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Jordan Peterson: The Monster Hidden Inside Every One of Us · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: How do I decide if my inner voice is healthy
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: or not, and how do I maintain it healthily? How
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: can one tell if one's inner voice, judgment or conscience,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: is a healthy one and not a voice that is
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the result of an unhealthy mind due to past experiences.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Now that's a really interesting question, the question of conscience.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I continually asked my frequently, let's say, or yearly, ask
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: my personality class attendees if they heard the voice of conscience,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: if they had a feeling and emotion emotional state, let's say,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: or a voice that informed them when they had done
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: something ethically wrong and that perhaps made them guilty as
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a consequence, and it was essentially a universal experience, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: that's the voice of society within I suppose that's one
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. The Freudians would think about
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: that as the voice of the super egong. Carl Jung
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: would take that conceptualization somewhat farther. He would have considered
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it the voice of the self, which is in part
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the voice of the ethic that's derived from the broader
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: community insofar as that ethic is valid, let's say, but
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: also in part the voice of the more thoroughly developed
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: self that's still striving to be born. One thing you
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: could say is that you experience violations of your conscience
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: when you're not acting like the better person that you
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: could possibly become, And so to some degree that's your
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: higher self upbraiding you for failure to develop in the
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: appropriate direction, And that seems to me to be a
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: reasonable way of conceptualizing it. Now, the one question might
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: be how error prone is your conscience? Given that you're
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: not omniscient. You have to attend to your guilt and
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: your self disgusted and your self contempt and your self consciousness.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: You have to understand that the manifestation of those emotions
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: might well indicate a moral failing on your part or
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a lack that needs to be addressed, while at the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: same time considering that it is not a straightforward matter
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: to deal fairly with yourself, and you can be too
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: tormented by your conscience, too rigid, too responsible, take on
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: too much weight onto yourself, deny yourself in a manner
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that isn't sustainable, and so forth, that that a moral code,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a moral way of being, can become too rigid and inflexible,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and despite its putative aim upward be something counterproductive. I
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: think most of the way out of that, if there
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: is one, is well careful thinking. You have to see
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: what your conscience says. You have to see how you respond.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You have to capture that voice and your responses, and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: you have to think it through. But most of that
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: is done in dialogue with other people rather than as
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the consequence of internal thought. You know, if you have
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a dispute with your wife or your husband, your intimate partner, sibling,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: your parents, anybody close to you, and it's useful for
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: each of you in the dispute to ask yourself and
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: the other person seriously if you're at fault or if
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: they're at fault, and for both of you to be
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: able to contemplate that you might be at fault and
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: so might the other person, And then it's in your
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: best interest to sort out exactly who's made the error
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: and where, and maybe it's both of you and maybe
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: at different levels of analysis. I think the same might
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: be said about your reaction to your conscience. It's not
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: uncommon for me to talk to my wife, my kids,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: my parents, my friends for that matter, about something I
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: might be feeling. Maybe I'm guilty about something I'm self
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: conscious about something, I'm angry about something, I feel impelled
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: by my conscience to do something as a consequence to
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: change something. It's very helpful to discuss such things with
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: other people, to say, look, here's what I think I
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: did wrong, and here's how I'm punishing myself. But I'm
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: not sure that I'm not doing it in an exaggerated way.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And you gather other people's opinions and listen to them carefully,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and friends are extraordinarily useful in that regard, and that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: can help you calibrate it. So I think most of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: what we do to decide if our inner voice is
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: healthy is discuss it with other people. And I believe,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: as I pointed out in my last book explicitly, that
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: tremendous amount of our sanity is maintained as a consequence
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of social interaction. So you can't find your authentic self
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: merely as a consequence of a journey within. I would say,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: there's just not enough of you. You have to be
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: informed by the broader social world. What is the best
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: way to avoid falling back into nihilistic behaviors and thinking, Well,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: A large part of that, I would say is is habit.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: The maintenance the development maintenance of good practices habits. If
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: you find yourself dissolute, neurotic, if your tenants, if your
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: thought tends in the nihilistic direction, and you tend to
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: fall apart, organizing your life across multiple dimensions is a
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: good antidote. It's not exactly thinking. Do you have an
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: intimate relationship? If not, well, probably you could use one.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Do you have contact with close family members siblings or children,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: or parents, or people who are even more distantly related.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: If not, you probably need that. Do you see your
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: friends a couple of times a week and do something
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: social with them? Do you have a way of productively
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: using your time outside of employment? Are you employed? Do
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: you have a good job, or at least a job
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: that is practically sufficient and that enables you to work
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: with people who you like working with, Even if the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: job itself is mundane or repetitive or difficult. Sometimes the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: relationships that you establish in an employment situation like that
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: can make the job worthwhile. Have you regulated your response
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to temptations? Pornography, alcohol abuse, drug abuse? Is that under control?
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I would say differentiate the problem. There's multiple dimensions of attainment, ambition, pleasure, responsibility,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: all of that that make up a life, and to
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the degree that it's possible, you want to optimize your
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: function on as many of those dimensions as possible. Those
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: are all the questions that I would decompose the problem
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: into the best way to avoid falling back into nihilistic
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: behaviors and thinking, how can responsibility be differentiated from imposed guilt? Well,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I think you adopt genuine responsibility, let's say, healthy responsibility.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I think you adopt that more or less voluntarily. I
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: mean there's an element of necessity and compulsion in our
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: lives as well, because there are things we have to
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: do to survive. But if you've explicitly formulated a set
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of goals and you're pursuing them, then you've adopted the
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: responsibility to act in a certain manner to make those
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: goals realize themselves. That's responsibility that you've adopted, rather than
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: responsibility that's been imposed on you. Assuming that you've thought
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: through the goals and you find your spirit in harmony
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: with those goals, you can consult your resentment. I think
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that's a very useful step. If you find yourself angry
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: and bitter about the things that you are responsible for doing,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: then that's an indication that you might be operating under
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: some unhealthy compulsion, that you're rebelling, and that's the reason
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for the resentment against the insistence that you act in
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a certain way, although it's also possible that you're just
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: immature and that you're rebelling against the discipline that's necessary
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: to attain the goals that you genuinely do want to
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: attain and that are valid, and that you are actively
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: engaged in constructing. So you have to get that straight.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And some of that's a consequence of thought, and again
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: some of that's a consequence of discussion with other people
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: with whom you're intimate enough to have a conversation like that,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: and perhaps they have conversations about similar things with you,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: if you're fortunate