we focus on the idea of happiness too
much and the problem with that is is
that it takes our focus away from aims
that would be more productive it’s much
better to aim for meaning than for
happiness best bet is truth but that
doesn’t necessarily mean that’s always
going to do the trick right I mean
sometimes you go fight a dragon and it
eats you and if the if you being eaten
wasn’t a real possibility it wouldn’t be
a real fight and so you see people like
I’ve seen people in my clinical practice
sometimes I had one client in particular
who was undergoing a particularly
vicious divorce with someone who was
really seriously inclined to take him
out and would do pretty much everything
at her disposal to do so and I
strategized with him for about three
years and we did everything like and
hyper carefully he was a very
conscientious and diligent person and he
put into practice everything that we
discussed and strategized and he still
pretty much he got backed into a corner
so hard that I did not help him anymore
so I would say however that he like he
was a very truthful person throughout
that and one thing he did do was part of
it was a custody battle and he did
manage despite his declined in
consequence of being repeatedly cornered
I would say he did manage to establish
what I think was a lasting relationship
with his kids so he might have got
enough out of what he did to justify it
even though the whole landscape was
pretty awful I think that not lying is
your best bet
but life is hard and people get run over
and it doesn’t necessarily mean that
you’re going to emerge in any obvious
sense triumphant but if you take the
alternative path path especially when
you’re facing severe tribulations let’s
say and you complicate those with deceit
you can be sure that whatever tragedy
that you’re confronting is going to turn
into not only try
but something very much akin to hell and
so you might be able to at least
minimize the degree of suffering even if
you can’t overcome it or transcend it
and that’s something you know there is
no faith and no courage and no sacrifice
in doing what is expedient what do you
say to those viewers that don’t pursue
their dreams and are locked into their
careers because they are too afraid to
take risks and pursue something
meaningful well the first thing I would
say is well you should be afraid of
taking risks and pursuing something
meaningful but you should be more afraid
of staying where you are if it’s making
you miserable it’s like the first thing
you want to do is dispense with the idea
that you get to have any any permanent
security outside of your ability to
contend and adapt it’s the same issue
with children it’s like you’re paying a
price by sitting there being miserable
and you might say well the devil I know
is better than the one I don’t it’s like
don’t be so sure of that the clock is
ticking yeah and if you’re miserable in
your job now and you change nothing in
five years you’ll be much more miserable
and you’ll be a lot older but this into
the luxury to pursue what is meaningful
our viewers have mortgages they have
children yeah they have payments and
loans it’s a luxury to pursue because we
lack the resources well I don’t think I
don’t remember now I’m not talking about
what makes you happy it’s a luxury to
pursue what makes you happy it’s a moral
obligation to pursue what you find
meaningful and that doesn’t mean it’s
easy it might require sacrifice if you
need to change your job to let’s say you
have family and and and and children and
Ana mortgage you have responsibilities
you’ve already picked up those
responsibilities you don’t just get to
walk away scot-free and say well I don’t
like my job I quit
that’s no strategy but what you might
have to do is you think well this job is
killing my soul all right so what do I
have to do about that well I have to
look for another job well no one wants
to hire me it’s like okay maybe you need
to educate yourself more maybe you need
to update your your curriculum vitae
your resume maybe you need to overcome
your fear of being interviewed maybe you
need to sharpen your social skills like
you
you have to think about these things
strategically if you’re going to switch
careers you have to do it like an
intelligent responsible person that
might take you a couple of years of
effort to do properly I’ve dealt with
hundreds of people in my clinical and
consulting practice and we set a goal we
develop a vision and work towards it and
it things inevitably get better for
people so it’s not a luxury it’s it’s
difficult it’s a moral responsibility
and it isn’t happiness it’s it’s not the
pursuit isn’t for happiness it’s a moral
responsibility to push you what is
meaning absolutely or radical the
necessary change the more pain that
accompanies it like the more opportunity
as well but and a lot of what we learn
we learn painfully and so it’s not
surprising that people shrink away from
learning we learn in pain and anxiety
very frequently everyone knows that like
the things that really that you really
learned in life it’s like it was no joy
man it took you out and so the fact that
people flee from that is hardly
surprising but it doesn’t help that’s
the thing it just stores up the
catastrophe for later and so the better
the better idea is to eat a little
poison every day so that you don’t have
to overdose in a month it’s something
like that and it is the case that I
think because you don’t you aren’t
forced first of all you don’t learn
unless you’re forced to learn I know
there’s alternatives to that there’s the
voluntary search for knowledge and
that’s a fine thing and that is an
antidote to this but apart from that
speaking more practically you tend not
to learn unless you’re forced to learn
and it’s and what you tend to learn by
force are difficult lessons and so
people are very prone to not do not seek
that out it’s not surprising but it’s
because they don’t understand the
consequences very well you know you you
it’s because maybe it’s because they’re
convinced that there’s some way of for
stalling the necessary learning and
there isn’t any way of for stalling it
all you do is make it worse in the
future you make yourself smaller and you
make the lesson hard
and so that’s why in so many religious
doctrines there’s emphasis on humility
you know and humility isn’t to debase
yourself it’s to understand that you
don’t know enough so that your life
isn’t going to be miserable and so every
chance you get to grab something new
that will help you along your way you
should take it as fast as you can but
you have to have a very tragic I would
say view of reality and also a harsh one
because it’s not just tragedy it’s also
malevolence you have to understand that
those are waiting for you and that makes
you desperate enough to learn and that
might be make you desperate enough to
fall out of your ideology but that’s
that’s a hard way of looking at the
world it beats living through it though
continual circling in some sense of who
you could be you might notice for
example that there are themes in your
life you know when you go back across
your experiences you see you kind of
have your typical experience that sort
of repeats itself and there might be
variation on it like a musical theme but
it’s it’s like you’re circling yourself
and getting closer to yourself as you
move across time
that’s the circumambulation now you
remember that for a second as well go
back to it okay so imagine that
something glimmers before you it’s an an
interest that’s dawning and you decide
well first of all you’re paralyzed do
you think well how do I know if I should
pursue that it’s probably a stupid idea
and the proper response to that is
you’re right it probably is a stupid
idea because almost all though all ideas
are stupid and so the probability that
as you move forward on your adventure
that you’re gonna get it right the first
time is zero it’s just not gonna happen
and so then you might think well maybe
I’ll just wait around until I get the
right idea and which people do right so
they’re like 40 year old thirteen year
olds which is not a good idea
so they wait around until it’s Waiting
for Godot until they finally got it
right but the problem is you’re too
stupid to know when you’ve got it right
so waiting around isn’t gonna help
because even if it the perfect
opportunity manifested itself to you in
your
in complete form the probability that
you would recognize it as the perfect
opportunity is zero you might even think
it’s the worst possible idea that you’ve
ever heard of anywhere highly likely
highly likely so so you had theirs
niche if nature call data will will to
stupidity which I really liked so
because he thought of stupidity as being
it you know it’s it’s you have to take
it into account fundamentally and work
with it and so and so you can take these
tentative steps on your pathway to
destiny and you can assume that you’re
gonna do it badly and that’s really
useful because you don’t have to beat
yourself up it’s pretty easy to do it
badly but the thing is it’s way better
to do it badly than not to do it at all
so you you start your path and you think
that you’re heading you know towards
your star and so you go in that
direction and then because you’re here
the world looks a particular way but
then when you move here the world looks
different and you’re different as a
consequence of having made that voyage
and so what that means is that now that
thing that glimmers in front of you is
going to have shifted its location
because you weren’t very good at
specifying it to begin with and now that
you’re a little sharper and more focused
than you were it’s it’s going to reveal
itself with more accuracy to you and so
then you have to take a you know it’s
almost like 180 degree reversal but it
isn’t because you know you’ve
I mean you’ve gone this far and that’s a
long ways to get that far but that’s a
lot farther than you would be if you
just stayed where you were waiting and
so it doesn’t matter that you overshoot
continually because as you overshoot
even if you don’t learn what you should
have done you’re going to continually
learn what you shouldn’t keep doing and
if you learn enough about what you
shouldn’t keep doing then that’s
tantamount at some point to learning at
the same time what you should be doing
so it’s ok so it’s like this now what’s
cool about it though I think is that as
you progress the degree of overshooting
starts to decline right and that we know
that there’s nothing hypothetical about
that as you learn a new skill like even
to play it play a song on the piano for
example you overshoot madly you’re
making all sorts of mistakes to begin
with and then the mistakes they
disappear so anyways the fact that
you’re full of faults doesn’t mean you
have to stop and thank God for that
that’s a really useful thing and the
fact that you’re full of faults doesn’t
mean that you can’t learn and so you can
pause it an ideal and you’re gonna be
wrong about it but it doesn’t matter
because what you’re right about is
positing the ideal moving towards it if
the actual ideal isn’t conceptualize
perfectly well first a surprise surprise
because like what are you going to do
that’s perfect so it doesn’t matter that
it’s imperfect imperfect it just matters
that you do it and that you move forward
so that’s really that’s really positive
news as far as I’m concerned because you
can actually do that right you can do it
badly anyone can do that so that’s
that’s useful
built for struggle us human beings you
not after the bubbles of bliss that
Dostoyevsky described in in notes from
underground
we’re built to contend with the world
we’re built to contend with reality you
want a challenge and the best way that
you can take on a challenge because the
challenge fortifies you so you don’t
want to be secure you want to be strong
and you get strong by taking on optimal
challenges and so you lay out your
destiny in the world and you take the
slings and arrows of fate and you make
yourself stronger while you’re doing so
and you might fail and fortune might do
you in but it’s your best bet and you
know people have also people that have
extracted unbelievable successes out of
catastrophic failures and so and I’m not
saying that in a naive way I know
perfectly well what happens to people
you know you’re doing fine in life and
then you get cancer and then six months
later you’re dead and all the heroism in
the world isn’t going to save you at
that point but that’s not the point
that’s not the point
life is bounded by mortality but that
doesn’t mean that you don’t get out
there and contend and you develop by
contending and you minimize the net
amount of suffering in the world and
that’s something man that’s something to
do helps to read a lot it really helps
to write so if you want to make yourself
articulate which is a very good idea
then not only should you read but you
should write down what you think and if
you can do that a little bit every day
15 minutes maybe you could steal 15
minutes and do it every day but if you
do that for 10 years you really
straighten out your thinking if you’re
gonna speak effectively you have to know
way more than you’re talking about you
know so if you this is often difficult
for beginning lecturers at university
because they’ll do a lecture on a topic
but they only know as much as they’re
saying in the lecture and they get kind
of stuck to their notes because of it
but you want to know 10 times as much as
you are saying in the lecture and then
you can specify a stepping path through
it and elaborate with the other things
that you know but to do that you have to
do a lot of reading by
you also have to do a lot of reading
because that’s where the synthesize
that’s where the synthesizing comes so
that’s on the input side and then on the
output side well there’s some tricks
techniques let’s say is like if you’re
speaking in front of a group you are not
delivering a talk to a group that’s not
what you’re doing the talk isn’t a
package thing that you present to a
group there isn’t a group there’s a
bunch of individuals and you talk to
them so when I talk to a group I always
talk to people one at a time and that
makes it easier to because you know how
to talk to a person it’s like can you
talk to a thousand people well probably
not because it’s too intimidating but
there isn’t a thousand people there
there’s a thousand individuals and so
you just look at an individual and you
say something and you can tell if
they’re engaged they look confused or
they look interested or they look angry
or they look bored or maybe they’re
asleep in which case you look at someone
else and they give you feedback about
how you’re doing and so one thing is to
to have something to say yeah but the
next thing is pay attention to who
you’re talking to because unless you’re
very badly socialized and that seems
unlikely in your case because you know
you present yourself at least moderately
well you know and well I mean I don’t
know you very well but at first but on
first sight you know you’re doing fine
so the probability that if you pay
attention to the individuals that you’re
talking to that your natural wealth of
social skill will manifest itself is
extremely high and so you don’t deliver
a talk to an audience that’s a really
bad way of thinking about you’re
actually engaged in a conversation with
an audience even if they’re not talking
they’re nodding and shifting position
and you know looking like this or and
you can you can pull all that in and and
and use it to govern the level at which
you’re addressing the entire audience so
the last thing I would say is well
having the aim to be a good communicator
is a good start and you think well I
could bunch us that to some degree well
there isn’t anything that you can
this is the whole point of a liberal
education there isn’t anything that you
can possibly do that makes you more
competent in everything you do than to
learn how to communicate I don’t care if
you’re gonna be a carpenter I mean being
a carpenter by the way is very difficult
especially if you’re a good carpenter
but if you’re good at communicating as a
carpenter you’re like ten times better
as a carpenter so the and this is
something that the liberal arts colleges
I think him I don’t know if they’ve
forgotten it but they don’t do a very
good job of marketing it’s like what’s
the use of a bachelor’s degree Bachelor
of Arts it’s like well you can think you
can write you can speak you’ve read
something it’s like the economic value
that is incalculable the people that
I’ve watched in my life would be
spectacular ly successful are they have
skills clearly that that’s a minimum
precondition but they’re also very very
good at articulating themselves and so
whenever they negotiate they’re
successful well that’s kind of like the
definition of success in life right you
negotiate and you’re six doesn’t mean
you win because if you’re a good
negotiator if you’re really good
negotiator everybody walks away from the
negotiation thrilled and so then people
line up to do things with you so and
that’s all that’s all dependent on your
there’s a great hunger for information
that is practical and useful and that
helps people find meaning in their lives
and orient themselves there’s a great
hunger for that and most of my lectures
were derived from solid psychology some
of it experimental some of it biological
some of it from from from the domains of
neuroscience a lot of it from great
clinicians it’s not surprising that
people find it helpful because well
great clinicians were great because they
were really helpful and so to distill
that and to offer it to people in a
digestible form to have that have a good
effect on them well that’s that’s what
you’d expect that’s what the whole
discipline is about and so that’s been
compare yourself to who you were
yesterday and not to who someone else is
today because if you’re comparing
yourself to someone else I mean first of
all you don’t know very much about the
life of the person you’re comparing
yourself to you don’t know it you know
it across all of its dimensions and
second people are very different and so
comparing yourself to someone else it’s
it’s kind of useful I guess when you’re
young but as you get older and more
singular and more particular it becomes
increasingly less useful better to
compare yourself to a previous version
of yourself and work for improvement in
that way here is an impossible thing why
don’t you go out and fail you say here’s
something worth going after here’s a
step you could take that would push you
beyond where you are but that you also
have a reasonably high probability of
succeeding it right they called that
within a time frame if then some time
frame that’s the other thing you have to
parameterize it with regards to time
frame that’s right and that puts you in
the zone of proximal development and
that says that’s a concept that was
generated by a guy named Vygotsky he was
a Russian developmental psychologist and
the smart one
it’s where the idea of the zone comes
from to be in the zone and when you’re
in the zone you’re expanding your skills
in a manner that’s intrinsically
rewarding because you’re succeeding and
so you want to set if you’re good to
yourself you think okay I need to set a
goal but I need to set a goal that
someone is stupid and useless as me
could probably attain if they put some
effort into it and then you got it then
you’ve got it perfectly because it’s not
so high that it’s grandiose or
impossible that you fail necessarily and
then justify your bitterness it’s like
well I couldn’t do it well because that
happens to Pete how much all the time
yeah it’s like that’s all the time you
know it’s like it’s yes exactly well I
set a goal and I didn’t attain it so I’m
not gonna set any more goal right it’s
like no you set a goal that was
inappropriate for the time frame that’s
right you didn’t calibrate it properly
and and you’re playing a trick on
yourself because you wanted to fail so
that you could justify not having to try
that’s why being a victim mmm it’s just
in helpful you’re still gonna be a
victim
it’s like there’s no way out of that man
so you know because life is this life is
a challenge that in some sense can’t be
surmounted so there’s no way out of your
problem but there are certainly proper
ways of dealing with it if is difficult
and you cannot protect your children
what you can do is prepare them and you
can prepare them to be strong and
courageous and truthful and resilient
and reciprocal in their interactions
with other people and that means you
equip them for what life will be which
is at minimum a series of difficult
challenges and and often more than that
because of course people go through very
difficult times in their lives and a
resilient person is capable of standing
up to things in the face of fear and
moving forward voluntarily and Vince of
their own competence and ability to
prevail and so the primary your primary
goal as a parent apart from facilitating
your child’s social desirability which
is a major obligation on your part is to
encourage your children and to and I
mean that literally to instill in them a
sense of courage in the face of the
difficulties of life and not to protect
them from that we don’t even want to be
protected from those difficulties
because a major part of life and its
meaning is the the challenge that comes
there is definitely an epidemic of
overprotective parenting but it’s useful
to ask why and my suspicions are is that
this is driven by very fundamental
biological and cultural phenomena that
aren’t generally considered in
relationship to this issue we don’t have
very many children we don’t have 12 you
know six of whom die
we have one or two and that makes them
very precious right
we’re unwilling to take risks with them
and no wonder and then we also have the
much later in life and so like if you
have a kid when you’re 18 you’re still a
kid you know you’re gonna go out and
have your life right because you’re so
well you’re in the in the height of your
exploratory you’re in the height of the
exploratory part of your life you’re not
gonna over protect your kid because
you’re still a kid but if you’re 40 and
you have one child it’s like all your
eggs are in one basket
and the probability that you’re going to
take undue risks with that precious
person is very very low now obviously
there’s some advantages to that because
great you would devote resources to your
child you know and foster their
development but the downside is that you
have every motivation to hover and maybe
you’re also extraordinarily desperate as
a mother to maintain that bond with your
child because you’ve struggled so long
to achieve it it’s highly highly
valuable
you can’t take a risk well so these so
we might say well perhaps overprotective
parenting is a secondary and unintended
consequence of the birth control pill
and the fact that people now have
children later in life could easily be
you know if you have six kids it’s like
what are you gonna do helicopter parent
them it’s like little yeah you’re so
tired you can’t even get off the couch
if you have six kids and there they
outnumber you right there raising each
other they’re competing and they’re
taking each other down a peg they’re not
there’s no overprotection there but with
it with a single child landscape or dual
child landscape
mostly a single child landscape then
you’re gonna over protect and then that
ethos starts to permeate the schools and
it starts to permeate the higher
education institutions as those children
mature and then that all reinforces it
not good it’s not obvious what to do
about it either because if it is driven
by demographics and not in that sense
it’s a much more intractable problem
than we think so I did some of that in
12 rules for life you know I said look
you what you have to understand is that
you’re a danger to your children no
matter what right you can let them go
out in the world and be hurt or you can
over protect them and hurt them that way
so you here’s your choice you can make
your children competent and courageous
or you can make them safe but you can’t
make them safe because life isn’t safe
so if you sacrifice their courage and
competence on the altar of safety then
you disarm them completely and all they
can do is pray to be protected do you
have to move from point A to B in life
but point a is often a very difficult
place to be because we’re fragile and
bounded and mortal and limited and
because we know that and so one of the
implications of that as many great
religious traditions are at pains to
illustrate or demonstrate or proclaim is
that life is essentially suffering and I
believe that to be a fundamental truth
but but perhaps not the most fundamental
truth because I think the most
fundamental truth is that despite the
fact that life is suffering people can
transcend that and partly the way they
transcend that is by pursuing things of
value and so that if there is no value
proposition at hand then you have no
meaning to justify the difficult
conditions of your life and that’s
brutally difficult for people no
Nietzsche said he who has a why can bear
anyhow and you see and I’ve certainly
seen this as a clinical practitioner
that people who have no purpose in their
life are embittered by the difficulties
of their life and they become first
bitter and then resentful and then
revengeful and then cruel
and there’s plenty of places to go past
cruel that’s just where you start if
you’re really on a downhill path that
you have a certain delightful wonderful
positive freedom as a child and then
that’s given up as you approach
adulthood but the truth of the matter is
is that you have a lot of potential as a
child but none of that is capable of
manifesting itself as freedom before you
become disciplined and discipline is a
matter of the imposition of order and
the order is necessary especially for
people who are hopeless and nihilistic
and lots of people are hopeless and
nihilistic we more people than you think
and part of that is because no one’s
ever really encouraged them and so the
book is in part a matter of
encouragement it’s like lay yourself lay
a disciplinary structure on yourself
get the chaos in in in check and then
you can move towards a state that’s
freer because it’s disciplined first
like look if you’re going to become a
concert pianist there’s going to be
several thousand hours of
extraordinarily disciplined practice
that’s the imposition of order on your
potential let’s say you know if you
start with the presumption that there’s
a baseline of suffering in life and that
that can be exaggerated by as a
consequence of human failing as a
consequence of malevolence and betrayal
and self betrayal and deceit and all
those things that we do to each other
and ourselves that we know that aren’t
good that amplifies the suffering that’s
sort of the baseline against which you
have to work and and and it’s
contemplation of that often that makes
people hopeless and depressed and
anxious and overwhelmed and all of that
it and and they have the reasons but you
need something to put up against that
and what you put up against that is
meaning meaning is actually the instinct
that helps you guide yourself through
that catastrophe and most of that
meaning is to be found in the adoption
of responsibility so if you think for
example if you think about the people
that you admire well you think about
when you have a clear conscience first
because that’s a good thing to aim at
which is something different than
happiness right a clear conscience is
different than happiness that’s better
yeah
that’s not other guilting yourself
you’re not feeling bad about your sister
right you feel that you’ve just
acclaimed you’ve justified your
existence right and so you’re not waking
up at 3:00 in the morning in a cold
sweat thinking about all the terrible
things that you’ve involved yourself in
what you said to someone that you
shouldn’t have said I you acted or what
opportunity you lost or yeah or or the
things that you’ve that you’ve let go
that you should have capitalized on and
all of that and so if you think about
the times when you’re at peace with
yourself with regards to how you’re
conducting yourself in the world it’s
almost always conditions under which
you’ve adopted responsibility right at
least the most the most guilt I think
that you can experience perhaps is the
sure knowledge that you’re not even
taking care of yourself so that you’re
leaving that responsibility to other
people because that’s pretty pathetic
and I unless you’re psychopathic
and you know and you’re living a
parasitical life and that that
characterizes a very small minority of
people and an even smaller minority
think that’s justifiable but most of the
time you’re in guilt and shame because
you’re not you’re you’re not not only
are you not taking care of yourself
let’s say so someone else has to but
you’re not living up to your full
potential and so there’s a existential
weight that goes along with that people
have an unspecified potential for
development educationally obviously with
regards to the skills they have but also
in relationship to their character and
it’s it’s much it’s much more
encouraging for people I think to
concentrate on who they could be rather
than who they are especially when
they’re young because they still have
most of their life ahead of them and and
they’re not everything they could be yet
and so to tell people even something
like well you should feel good about
yourself the way you are is like well
that there’s something there that’s
seriously lacking because there’s so
much more that you could be that you
need to be and that you should be aiming
at the Sun you’re the problem with being
ok the way you are is that you don’t
have a goal then and people need to have
a goal in order to
come to terms with their life this the
baboon here who’s supposed to be
basically just a fool when the story was
first written he turned into what’s
essentially a shaman across time and
then so he represents the self from the
Union perspective now the self is
everything you could be across time she
imagined that there’s you and there’s
the potential inside you whatever that
is you know and potential is an
interesting idea because it represents
something that isn’t yet real yet we act
like it’s real because people will say
to you you should live up to your
potential and that potential is partly
what you could be if you interacted with
the world in a manner that would gain
you the most information right because
you build yourself out of the
information in the piagetian sense but
it’s deeper than that – because we know
that if you take yourself and you put
yourself in a new environment new genes
turn on in your nervous system they
encode for new proteins and so you’re
full of biological potential that won’t
be realized unless you move yourself
around in the world in two different
challenging circumstances and that will
turn on different circuits so it’s not
merely that you’re incorporating
information from the outside world in
the constructivist sense it’s that by
exposing yourself to different
environments you put different
physiological demands on on yourself all
the way down to the genetic level and
that manifests new elements of you and
so one of the things that happens to
people and this is a very common
cultural notion is that you should go on
a pilgrimage at some point to somewhere
central and that would be say like the
rock in the Pride Rock and the Lion King
because you take yourself out of your
dopey little village and that’s just a
little bounded you that everyone knows
and that isn’t very expanded and then
you go somewhere dark and dangerous to
the central place and while you do that
you have adventures and they toughen you
and pull more out of you like partly
because you’re becoming informed which
means information it means you’re
becoming more organized at every level
of analysis but there’s also more of you
to primary motive as a clinical
psychologist and educator is to help
individuals live more meaningful and
productive lives in harmony with their
families and their community that’s my
motive and the evidence for that I think
is
well if people go online and first of
all you can watch the lectures and
decide for yourself but you can also go
there’s I suspect probably maybe 250,000
people have commented on the lectures
and their effects on them and so that’s
what people say I’m watching the
lectures yeah I’m trying to develop a
vision for my life I’m trying to become
more responsible and its really helping
and that’s and that’s what I hear all
the time when I do these public lectures
which aren’t political but when we gain
success we raise the bar we set our
ambitions higher I mean what is your end
game what do you want that’s all that’s
what I want I want I want to help as
many individuals as possible become more
courageous more truthful and more
engaged in the pursuit of individual
familial and social harmony that’s what
I want a great job of modeling courage
in the face of far well there’s
something I’d like to say maybe in
closing about courage people say that to
me and you know I don’t think it’s
exactly right doesn’t there’s a line in
the Old Testament the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom and I think it’s
more like that it’s not that I’m
courageous it’s that I’m afraid of the
right things so when I made my videos it
wasn’t like that didn’t make me nervous
but I was less nervous about going back
to bed and not saying what I had to say
that I was about making the videos
because I know where this is going I
don’t want to go there and so it’s it’s
not so much courage it’s that it’s a
matter of I it’s it’s it’s less risky to
say something
than to remain silent when you know
there’s something to be said I know that
to be the case and so lots of times in
life it’s like there’s no pathway
forward that’s going to shield you from
risk you get to pick this risk or you
get to pick this risk and I think I
picked the lesser risk and that might be
assume that the person you are listening
to might know something you don’t this
is a chapter about conversation and
about the different forms conversation
takes and so chapter about humility and
it’s a chapter about listening and
humility element is it took me a long
time to understand why there’s religious
injunctions supporting humility but even
understand what the word really meant
and that sort of technical sense and it
means something like this it means what
you don’t know is more important than
what you know and that’s a lovely thing
too then what you don’t know can start
to be your friend you see people are
very defensive about what they know and
for the reasons we’ve already discussed
but the thing is you don’t know enough
and the Riu can tell you don’t know
enough because your life is not what it
could be and neither is the life of the
people around you you just don’t know
enough and so what that means is that
every time you encounter some evidence
that you’re ignorant someone points it
out you should be happy about that
because you think oh you just told me
how I’m wrong it’s like great like maybe
I had to sift through a lot of nonsense
to get through the real message that
you’re telling me but if you could
actually tell me some way that I’m wrong
and then maybe give me a hint about how
to not be wrong like that well then I
wouldn’t have to be wrong like that
anymore that that would be a good thing
and and you can you can you can embark
on that adventure by listening to people
and if you listen to people they will
tell you they’ll tell you amazing things
if you listen to them and many of those
things are little tools that you can put
in your toolkit like Batman and then you
can go out into the world and use those
tools and you don’t have to fall blindly
into a pit quite as often and so the
humility element is well you want to be
right or do you want to be learning
and it’s deeper than that it’s do you
want to be the the tyrannical king who’s
already got everything figured out or do
you want to be the continually
transforming hero or fool for that
matter who’s getting better all the time
and that’s actually a choice you know
it’s a deep choice and it’s better to be
the self transforming fool who’s humble
enough to make friends with what he or
she doesn’t know and to listen when
people talk and listening is a
transformative exercise like it’s if you
listen to the people in your life for
example if you actually listen to them
they’ll tell you what’s wrong with them
and how to fix it and what they want
they can’t even help it if you start
listening because people are so shocked
if you actually listen to them that they
tell you also those sorts of things that
they might not have even intended to
things they don’t even know and then you can you can work with that
much and the problem with that is is
that it takes our focus away from aims
that would be more productive it’s much
better to aim for meaning than for
happiness best bet is truth but that
doesn’t necessarily mean that’s always
going to do the trick right I mean
sometimes you go fight a dragon and it
eats you and if the if you being eaten
wasn’t a real possibility it wouldn’t be
a real fight and so you see people like
I’ve seen people in my clinical practice
sometimes I had one client in particular
who was undergoing a particularly
vicious divorce with someone who was
really seriously inclined to take him
out and would do pretty much everything
at her disposal to do so and I
strategized with him for about three
years and we did everything like and
hyper carefully he was a very
conscientious and diligent person and he
put into practice everything that we
discussed and strategized and he still
pretty much he got backed into a corner
so hard that I did not help him anymore
so I would say however that he like he
was a very truthful person throughout
that and one thing he did do was part of
it was a custody battle and he did
manage despite his declined in
consequence of being repeatedly cornered
I would say he did manage to establish
what I think was a lasting relationship
with his kids so he might have got
enough out of what he did to justify it
even though the whole landscape was
pretty awful I think that not lying is
your best bet
but life is hard and people get run over
and it doesn’t necessarily mean that
you’re going to emerge in any obvious
sense triumphant but if you take the
alternative path path especially when
you’re facing severe tribulations let’s
say and you complicate those with deceit
you can be sure that whatever tragedy
that you’re confronting is going to turn
into not only try
but something very much akin to hell and
so you might be able to at least
minimize the degree of suffering even if
you can’t overcome it or transcend it
and that’s something you know there is
no faith and no courage and no sacrifice
in doing what is expedient what do you
say to those viewers that don’t pursue
their dreams and are locked into their
careers because they are too afraid to
take risks and pursue something
meaningful well the first thing I would
say is well you should be afraid of
taking risks and pursuing something
meaningful but you should be more afraid
of staying where you are if it’s making
you miserable it’s like the first thing
you want to do is dispense with the idea
that you get to have any any permanent
security outside of your ability to
contend and adapt it’s the same issue
with children it’s like you’re paying a
price by sitting there being miserable
and you might say well the devil I know
is better than the one I don’t it’s like
don’t be so sure of that the clock is
ticking yeah and if you’re miserable in
your job now and you change nothing in
five years you’ll be much more miserable
and you’ll be a lot older but this into
the luxury to pursue what is meaningful
our viewers have mortgages they have
children yeah they have payments and
loans it’s a luxury to pursue because we
lack the resources well I don’t think I
don’t remember now I’m not talking about
what makes you happy it’s a luxury to
pursue what makes you happy it’s a moral
obligation to pursue what you find
meaningful and that doesn’t mean it’s
easy it might require sacrifice if you
need to change your job to let’s say you
have family and and and and children and
Ana mortgage you have responsibilities
you’ve already picked up those
responsibilities you don’t just get to
walk away scot-free and say well I don’t
like my job I quit
that’s no strategy but what you might
have to do is you think well this job is
killing my soul all right so what do I
have to do about that well I have to
look for another job well no one wants
to hire me it’s like okay maybe you need
to educate yourself more maybe you need
to update your your curriculum vitae
your resume maybe you need to overcome
your fear of being interviewed maybe you
need to sharpen your social skills like
you
you have to think about these things
strategically if you’re going to switch
careers you have to do it like an
intelligent responsible person that
might take you a couple of years of
effort to do properly I’ve dealt with
hundreds of people in my clinical and
consulting practice and we set a goal we
develop a vision and work towards it and
it things inevitably get better for
people so it’s not a luxury it’s it’s
difficult it’s a moral responsibility
and it isn’t happiness it’s it’s not the
pursuit isn’t for happiness it’s a moral
responsibility to push you what is
meaning absolutely or radical the
necessary change the more pain that
accompanies it like the more opportunity
as well but and a lot of what we learn
we learn painfully and so it’s not
surprising that people shrink away from
learning we learn in pain and anxiety
very frequently everyone knows that like
the things that really that you really
learned in life it’s like it was no joy
man it took you out and so the fact that
people flee from that is hardly
surprising but it doesn’t help that’s
the thing it just stores up the
catastrophe for later and so the better
the better idea is to eat a little
poison every day so that you don’t have
to overdose in a month it’s something
like that and it is the case that I
think because you don’t you aren’t
forced first of all you don’t learn
unless you’re forced to learn I know
there’s alternatives to that there’s the
voluntary search for knowledge and
that’s a fine thing and that is an
antidote to this but apart from that
speaking more practically you tend not
to learn unless you’re forced to learn
and it’s and what you tend to learn by
force are difficult lessons and so
people are very prone to not do not seek
that out it’s not surprising but it’s
because they don’t understand the
consequences very well you know you you
it’s because maybe it’s because they’re
convinced that there’s some way of for
stalling the necessary learning and
there isn’t any way of for stalling it
all you do is make it worse in the
future you make yourself smaller and you
make the lesson hard
and so that’s why in so many religious
doctrines there’s emphasis on humility
you know and humility isn’t to debase
yourself it’s to understand that you
don’t know enough so that your life
isn’t going to be miserable and so every
chance you get to grab something new
that will help you along your way you
should take it as fast as you can but
you have to have a very tragic I would
say view of reality and also a harsh one
because it’s not just tragedy it’s also
malevolence you have to understand that
those are waiting for you and that makes
you desperate enough to learn and that
might be make you desperate enough to
fall out of your ideology but that’s
that’s a hard way of looking at the
world it beats living through it though
continual circling in some sense of who
you could be you might notice for
example that there are themes in your
life you know when you go back across
your experiences you see you kind of
have your typical experience that sort
of repeats itself and there might be
variation on it like a musical theme but
it’s it’s like you’re circling yourself
and getting closer to yourself as you
move across time
that’s the circumambulation now you
remember that for a second as well go
back to it okay so imagine that
something glimmers before you it’s an an
interest that’s dawning and you decide
well first of all you’re paralyzed do
you think well how do I know if I should
pursue that it’s probably a stupid idea
and the proper response to that is
you’re right it probably is a stupid
idea because almost all though all ideas
are stupid and so the probability that
as you move forward on your adventure
that you’re gonna get it right the first
time is zero it’s just not gonna happen
and so then you might think well maybe
I’ll just wait around until I get the
right idea and which people do right so
they’re like 40 year old thirteen year
olds which is not a good idea
so they wait around until it’s Waiting
for Godot until they finally got it
right but the problem is you’re too
stupid to know when you’ve got it right
so waiting around isn’t gonna help
because even if it the perfect
opportunity manifested itself to you in
your
in complete form the probability that
you would recognize it as the perfect
opportunity is zero you might even think
it’s the worst possible idea that you’ve
ever heard of anywhere highly likely
highly likely so so you had theirs
niche if nature call data will will to
stupidity which I really liked so
because he thought of stupidity as being
it you know it’s it’s you have to take
it into account fundamentally and work
with it and so and so you can take these
tentative steps on your pathway to
destiny and you can assume that you’re
gonna do it badly and that’s really
useful because you don’t have to beat
yourself up it’s pretty easy to do it
badly but the thing is it’s way better
to do it badly than not to do it at all
so you you start your path and you think
that you’re heading you know towards
your star and so you go in that
direction and then because you’re here
the world looks a particular way but
then when you move here the world looks
different and you’re different as a
consequence of having made that voyage
and so what that means is that now that
thing that glimmers in front of you is
going to have shifted its location
because you weren’t very good at
specifying it to begin with and now that
you’re a little sharper and more focused
than you were it’s it’s going to reveal
itself with more accuracy to you and so
then you have to take a you know it’s
almost like 180 degree reversal but it
isn’t because you know you’ve
I mean you’ve gone this far and that’s a
long ways to get that far but that’s a
lot farther than you would be if you
just stayed where you were waiting and
so it doesn’t matter that you overshoot
continually because as you overshoot
even if you don’t learn what you should
have done you’re going to continually
learn what you shouldn’t keep doing and
if you learn enough about what you
shouldn’t keep doing then that’s
tantamount at some point to learning at
the same time what you should be doing
so it’s ok so it’s like this now what’s
cool about it though I think is that as
you progress the degree of overshooting
starts to decline right and that we know
that there’s nothing hypothetical about
that as you learn a new skill like even
to play it play a song on the piano for
example you overshoot madly you’re
making all sorts of mistakes to begin
with and then the mistakes they
disappear so anyways the fact that
you’re full of faults doesn’t mean you
have to stop and thank God for that
that’s a really useful thing and the
fact that you’re full of faults doesn’t
mean that you can’t learn and so you can
pause it an ideal and you’re gonna be
wrong about it but it doesn’t matter
because what you’re right about is
positing the ideal moving towards it if
the actual ideal isn’t conceptualize
perfectly well first a surprise surprise
because like what are you going to do
that’s perfect so it doesn’t matter that
it’s imperfect imperfect it just matters
that you do it and that you move forward
so that’s really that’s really positive
news as far as I’m concerned because you
can actually do that right you can do it
badly anyone can do that so that’s
that’s useful
built for struggle us human beings you
not after the bubbles of bliss that
Dostoyevsky described in in notes from
underground
we’re built to contend with the world
we’re built to contend with reality you
want a challenge and the best way that
you can take on a challenge because the
challenge fortifies you so you don’t
want to be secure you want to be strong
and you get strong by taking on optimal
challenges and so you lay out your
destiny in the world and you take the
slings and arrows of fate and you make
yourself stronger while you’re doing so
and you might fail and fortune might do
you in but it’s your best bet and you
know people have also people that have
extracted unbelievable successes out of
catastrophic failures and so and I’m not
saying that in a naive way I know
perfectly well what happens to people
you know you’re doing fine in life and
then you get cancer and then six months
later you’re dead and all the heroism in
the world isn’t going to save you at
that point but that’s not the point
that’s not the point
life is bounded by mortality but that
doesn’t mean that you don’t get out
there and contend and you develop by
contending and you minimize the net
amount of suffering in the world and
that’s something man that’s something to
do helps to read a lot it really helps
to write so if you want to make yourself
articulate which is a very good idea
then not only should you read but you
should write down what you think and if
you can do that a little bit every day
15 minutes maybe you could steal 15
minutes and do it every day but if you
do that for 10 years you really
straighten out your thinking if you’re
gonna speak effectively you have to know
way more than you’re talking about you
know so if you this is often difficult
for beginning lecturers at university
because they’ll do a lecture on a topic
but they only know as much as they’re
saying in the lecture and they get kind
of stuck to their notes because of it
but you want to know 10 times as much as
you are saying in the lecture and then
you can specify a stepping path through
it and elaborate with the other things
that you know but to do that you have to
do a lot of reading by
you also have to do a lot of reading
because that’s where the synthesize
that’s where the synthesizing comes so
that’s on the input side and then on the
output side well there’s some tricks
techniques let’s say is like if you’re
speaking in front of a group you are not
delivering a talk to a group that’s not
what you’re doing the talk isn’t a
package thing that you present to a
group there isn’t a group there’s a
bunch of individuals and you talk to
them so when I talk to a group I always
talk to people one at a time and that
makes it easier to because you know how
to talk to a person it’s like can you
talk to a thousand people well probably
not because it’s too intimidating but
there isn’t a thousand people there
there’s a thousand individuals and so
you just look at an individual and you
say something and you can tell if
they’re engaged they look confused or
they look interested or they look angry
or they look bored or maybe they’re
asleep in which case you look at someone
else and they give you feedback about
how you’re doing and so one thing is to
to have something to say yeah but the
next thing is pay attention to who
you’re talking to because unless you’re
very badly socialized and that seems
unlikely in your case because you know
you present yourself at least moderately
well you know and well I mean I don’t
know you very well but at first but on
first sight you know you’re doing fine
so the probability that if you pay
attention to the individuals that you’re
talking to that your natural wealth of
social skill will manifest itself is
extremely high and so you don’t deliver
a talk to an audience that’s a really
bad way of thinking about you’re
actually engaged in a conversation with
an audience even if they’re not talking
they’re nodding and shifting position
and you know looking like this or and
you can you can pull all that in and and
and use it to govern the level at which
you’re addressing the entire audience so
the last thing I would say is well
having the aim to be a good communicator
is a good start and you think well I
could bunch us that to some degree well
there isn’t anything that you can
this is the whole point of a liberal
education there isn’t anything that you
can possibly do that makes you more
competent in everything you do than to
learn how to communicate I don’t care if
you’re gonna be a carpenter I mean being
a carpenter by the way is very difficult
especially if you’re a good carpenter
but if you’re good at communicating as a
carpenter you’re like ten times better
as a carpenter so the and this is
something that the liberal arts colleges
I think him I don’t know if they’ve
forgotten it but they don’t do a very
good job of marketing it’s like what’s
the use of a bachelor’s degree Bachelor
of Arts it’s like well you can think you
can write you can speak you’ve read
something it’s like the economic value
that is incalculable the people that
I’ve watched in my life would be
spectacular ly successful are they have
skills clearly that that’s a minimum
precondition but they’re also very very
good at articulating themselves and so
whenever they negotiate they’re
successful well that’s kind of like the
definition of success in life right you
negotiate and you’re six doesn’t mean
you win because if you’re a good
negotiator if you’re really good
negotiator everybody walks away from the
negotiation thrilled and so then people
line up to do things with you so and
that’s all that’s all dependent on your
there’s a great hunger for information
that is practical and useful and that
helps people find meaning in their lives
and orient themselves there’s a great
hunger for that and most of my lectures
were derived from solid psychology some
of it experimental some of it biological
some of it from from from the domains of
neuroscience a lot of it from great
clinicians it’s not surprising that
people find it helpful because well
great clinicians were great because they
were really helpful and so to distill
that and to offer it to people in a
digestible form to have that have a good
effect on them well that’s that’s what
you’d expect that’s what the whole
discipline is about and so that’s been
compare yourself to who you were
yesterday and not to who someone else is
today because if you’re comparing
yourself to someone else I mean first of
all you don’t know very much about the
life of the person you’re comparing
yourself to you don’t know it you know
it across all of its dimensions and
second people are very different and so
comparing yourself to someone else it’s
it’s kind of useful I guess when you’re
young but as you get older and more
singular and more particular it becomes
increasingly less useful better to
compare yourself to a previous version
of yourself and work for improvement in
that way here is an impossible thing why
don’t you go out and fail you say here’s
something worth going after here’s a
step you could take that would push you
beyond where you are but that you also
have a reasonably high probability of
succeeding it right they called that
within a time frame if then some time
frame that’s the other thing you have to
parameterize it with regards to time
frame that’s right and that puts you in
the zone of proximal development and
that says that’s a concept that was
generated by a guy named Vygotsky he was
a Russian developmental psychologist and
the smart one
it’s where the idea of the zone comes
from to be in the zone and when you’re
in the zone you’re expanding your skills
in a manner that’s intrinsically
rewarding because you’re succeeding and
so you want to set if you’re good to
yourself you think okay I need to set a
goal but I need to set a goal that
someone is stupid and useless as me
could probably attain if they put some
effort into it and then you got it then
you’ve got it perfectly because it’s not
so high that it’s grandiose or
impossible that you fail necessarily and
then justify your bitterness it’s like
well I couldn’t do it well because that
happens to Pete how much all the time
yeah it’s like that’s all the time you
know it’s like it’s yes exactly well I
set a goal and I didn’t attain it so I’m
not gonna set any more goal right it’s
like no you set a goal that was
inappropriate for the time frame that’s
right you didn’t calibrate it properly
and and you’re playing a trick on
yourself because you wanted to fail so
that you could justify not having to try
that’s why being a victim mmm it’s just
in helpful you’re still gonna be a
victim
it’s like there’s no way out of that man
so you know because life is this life is
a challenge that in some sense can’t be
surmounted so there’s no way out of your
problem but there are certainly proper
ways of dealing with it if is difficult
and you cannot protect your children
what you can do is prepare them and you
can prepare them to be strong and
courageous and truthful and resilient
and reciprocal in their interactions
with other people and that means you
equip them for what life will be which
is at minimum a series of difficult
challenges and and often more than that
because of course people go through very
difficult times in their lives and a
resilient person is capable of standing
up to things in the face of fear and
moving forward voluntarily and Vince of
their own competence and ability to
prevail and so the primary your primary
goal as a parent apart from facilitating
your child’s social desirability which
is a major obligation on your part is to
encourage your children and to and I
mean that literally to instill in them a
sense of courage in the face of the
difficulties of life and not to protect
them from that we don’t even want to be
protected from those difficulties
because a major part of life and its
meaning is the the challenge that comes
there is definitely an epidemic of
overprotective parenting but it’s useful
to ask why and my suspicions are is that
this is driven by very fundamental
biological and cultural phenomena that
aren’t generally considered in
relationship to this issue we don’t have
very many children we don’t have 12 you
know six of whom die
we have one or two and that makes them
very precious right
we’re unwilling to take risks with them
and no wonder and then we also have the
much later in life and so like if you
have a kid when you’re 18 you’re still a
kid you know you’re gonna go out and
have your life right because you’re so
well you’re in the in the height of your
exploratory you’re in the height of the
exploratory part of your life you’re not
gonna over protect your kid because
you’re still a kid but if you’re 40 and
you have one child it’s like all your
eggs are in one basket
and the probability that you’re going to
take undue risks with that precious
person is very very low now obviously
there’s some advantages to that because
great you would devote resources to your
child you know and foster their
development but the downside is that you
have every motivation to hover and maybe
you’re also extraordinarily desperate as
a mother to maintain that bond with your
child because you’ve struggled so long
to achieve it it’s highly highly
valuable
you can’t take a risk well so these so
we might say well perhaps overprotective
parenting is a secondary and unintended
consequence of the birth control pill
and the fact that people now have
children later in life could easily be
you know if you have six kids it’s like
what are you gonna do helicopter parent
them it’s like little yeah you’re so
tired you can’t even get off the couch
if you have six kids and there they
outnumber you right there raising each
other they’re competing and they’re
taking each other down a peg they’re not
there’s no overprotection there but with
it with a single child landscape or dual
child landscape
mostly a single child landscape then
you’re gonna over protect and then that
ethos starts to permeate the schools and
it starts to permeate the higher
education institutions as those children
mature and then that all reinforces it
not good it’s not obvious what to do
about it either because if it is driven
by demographics and not in that sense
it’s a much more intractable problem
than we think so I did some of that in
12 rules for life you know I said look
you what you have to understand is that
you’re a danger to your children no
matter what right you can let them go
out in the world and be hurt or you can
over protect them and hurt them that way
so you here’s your choice you can make
your children competent and courageous
or you can make them safe but you can’t
make them safe because life isn’t safe
so if you sacrifice their courage and
competence on the altar of safety then
you disarm them completely and all they
can do is pray to be protected do you
have to move from point A to B in life
but point a is often a very difficult
place to be because we’re fragile and
bounded and mortal and limited and
because we know that and so one of the
implications of that as many great
religious traditions are at pains to
illustrate or demonstrate or proclaim is
that life is essentially suffering and I
believe that to be a fundamental truth
but but perhaps not the most fundamental
truth because I think the most
fundamental truth is that despite the
fact that life is suffering people can
transcend that and partly the way they
transcend that is by pursuing things of
value and so that if there is no value
proposition at hand then you have no
meaning to justify the difficult
conditions of your life and that’s
brutally difficult for people no
Nietzsche said he who has a why can bear
anyhow and you see and I’ve certainly
seen this as a clinical practitioner
that people who have no purpose in their
life are embittered by the difficulties
of their life and they become first
bitter and then resentful and then
revengeful and then cruel
and there’s plenty of places to go past
cruel that’s just where you start if
you’re really on a downhill path that
you have a certain delightful wonderful
positive freedom as a child and then
that’s given up as you approach
adulthood but the truth of the matter is
is that you have a lot of potential as a
child but none of that is capable of
manifesting itself as freedom before you
become disciplined and discipline is a
matter of the imposition of order and
the order is necessary especially for
people who are hopeless and nihilistic
and lots of people are hopeless and
nihilistic we more people than you think
and part of that is because no one’s
ever really encouraged them and so the
book is in part a matter of
encouragement it’s like lay yourself lay
a disciplinary structure on yourself
get the chaos in in in check and then
you can move towards a state that’s
freer because it’s disciplined first
like look if you’re going to become a
concert pianist there’s going to be
several thousand hours of
extraordinarily disciplined practice
that’s the imposition of order on your
potential let’s say you know if you
start with the presumption that there’s
a baseline of suffering in life and that
that can be exaggerated by as a
consequence of human failing as a
consequence of malevolence and betrayal
and self betrayal and deceit and all
those things that we do to each other
and ourselves that we know that aren’t
good that amplifies the suffering that’s
sort of the baseline against which you
have to work and and and it’s
contemplation of that often that makes
people hopeless and depressed and
anxious and overwhelmed and all of that
it and and they have the reasons but you
need something to put up against that
and what you put up against that is
meaning meaning is actually the instinct
that helps you guide yourself through
that catastrophe and most of that
meaning is to be found in the adoption
of responsibility so if you think for
example if you think about the people
that you admire well you think about
when you have a clear conscience first
because that’s a good thing to aim at
which is something different than
happiness right a clear conscience is
different than happiness that’s better
yeah
that’s not other guilting yourself
you’re not feeling bad about your sister
right you feel that you’ve just
acclaimed you’ve justified your
existence right and so you’re not waking
up at 3:00 in the morning in a cold
sweat thinking about all the terrible
things that you’ve involved yourself in
what you said to someone that you
shouldn’t have said I you acted or what
opportunity you lost or yeah or or the
things that you’ve that you’ve let go
that you should have capitalized on and
all of that and so if you think about
the times when you’re at peace with
yourself with regards to how you’re
conducting yourself in the world it’s
almost always conditions under which
you’ve adopted responsibility right at
least the most the most guilt I think
that you can experience perhaps is the
sure knowledge that you’re not even
taking care of yourself so that you’re
leaving that responsibility to other
people because that’s pretty pathetic
and I unless you’re psychopathic
and you know and you’re living a
parasitical life and that that
characterizes a very small minority of
people and an even smaller minority
think that’s justifiable but most of the
time you’re in guilt and shame because
you’re not you’re you’re not not only
are you not taking care of yourself
let’s say so someone else has to but
you’re not living up to your full
potential and so there’s a existential
weight that goes along with that people
have an unspecified potential for
development educationally obviously with
regards to the skills they have but also
in relationship to their character and
it’s it’s much it’s much more
encouraging for people I think to
concentrate on who they could be rather
than who they are especially when
they’re young because they still have
most of their life ahead of them and and
they’re not everything they could be yet
and so to tell people even something
like well you should feel good about
yourself the way you are is like well
that there’s something there that’s
seriously lacking because there’s so
much more that you could be that you
need to be and that you should be aiming
at the Sun you’re the problem with being
ok the way you are is that you don’t
have a goal then and people need to have
a goal in order to
come to terms with their life this the
baboon here who’s supposed to be
basically just a fool when the story was
first written he turned into what’s
essentially a shaman across time and
then so he represents the self from the
Union perspective now the self is
everything you could be across time she
imagined that there’s you and there’s
the potential inside you whatever that
is you know and potential is an
interesting idea because it represents
something that isn’t yet real yet we act
like it’s real because people will say
to you you should live up to your
potential and that potential is partly
what you could be if you interacted with
the world in a manner that would gain
you the most information right because
you build yourself out of the
information in the piagetian sense but
it’s deeper than that – because we know
that if you take yourself and you put
yourself in a new environment new genes
turn on in your nervous system they
encode for new proteins and so you’re
full of biological potential that won’t
be realized unless you move yourself
around in the world in two different
challenging circumstances and that will
turn on different circuits so it’s not
merely that you’re incorporating
information from the outside world in
the constructivist sense it’s that by
exposing yourself to different
environments you put different
physiological demands on on yourself all
the way down to the genetic level and
that manifests new elements of you and
so one of the things that happens to
people and this is a very common
cultural notion is that you should go on
a pilgrimage at some point to somewhere
central and that would be say like the
rock in the Pride Rock and the Lion King
because you take yourself out of your
dopey little village and that’s just a
little bounded you that everyone knows
and that isn’t very expanded and then
you go somewhere dark and dangerous to
the central place and while you do that
you have adventures and they toughen you
and pull more out of you like partly
because you’re becoming informed which
means information it means you’re
becoming more organized at every level
of analysis but there’s also more of you
to primary motive as a clinical
psychologist and educator is to help
individuals live more meaningful and
productive lives in harmony with their
families and their community that’s my
motive and the evidence for that I think
is
well if people go online and first of
all you can watch the lectures and
decide for yourself but you can also go
there’s I suspect probably maybe 250,000
people have commented on the lectures
and their effects on them and so that’s
what people say I’m watching the
lectures yeah I’m trying to develop a
vision for my life I’m trying to become
more responsible and its really helping
and that’s and that’s what I hear all
the time when I do these public lectures
which aren’t political but when we gain
success we raise the bar we set our
ambitions higher I mean what is your end
game what do you want that’s all that’s
what I want I want I want to help as
many individuals as possible become more
courageous more truthful and more
engaged in the pursuit of individual
familial and social harmony that’s what
I want a great job of modeling courage
in the face of far well there’s
something I’d like to say maybe in
closing about courage people say that to
me and you know I don’t think it’s
exactly right doesn’t there’s a line in
the Old Testament the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom and I think it’s
more like that it’s not that I’m
courageous it’s that I’m afraid of the
right things so when I made my videos it
wasn’t like that didn’t make me nervous
but I was less nervous about going back
to bed and not saying what I had to say
that I was about making the videos
because I know where this is going I
don’t want to go there and so it’s it’s
not so much courage it’s that it’s a
matter of I it’s it’s it’s less risky to
say something
than to remain silent when you know
there’s something to be said I know that
to be the case and so lots of times in
life it’s like there’s no pathway
forward that’s going to shield you from
risk you get to pick this risk or you
get to pick this risk and I think I
picked the lesser risk and that might be
assume that the person you are listening
to might know something you don’t this
is a chapter about conversation and
about the different forms conversation
takes and so chapter about humility and
it’s a chapter about listening and
humility element is it took me a long
time to understand why there’s religious
injunctions supporting humility but even
understand what the word really meant
and that sort of technical sense and it
means something like this it means what
you don’t know is more important than
what you know and that’s a lovely thing
too then what you don’t know can start
to be your friend you see people are
very defensive about what they know and
for the reasons we’ve already discussed
but the thing is you don’t know enough
and the Riu can tell you don’t know
enough because your life is not what it
could be and neither is the life of the
people around you you just don’t know
enough and so what that means is that
every time you encounter some evidence
that you’re ignorant someone points it
out you should be happy about that
because you think oh you just told me
how I’m wrong it’s like great like maybe
I had to sift through a lot of nonsense
to get through the real message that
you’re telling me but if you could
actually tell me some way that I’m wrong
and then maybe give me a hint about how
to not be wrong like that well then I
wouldn’t have to be wrong like that
anymore that that would be a good thing
and and you can you can you can embark
on that adventure by listening to people
and if you listen to people they will
tell you they’ll tell you amazing things
if you listen to them and many of those
things are little tools that you can put
in your toolkit like Batman and then you
can go out into the world and use those
tools and you don’t have to fall blindly
into a pit quite as often and so the
humility element is well you want to be
right or do you want to be learning
and it’s deeper than that it’s do you
want to be the the tyrannical king who’s
already got everything figured out or do
you want to be the continually
transforming hero or fool for that
matter who’s getting better all the time
and that’s actually a choice you know
it’s a deep choice and it’s better to be
the self transforming fool who’s humble
enough to make friends with what he or
she doesn’t know and to listen when
people talk and listening is a
transformative exercise like it’s if you
listen to the people in your life for
example if you actually listen to them
they’ll tell you what’s wrong with them
and how to fix it and what they want
they can’t even help it if you start
listening because people are so shocked
if you actually listen to them that they
tell you also those sorts of things that
they might not have even intended to
things they don’t even know and then you can you can work with that
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