until they have a child.
9:52
Speaker 2: You find a huge part of what you are in
9:54
Speaker 2: that relationship. It makes you responsible, makes you grow up,
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Speaker 2: It gives you the opportunity to mentor someone you have
10:00
Speaker 2: someone around who's more important than you. Well that's part
10:03
Speaker 2: of being mentally healthy. It's a huge part of it.
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Speaker 2: This enterprise that I helped put together, Alliance for Responsible Citizenship,
10:10
Speaker 2: we're trying to put forward a model of governance. It's
10:13
Speaker 2: called a subsidiary model, and the idea is that people
10:16
Speaker 2: have multiple social roles that scale. Now there's you take
10:20
Speaker 2: care of yourself, integrate yourself, which means you can conduct
10:24
Speaker 2: yourself properly across the medium to long run your self sustaining.
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Speaker 2: Then you can maybe extend that to your partner, and
10:31
Speaker 2: then to your family, and then to your local community,
10:34
Speaker 2: and then to broader communities as you become more and
10:38
Speaker 2: more competent and able to take on that responsibility. That's
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Speaker 2: the alternative to isolated hedonic slavery. Is slave to your
10:46
Speaker 2: own whims, and it's the alternative to tyranny because if
10:50
Speaker 2: you take on all that responsibility, you don't have any
10:53
Speaker 2: need for someone to govern you. It's truly the case
10:56
Speaker 2: that your sanity is the concordance between you as an
11:00
Speaker 2: individual and the world. That's the sanity you're distributed out
11:04
Speaker 2: into the world and you shouldn't be, and that's you
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Speaker 2: want to be. That's where the adventure is you want
11:09
Speaker 2: to be solepsistic, the solepsistic porn masturbator. Jesus isn't going
11:14
Speaker 2: to be aimless and miserable. Well, god, it's so pathetic.
11:19
Speaker 2: Why am I so unhappy? It's because you think about yourself. No,
11:23
Speaker 2: you think about the lowest impulses in yourself all the time.
11:29
Speaker 2: That's why you're miserable. People exist in a sacrificial relationship
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Speaker 2: to the world. What does that mean? It seems to
11:37
Speaker 2: mean something like human beings are aware of their extended self.
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Speaker 2: You know you're going to be around tomorrow and next week,
11:44
Speaker 2: and next month, the next year, and five years from
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Speaker 2: now and ten years from now. Now it's less certain
11:48
Speaker 2: as you go out, but you do have the sense
11:51
Speaker 2: of yourself as something that stretches across the decades. Okay,
11:55
Speaker 2: And so what that means is that you have to
11:57
Speaker 2: conduct yourself in a manner that is and merely immediate.
12:02
Speaker 2: You have to conduct yourself in a manner that will
12:04
Speaker 2: work across time. Now, how do people do that? They work?
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Speaker 2: Work is a sacrificial gesture. So you work, by definition,
12:14
Speaker 2: virtually work is the sacrifice of the present for the future.
12:17
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe someone can come up with a better
12:19
Speaker 2: definition of work than that, But I don't think so.
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Speaker 2: It's like, you put in time and effort right now,
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Speaker 2: even if it's something not what you'd like to be
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Speaker 2: doing at the moment, you put in time and effort
12:29
Speaker 2: because you believe. What the hell does that mean? You
12:33
Speaker 2: believe it'll pay off? Well, is that a contract with
12:36
Speaker 2: the future? Is it a covenant? Because the relationship that
12:41
Speaker 2: the Biblical Corpus characterizes human striving is covenant. It's a bargain.
12:46
Speaker 2: The bargain is you make the right sacrifices and they
12:49
Speaker 2: pay off. That's the bargain. Now you might say, well,
12:52
Speaker 2: that's just part of the social contract, but the Biblical
12:56
Speaker 2: Corpus insists that it's deeper than that. It's built into
12:58
Speaker 2: the structure of reality itself, and that if you got
13:01
Speaker 2: the sacrifices right, the future would be paradisal. That's a
13:06
Speaker 2: kind of sacrifice right there, is that you're willing to
13:09
Speaker 2: sacrifice your short term physiological and psychological comfort for a
13:15
Speaker 2: medium to long term benefit. It's the essence of sacrifice.
13:18
Speaker 2: This is something the atheists don't understand about the Biblical narrative,
13:22
Speaker 2: is that the narrative insists that we live in a
13:24
Speaker 2: sacrificial relationship. It's the essence of humanity to live in
13:28
Speaker 2: a sacrificial relationship. It's like, well, is that true or not? Well,
13:32
Speaker 2: as you mature, your relationships are more sacrificial. It's less
13:36
Speaker 2: about what you, in your narrow sense want right now,
13:41
Speaker 2: and it's more about what's good over the medium to
13:43
Speaker 2: long run, including other people. Well, that's a sacrificial relationship. Now,
13:48
Speaker 2: the covenant, you know, and this is a matter of faith,
13:50
Speaker 2: it's the matter of the deepest faith. Are you willing
13:53
Speaker 2: to act out the proposition that the way to make
13:56
Speaker 2: the world reveal itself to you in its most positive
13:59
Speaker 2: go eyes is for you to adopt the most appropriate
14:03
Speaker 2: sacrificial relationship. What's a big risk, isn't it? Because you
14:07
Speaker 2: have to give up everything. That's the deal. You give
14:10
Speaker 2: up everything that's low everything, everything. Well, that's what the
14:14
Speaker 2: Christian passion is, because the Christian passion is an archetypal story,
14:18
Speaker 2: because Christ is the person who sacrifices everything thoroughly, one
14:24
Speaker 2: hundred percent. There's no indecision because you age like you
14:30
Speaker 2: pay for your indecision. It's a decision, it's a decision
14:33
Speaker 2: to avoid fundamentally and part of the moral that's embedded
14:38
Speaker 2: in the story of Job and in the Christian passion
14:41
Speaker 2: is that you can master what you'll face. And maybe
14:44
Speaker 2: that's true. I mean, the clinical literature seems to indicate
14:47
Speaker 2: that it's true. Because one of the things you do
14:50
Speaker 2: if you're a competent clinician is you look at what
14:53
Speaker 2: people are attempting to accomplish. And maybe that needs some retooling.
14:57
Speaker 2: But let's assume that they have a goal in mind
14:59
Speaker 2: that would work. Right, You've talked it through with them strategically,
15:04
Speaker 2: they have a well laid out vision. Okay, now they're
15:06
Speaker 2: laying out the vision, and they encounter impediments that stop them,
15:10
Speaker 2: and maybe they're impediments that make them afraid and paralyze them.
15:14
Speaker 2: And so then what you do is you decompose the
15:16
Speaker 2: impediment or until you find a way they can advance
15:20
Speaker 2: that constitutes a genuine advance that they'll actually do. So
15:24
Speaker 2: what you do is you take the problem and you
15:26
Speaker 2: narrow it until they'll face it. Okay, then they face it.
15:29
Speaker 2: Then what happens They get more competent, That's what happens,
15:33
Speaker 2: and then they get better at facing all problems, so
15:36
Speaker 2: they don't just learn how to deal with that specific problem,
15:39
Speaker 2: They learn a lesson that generalizes across problems. They get braver.
15:42
Speaker 2: When you use exposure therapy, people don't get less afraid,
15:45
Speaker 2: they get braver. That's way better because braver moves from
15:50
Speaker 2: situation to situation. Okay, So the question is if you
15:53
Speaker 2: faced everything that was put in front of you, who
15:56
Speaker 2: would you be. Well, the answer to the biblical answers,
15:59
Speaker 2: you'd be a son of God. That's the biblical answer.
16:02
Speaker 2: It's like, well, do you believe that, Well, it depends
16:05
Speaker 2: on what you mean by believe. Do you have a
16:07
Speaker 2: better bet than facing what's there? Well, you just have
16:11
Speaker 2: to be sensible about it for a Moment's like, is
16:14
Speaker 2: your theory that you're going to adapt better using falsehood
16:18
Speaker 2: and avoidance, because that's the contrary theory. You either face
16:22
Speaker 2: it and you do that predicated on the faith that
16:25
Speaker 2: something in you will respond if you do, or you
16:28
Speaker 2: don't face it, that's it. Those are the options. If
16:31
Speaker 2: you don't face it, that's faith too. That's faith in
16:35
Speaker 2: the notion that avoidance and deception will suffice. There's technically
16:42
Speaker 2: two different forms of reward. There's consumatory reward. That's what
16:46
Speaker 2: an orgasm is it's consumatory reward. It brings the behavioral
16:50
Speaker 2: and perceptual sequence to a halt. It ends it right
16:54
Speaker 2: at the climax, it ends it, but then it's over.
16:56
Speaker 2: That journey is over. Right. Then there's the dopamine ergic reward,
17:00
Speaker 2: and dopaminergic reward is evidence of advancement towards a goal. Right, Okay,
17:06
Speaker 2: So there's a corollary to that, Well, how do you
17:09
Speaker 2: become optimally engaged? Because dopamine facilitates engagement and focus, which
17:14
Speaker 2: is why drugs like amphetamines can be used for kids
17:18
Speaker 2: who are attention deficit disorted. You tap up the dopamine response,
17:23
Speaker 2: they lock on, right, Okay, so they're locking onto a
17:25
Speaker 2: goal directed pursuit. The problem with amphetamines is that they
17:29
Speaker 2: can lock you on so hard you can't get out
17:31
Speaker 2: of the frame. So like kids on amphetamines will obsess,
17:35
Speaker 2: for example, cleaning up their closet, they can't switch to
17:37
Speaker 2: the next activity. Okay. Dopaminergic reward is reward that's accrued
17:41
Speaker 2: in relationship to a goal. Okay, So what's an implication
17:44
Speaker 2: of that, Well, pursue the highest possible goal. Well, why
17:48
Speaker 2: because the kick from advancement is higher. Now you have
17:52
Speaker 2: to balance that. It can't be you have to advance, right,
17:55
Speaker 2: because imagine the reward's got two components. Number one is
17:59
Speaker 2: you're moving towards something valuable. Okay, So you want it
18:02
Speaker 2: to be as valuable as possible, Okay, but you have
18:05
Speaker 2: to be moving. You need something extremely valuable that you
18:08
Speaker 2: can move towards. Okay. So part of the reason that
18:12
Speaker 2: you establish a relationship with God, let's say, is because
18:17
Speaker 2: that's what sets the upper bound to your vision. It's like,
18:20
Speaker 2: I want things to be the best they could be.
18:23
Speaker 2: That's a vision of paradise. Well, that has to be
18:25
Speaker 2: fractionated into your proximal decisions. But lurking behind that should
18:31
Speaker 2: be this continual movement towards what would you say, a
18:34
Speaker 2: heaven that recedes as you approach it. That's the proper
18:37
Speaker 2: vision of heaven. A heaven is a place that's perfect
18:40
Speaker 2: and getting better both at the same time. That's what
18:43
Speaker 2: music shows you, because a great piece of music is perfect,
18:46
Speaker 2: but it's just getting better as it unfolds, and you
18:49
Speaker 2: need that. This is part of the problem with a static,
18:52
Speaker 2: utopian vision, something Dostyevski criticized. If you gave people nothing
18:56
Speaker 2: but consumatory reward, he famously says, so that they can
19:01
Speaker 2: do nothing but sit in tubs of hot water, eat cake,
19:04
Speaker 2: and busy themselves with the continuation of the species. Human
19:08
Speaker 2: beings would break that all to hell in a moment,
19:11
Speaker 2: just so they have something interesting to do. If you
19:13
Speaker 2: run yourself through a disciplinary process, so you accomplish something,
19:17
Speaker 2: maybe you don't attain the goal you were aiming at,
19:20
Speaker 2: but you accrue a new way of looking at the
19:22
Speaker 2: world in a set of skills. Well, if you just
19:25
Speaker 2: keep doing that, you have multiple ways of looking at
19:27
Speaker 2: the world in more and more skill. Well, that's that's
19:30
Speaker 2: your storehouse of treasure. As you walk through life in
19:33
Speaker 2: your normal mode, things will call to you, and if
19:36
Speaker 2: you pursue them, they will take you deep. It doesn't
19:39
Speaker 2: really matter what it is that calls. What matters is
19:41
Speaker 2: that you pursue it, and you pursue it to the depths.
19:45
Speaker 2: And as you pursue it to the depths, you will
19:48
Speaker 2: become transformed. And if you do that without reservation, that
19:52
Speaker 2: will turn you into the person who frees the slaves
19:54
Speaker 2: and opposes the tyrants. And that is how it works.
19:58
Speaker 2: That's the call and that can happen in any direction,
20:02
Speaker 2: virtually any direction. You just have to pursue it with
20:05
Speaker 2: sufficient faith. Aimless is not nothing. Aimless is bad. Who
20:12
Speaker 2: Nietzscha said, if you had a why, you could bear anyhow.
20:18
Speaker 2: Most people find the meaning in their life through responsibility.
20:22
Speaker 2: I believe the fundamental religious truth of the idea that
20:27
Speaker 2: life is suffering. It's suffering because we're mortal and fragile,
20:32
Speaker 2: and because we're also subject to malevolence at our own
20:35
Speaker 2: hands into the hands of others. It's a constant existential problem.
20:40
Speaker 2: And that can make you bitter, and can make you
20:43
Speaker 2: hopeless and nihilistic and depressed and anxious and likely to
20:47
Speaker 2: abuse substances of various sorts as a medication or an escape.
20:52
Speaker 2: It can augur you in in a very large number
20:55
Speaker 2: of ways. And I'm suggesting to people that there is
20:58
Speaker 2: a way out of that, and the way out to
21:00
Speaker 2: confront that forthrightly and to adopt responsibility in your own
21:04
Speaker 2: life and to try to make the world a better place,
21:06
Speaker 2: and that it's necessary to do that, and that if
21:08
Speaker 2: you don't do that, then things go badly. I think
21:11
Speaker 2: the deck is stacked against everyone to some degree because
21:14
Speaker 2: life is very difficult, and we all die so but people,
21:18
Speaker 2: some people do have it harder than others, and all
21:21
Speaker 2: of us have it very hard. At some times in
21:24
Speaker 2: our lives. It's like, well, what's the alternative? You take
21:28
Speaker 2: responsibility for that and try to struggle uphill, because the
21:31
Speaker 2: alternative makes everything worse. Find something in your life that's
21:36
Speaker 2: so worthwhile doing that. The fact that you're going to
21:39
Speaker 2: suffer is justifiable. Yeah, life's rough, no doubt about it.
21:45
Speaker 2: And if good luck comes your way, then you should
21:47
Speaker 2: be grateful for it. And if happiness manages to manifest itself,
21:50
Speaker 2: you should be grateful for that too. So then you
21:53
Speaker 2: might ask yourself, well, what's the best antidote to the
21:56
Speaker 2: discomfort of life? And you might say, well, it's comfort,
22:00
Speaker 2: and I suppose that's what you act out when you
22:04
Speaker 2: swaddle a baby. But a better antidote is something like
22:08
Speaker 2: adventure to excellence, and that's far better antidote to suffering
22:13
Speaker 2: than the mere absence of suffering. So not to say
22:18
Speaker 2: that the mere absence of suffering, that's not nothing. I've
22:21
Speaker 2: been a psychotherapist for twenty years. I've seen things you
22:24
Speaker 2: can't imagine, horror shows that you can't fathom and people
22:28
Speaker 2: who have been hurt in so many ways, so many dimensions.
22:32
Speaker 2: It's like, should they be bitter, should they be resentful?
22:35
Speaker 2: Should they become violent? These things don't help. They have
22:38
Speaker 2: to struggle uphill despite their excess burden. And it's responsibility,
22:43
Speaker 2: not guilt. It's the female crucifixion, and that's exemplified best
22:49
Speaker 2: in well, the best portrayal of that I've seen is
22:52
Speaker 2: Michael Angelo's Pieta. No, it's a statue of Mary and
22:57
Speaker 2: she has Christ's body on her as an adult, on
23:00
Speaker 2: her lap, and that's broken and destroyed, and you know,
23:04
Speaker 2: she's displaying that. That's that's the bravery of a mother
23:09
Speaker 2: to allow that to happen, but not only that, to
23:13
Speaker 2: facilitate it facilitated. Hey you go, kid, where you go?
23:17
Speaker 2: Way you go? Well, why it's dangerous out there? It's yeah,
23:21
Speaker 2: no kidding, it's more dangerous here if you stay with
23:24
Speaker 2: me by a lot. So you might lose your body
23:27
Speaker 2: out there in the world, but if you stay here,
23:28
Speaker 2: you lose your soul, you know. I mean, it's a
23:32
Speaker 2: pretty competitive world. There's lots of competition for young men
23:35
Speaker 2: in particular, there's competition for status and limited resources, and
23:38
Speaker 2: for the attention of women. And just because you're nice
23:42
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean that you come out particularly well in
23:44
Speaker 2: those competitions. I would like to say that you should
23:48
Speaker 2: all be smarter, but I don't know how you could
23:50
Speaker 2: be smarter. We don't know anything about how to improve intelligence,
23:54
Speaker 2: and I suppose we don't really know anything about how
23:56
Speaker 2: to improve industriousness either. But I can tell you that
24:00
Speaker 2: people who are industrious come up with a strategy for
24:03
Speaker 2: solving the problem that's ahead of them, and then they
24:06
Speaker 2: do whatever they can to stick to the strategy. And so,
24:09
Speaker 2: for example, if you sat down today or tomorrow for
24:12
Speaker 2: a couple of hours, three hours, and you filled in
24:15
Speaker 2: a Google calendar whatever you happen to use, with a
24:18
Speaker 2: strategy for studying and a list of when all your
24:22
Speaker 2: assignments are doing all of that, and when you're going
24:25
Speaker 2: to sit down and study, then you won't be in
24:27
Speaker 2: a position where you have to cram for ten hours
24:29
Speaker 2: a day hopelessly. Right before you know, an important exam
24:35
Speaker 2: is beautifully put that love is the highest ideal to
24:40
Speaker 2: reach for, and truth is it's handmade. I try. I
24:43
Speaker 2: thought about that for a long time. Right, this hierarchy
24:46
Speaker 2: of ideal. The thing about truth, that bitter truth, let's
24:49
Speaker 2: say that cynical truth, is it can break the shackles
24:54
Speaker 2: of naivety. And actually a burnt cynicism is a moral
25:00
Speaker 2: improvement over a blind naivete, even though one is in
25:05
Speaker 2: some ways positive but only because it's protected, and the
25:07
Speaker 2: other is bitter and dark but still better. But you're
25:12
Speaker 2: not done at that point, you're just barely started. I
25:15
Speaker 2: think optimally we exist to have something like a playful adventure. Right.
25:21
Speaker 2: We're built for an optimal challenge. It's partly why we
25:24
Speaker 2: like to play, because in play you find an optimal challenge.
25:27
Speaker 2: It's almost like the definition of play. And so if
25:32
Speaker 2: you can organize yourself and the world optimally, then you
25:39
Speaker 2: have adventure, and maybe you have the adventure of your life.
25:43
Speaker 2: And if you can do that brilliantly, then you can
25:47
Speaker 2: do it in a spirit of play. That's what you
25:50
Speaker 2: need and want. I saw an endless repetition in my
25:56
Speaker 2: clinical practice and in my own private life when my
25:58
Speaker 2: eyes were open, the consequences of not saying what was true.
26:04
Speaker 2: It's like whatever hell you might fall into by opening
26:07
Speaker 2: your mouth when you have something to say that isn't popular.
26:09
Speaker 2: It's nothing like the hell that you're going to envelop
26:11
Speaker 2: yourself in if you lose control of your own tongue
26:14
Speaker 2: and mind. And like I said, in my clinical practice,
26:18
Speaker 2: I never saw anyone get away with anything even once.
26:23
Speaker 2: And so all you have in a situation like that
26:25
Speaker 2: is what is the truth? Now? You know, of course
26:29
Speaker 2: you only have your approximations to the truth. But that's
26:32
Speaker 2: better than nothing. And so you need to be afraid
26:35
Speaker 2: of the right thing. And you should be afraid of
26:37
Speaker 2: contaminating your soul with deceit. That's what you should be
26:41
Speaker 2: afraid of. What happens is, you know, garbage in, garbage out,
26:45
Speaker 2: the old programmers saying goes. And so you'll fill your
26:49
Speaker 2: head with nonsense and no one will call you on
26:51
Speaker 2: it except you. But you can still that voice if
26:53
Speaker 2: you try hard enough. You just wait until you get
26:56
Speaker 2: in real trouble. You know, one day they'll come a
26:59
Speaker 2: point where you have to make a decision. And the
27:02
Speaker 2: decision is the difference between life and death, or worse,
27:05
Speaker 2: between someone else's life and death, or worse between health
27:09
Speaker 2: and the suffering. That's worse than death. And because you've
27:13
Speaker 2: compromised yourself to such a degree, you will not be
27:16
Speaker 2: able to rely on your judgment and you will make
27:18
Speaker 2: the mistake you shouldn't make, and then you're done and
27:22
Speaker 2: that will absolutely happen. Yeah, well, I mean you set
27:27
Speaker 2: what's great against what's tragic. Yeah, I mean, what else
27:30
Speaker 2: could you possibly do? And so then you say, well,
27:32
Speaker 2: how do you find what's great in your own life?
27:34
Speaker 2: And part of that is you watch. It's like, when
27:38
Speaker 2: is it that I'm doing something that alleviates my suffering? Right,
27:41
Speaker 2: it's a real you have to ask that question to yourself. Honestly.
27:44
Speaker 2: One of the things you have them do is say, well,
27:47
Speaker 2: why don't you just watch for a week, like watch
27:49
Speaker 2: yourself like you don't know who you are, and just
27:52
Speaker 2: see when you're not quite as miserable, and then let's
27:56
Speaker 2: see if we can figure out what it is about
27:58
Speaker 2: what you're doing in that situation that's lifting the gloom.
28:01
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, okay, there's something in that that's curative, right,
28:06
Speaker 2: And that's something in that that's curative is related to well,
28:09
Speaker 2: you might say your purpose. It's like, maybe part of
28:11
Speaker 2: the reason you're depressed is because you're too isolated, and
28:14
Speaker 2: now we can work on that. So let's see if
28:16
Speaker 2: we can increase the amount of time you're spending with
28:18
Speaker 2: your friends by like twenty percent, or maybe you need
28:21
Speaker 2: a couple of new friends, or maybe you need to
28:23
Speaker 2: work on your comic material, you know, because you can
28:26
Speaker 2: set that against the tragedy of life. This is I think,
28:32
Speaker 2: why people are so obsessed in some sense with the
28:35
Speaker 2: search for fundamental meaning. This is a good story. So
28:39
Speaker 2: you can imagine two people laying bricks. They're building a
28:43
Speaker 2: gigantic wall, and the one person thinks, oh my god,
28:45
Speaker 2: you know this wall is going to take one hundred
28:48
Speaker 2: thousand bricks. I'm laying one at a time, and I'm
28:50
Speaker 2: wasting my life away trivially adding to this gigantic brick wall.
28:56
Speaker 2: And what am I doing This is absolutely miserable. Brick
29:00
Speaker 2: by brick, And the other person thinks, in three hundred years,
29:03
Speaker 2: this is going to be a cathedral. And so the
29:07
Speaker 2: person in the second state is doing exactly the same
29:10
Speaker 2: thing at a local level, laying bricks. But each brick
29:13
Speaker 2: is related to a very high goal, and that means
29:16
Speaker 2: the reward that's attendant upon the laying of the brick
29:19
Speaker 2: is proportional to the goal of the entire behavioral process.
29:25
Speaker 2: So if you're aimless and goalless, then you can't elicit
29:28
Speaker 2: any positive emotion. And if your goals are fragmented, which
29:32
Speaker 2: is also what happens if you're aimless or your goals
29:34
Speaker 2: lack unity. If your goals are fragmented, then no given
29:37
Speaker 2: behavioral manifestation can listit any dopaminergic reward because it's not
29:42
Speaker 2: a step forward to anything desirable. One of the things well,
29:47
Speaker 2: I did write about this in my first book, particularly
29:49
Speaker 2: about putting your life, putting your house in perfect order.
29:52
Speaker 2: It's like, well, if you're lost, one of the things
29:55
Speaker 2: you can do is look around and see what direction
29:58
Speaker 2: you could take locally something, find something that you could
30:04
Speaker 2: do that would make things better that you would do.
30:08
Speaker 2: And there's a humility in that too, because, especially if
30:10
Speaker 2: you're in a low energy state, it's like, oh my god,
30:12
Speaker 2: you know, I don't have enough energy to make dinner.
30:14
Speaker 2: It's like do you have enough energy to put a
30:17
Speaker 2: fork on the table. And sometimes people are so depressed
30:20
Speaker 2: that that's really all they can do. Can you take
30:22
Speaker 2: a small step forward, no matter how small that is,
30:26
Speaker 2: implement a micro routine, even something like washing a cup
30:29
Speaker 2: and putting it back in the shelf, and you know
30:31
Speaker 2: that's a good thing. Because you have a shelf and
30:33
Speaker 2: there's cups on it. You've already decided that's an appropriate
30:36
Speaker 2: way to live is to have your coffee cups on
30:38
Speaker 2: a shelf. If you go ahead with cleaning out the
30:42
Speaker 2: cup and putting it on the shelf, then you've taken
30:44
Speaker 2: steps towards a valuable micro goal. You get a dopamine
30:48
Speaker 2: kick from that that transforms itself into adrenaline and energizes
30:52
Speaker 2: you in part what the dopamine system is doing. So
30:55
Speaker 2: imagine that the purpose of the dopamine system is to
30:58
Speaker 2: elicit a satiating reward fundamentally, but then the satiating reward
31:03
Speaker 2: is something that has to be approached in steps, and
31:06
Speaker 2: so in order to maintain the motivation necessary to approach
31:10
Speaker 2: the satiating reward, you have to mark each of the
31:12
Speaker 2: steps with a marker of pleasure. Small things are not small.
31:21
Speaker 2: You might have the cognitive appraisal that doing something local
31:24
Speaker 2: like cleaning up your room is small, but it's not
31:27
Speaker 2: obvious at all that that's the case. It's not that
31:30
Speaker 2: trivial to put your immediate surroundings in order, and it
31:33
Speaker 2: can easily be the stepping stone to putting things in
31:36
Speaker 2: order on a broader scale. In fact, it's probably the
31:39
Speaker 2: necessary stepping stone to do that. You can pat yourself
31:41
Speaker 2: on the back, especially if you're depressed a little harder
31:43
Speaker 2: than you might otherwise, by saying, you know, you say, well,
31:45
Speaker 2: this is trivial, but I did it. It's like no,
31:48
Speaker 2: if you're moving ahead, that's not small. You just keep
31:52
Speaker 2: doing that. You're going to get out of this paralyzed
31:55
Speaker 2: or retreat mode. If you're in the zone of proximal development,
31:59
Speaker 2: you're pushishing your skill development one increment forward, and it's
32:04
Speaker 2: one that you can actually manage. Imagine that you have
32:07
Speaker 2: someone who's habitually avoidant, and maybe they're avoidant because when
32:11
Speaker 2: they become possessed by negative emotion, they become hyper aware
32:14
Speaker 2: of their internal state and they feel the panic, and
32:17
Speaker 2: so then they freeze or retreat and they do that constantly,
32:22
Speaker 2: and then they're in this terrible negative emotional state all
32:25
Speaker 2: the time because every time they see a stimulus that's
32:28
Speaker 2: associated with retreat, they get gripped by these interceptive sensations.
32:34
Speaker 2: And so you say to them, well, we're going to
32:36
Speaker 2: reverse that. Instead of you being gripped by that, you're
32:39
Speaker 2: going to expose yourself to that voluntarily. So if you
32:42
Speaker 2: do that well repeatedly with people, not only do they
32:45
Speaker 2: stop being afraid of the things that you're showing them,
32:50
Speaker 2: that you're exposing them to, but they become more likely
32:53
Speaker 2: to approach other things they're afraid of, far more likely.
32:56
Speaker 2: In fact, it doesn't exactly look like people get more
32:59
Speaker 2: less afraid at all. It looks like what happens is
33:02
Speaker 2: they learned to get braver. One of the phenomenon cognitive
33:14
Speaker 2: phenomena that loads very heavily on their auticism is self consciousness.
33:19
Speaker 2: And so when you fall into anxiety, then there is
33:21
Speaker 2: this internal obsessiveness which has to do with the panoply
33:26
Speaker 2: of sins in some sense, which parts of me are
33:30
Speaker 2: malfunctioning and need to be eradicated. And one of the
33:33
Speaker 2: things I used to do with my socially anxious clients,
33:35
Speaker 2: so they would go into a social situation, often with
33:38
Speaker 2: eyes down cast, by the way, and they would be
33:42
Speaker 2: so intensely concentrating on their own internal sensations that they
33:46
Speaker 2: would fail to make eye contact with anybody they were
33:48
Speaker 2: talking to, and then they would be awkward because they
33:51
Speaker 2: weren't reading the cues they could have read if they
33:54
Speaker 2: would have only looked, and then the conversation would become disjointed,
33:58
Speaker 2: and then they would get anxioent and fall into themselves.
34:01
Speaker 2: And so one of the things that I taught them
34:03
Speaker 2: to do wasn't to try to calm themselves down, but
34:07
Speaker 2: to try to calm the other person down. So when
34:10
Speaker 2: you go into a social situation, pay more attention to
34:13
Speaker 2: the other person, like just focus your attention outward. And
34:17
Speaker 2: if the person had any social skill. Sometimes I had
34:20
Speaker 2: clients who had skills, and so they were anxious socially
34:23
Speaker 2: because they actually didn't know how to behave socially. So
34:26
Speaker 2: then you had to teach them the social skills. But
34:29
Speaker 2: some of them had the skills but wouldn't activate them
34:31
Speaker 2: because they were so neurotically obsessed with their own inadequacy
34:37
Speaker 2: that they failed to attend to the cues that would
34:39
Speaker 2: elicit the proper responses, And all they had to learn
34:42
Speaker 2: to do was wash and then they would automatically respond
34:46
Speaker 2: because they knew how to have a conversation. See, the
34:55
Speaker 2: reason that socially anxious people are so interroceptive is it's involuntary, right,
35:00
Speaker 2: they get gripped by the negative emotion, and then that
35:02
Speaker 2: produces this intense, obsessive interception that might not happen if
35:08
Speaker 2: they did it voluntarily. This is why exposure therapy works
35:12
Speaker 2: so well in psychotherapy. Is like, well, I'm afraid of something,
35:15
Speaker 2: and if I go near it, then I'm possessed by
35:18
Speaker 2: negative emotion. Well, that's if you go near it accidentally.
35:22
Speaker 2: I'm going to have you go near it purposefully. And
35:25
Speaker 2: what you're going to find is that to the degree
35:27
Speaker 2: that you do it purposefully, that response will be quelled.
35:31
Speaker 2: And that happens. It's extraordinarily reliable. Imagine you anticipate something
35:39
Speaker 2: and then you make a mistake. Now the question then
35:41
Speaker 2: becomes how significant is the mistake The depressive takes that
35:49
Speaker 2: punishment response. Let's say that's a consequence of failed anticipation
35:53
Speaker 2: and can't bind it. It just takes out all of
35:56
Speaker 2: their potential future selves and so then they're in a
35:58
Speaker 2: depressive pit. It's too much learning from failure. That binding
36:04
Speaker 2: problem is really tricky. One of the rules of thumb
36:08
Speaker 2: for that that's extremely useful, that's socially instantiated is innocent
36:13
Speaker 2: until proven guilty. So you might say when those thoughts
36:18
Speaker 2: come up because they're adversarial and accusatory thoughts. You might say, well,
36:22
Speaker 2: that is part of the realm of possibility. But when
36:25
Speaker 2: your child does something wrong that's minor, you don't say
36:28
Speaker 2: you're a rotten kid. You bind it. You say, look, kid,
36:34
Speaker 2: here's a bunch of things you're doing right. But in
36:37
Speaker 2: this particular example, specific situation, here's the minimal thing you
36:42
Speaker 2: did in correctly and how to alter it. And it's
36:45
Speaker 2: a really good habit of mind to address towards yourself
36:49
Speaker 2: as well as to other people, which is to say, well,
36:50
Speaker 2: what's the minimum crime that I'm responsible for in this moment,
36:55
Speaker 2: And that's part of this miracle of the presumption of
36:58
Speaker 2: innocence and especially without proof. A lot of what I
37:02
Speaker 2: did in my clinical practice to people who had a
37:04
Speaker 2: depressive temperament was help them make a case for themselves.
37:07
Speaker 2: It's like, well, maybe you're as bad as you think
37:10
Speaker 2: you might be, but maybe not. Let's take the contrary
37:14
Speaker 2: argument and only narrow the repair to the absolute minimum
37:21
Speaker 2: that needs to be manifested. Sometimes when you make one
37:24
Speaker 2: little mistake, it is actually an indicator of a flaw
37:27
Speaker 2: in your character. But most of the time it isn't,
37:30
Speaker 2: and it certainly can't be responded to that all the time,
37:32
Speaker 2: because then you'd never be able to make a mistake
37:34
Speaker 2: without wiping yourself completely out. You want to make it
37:40
Speaker 2: as local and precise as you possibly can, and that's
37:44
Speaker 2: also one of the advantages to removing yourself from a
37:49
Speaker 2: rage or an anxiety state, because a rage or an
37:51
Speaker 2: anxiety state is low resolution and global, and so it'll
37:55
Speaker 2: be globally accusatory. So you want to specify. You think, okay, well,
38:02
Speaker 2: what's the minimum necessary behavioral transformation to ensure that similar
38:07
Speaker 2: mistakes are not replicated in the future. It's like, if
38:10
Speaker 2: your roof leaks, you don't have to dig a new foundation.
38:13
Speaker 2: You can just fix a few shingles. And you might think, well,
38:15
Speaker 2: the rain's coming through, so you have to tear down
38:17
Speaker 2: the whole house. It's like, well no, and you might
38:21
Speaker 2: panic and run around because the water's coming in, but
38:23
Speaker 2: it's still a bad idea to dig up the foundations.
38:25
Speaker 2: Every time something trivial maintenance problem needs to emerge, and
38:29
Speaker 2: so one of the things that's very useful to learn
38:32
Speaker 2: is like, well, is this only a trivial maintenance problem?
38:36
Speaker 2: And one of the advantages to that too, is that
38:38
Speaker 2: if it's not the collapse of your entire self, let's say,
38:41
Speaker 2: and it's a trivial maintenance problem, you're much more able
38:44
Speaker 2: to activate that courageous response to anomaly. That's part and
38:49
Speaker 2: parcel of exploratory behavior and eventual of success. So what
38:54
Speaker 2: part of the trick of many sorts of well, I'd
38:57
Speaker 2: say religious training enterprise is certainly tative enterprises is something like,
39:02
Speaker 2: how do you tell yourself a story, like a real story, though,
39:06
Speaker 2: a story that actually works, where you can confidently approach
39:09
Speaker 2: the thing that's blocking your path. Sometimes you take a
39:16
Speaker 2: leap forward and you learn some things, but you can't
39:19
Speaker 2: catalyze a new identity, so you try to go back
39:22
Speaker 2: and hide in your old identity, and that actually doesn't
39:25
Speaker 2: work because well, things have changed and you've learned something,
39:30
Speaker 2: and that isn't who you are anymore, and so it's
39:33
Speaker 2: like you have to cut parts of yourself off in
39:36
Speaker 2: a destructive manner to fit back into the person that
39:39
Speaker 2: you work. One of the times in your life when
39:43
Speaker 2: you actually realize that you're an individual is when you'll
39:46
Speaker 2: go and ask your parents something and you'll realize they
39:49
Speaker 2: actually don't know any more about what you should do
39:53
Speaker 2: than you do, and that sucks, and that's partly why
39:56
Speaker 2: people are often willing to maintain a tyrant slave relations
40:00
Speaker 2: ship with their fathers. Like on the one hand, you
40:03
Speaker 2: have to be inferior in a relationship like that. You know,
40:06
Speaker 2: you've always got the judge watching you. But on the
40:09
Speaker 2: other hand, there's always someone who knows what to do.
40:11
Speaker 2: There's always someone standing between you and the unknown that
40:15
Speaker 2: you can go ask what should I do? Well, at
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Speaker 2: some point you'll realize that the reason you can't ask
40:19
Speaker 2: that anymore is because they actually don't know any more
40:22
Speaker 2: than you do. And then that's a pain like that
40:25
Speaker 2: that is a symbolic death. And that's also when you
40:28
Speaker 2: establish a more individual relationship with your parents. It's at
40:32
Speaker 2: that point that you could conceivably start taking care of
40:34
Speaker 2: them instead of the reverse. And that's a time that
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Speaker 2: should come. But you have to let that image of
40:40
Speaker 2: perfection go, and that exposes you