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Why Young Men Are More Lost Than Ever | Jordan Peterson’s Wake-Up Call · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: This is I think why people are so obsessed in
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: some sense with the search for fundamental meaning. This is
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: a good story. So you can imagine two people laying bricks.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: They're building a gigantic wall, and the one person thinks,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: oh my god, you know this wall is going to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: take one hundred thousand bricks. I'm laying one at a time,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and I'm wasting my life away trivially adding to this
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: gigantic brick wall. And what am I doing This is
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: absolutely miserable brick by brick, And the other person thinks,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in three hundred years, this is going to be a cathedral.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And so the person in the second state is doing
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: exactly the same thing at a local level, laying bricks.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: But each brick is related to a very high goal,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: and that means the reward that's attendant upon the laying
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of the brick is proportional to the goal of the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: entire behavioral process. So if you're aimless and goalless, then
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: you can't elicit any positive emotion. And if your goals
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: are fragmented, which is also what happens if you're aimless
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: or your goals lack unity. If your goals are fragmented,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: then no given behavioral manifestation can listit any dopaminergic reward
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: because it's not a step forward to anything desirable. One
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of the things well, I did write about this in
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: my first book, particularly about putting your life, putting your
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: house in perfect order. It's like, well, if you're lost,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: one of the things you can do is look around
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and see what direction you could take locally, fix something,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: find something that you could do that would make things better,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: that you would do. And there's a humility in that too, because,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: especially if you're in a low energy state, it's like,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: oh my god, you know I don't have enough energy
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: to make dinner. It's like do you have enough energy
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to put a fork on the table? And sometimes people
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: are so depressed that that's really all.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: They can do.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Can you take a small step forward, no matter how
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: small that is, implement a micro routine, even something like
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: washing a cup and putting it back in the shelf,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: And you know that's a good thing because you have
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: a shelf and there's cups on it. You've already decided
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: that's an appropriate way to live, is to have your
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: coffee cups on a shelf. If you go ahead with
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: cleaning out the cup and putting it on the shelf.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Then you've taken steps towards a valuable micro goal. You
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: get a dopamine kick from that that transforms itself into
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: adrenaline and energizes you in part what the dopamine system
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: is doing. So imagine that the purpose of the dopamine
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: system is to elicit a satiating reward fundamentally, but then
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the satiating reward is something that has to be approached
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: in steps, and so in order to maintain the motivation
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: necessary to approach the satiating reward, you have to mark
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: each of the steps with a marker of pleasure.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Small things are not small.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: You might have the cognitive appraisal that doing something local
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: like cleaning up your room is small, but it's not
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: obvious at all that that's the case. It's not that
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: trivial to put your immediate surroundings in order, and it
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: can easily be the stepping stone to putting things in
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: order on a broader scale. In fact, it's probably the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: necessary stepping stone to do that. You can pat yourself
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: on the back, especially if you're depressed a little harder
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: than you might otherwise, by saying, you know, you say, well,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: this is trivial, but I did it. It's like no,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: if you're moving ahead, that's not small. You just keep
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: doing that. You're going to get out of this paralyzed
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: or retreat mode. If you're in the zone of proximal development,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you're pushing your skill development one increment forward, and it's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: one that you can actually manage. Imagine that you have
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: someone who's habitually avoidant, and maybe they're avoidant because when
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: they become possessed by negative emotion, they become hyper aware
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of their internal state and they feel the panic, and
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: so then they freeze or retreat, and they do that constantly,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and then they're in this terrible negative emotional state all
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: the time because every time they see a stimulus that's
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: associated with retreat, they get gripped by these interceptive sensations.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And so you say to them, well, we're going to
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: reverse that. Instead of you being gripped by that, you're
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: going to expose yourself to that voluntarity. So if you
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: do that well repeatedly with people, not only do they
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: stop being afraid of the things that you're showing them
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: that they're exposing them to, but they become more likely
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: to approach other things they're afraid of far more likely.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: In fact, it doesn't exactly look like people get more
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: less afraid at all. It looks like what happens is
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: they learn to get braver. One of the phenomenon cognitive
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: phenomena that loads very heavily on your auticism is self consciousness.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: And so when you fall into anxiety, then there is
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: this intern obsessiveness which has to do with the panoply
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: of sins in some sense, which parts of me are
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: malfunctioning and need to be eradicated. And one of the
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: things I used to do with my socially anxious clients,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So they would go into a social situation, often with
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: eyes down cast, by the way, and they would be
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: so intensely concentrating on their own internal sensations that they
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: would fail to make eye contact with anybody they were
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: talking to, and then they would be awkward because they
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: weren't reading the cues they could have read if they
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: would have only looked, and then the conversation would become disjointed,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and then they would get anxious and fall into themselves.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: And so one of the things that I taught them
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: to do wasn't to try to calm themselves down, but
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to try to calm the other person down. So when
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you go into a social situation, pay more attention to
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: the other person, like just focus your attention outward, and
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: if the person had any social skill. Sometimes I had
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: clients who had no skills, and so they were anxious
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: socially because they actually didn't know how to behave socially.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So then you had to teach them the social skills.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: But some of them had the skills but wouldn't activate
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: them because they were so neurotically obsessed with their own
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: inadequacy that they failed to attend to the cues that
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: would elicit the proper responses.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And all they had to learn to do was wash.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: And then they would automatically respond because they knew how
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to have a conversation.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: See.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: The reason that socially anxious people are so interroceptive is
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: it's involuntary, right. They get gripped by the negative emotion
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: and then that produces this intense, obsessive interception that might
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: not happen if they did it voluntarily. This is why
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: exposure therapy works so well in psychotherapy. Is like, well,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid of something, and if I go near it,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: then I'm possessed by negative emotion. Well, that's if you
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: go near it accidentally. I'm going to have you go
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: near it purposefully. And what you're going to find is
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: that to the degree that you do it purposefully, that
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: response will be quelled. And that happens. It's extraordinarily reliable.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Imagine you anticipate something and then you make a mistake.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Now the question then becomes how significant is the mistake
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: The depressive takes that.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Punishment response.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Let's say that's a consequence of failed anticipation and can't
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: bind it. It just takes out all of their potential
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: future selves, and so then they're in a depressive pit.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: That's too much learning from failure. That binding problem is
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: really tricky. One of the rules of thumb for that
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: that's extremely useful, that's socially instantiated, is innocent until proven guilty.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: So you might say when those thoughts come up, because
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: they're adversarial and accusatory thoughts, you might say, well, that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: is part of the realm of possibility. But when your
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: child does something wrong that's minor, you don't say you're
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a rotten kid.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: You bind it. You say, look, kid, here's a bunch
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: of things you're doing right, but in.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: This particular example, specific situation, here's the minimal thing you
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: did in correctly and how to alter it. And it's
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a really good habit of mind to address towards yourself
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: as well as to other people, which is to say, well,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: what's the minimum crime that I'm responsible for in this moment.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: And that's part of this miracle of the presumption of
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: innocence and especially without proof, And a lot of what
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I did in my clinical practice to people who had
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a depressive temperament was help them make a case for themselves.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, maybe you're as bad as you think
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: you might be, but maybe not. Let's take the contrary
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: argument and only narrow the repair to the absolute minimum
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: that needs to be manifested. Sometimes when you make one
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: little mistake, it is actually an indicator of a flaw
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: in your character.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: But most of the time it isn't.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And it certainly can't be responded to that all the time,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: because then you'd never be able to make a mistake
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: without wiping yourself completely out.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: You want to make it as local and.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Precise as you possibly can, and that's also one of
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the advantages to removing yourself from a rage or an
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: anxiety state, because a rage or an anxiety state is
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: low resolution and global, and so it'll be globally accusatory.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: So you want to specify.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It, and you think, okay, well, what's the minimum necessary
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: behavioral transformation to ensure that similar mistakes are not replicated
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: in the future. It's like, if your roof leaks, you
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: don't have to dig a new foundation. You can just
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: fix a few shingles. And you might think, well, the
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: rain's coming through, so you have to tear down the
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: whole house. It's like, well no, and you might panic
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and run around because the water's coming in, but it's
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: still a bad idea to dig up the foundations every
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: time something trivial maintenance problem needs to emerge, and so
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: one of the things that's very useful to learn is like, well,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: is this only a trivial maintenance problem. And one of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the advantages to that too, is that if it's not
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the collapse of your entire self, let's say, and it's
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: a trivial maintenance problem, you're much more able to activate
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that courageous response to anomaly. That's part and parcel of
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: exploratory behavior. And eventional of success. So what part of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the trick of many sorts of well, I'm say religious
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: training enterprises, certainly the meditative enterprises is something like, how
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: do you tell yourself a story, like a real story, though,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a story that actually works, where you can confidently approach
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: the thing that's blocking your path e