stop doing the things that you know are
wrong that you could stop doing if
you’re failing repeatedly it’s possible
that there’s something wrong with the
way that you’re conceptualizing the
world it’s like we’re built for struggle
as human beings need motivation Watts a
top ten with believe nation what’s that
belief nation it’s Evan I believe in you
and this channel is designed to be a
part of your daily success routine so
let’s get your motivation to attend and
get you believing in you grab a snack
and join today’s lessons from a man who
went from being introduced to the
writings of George Orwell at a young age
to becoming a Harvard professor and
through his thought leadership inspiring
millions of people around the world
he’s Jordan Peterson and here’s my take
on his top 50 rules for success also if
you want to know what Jordan Peterson
and others have to say about building
unstoppable confidence check out my 250
for confidence series where every day
for the next 254 days I will send you a
morning video for free to help you build
your confidence the link to join is in
the description below if you’re gonna
speak effectively you have to know way
okay let’s kick it off with rule number
one stop doing the wrong things stop
doing the things that you know are wrong
that you could stop doing right so it’s
it’s a fairly it’s a fairly limited
attempt first of all we’re not going to
say that you know what the good is or
what the truth is
in any ultimate sense but we will
presume that there are things that
you’re doing that for one reason another
you know are not in your best interests
there’s something about them that you
just know you should stop they’re kind
of self-evident to you other things
you’re gonna be doubtful about you’re
not gonna know which way is up and which
way is down but there are things that
you’re doing that you know you shouldn’t
do now some of those you won’t stop
doing for whatever reason you don’t have
the discipline or maybe there’s a
secondary payoff or you don’t believe
it’s necessary or it’s too much of a
sacrifice or you’re angry or resentful
or or afraid who knows so forget about
those for now but there’s another subset
that you could stop doing it might be
little thing well that’s fine stop doing
it and see what happens and what will
happen is your vision will clear a
little bit and then something else will
pop up in your field of apprehension
that you will also know you should stop
doing and that you could stop doing
because you’ve strengthened yourself a
bit by stopping doing the particular
stupid thing that you were doing before
that just puts you together a little bit
more and you could do that repeatedly
for for an indefinite period of time and
and you know that doesn’t necessarily
mean that you’re going to ever be able
to formulate a clear and final picture
of what constitutes the truth and the
good but it does mean that you’ll be
able to continually move away from
what’s untruth and what’s bad and you
know well that’s not a bad start rule
number two make a schedule make a damn
schedule and stick to it okay so what’s
the rule with the schedule it’s not a
bloody prison that’s the first thing
that people do wrong is well I don’t
like to have follow a schedule it’s like
well what kind of schedule are you
setting up well I should I have to do
this then I have to do this then I have
to do this you know and then I just go
play video games because who wants to do
all these things that I have to do it’s
like wrong
set the damn schedule up so that you
have the day you want that’s the trick
it’s like okay I’ve got tomorrow if I
was gonna set it up so it was the best
possible day I could have practically
speaking what would it look like well
then you schedule that and obviously
there’s a bit of responsibility that’s
gonna go along with that because if you
have any sense one of the things that
you’re gonna insist upon is that at the
end of the day you’re not in worse shape
than you were then then at the beginning
of the day right
that’s a stupid day if you have a bunch
of those in a row you just dig you know
you dig yourself a hole and then you
bury yourself and it’s like sorry that’s
just not a good strategy it’s a bad
strategy
so maybe 20% of your day has to be
responsibility and obligation or maybe
it’s more than that depending on how far
behind you are but even that you can you
can ask yourself okay well I’ve got
these responsibilities I have to
schedule the damn things in what’s the
right ratio of responsibility to reward
and you can ask yourself that just like
you’d negotiate with someone who is
working for you it’s like okay you gotta
work tomorrow okay so I want you to work
tomorrow and you might say okay well
what are you gonna do for me
that makes it likely that I’ll work for
you well you could ask yourself that you
know maybe you’d do an hour of
responsibility and then you play a video
game for 15 minutes I don’t know
whatever turns your crank man but you
know you have to negotiate with yourself
and not tyrannize yourself like you’re
negotiating with someone that you care
for that you would like to be productive
and have a good life and and that’s how
you make the schedule it’s like and then
you look at the day and you think well
if I had that day that’d be good great
you know and you you’re useless and
horrible so you’ll probably only hit it
with about 70% accuracy but that beats
the hell out of zero right and if you
hit it even with 50% accuracy another
rule is well aim for 51% the next week
or 50 and a half percent for God’s sake
or because you’re gonna hit that
position where things start to loop back
positively and spiral you upward rule
number three clarify your thoughts
sometimes you know oh I can’t sleep at
night because I’m thinking about
something and usually what I’ll do is go
write it down I have some writing to do
so I get up and I go
down what I’m thinking and that usually
does the trick but because I had been
playing with YouTube I thought well I’ll
try making YouTube video and telling
people what I’m thinking about and see
if that performs the same function as
writing and to me the function of
writing while it’s twofold one is
conceivably to communicate with people
although the fundamental purpose for me
is to clarify my thoughts so that I know
do you know because if you’re if
something is disturbing you what that
means is that it needs to be articulated
it what it’s the emergence of unexplored
territory something that disturbs you
that that’s the right way to think about
it
it’s unmapped territory that’s
manifesting itself it’s like a Vista of
threat and possibility and you need to
articulate a path through it and so
that’s what I was doing it’s like I was
thinking well this is bothering me and
this seems to be why and here’s what I
think is going on and and so I made the
videos and in some sense I I didn’t
think anything more of it Rula before
take the meaningful path you don’t have
to necessarily have done anything wrong
for things to get completely out of
control it’s a terrifying doctrine but
it’s not a hopeless doctrine because it
still says that there’s a way forward
there’s a pathway forward and the
pathway forward is to adopt a mode of
being that has some nobility so that you
can tolerate yourself and perhaps even
have some respect for yourself as
someone who’s capable of standing up in
the face of that terrible vulnerability
and suffering and that the pathway
forward as far as the existentialists
are concerned is by well certainly by
the avoidance of deceit particularly in
language but also by the adoption of
responsibility for the conditions of
existence and some attempt on your part
to actually rectify them and the thing
that’s so interesting about that is
though up to as far as I’m concerned and
some of this is from clinical experience
you know if you take people and I’ve
told you this and you expose them
voluntarily to things that they are
avoiding and are afraid of you know that
they know they need to overcome in order
to meet their goals their self defined
goals if you can teach be
to stand up in the face of the things
they’re afraid of they get stronger and
you don’t know what the upper limits to
that are because you might ask yourself
like if for ten years if you didn’t
avoid doing what you knew you needed to
do by the depth by your own definitions
right within the value structure that
you’ve created to the degree that you’ve
done that what would you be like well
you know there are remarkable people who
come into the world from time to time
and there are people who do find out
over decades long periods what they
could be like if they were who they were
if they said if they spoke their being
forward and they’d be get stronger and
stronger and stronger and we don’t know
the limits to that we do not know the
limits to that and so you could say well
in part perhaps the reason that you’re
suffering unbearably can be left at your
feet because you’re not everything you
could be and you know it and of course
that’s a terrible thing to admit and
it’s a terrible thing to consider but
there’s real promise in it right because
it means that perhaps there’s another
way that you could look at the world in
a number another way that you could act
in the world so what it would reflect
back to you would be much better than
what it reflects back to you now my
experience is with people that were
probably running at about 51% of our
capacity something mean you can think
about this yourselves I often ask
undergraduates how many hours a day you
waste or how many hours a week you waste
and the classic answer is something like
4 to 6 hours a day
you know inefficient studying watching
things on YouTube that not only do you
not want to watch that you don’t even
care about that make you feel horrible
about watching after you’re done that’s
probably four hours right there no what
do you think well that’s 2025 hours a
week it’s a hundred hours a month that’s
two and a half full work weeks it’s half
a year of work weeks per year and if
your time is worth twenty dollars an
hour which is a radical under estimate
it’s probably more like 50 if you think
about it in terms of deferred wages if
you’re wasting 20 hours a week
you’re wasting fifty thousand dollars a
year and you are doing that right now
and it’s because you’re young wasting
fifty thousand dollars a year is a way
bigger catastrophe than it would be for
me to waste it because I’m not gonna
last nearly as long and so if your life
isn’t everything
it could be you could ask yourself all
what would happen if you just stopped
wasting the opportunities that are in
front of you you be who knows how much
more efficient 10 times more efficient
20 times more efficient that’s the
Pareto distribution you have no idea how
efficient efficient people get it’s
completely off its off the charts well
and if we all got our act together
collectively and stop making things
worse because that’s another thing
people do all the time not only do they
not do what they should to make things
better they actively attempt to make
things worse because they’re spiteful or
resentful or arrogant or deceitful or or
homicidal or genocide allure all of
those things all bundled together in an
absolutely pathological package if
people start really really trying just
to make things worse we have no idea how
much better they would get just because
of that so there’s this weird dynamic
that’s part of the existential system of
ideas between human vulnerability social
judgment both of which are our major
causes of suffering and the failure of
individuals to adopt the responsibility
that they know they should adopt it
isn’t merely that your fate depends on
whether or not you get your act together
and to what degree you decide that
you’re going to live out your own
genuine being it isn’t only your fate
it’s the fate of everyone that you’re
networked with and so you know you think
well there’s nine billion seven billion
people in the world we’re going to peak
at about nine billion by the way and
then it’ll decline rapidly but seven
billion people in the world and who are
you you’re just one little dust mote
among that seven billion and so it
really doesn’t matter what you do or
don’t do but that’s simply not the case
it’s the wrong model because you’re at
the center of a network you’re a node in
a network of course that’s even more
true now that we have social media
you’ll you know you’ll know a thousand
people at least over the course of your
life and they’ll know a thousand people
each and that puts you one person away
from a million and two persons away from
a billion and so that’s how you’re
connected and the things you do there
like dropping a stone in a pond the
ripples move outward and they affect
things in ways
that you can’t fully comprehend and it
means that the things that you do and
that you don’t do are far more important
than you think and so if you act that
way of course the terror of realizing
that is that it actually starts to
matter what you do and you might say
well that’s better than living a
meaningless existence it’s better for it
to matter but I mean if you really ask
yourself would you be so sure if you had
the choice I can live with no
responsibility whatsoever the price I
pay is that nothing matters or I can
reverse it and everything matters but I
have to take the responsibility that’s
associated with that it’s not so obvious
to me that people would take the
meaningful path now when you say well
denialists suffered dreadfully because
there’s no meaning in their life and
they still suffer yeah but the
advantages they have no responsibility
so that’s the payoff and I actually
think that’s the motivation say well I
can’t help being nihilistic all my
belief systems have collapsed it’s like
yeah maybe maybe you’ve just allowed
them to collapse because it’s a hell of
a lot easier than acting them out and
the price you pay is some meaningless
suffering but you can always whine about
that and people will feel sorry for you
and you have the option of taking the
pathway of the martyr so that’s a pretty
good deal all things considered
especially when the or when the
alternative is to bear your burden
properly and to live forthrightly in the
world well what Solzhenitsyn figured out
and so many people in the 20th century
it’s not just him even though he’s the
best example is that if you live a
pathological life you pathologize your
society and if enough people do that
then it’s hell really really and you can
read the Gulag Archipelago if you have
the four tit fortitude to do that and
you’ll see exactly what hell is like and
then you can decide if that’s a place
you’d like to visit or even more
importantly if it’s a light if it’s a
place you’d like to visit and take all
your family and friends because that’s
what happened in the 20th century rule
number five specify your goals the next
best predictor of lifetime success is
conscientiousness well so and although
of the two aspects of conscientiousness
say orderliness and industriousness
the better predictor is industriousness
so the question is well what can you do
about your in dose
business and the answer to that is well
that’s kind of rough too because there’s
a strong genetic component but you can
work on micro habits with regards to
your conscientiousness and I think the
best micro habits this is partly to do
with this future authoring program
processes I think the best thing you can
do with regards to your
conscientiousness is to set up some aims
for yourself goals that you actually
value and the future authoring program
helps people do that and basically it
does a situational analysis of it helps
you do a situational analysis of your
life more than a psychological analysis
I would say and so the questions are
something like well alright you’re gonna
have to put some effort into your life
and you need to be motivated to do that
and so what are the potential sources of
motivation well you could think about
them in in the Big Five manner you know
if you’re extroverted you want friends
if you’re agreeable you want an intimate
relationship if you’re a disagreeable
you want to win competitions if you’re
open you want to engage in creative
activity if you’re high in neuroticism
you want security okay so those are all
sources of potential motivation that you
could draw on that you could tailor to
your own you know your own personality
but then there are dimensions that you
want to consider your life across and so
we ask people about well you know if you
could have your life the way you wanted
it in three to five years if you were
taking care of yourself properly you
know what would you want from your
friendships what would you want from
your intimate relationship how would you
like to structure your family what do
you want for your career well how are
you going to use your time outside of
your job and how are you gonna regulate
your mental physical mental and physical
health and maybe also your drug and
alcohol use because that’s that’s a good
place to auger down you know because
alcoholism for example wipes out you
know five to ten percent of people so
you want to keep that under control and
then and then so maybe you know you you
you develop a vision of what your life
what you would like your life to be and
that associates the so the goal once the
goal is established and then you break
down the goal into micro processes that
you can implement the micro process has
become rewarding in proportion in
relation to their causal association
with the goal and that tangles in your
your incentive reward system you know we
talked about the dopaminergic
consent of reward system and that’s the
thing that keeps you moving forward and
the way it works is that it works better
if it produces positive emotion win it
can see you moving towards a valued goal
okay well what’s the implication of that
better have a valued goal because
otherwise you can’t get any positive
motivation working out and so the more
valuable the goal in principle the more
the micro process is associated with
that goal start to take on a positive
charge and so what that means is well
you get up in the morning and you’re
excited about the day you’re ready to go
and so as far as I can tell what you do
is you specify your long term ideal
maybe you also specify a place you want
to stay the hell away from so that
you’re terrified to fail as well as
excited about succeeding because that’s
also useful you specify your goal you do
that you do that in some sense as a
unique individual you want to you want
to specify goals that make you say oh if
that could happen as a consequence of my
efforts it would clearly be worthwhile
because the question always is why do
something because doing nothing is easy
you just sit there and you don’t do
anything that’s real easy the question
is why would you ever do anything and
the answer that has to be because you’ve
determined by some means that it’s
worthwhile and then the next question
might be well where should you look for
worthwhile things and one would be well
you could consult your own temperament
and the other would be well you kind of
look at how look at what it is that
people accrue that’s valuable across the
lifespan look look what so you do a
structural analysis of the subcomponents
of human existence and already did that
you need a family you need friends like
you don’t need to have all these things
but you better have most of them family
friends career educational goals plans
for you know time outside of work
attention to your mental and physical
health etc you know those are that’s
what life is about and if you don’t have
any of those things well then all you’ve
got left is misery and suffering so
that’s that’s a bad that’s a bad deal
for you so so once you but once you set
up that that goal structure let’s say
and that’s really in many in many ways
that’s what you should be doing at
universities is that’s exactly what you
should be doing is trying to figure out
who it is that you’re trying to be right
and you aim at that and then use
everything you learned as a means of
building that person that you want to be
and and I really mean want to be I don’t
mean should be even those things those
things are going to overlap and it’s
important to distinguish between those
because that’s partly and this is back
down to the micro routine analysis so as
I saying well you’re gonna try to make
yourself more industrious okay number
one specify your damn goals because how
are you gonna hit something if you don’t
know what it is that isn’t going to
happen and often people won’t specify
their goals too because they don’t like
to specify conditions for failure so if
you keep yourself all vague and foggy
which is real easy because that’s just a
matter of not doing as well then you
don’t know when you fail and people
might say well I really don’t want to
know when I fail because that’s painful
it’s so I’ll keep myself blind about
when I fail that’s fine except you’ll
fail all the time then you just won’t
know it until you’ve failed so badly
that you’re done and that can easily
happen by the time you’re 40 so so I
would recommend that you don’t let that
happen
so that’s willful blindness right you
could have known but you chose not to
okay so once you get your goal structure
set up you think okay if I could have
this life it looks like that might be
worth living despite the fact that it’s
going to be you know anxiety provoking
and threatening and there’s gonna be
some suffering and loss involved in all
of that obviously the goal is to have a
vision for your life such that all
things considered that justifies your
effort rule number six stop saying
things that make you weak I started to
pay very careful attention to what I was
saying I don’t know if that happened
voluntarily or involuntarily but I could
feel a sort of split developing in my
psyche and the split and I’ve actually
had students tell me the same thing that
has happened to them after they’ve
listened to some of the material that
that I’ve been describing to all of you
but split into two let’s say and one
part was the let’s say the old me that
was talking a lot and that liked to
argue and that liked ideas and there was
another part that was watching that part
like just with its eyes open and
neutrally judge
and the part that was neutrally judging
was watching the part that was talking
and going that isn’t your idea you don’t
really believe that you don’t really
know what you’re talking about
that isn’t true and I thought hmm that’s
really interesting so now I’ve and that
was happening to like 95% of what I was
saying and so then I didn’t really know
what to do I thought okay this is
strange so maybe I’ve fragmented and
that’s just not a good thing at all I
mean it wasn’t like I was hearing voices
or anything like that I mean it wasn’t
like that it was it was well people have
multiple parts so then I had this weird
conundrum it’s like well which of those
two things are me is it the part that’s
listening and saying no that’s rubbish
that’s a lie that’s you’re doing that to
impress people you’re just trying to win
the argument you know was that me or was
the part that was going about my normal
verbal business me and I didn’t know but
I decided I would go with the critic and
then what I’d tried to do what I learned
to do I think was to stop saying things
that made me weak and now that I mean
I’m still trying to do that because I’m
always feeling when I talk whether or
not the words that I’m saying are either
making me a line or making me come apart
and I think the alignment I really do
think the alignment is I think alignment
is the right way of conceptualizing it
because I think if you say things that
are as true as you can say them let’s
say then they come up they come out of
the depths inside of you
because we don’t know where thoughts
come from we don’t know how far down
into your sub structure the thoughts
emerge we don’t know what processes of
physiological alignment are necessary
for you to speak from the core of your
being we don’t understand any of that we
don’t even conceptualize that but I
believe that you can feel that and I
learned some of that from reading Carl
Rogers by the way who’s a great
clinician because he talked about mental
health in part as the coherence between
the the the spiritual or the or the
abstract and the physical that the two
things were aligned and and there’s a
lot of idea of alignment in in
psychoanalytic and clinical thinking but
anyways I decided that I would start
practicing not saying things that would
make me weak and what happened was that
I had to stop saying almost everything
that I was saying I would say 95% of it
as a hell of a shark to wake up and I
mean this was over a few months but it’s
a hell of a shark to wake up and realize
that you’re mostly dead wood it’s a
shark
you know and you might think well do you
really want all of that to burn off it’s
like well there’s nothing left but a
little hospital it’s like well if that
5% is solid then maybe that’s exactly
what you want to have happen rule number
seven adopt the mode of authentic being
adopt the mode of authentic being and
that is something like refusing to
participate in the lie in deception in
the lie to orient your speech as much as
you can towards the truth and to take
responsibility for your own life and
perhaps also for the lives of other
people and there’s something about that
that’s meaningful and responsible and
Noble but also serves to mitigate the
very suffering that produces say the
nihilism or the flee into the arms of
fleet or or the or the escape into the
arms of totalitarians to begin with you
need something to shelter you against
your own vulnerability rule number eight
learn from your errors you can think
about the world this way you can think
about it as your orderly little plan
that’s a place and you can think about
it as the place that things that disrupt
your plan comes from that’s another
place this is a bigger place than this
because there’s an endless number of
things that can disrupt your plan and
only a tiny number of them that can you
know that will help you work it out so
part of the question then too is like
are you the friend of your plan or are
you the friend of the thing that
disrupts your plan and I would say you
should work to become the friend of the
thing that disrupts your plan because
there’s a lot of that and then if you
become the friend of the thing that
disrupts your plan then you start to
develop strength in proportion to the to
the disruptive force and that’s really
what you want you want to be able to
implement your plan obviously but you
want to be
to take on the consequences of error and
learn from it and then then you win
constantly because even if something
goes sideways you think there’s
something to be derived from this that’s
wisdom fundamentally rule number nine
have a conversation with yourself plan a
life you’d like to have and and you do
that partly by referring to social norms
that’s more or less rescuing your father
from the belly of the whale but the way
other way you do that is by having a
little conversation with yourself about
as if you don’t really know who you are
because you know what you’re like you
won’t do what you’re told
you won’t do what you tell yourself to
do you must have noticed that it’s like
you’re a bad employee and a worse boss
and both of those work you know for you
you don’t know what you want to do and
then when you tell yourself what to do
you don’t do it anyway so you should
fire yourself and find someone else to
be but but you know what my point is is
that you have to understand that you’re
not your own servant so to speak you’re
someone that you have to negotiate with
and that’s and you’re someone that you
want to present the opportunity of
having a good life to and that’s hard
for people because they don’t like
themselves very much so you know they’re
always like cracking the whip and then
procrastinating and cracking the whip
and then procrastinating and it’s like
god it’s so boring and such a pathetic
way of spending your time rule number
ten aim high if you configure your life
so that what you are genuinely doing is
aiming at the highest possible good then
the things that you need to to survive
and to thrive on a day to day basis will
deliver themselves to you that’s a
hypothesis and it’s not some simple
hypothesis right because it what it
basically says is if you dared to do the
most difficult thing that you can
conceptualize your life will work out
better than it will if you do anything
else well how are you gonna find out if
that’s true well it’s a Kierkegaard
ian’s leap of faith there’s no way
you’re gonna find out whether or not
that’s true unless you do it so no one
no one can tell you either because just
because it works for someone else I mean
that’s interesting and all that but it’s
no proof that it’ll
for you you have to be all-in in this
game there is no more effective way of
operating in the world than to
conceptualize the highest good that you
can and then strive to attain it there’s
no more practical pathway to the kind of
success that you could have if you
actually knew what success was the world
shifts itself around your aim is you’re
you’re a creature that has a name you
have to have a name in order to do
something you’re an aiming creature you
look at a point and you move towards it
it’s built right into you and so you
have a name well let’s say your aim is
the highest possible aim well then so
that sets up the world around you it
organizes all of your perceptions it
organizes what you see and you don’t see
it organizes your emotions and your
motivations so you organize yourself
around that aim and then what happens is
the day manifests itself as a set of
challenges and problems and if you solve
them properly then you stay on the
pathway towards that aim and you can
concentrate on the on the 8 on the day
and so that way you get to have your
cake and eat it too
because you can you can point into the
distance the far distance and you can
live in the day and it seems to me that
that’s that makes every moment of the
day supercharged with meaning that
that’s how because if everything that
you’re doing every day is related to the
highest possible aim that you can
conceptualize well that’s the very
definition of the meaning that would
sustain you in your life rule number 11
set up criteria for success but one of
the main reasons that people do get what
they want is because they don’t actually
figure out what it is and the
probability that you’re going to get
what would be good for you let’s say
which would even be better than what you
want right because you know you might be
what wrong about what you want easily
but maybe you could get what would
really be good for you well why don’t
you well because you don’t try you don’t
think okay here’s what I would like if I
could have it and and I don’t mean I
don’t mean in a way that you manipulate
the world to force it to deliver you
goods for status or something like that
that isn’t what I mean I’m
something like imagine that you were
taking care of yourself like you were
someone you actually cared for and then
you thought okay I’m caring for this
person I would like things to go as well
for them as possible
what would their life have to be like in
order for that to be the case what
people don’t do that they don’t sit down
and think alright you know let’s let’s
figure it out you’ve got a life it’s
hard obviously it’s like three years
from now you can have what you need
you’ve got to be careful about it you
can’t have everything you can have what
would be good for you but you have to
figure out what it is and then you have
to aim at it well my experience with
people as being is if they figure out
what it is that would be good for them
and then they aim at it then they get it
and it’s strange because they don’t
necessarily an idea about what would be
good for you and then you take ten steps
towards that and you find out that your
formulation was a bit off and so you
have to reformulate your goal you know
you’re kind of going like this as you
move towards the goal but a huge part of
the reason that people fail is because
they don’t ever set up the criteria for
success and so since success is a very
narrow line and very unlikely the
probability that you’re going to stumble
on it randomly is zero and so there’s a
proposition here in the proposition is
if you actually want something you can
have it now the question then would be
well what do you mean by actually want
and the answer is that you reorient your
life in every possible way to make the
probability that that will occur as
certain as possible and that’s a
sacrificial idea right it’s like you
don’t get everything obviously you
obviously but maybe you can have what
you need and maybe all you have to do to
get it is ask but asking isn’t a whim or
today’s wish it’s like you have to be
deadly serious about it you have to
think okay like I’m taking stock of
myself and if I was going to live
properly in the world and I was going to
set myself up such that being would just
defy itself in my estimation and I don’t
mean as a harsh judge exactly what is it
that I would aim at sit on your bed one
day and ask yourself what’s what
remarkably stupid things am i doing on a
regular basis to absolutely screw up my
life and if you actually ask that
question but you have to want to know
the answer right because that’s actually
what asking the question means it
doesn’t mean just mouthing the words it
means you have to decide that you want
to know you’ll figure that’s out so fast
it’ll make your hair curl rule number 12
learn how to think critically the best
thing you can do is teach people to
write because there’s no difference
between that and thinking and one of the
things that just blows me away about
universities is that no one ever tells
students why they should write something
it’s like well you have to do this
assignment well why are you writing well
you need the great it’s like no you need
to learn to think because thinking makes
you act effectively in the world
thinking makes you win the battles you
undertake and those could be battles for
good things if you can think and speak
and write you are absolutely deadly
nothing can get in your way so that’s
why you learn to write it’s like what I
can’t believe that people aren’t just
told that it’s it’s it’s like it’s the
most powerful weapon you can possibly
provide someone with and I mean I know
lots of people who’ve been staggeringly
successful and watched them throughout
my life I mean those people you don’t
want to have an argument with them
they’ll just slash you into pieces and
then not in a malevolent way it’s like
if you’re gonna make your point and
they’re gonna make their point you
better have your points organized
because otherwise you’re gonna look like
and be an absolute idiot you are not
gonna get anywhere and if you can
formulate your arguments coherently and
make a presentation if you can speak to
people if you can lay out a proposal god
people give you money they give you
opportunities you have influence rule
number 13
don’t be harmless if you’re harmless
you’re not virtuous you’re just harmless
you’re like a rabbit rabbit isn’t
virtuous
it’s just just can’t do anything except
get eaten it’s not virtuous if you’re a
monster and you don’t act monstrously
then you’re virtuous but you also have
to be a monster while you see this all
the time Harry Potter’s like that too
it’s like he’s he’s flawed he’s hurt
he’s got evil in him he can talk to
snakes man he breaks rules all the time
all the time he’s not at OPD –nt at all
but you know he has a good reason for
breaking the rules and if he couldn’t
break the rules him in his little clique
of rule breaking you know troublemakers
if they didn’t break the rules
they wouldn’t attain the highest goal so
it’s very peculiar but it’s it’s very
there it’s a very very very very common
mythological notion you know the hero
has to be the hero has to be a monster
but a controlled monster Batman is like
that you know I mean it’s it’s
everywhere it’s it’s the Tor story you
always hear rule number fourteen compare
yourself to who you were yesterday rule
4 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 in 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 particularly it
becomes increasingly less useful better
to compare yourself to a previous
version of yourself and work for
improvement in that way
rule number 15 start small I know you
stated in the last lecture that the
importance for setting aims in life and
to kind of have goals to work towards
right so my question was where do you
how do you do that if you don’t know
where you want to go because that’s kind
of where I got stuck on you’re your
future off authoring program because
okay that’s that’s a good question
that’s a really good question so there’s
this notion in the Old Testament that
morality is following a sequence of
prohibitions
there’s a bunch of bad things you
shouldn’t do and then basically you’re
good enough and and and I think there’s
wisdom in that I think that’s kind of
where children start right you you I
mean I love children and all that but
they’re they’re they’re crazy little
creatures and they need to be you know
civilized and partly what you do is you
you lay prohibitions on them and mostly
what you’re trying to do is lay
prohibitions on them for the behaviors
that if they manifested would make their
life miserable
so this is why this thing that I’ve said
the people has become this crazy
internet meme but that’s to clean up
your room and which which is a lot
better and more useful than people think
it’s a lot harder to but the thing the
first thing you do I think and I learned
this in part from Solzhenitsyn when he
was trying to iron out his soul when he
was in the gulag because he was trying
to figure out how he got there how he
contributed to how he got there you know
not Stellan and Hitler even though they
were kind of a blade you know but he
wasn’t much he could do about that I
think what you have to do and this is
part of humility is you have to look
around you within your sphere of
influence like the direct sphere of
influence and fix the things that
announce themselves as in need of repair
and those are often small things you
know and they can be like your room put
it in order because the thing is it
isn’t exactly so important that your
room is in order although it is what’s
important is that you learn how to
distinguish between chaos and order and
to be able to act in a manner that
produces order and I think you can you
can do something as simple as just sit
on your bed and think okay there’s
probably like five things I could do
today so that tomorrow morning is
slightly better than this morning was at
least or at least I’m not falling behind
and those will usually be it’s like
having eat a toad in the morning right
it’s like it’s not gonna be something
you want to do there’ll be things you’re
trying to avoid there’s snakes
essentially but if you ask yourself like
you’re asking someone which i think is a
form of prayer if you ask yourself
instead of telling yourself you know
what is it that I could do to set things
more right today that I would actually
do it’s usually some small thing because
you’re not that disciplined you know
then you can go do it
and then you you put the world together
a little more
when you do that and that spreads out
but you also put your you also construct
yourself into something that’s better
able to call order forth from chaos and
that makes you just incrementally
stronger and then the next day you can
maybe take on a slightly larger task and
like you get the benefit of compound
interest if you do that it’s a
tremendously powerful technique and they
think if you do that at some point
instead of just having to fix things up
that are not good you’ll start to get a
glimmer of the positive things that you
could do you know the positive things
that you could do that would actually
constitute a vision and now that’s what
I would recommend
rule number 16 don’t make excuses when
people are beset with a catastrophe like
let’s say the death of their father that
they are prone to use that as an excuse
for not going about the business that
they should be going about because they
can say to themselves well I would
accept and accept there’s always good
reasons I mean believe me there’s always
good reasons for not doing what you
should that’s for sure the reasons pile
up day after day to not do what you
should especially because you’re you’re
aiming at things in the future you can
put them off indefinitely right because
of the demands of the day like there’s
no excuse whatsoever for not getting at
what it is that you should be doing it’s
absolutely reprehensible to justify
you’re in action with a catastrophe that
extracts mercy from other people right
there’s a tricky tricky game that’s
going well of course I can’t do that
look at the terrible thing that’s just
happened to me it’s see how okay I
understand you’re absolved of any
necessity to move forward because of
your current catastrophe it’s like well
actually you’re not and it’s rather rude
of you to use it as an excuse and it’s
certainly counterproductive rule number
17 change yourself when I was 25 or so I
probably weighed about 138 pounds I
smoked like a pack of cigarettes day I
drank tremendous amount of alcohol I was
from northern Alberta this rough little
town up and
northern Alberta called Fairview and you
know there were long winters there and
my friends were heavy drinkers and most
of them dropped out of school by the
time they were 15 or 16 went off to work
on the oil rigs and you know it was a
rough town and we drank a lot I started
when I was 14 and you know and so I was
I had a lot of bad habits let’s say and
things that were and I wasn’t in great
shape physically and I was also still
intellectually obsessed by as I am now
and so that would have been that would
have been in 85 but when I but I decided
around that about 85 84 or something
like that maybe a little earlier that I
was really going to try to get my act
together and so I started doing that I
you know I first of all I quit smoking
well that took a long time because I
eventually had to quit drinking to in
order to quit smoking and I started
working out starting playing sports
which I’d never done I had a fine town
when I was a kid and but I needed really
to get disciplined and I had to do it
because I was working on these hard
problems that you know that I’ve been
discussing with all of you and I’ve been
working on them really you know
obsessively since I was probably about
18 maybe even earlier than that got to
the point around 25 when I was in
graduate school trying to get my PhDs
doing all my research like I published
15 papers by the time I graduated with
my PhD which was but I think by a fairly
large measure the most papers that any
graduate student at that time had ever
published at McGill I think that’s right
might have been twice as many or maybe
twice as many maybe even three times as
many and at the same time I wrote maps
of meaning which was a terrible terrible
terribly difficult thing to do because I
was writing about three hours a day
doing that and I couldn’t do all that
and continue with my misbehavior you
know my sort of my what would you say my
my my hedonistic my hedonistic my
massive hedonistic consumption of
alcohol and all of that I just couldn’t
keep it up and also work seriously on
the issues that were at hand so you know
I had to stop that’s a sacrifice I had
to stop messing about and straight my
cell phone rule number 18
you’re actually tougher than you think
you never knew that and maybe you didn’t
want to take on the responsibility
because you know people play a role in
their own demise so to speak when you
had opportunity to go out and explore or
withdraw because you were afraid you
chose to withdraw because you were
afraid so it’s not only that you were
over protected often it’s that you were
willing to take advantage of the fact
that you were over protected and run
back there whenever you had the
opportunity you know so maybe you’re a
kid in the playground right and you’re
having some trouble with other kids and
you know in the back of your mind
I should deal this with deal with this
myself but you go and tell your mom and
get her to intervene and you know that
that’s not right you know that you’re
breaking the social contract but it’s
easier and so that’s what you do you run
off to an authority figure and hide
behind the Great Father right roughly
speaking well the problem with that is
you don’t learn how to do it yourself so
then you have to relearn it painfully
when you’re 40 so then you take people
out you say well what are you afraid of
rank it from 1 to 10 so 10 is what make
a list of 10 things you’re afraid of the
least the thing you’re least afraid of
will call number 10 so we’ll start with
that
okay well I’m afraid of elevators ok
well let’s let’s look at a picture of an
elevator let’s have you imagine being in
an elevator let’s go out to an elevator
and let you watch the terrible jaws of
death open because that’s how you’re
responding to it symbolically right and
you’re gonna do that at it at the the
closest proximity you can manage you
find out you go do that
it works you’re nervous as hell
especially an it from an anticipatory
perspective shaking you go out you stop
you watch it happen and you actually
calm down you do that 10 times it no
longer bothers you well what you’ve
learned that you didn’t die but more
importantly than that you’ve learned
that you could withstand the threat of
death that’s what you’ve learned and
then you move a little closer and then
you move a little closer and then you
move a little closer and finally you’re
back in what’s no longer the elevator
from a symbolic perspective it’s a tomb
right it’s it’s it’s a place of
enclosure and isolation and you learn
hmm
turns out I can withstand that and then
you’re met much more
together much more confident and that’s
often one of the things that often
happens in situations like that I’ve
seen this multiple times is that if you
run someone through an exposure training
process like that and toughen them up
they’ll often start standing up to
people around them in a way they never
did before
rule number 19 find your winning
strategy
if you concentrate solely on your career
you can get a long way in your career
and I would say that that’s a strategy
that a minority of men preferentially do
that that’s all they do they worked like
70 80 hours a week they go flat out on
their career they’re staking everything
on the small probability of exceptional
status in a narrow domain but it’s it’s
hard on them they don’t have a life it’s
very difficult for them to have a family
they don’t know how to take any leisure
activity like they get very
one-dimension now it may be that that
unit dimensionality is the price you
have to pay to be exceptional at one
thing right because if you’re going to
be something like a genius level
mathematician and you want to do that
for a scientist say it’s like you’re in
your lab you’re in your lab all the time
you’re working 70 hours a week or 80
hours a week you’re smart you’re
dedicated your unit dimensional and
that’s how you get to beat all the other
people who are doing that it’s the only
way but the problem is you don’t get
life now if you love being a scientist
and you have that kind of focus of mind
well first of all you’re a rare person
and second you’re gonna pay for it but
find more power to you but but it’s a
it’s a risky business to do that you
sacrifice a lot for it you know and I
would say most often if you’re speaking
about having a healthy life that isn’t
what you do you spread yourself out more
so you know you have a family you have
some things that you do outside of work
that are meaningful to you and useful
you you have a network of friends that
that those three things alone are four
things alone are plenty to keep you well
oriented and then if one of those things
collapses you know everything doesn’t go
now the price you pay for that is the
more you strive to optimize that balance
the less likely you are to be fantastic
please successful at any single one of
them but you might have a very you know
if you consider your life as a whole
that might be a winning strategy
rule number 20 make yourself into
something right a plumber once you know
it was the night it was the night before
we were putting drywall in our house we
were redoing a house and he had put in
all the plastic piping you know and I
was going to test the joints steel are
supposed to be glued together with this
pipe glue right and I said I told him I
had to test the joints and he said well
you don’t have to test my joints they
never leak and I thought yeah that’s
okay how about if I test them so I went
up on the third floor and filled the
pipes with water capping them in the
basement like you’re supposed to and
like half an hour later had two inches
of water in the basement there were
thirty leaking joints that was the night
before the drywallers were supposed to
show up so well so he wasn’t
particularly competent that’s the point
of that story but even more so he had
put a bunch of the plastic pipe outside
where the drywall would be so it would
have been sticking through the wall so I
spent a frenetic night you know sawing
through plastic pipe and reglue in
joints so that my well so that the dryer
owners could come in what’s the point if
you’re going to be a plumber man be a
good plumber because otherwise all you
do is go out there and cause trouble we
don’t need people to cause more trouble
we need people to solve problems you
know and so you can be a tradesman and
you can be you can make a lot of money
as a trades person it’s a bloody
reliable honorable forthright productive
way of making a living and there is a
hell of a lot of difference between a
working man who knows what he’s doing
and one who doesn’t both in terms of
skill and ethics right and you work with
someone who knows what they’re doing
it’s a bloody pleasure they tell you
what they’re gonna do they tell you how
much it will cost they go and do it it
works and you pay them perfect
everyone’s happy and that’s what happens
when you have genuine hierarchies of
competence and so you to listen to these
panderers of egalitarian gely
egalitarianism and equity and they fail
to recognize completely that there are
differences in rank between people it’s
not such a terrible thing man maybe you
wouldn’t be a great lawyer like it’s
certainly possible most people aren’t
but that doesn’t mean there isn’t
something you could be great at there’s
lots of hierarchies to attempt to climb
and if he
in one go try in another but the point
is you’re still trying to aim for the
top and what the hell are you gonna do
if you don’t try to aim for the top you
know flap about uselessly and whine
about your life it’s not helpful it’ll
just make you miserable
you’re not reliable to anyone you can’t
help out in a crisis it’s like so you
tell young people and this is another
message for conservatives like I don’t
care what you’re gonna do but go out
there and make something of yourself for
God’s sake be an honest person and work
and get to the top of whatever it is
that you want to get to the top of you
know and and and and that you stand up
for yourself like a respectable human
being and be a bit of a light on the
world instead of a blight you know and
you can tell young people that and they
haven’t been told that by anyone now and
so the young men are so hungry for that
that it’s it’s painful to watch
they’re so relieved when finally someone
finally comes up and says hey you know
you get your act together a bit
discipline yourself see if you can learn
to tell the truth concentrate on
something for a year or two you could be
a bloody world beater they think really
that’s possible wow that would be that
would be interesting that might make
life or life worth living it’s like yeah
it might so why don’t you go do it
that’s what the damn universities we’re
supposed to be teaching people they’ve
forgotten that I went to Harvard
a month ago a month and a half he used
to teach there and I talked to a bunch
of students you know and I told them
it’s not easy to get into Harvard you
know like you’re a valedictorian if
you’re at Harvard and not only are you a
valedictorian you’re way better than
most people at at least two other things
or you don’t get in and so that gets I
don’t know what the acceptance rate is
like 5% and believe me not everybody
applies so it’s a very selective school
and so why am I saying that it’s like
these are high quality kids so I told
them what I just told you it’s like here
you are at Harvard like get yourself
educated man read some books learn to
talk learn to think make yourself into
something get the hell out there and
make the world that put you here happy
that you were put there in that great
institution you know and they came up to
me afterwards and said god I wish
someone would have told us that when we
were in our first year
Jesus why didn’t someone tell the math
for God’s sake it’s supposed to be the
greatest university in the world is it
so difficult to figure that out
rule number 21 encourage others I’m
really sad to see that people are
disenchanted and nihilistic and
depressed and anxious and aimless and
and perverse and vengeful and and all of
those things it’s terrible and then to
see people question whether that’s
necessary and then to start to rise out
of it it’s like it’s so fun like last
night I was at after my talk it’s
overwhelming I don’t usually think about
these things but I was I was after my
talk last night and so all these people
line up and you know they have their 15
15 seconds with me and they’re kind of
tentative they’re excited and a
tentative when they come up to talk to
me and then they have you know 15
seconds of time to tell me something I’m
really listening to them and they’re
hesitant about whether or not to share
the good news about their life you know
and I think it’s often because when
people share good news about their life
people don’t necessarily respond
positively you know they don’t get
encouragement and people need so little
encouragement it’s just unbelievable and
so they tell me something good and I’m
like ah that’s so good you know somebody
says well I’m getting along way better
with my father I haven’t seen him for 10
years and now we get along great and
then the power of that you can’t
overstate the power of that for
individuals to get their life together
the individual is an unbelievably
powerful force and every single person
who gets their act together a little bit
has the capacity to spread that around
them it’s it’s a chain reaction and so
it’s a lovely thing to see
rule number 20 to take responsibility
one of the things that’s really
interesting about the Old Testament is
that and the Jews in the Old Testament
is that they don’t take the path of Cain
every time they’re walloped by God which
is like fairly frequently they say we
must have done something wrong and we
have to set our self right and that’s a
an unbelievably heroic attitude because
that’s the alternative to cursing fate
it’s like you take the risk
instability for failure unto yourself
and you think well if I was just maybe
if I just had my act together a little
bit more if I took advantage of every
opportunity that was put in front of me
if I wasn’t resentful and bitter then I
could have done something that would
have tilted the situation in a different
direction and like that’s almost
inevitably true
Dostoevsky I think said something like
every man is responsible for everything
that happens to him and everything that
happens to everyone else and that’s you
know that that’s that’s it’s a crazy
statement right it’s a crazy statement
and he was a pretty extreme person in
many many ways but there’s a level at
which that’s metaphysically true you
know because what happens is that it’s
you its failure to act often that’s the
most catastrophic you know I mean it’s
it’s it’s to not do the right thing when
the when the situation presents itself
and it’s very specific you know you’re
constantly in situations where you could
do the right thing if you were willing
to take a risk
that’s actually a relatively moderate
size and you know that you could take
the risk and you know that you should
take the risk and you don’t and that
happens to people all the time and then
what happens is the thing that they
didn’t oppose grows a little bit and
they shrink a little bit and that starts
a loop a rule number 23 know when to
pull back I noticed that there’s always
a group of my friends who always
criticize what I’m saying and not even
try to understand what I’m wearing I’m
coming from and I’ve always wondered how
to deal with that I mean I want to
listen to what they’re saying but they
are not understanding what I’m they’re
not trying to listen to what I’m saying
so what would you do in that situation
answer that very briefly okay there’s a
line in the New Testament that’s
relevant to that do not cast pearls
before swine and what that means is that
if people are not listening to you stop
talking to them and that’s really that
is the best piece of advice that I can
give you and what happens is is that if
you
stop talking to people who aren’t
listening to you and start watching them
instead they will tell you what they’re
up to but so if you have things to say
say them but you find people that will
listen talk to them the ones who aren’t
listening pull back because you’re
you’re devaluing what you have to say by
offering it to an audience that does
nothing but reject it and that’s a good
guideline to life in general
so pull back rule number 24 change
yourself psychologists have been not all
psychologists obviously but the
psychological profession is its neck
deep in this in this pathology has been
beating these self-esteem drum for 50
years oh no you’re okay you should feel
good about yourself like you’re fine the
way you are it’s like you think well
that’s a calming message for people it’s
like no it’s not it’s not at all and I
watch my audiences is like it’s full of
people in the audience who think I’m
suffering a lot more than I think is
tenable a whole bunch of it’s my fault
my life is not in the order it should be
I know I’m doing 50 things wrong it’s
like what the hell’s wrong with me
what’s wrong with the people around me
this is really serious and some you know
well-meaning person comes up and says oh
you’re okay just the way you are it’s
like no one wants that message it’s like
no I’m not okay the way I am I’m not
okay at all the way I am I know that and
so you know when I’m when I’m speaking
to to when I’m speaking now I say to
people oh you’re nowhere near what you
could be that’s that that’s the positive
message it’s like yeah you’re a mess but
you don’t have to stay that way as
you’re a mess you know it obviously
you’re suffering away like like so much
you can barely tolerate it it’s like
that’s okay you can do something about
it so yeah that’s the thing that that
turns the lights on it’s like you had do
something about it Oh
rule number 25 find your purpose if
you’re hungry and you eat well that’s
good but it’s over and then you’re on to
the next thing right it’s not exactly
sustaining it’s just necessary that’s
called consume Ettore reward by the way
this other reward system is incentive
reward and the incentive reward system
works on dopamine this neurochemical
dopamine which is also the neuro
chemical tracks that opiates and cocaine
and amphetamines the drugs that people
really like to abuse alcohol often for
some people activate and so you might
say if you don’t have enough
in your life then you’re more prone to
addiction and that’s definitely the case
even with rats if you take a rat you put
him in a cage by himself and he has
nothing to do and then you give him
access to cocaine he’ll get addicted to
the point where he won’t do anything but
take cocaine but if you throw the rat
back in with a bunch of other rats and
he gets to do rat things then it’s very
hard to get him addicted to cocaine and
so the purposeless rat is prone to
addiction well it’s the same with human
beings now here’s a corollary to that
which is really cool so the magnitude of
the reward you experience as you’re
moving towards a goal is proportionate
to the importance of the goal so that
means the more important the goal you
pick the more possibility there is for
the kind of reward let’s say that it’s
really a state of being that is
life-affirming and it is directly
life-affirming in that you know like if
you’re in a football game and you’re and
it’s an important football game and
maybe you break a finger and you know
normally that’s that’s a problem it
hurts and you’re gonna stop doing
whatever you’re doing but if you’re
right in the middle of the game then
you’ll be so amped up on this reward
system that its analgesic it stops the
pain it also suppresses anxiety so if
you have a purpose then its analgesic it
takes some of the pain out of life it’s
very positive in that it motivates and
energizes you and focuses you and makes
you able to remember and pay attention
and it quells fear and so those things
are all direct and so then you might
think well what’s the best possible goal
well and that’s that’s the purpose I
would say of religious training and
philosophical training it’s like just
what the hell are you doing in the world
rule number 26 tell the truth or at
least don’t lie tell the truth or at
least don’t lie yeah well it’s not that
easy to tell the truth because who knows
about the truth but you can learn not to
say things that you know to be false and
if you stop saying things that you know
to be false then your life will improve
a lot simplifies it and it puts you in
the linemen with reality and you should
be in alignment with reality because
there’s a lot more of it than there is
of you rule number 27 treat yourself
like you matter first of all you have to
yourself like you matter because if you
don’t then you don’t take care of
yourself and you become vengeful and and
and cruel and you you take you take it
out on people around you and you’re not
a positive force none of that’s good
so you suffer more and so does everyone
around you and there’s a malevolence
that enters into it none of that’s good
so that’s what happens if you don’t
treat yourself like you matter and then
what happens if you don’t treat other
people like they matter
well you lie to them you cheat them you
steal you you you enter into impulsive
relationships with them they can’t trust
you that doesn’t go anywhere they don’t
like you you you end up alone at best
and maybe like incarcerated at worst
like that doesn’t work and so you watch
the people around you who thrive
regardless of what they say they act out
the proposition that everyone matters
and then you have a functional society
and I think okay well if if if when you
act out the proposition that everyone
matters you have a functional society
maybe that’s evidence that that
proposition is true it’s like I think
it’s I think it’s true
rule number 28 don’t be arrogant if
you’re failing repeatedly then there’s
probably something wrong it’s possible
that there’s something wrong with the
way that you’re conceptualizing the
world because you have a choice right if
if you keep making sacrifices and they
don’t work there’s a binary choice and
one is well there’s something wrong with
the structure of reality and the other
is there’s something wrong with your
approach and so then you might say well
let’s take the first idea there’s
something wrong with the structure of
reality it’s like you’re really gonna
say that are you you’re really going to
come out and say I know enough to judge
the nature of being and and then the
alternative is also quite frightening
because then you know you it’s you
that’s making the mistakes and you might
be wrong at a really deep level and that
might mean that a lot of you has to burn
off and be transformed maybe even things
about yourself that you think are
admirable and that you like because your
position you know your your self
conceptualization is so warped and wrong
and that’s really daunting but you know
when people set themselves up as the
judge of being I mean I’ve written about
this a fair bit in my new book which is
twelve rules for life when people set
themselves up as the judge of being then
they take on what can only be described
as a kind of satanic arrogance because
they’ve actually taken to themselves the
moral right to criticize the structure
of existence itself it’s like you better
be careful when you do something like
that because you’re setting yourself up
as the judge of being rule number
twenty-nine listen to others there’s
another rule in my book which is rule
nine assume that the person that you’re
listening to knows something you don’t
well they do the person you’re listening
to knows some things you don’t you can
be sure of that now whether or not you
can get to them is a different matter
but if you do get to them it’s a real
deal for you that’s why you want to
listen to the other person’s arguments
it’s because you’re not everything you
could be you don’t know the pathway
forward with as much clarity as you
could and it’s possible this is one of
the wonderful things that I’ve had the
privilege of experiencing as a clinician
no because people it’s like I live
inside a Dostoyevsky novel as a
clinician people come in and they tell
me about their lives and I listen to
them and they tell me things that are
just absolutely beyond belief you know
and I learn from my clients constantly
there they’re telling me honestly about
their experience they tell me things
they wouldn’t tell anyone else because I
actually listen to them but part of the
reason I listen is because I’m desperate
to listen it’s like there’s a
possibility I’m gonna do something
stupid in the next five years that’s
gonna be like fatal and there’s some
small possibility that if we have a
decent discussion that you’ll tell me
something that will eliminate some of my
blindness so that I don’t have to fall
into that particular pit and if you have
a good sensitivity for the depth of the
pit then you know you’re pretty bloody
motivated to avoid it and so and that
and that and that dialogue is it’s it’s
dialogic it’s dial logos right it’s
shared logos it’s the way that we redeem
ourselves mutually moving forward rule
number 30 be precise in your speech I
like this one and I think I mean this is
very clearly what you do be precise in
your speech so in in Genesis one of the
things God has Adam do first so God
makes the world by speaking okay so
that’s the first thing to think about
you’re supposed to think
like in a sophisticated way about this
that the idea is that some integral
relationship between communication and
the structure of being it’s part of the
role that consciousness plays in the
world whatever that role is language
takes the chaos and makes it into things
and so God has Adam named all the
animals they’re not even really real
until they have names now those are more
implicit that’s another you know here’s
a here’s an example let’s say that
you’re having a rough patch in your
relationship and you don’t know why it’s
unnameable is it real well yeah it’s
manifesting itself in it like a
physiological discomfort then you talk
about it and you name it it’s like it
goes from this blurry thing that’s kind
of potential it goes snap and then it’s
this thing right and then that’s a
horrible thing it’s like a little
poisonous thing but it’s not a whole
foggy cloud of potential poison it’s
like this little sharp poison thing and
then you think okay it’s real it’s a
little monster but it’s not it’s little
at least and now probably we can do
something about it if we can admit to it
so it’s this precision that specifies
and like so this is a little bit of the
Voldemort effect right if you since
you’re a Harry Potter guy they wouldn’t
name right this problem we got to name
them first oh yeah you got to name them
first absolutely because the unnameable
is far more terrifying than the nameable
you see that in there was a great Blair
Witch Project terrifying move oh yeah
it’s unnamed there’s nothing terrible
happens in that movie it’s all there
unnameable it’s like what’s goin on
what’s goin on what’s goin on and no
matter how terrible the actuality is
it’s rarely as terrible as your
imagination because your imagination
like it’s an old thing it’s seen a lot
of terrible things in the history of
life like it can put monsters everywhere
and so it’s almost always better it
might be better without exception to
name the thing no matter how terrible it
is and if you can’t name it what that
means is that you’re you’re telling
yourself that you’re so terrified that
you can’t bring your attention to
bear on it and that makes you you’re the
loser instantly if it’s so terrifying
that you cannot face it it’s what rule
number 31 pursue what is meaningful
write in the book 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 a 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 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 meaningful absolutely
rule number 30 to fight for your beliefs
the first way in which you captured the
world’s attention was that University
and that’s what I want to talk about now
because the c16 law in Canada was being
proposed contextualized for us what it
is precisely that you were being that
you were opposed to in that well bill
c16 purported to do nothing but extend
human rights provisions to an excluded
group let’s say to the transgender and
non gender binary types and and that was
the federal legislation it also made it
a hate crime to to to discriminate or
harass essentially so now then the
question is well what exactly do you
mean by discriminator harass and why
exactly is that a hate crime under the
Criminal Code well there was an answer
to that the answer was well this bill
will be interpreted in light of the
policies generated by the Ontario Human
Rights Commission very large set of
policies now the Ontario Human Rights
Commission is a radically leftist
organization I think it’s the most
dangerous organization in Canada
although you could debate that and they
said are all sorts of policies about how
this these LED this legislation was
going to be interpreted and the federal
government linked to their website to
state that bill 16 c 16 would be
interpreted in light of those guidelines
so i went and read all the policies well
one of the policies was that if you
didn’t use the preferred pronouns of a
given group that you could be charged
essentially with a hate crime and i
thought no that group is that you can
talk about transgender people yeah and
so there’s all these pronouns that have
come up there’s 70 different sets of
pronouns approximately to to
hypothetically describe people who don’t
fit anywhere on the gender spectrum
which is also something that I don’t
really under
Stan I don’t understand that
conceptually like okay so now I’m comin
is compelled under Canadian law to use
the pronoun of another individuals
choice pipe on pain of law and I thought
well no that’s not acceptable it’s one
thing to put limits on what a person
can’t say like say with hate speech laws
which I also don’t agree with by the way
but that’s a different argument I think
it’s a narrower argument but to compel
me to use a certain content when I’m
formulating my thoughts or my actions
under threat of legislative action I
thought no what’s happened there is the
government has introduced compelled
speech legislation into the private
sphere it’s never happened in the
history of English common law and so I
said there’s no way I’m abiding by that
I don’t care what your damn rationale is
we’re compassionate it’s like no you’re
not no you’re not you’re playing this
radical collectivist left-wing game
you’re trying to gain linguistic you’re
trying to gain linguistic supremacy in
the in the area of public discourse
you’re doing that using compassion as a
guise and you’re pulling the wool over
people’s eyes and you’re not going to do
it with me
rule number 33 take on challenges we’re
built for struggle as human beings you
know you’re 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
10 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
rule number 34 don’t compare yourself
with others rule 4 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
in it you know what 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
rule number 35 develop resilience life
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
convinced 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 with confronting
difficulties rule number 36 get your act
together I said with Bill c16 that I
wouldn’t speak the language of the
radical leftist because I don’t think
that that language should define the
game but let’s say it does so here’s the
game the world is a battleground of
groups and the they’re battling for
power that’s it that’s the game and some
of them win and they oppress those who
don’t win so that’s how we’re gonna view
the world
okay now the left is say okay well
here’s the oppressed people the
oppressors the patriarchy type
patriarchal types they should be ashamed
of themselves and give up some power the
right-wingers the radical right wingers
look at that and they say oh I see so
the game is ethnic identity is it its
identity politics okay
we’re white males we’re not gonna lose
that’s the right wing version of
identity politics it’s like screw you if
we’re gonna divide into groups if we’re
gonna divide into tribes and I’m in my
tribe I’m not gonna get all guilty and
lose I’m gonna get all cruel and win and
that’s like then you think well there’s
people in the middle they’re kind of
looking back and forth which side of the
identity politics spectrum I am I going
to fall in do I want to go with do I
want to go what do I want to be driven
primarily by compassion and I’m am I
going to accept guilt for my historical
privilege so that’s one possibility
and then I’m the oppressor I’m the
member of the oppressor group or am I
going to say Oh to hell with that I’m
just gonna play to win well then I’m
gonna go to the right
it’s like well my sense is how about we
don’t play either of those games and the
reason we shouldn’t play them is well
the Soviets played the left-wing game
and like killed who knows how many tens
of millions of people you can’t even
count it accurately the estimates range
from twenty to a hundred million those
are pretty big error bars and that in
the Maoists maybe a hundred million
certainly 60 million so okay that didn’t
work out so well and then there’s the
Nazis like they played ethnic identity
politics and racial superiority it’s
like what do we want to play that game
see what I’ve been trying to do really
what I’ve been trying to do for the last
30 years is say look there’s heavy
temptations to play those sorts of games
but that’s not the only game in town
it’s a much better game to play
individual it’s like get your act
together stand up in the world make
something of yourself stay away from the
ideological over simple
vacations set your house in order that’s
rule 6 in the in this book so I have a
book rule in there says set your house
in perfect order before he criticized
the world and it’s a very dark chapter
about the motivations of the Columbine
High School killers and this other guy
named carl panzram who is a serial
rapist and arsonist and murderer and
these he wrote an autobiography and the
Columbine kids also wrote about why they
did what they did they’re resentful to
the core bitter bitter resentful
terrible and well I’m suggesting that
people stay away from that resentment
resentfulness and bitterness even though
life is hard and and there’s malevolence
in the world it’s like yeah you can you
can tell a story where everyone’s a
victim because we all die we all get
sick you know and and and things happen
to us that are bitter and terrible
betrayal deceit lies like people hurt us
on purpose you know so it’s not just the
tragedy of life it’s malevolence as well
it’s everyone’s a victim you can tell
that story the problem is if you tell
that story and you start to act it out
you make all of that worse that’s the
problem and it’s so this is why partly I
got attracted to Christian imagery at
least in part because there’s an idea in
Christianity that you should pick up
your goddamn cross and like walk off the
hill and that’s dramatically that’s
correct that’s the right answer it’s
like you’ve got a heavy load of
suffering to bear and a fair bit of it’s
going to be unjust it’s what are you
gonna do about it
accept it voluntarily and try to
transform as a consequence that’s the
right answer it’s the right answer
because the rest of it is tribalism and
we’re we’re too technologically powerful
to get all tribal again rule number 37
concentrate on who you could be 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
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 okay the
way you are is that you don’t have a
goal then and people need to have a goal
in order to to come to terms with their
life
rule number 38 leave your comfort zone
now this 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 so
you imagine that there’s you and there’s
the potential inside you whatever that
is you know and potential is an
interesting idea because it’s 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 too because we
know that if you take yourself and you
put yourself in a new environment new
jeans 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’ll 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 rule number 39 find your
why by 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 it’s
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
rule number forty pick the lesser risk
you’re doing a great job of modeling
courage in the face of fog 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
wise but I’m not so sure it’s courageous
rule number 41 set goals properly tell
your kid 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 at 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’s that’s a concept that was
generated by a guy named Vygotsky he was
a Russian developmental psychologist and
the smart one that’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 this 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 I’ve been a victim mmm yeah
it’s just in helpful you’re still gonna
be a victim right 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
yeah Lee number 42 find your why not
only 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 four
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 rule number 43 eat a
little poison every day the more radical
than 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 there was no
joy man like 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
harder 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
rule number 44 take responsibility so
one of the things I’ve been talking to
my audiences about is the relationship
between responsibility and meaning which
is there and what would you say it’s a
it’s a constant refrain in the book it’s
one of its underlying messages let’s say
or themes is a better way of thinking
about it 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 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 or my 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 an existential
weight that goes along with that
rule number 45 become disciplined we
kind of have this idea that while you’re
free as a child and then you let me see
if I can if I can put this properly 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 but what
comes out of that is a much grander
freedom and so in virtually every
freedom that you have in life that’s
true freedom is purchased at the price
of discipline
rule number forty-six be truthful your
best that 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
didn’t know how to 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 decline in consequence of being
repeat
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 tragedy 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 transcendent and that’s something you
know
rule number 47 provide value people came
to my website because they were
interested in well before the political
stuff blew up I had a million views on
YouTube which isn’t nothing
a million of anything is a lot but then
when the political scandal started to
break yeah then people came for them but
stayed for the content and so and that’s
really useful yeah well it’s all well
and it’s not that surprising well you
know because of what you do it’s like
people 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 doubt 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 that’s been great rule number 48
just start doing a circumambulation that
Jung talked about was
continual will return to this this
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 we’ll 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 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 incomplete 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 there’s a niche of Nietzsche
called that a 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 okay 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 over shoot 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 for
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 rule number 49 develop
communication skills I’m incredibly
nervous to talk in front of you because
you’ve got to be one of the most
formidable people that I’ve ever heard
up or ever listened to ever seen so my
question is again you’re one of the best
communicators that I’ve ever listened to
if I could be half as good at you or at
communicating as you are I would be set
how can I teach myself to do that
practice you know really like well
there’s a couple of things is helps to
read a lot it really helped 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 but 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
hich 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 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
but just that to some degree there isn’t
anything that you can possibly 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 then 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 I don’t know if
they 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 it 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
ability to communicate so practice and
rule number 50 the lasts only for a very
special bonus clip is fight for what you
stain for with our topic is the rising
tide of compelled speech in Canada my
that’s pure narcissism at work by the
way
you don’t to hijack to hijack an event
like this that other people put time and
effort into and to use they there are
their civility of the crowd and the
civility of the organizers as an excuse
to blatantly yell out your ill informed
opinions is no way to conduct a civil
dialogue it’s absolutely appalling the
people who do that should be embarrassed
do you see you know that’s that that and
mark my words
that’s the sounds of the barbarians
you know that’s all I’ll tell you again
too that you soon inchoate what would
you call it inchoate sensation is the
best formulation of their argument and
there’s not much difference between
knocking on the doors and knocking on
you so keep that in mind it’s not
amusing there’s nothing to it there’s
nothing for it the thing that’s also
quite appalling is that there’s no
evidence whatsoever that the people who
are conducting these protests know what
it is that they’re protesting against
you know I was in alright I was in the
midst of a discussion attempting to make
the case that it’s freedom of speech
that’s that is what people who have
nothing still have right so if you look
at the tyrannical structure of our
society let’s say the people at the top
have access to means of communication
everyone knows that it’s the people at
the bottom who have the right to say
what they think however badly they say
it that enables them to get a toehold
into the system into and to make their
suffering known that’s what freedom of
speech is for and so like what’s the
protest against that and I’ll tell you
you know that the radical neo-marxist
types they speak the language of power
and that’s what they’re speaking right
now and if you want to live in a world
where everyone speaks the language of
power then just let them do what they’re
doing and see what happens I wouldn’t
recommend it it’s not a pretty road and
you’re all in a position you’re on a
situation in your life now where you
have to make decisions about this sorts
of things like is this the sort of
now I’ve got a special bonus clip from
Jordan Peterson on how to take risks
that I think you’re going to really
enjoy but before that it’s time for the
three-point landing questions time to
move from just watching another video to
taking action in your life or your
business and if you’re feeling bold and
to the questions in the comments below
here we go
question number one what do you stay in
for number two what will you start doing
today and number three what poison will
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 them
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 your ear 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 hi 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 it 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 if you
had to think of one word that’s most
important to you that sums you Apple
that would be collect a little beacon if
you want more Jordan Peterson check out
the video we did on him and his 12 rules
for life it’s right there next to me I
think you’re gonna enjoy it continue to
believe and I’ll see you there people in
general now have very poor posture very
bad for the junction is like take a look at the people that are around you
wrong that you could stop doing if
you’re failing repeatedly it’s possible
that there’s something wrong with the
way that you’re conceptualizing the
world it’s like we’re built for struggle
as human beings need motivation Watts a
top ten with believe nation what’s that
belief nation it’s Evan I believe in you
and this channel is designed to be a
part of your daily success routine so
let’s get your motivation to attend and
get you believing in you grab a snack
and join today’s lessons from a man who
went from being introduced to the
writings of George Orwell at a young age
to becoming a Harvard professor and
through his thought leadership inspiring
millions of people around the world
he’s Jordan Peterson and here’s my take
on his top 50 rules for success also if
you want to know what Jordan Peterson
and others have to say about building
unstoppable confidence check out my 250
for confidence series where every day
for the next 254 days I will send you a
morning video for free to help you build
your confidence the link to join is in
the description below if you’re gonna
speak effectively you have to know way
okay let’s kick it off with rule number
one stop doing the wrong things stop
doing the things that you know are wrong
that you could stop doing right so it’s
it’s a fairly it’s a fairly limited
attempt first of all we’re not going to
say that you know what the good is or
what the truth is
in any ultimate sense but we will
presume that there are things that
you’re doing that for one reason another
you know are not in your best interests
there’s something about them that you
just know you should stop they’re kind
of self-evident to you other things
you’re gonna be doubtful about you’re
not gonna know which way is up and which
way is down but there are things that
you’re doing that you know you shouldn’t
do now some of those you won’t stop
doing for whatever reason you don’t have
the discipline or maybe there’s a
secondary payoff or you don’t believe
it’s necessary or it’s too much of a
sacrifice or you’re angry or resentful
or or afraid who knows so forget about
those for now but there’s another subset
that you could stop doing it might be
little thing well that’s fine stop doing
it and see what happens and what will
happen is your vision will clear a
little bit and then something else will
pop up in your field of apprehension
that you will also know you should stop
doing and that you could stop doing
because you’ve strengthened yourself a
bit by stopping doing the particular
stupid thing that you were doing before
that just puts you together a little bit
more and you could do that repeatedly
for for an indefinite period of time and
and you know that doesn’t necessarily
mean that you’re going to ever be able
to formulate a clear and final picture
of what constitutes the truth and the
good but it does mean that you’ll be
able to continually move away from
what’s untruth and what’s bad and you
know well that’s not a bad start rule
number two make a schedule make a damn
schedule and stick to it okay so what’s
the rule with the schedule it’s not a
bloody prison that’s the first thing
that people do wrong is well I don’t
like to have follow a schedule it’s like
well what kind of schedule are you
setting up well I should I have to do
this then I have to do this then I have
to do this you know and then I just go
play video games because who wants to do
all these things that I have to do it’s
like wrong
set the damn schedule up so that you
have the day you want that’s the trick
it’s like okay I’ve got tomorrow if I
was gonna set it up so it was the best
possible day I could have practically
speaking what would it look like well
then you schedule that and obviously
there’s a bit of responsibility that’s
gonna go along with that because if you
have any sense one of the things that
you’re gonna insist upon is that at the
end of the day you’re not in worse shape
than you were then then at the beginning
of the day right
that’s a stupid day if you have a bunch
of those in a row you just dig you know
you dig yourself a hole and then you
bury yourself and it’s like sorry that’s
just not a good strategy it’s a bad
strategy
so maybe 20% of your day has to be
responsibility and obligation or maybe
it’s more than that depending on how far
behind you are but even that you can you
can ask yourself okay well I’ve got
these responsibilities I have to
schedule the damn things in what’s the
right ratio of responsibility to reward
and you can ask yourself that just like
you’d negotiate with someone who is
working for you it’s like okay you gotta
work tomorrow okay so I want you to work
tomorrow and you might say okay well
what are you gonna do for me
that makes it likely that I’ll work for
you well you could ask yourself that you
know maybe you’d do an hour of
responsibility and then you play a video
game for 15 minutes I don’t know
whatever turns your crank man but you
know you have to negotiate with yourself
and not tyrannize yourself like you’re
negotiating with someone that you care
for that you would like to be productive
and have a good life and and that’s how
you make the schedule it’s like and then
you look at the day and you think well
if I had that day that’d be good great
you know and you you’re useless and
horrible so you’ll probably only hit it
with about 70% accuracy but that beats
the hell out of zero right and if you
hit it even with 50% accuracy another
rule is well aim for 51% the next week
or 50 and a half percent for God’s sake
or because you’re gonna hit that
position where things start to loop back
positively and spiral you upward rule
number three clarify your thoughts
sometimes you know oh I can’t sleep at
night because I’m thinking about
something and usually what I’ll do is go
write it down I have some writing to do
so I get up and I go
down what I’m thinking and that usually
does the trick but because I had been
playing with YouTube I thought well I’ll
try making YouTube video and telling
people what I’m thinking about and see
if that performs the same function as
writing and to me the function of
writing while it’s twofold one is
conceivably to communicate with people
although the fundamental purpose for me
is to clarify my thoughts so that I know
do you know because if you’re if
something is disturbing you what that
means is that it needs to be articulated
it what it’s the emergence of unexplored
territory something that disturbs you
that that’s the right way to think about
it
it’s unmapped territory that’s
manifesting itself it’s like a Vista of
threat and possibility and you need to
articulate a path through it and so
that’s what I was doing it’s like I was
thinking well this is bothering me and
this seems to be why and here’s what I
think is going on and and so I made the
videos and in some sense I I didn’t
think anything more of it Rula before
take the meaningful path you don’t have
to necessarily have done anything wrong
for things to get completely out of
control it’s a terrifying doctrine but
it’s not a hopeless doctrine because it
still says that there’s a way forward
there’s a pathway forward and the
pathway forward is to adopt a mode of
being that has some nobility so that you
can tolerate yourself and perhaps even
have some respect for yourself as
someone who’s capable of standing up in
the face of that terrible vulnerability
and suffering and that the pathway
forward as far as the existentialists
are concerned is by well certainly by
the avoidance of deceit particularly in
language but also by the adoption of
responsibility for the conditions of
existence and some attempt on your part
to actually rectify them and the thing
that’s so interesting about that is
though up to as far as I’m concerned and
some of this is from clinical experience
you know if you take people and I’ve
told you this and you expose them
voluntarily to things that they are
avoiding and are afraid of you know that
they know they need to overcome in order
to meet their goals their self defined
goals if you can teach be
to stand up in the face of the things
they’re afraid of they get stronger and
you don’t know what the upper limits to
that are because you might ask yourself
like if for ten years if you didn’t
avoid doing what you knew you needed to
do by the depth by your own definitions
right within the value structure that
you’ve created to the degree that you’ve
done that what would you be like well
you know there are remarkable people who
come into the world from time to time
and there are people who do find out
over decades long periods what they
could be like if they were who they were
if they said if they spoke their being
forward and they’d be get stronger and
stronger and stronger and we don’t know
the limits to that we do not know the
limits to that and so you could say well
in part perhaps the reason that you’re
suffering unbearably can be left at your
feet because you’re not everything you
could be and you know it and of course
that’s a terrible thing to admit and
it’s a terrible thing to consider but
there’s real promise in it right because
it means that perhaps there’s another
way that you could look at the world in
a number another way that you could act
in the world so what it would reflect
back to you would be much better than
what it reflects back to you now my
experience is with people that were
probably running at about 51% of our
capacity something mean you can think
about this yourselves I often ask
undergraduates how many hours a day you
waste or how many hours a week you waste
and the classic answer is something like
4 to 6 hours a day
you know inefficient studying watching
things on YouTube that not only do you
not want to watch that you don’t even
care about that make you feel horrible
about watching after you’re done that’s
probably four hours right there no what
do you think well that’s 2025 hours a
week it’s a hundred hours a month that’s
two and a half full work weeks it’s half
a year of work weeks per year and if
your time is worth twenty dollars an
hour which is a radical under estimate
it’s probably more like 50 if you think
about it in terms of deferred wages if
you’re wasting 20 hours a week
you’re wasting fifty thousand dollars a
year and you are doing that right now
and it’s because you’re young wasting
fifty thousand dollars a year is a way
bigger catastrophe than it would be for
me to waste it because I’m not gonna
last nearly as long and so if your life
isn’t everything
it could be you could ask yourself all
what would happen if you just stopped
wasting the opportunities that are in
front of you you be who knows how much
more efficient 10 times more efficient
20 times more efficient that’s the
Pareto distribution you have no idea how
efficient efficient people get it’s
completely off its off the charts well
and if we all got our act together
collectively and stop making things
worse because that’s another thing
people do all the time not only do they
not do what they should to make things
better they actively attempt to make
things worse because they’re spiteful or
resentful or arrogant or deceitful or or
homicidal or genocide allure all of
those things all bundled together in an
absolutely pathological package if
people start really really trying just
to make things worse we have no idea how
much better they would get just because
of that so there’s this weird dynamic
that’s part of the existential system of
ideas between human vulnerability social
judgment both of which are our major
causes of suffering and the failure of
individuals to adopt the responsibility
that they know they should adopt it
isn’t merely that your fate depends on
whether or not you get your act together
and to what degree you decide that
you’re going to live out your own
genuine being it isn’t only your fate
it’s the fate of everyone that you’re
networked with and so you know you think
well there’s nine billion seven billion
people in the world we’re going to peak
at about nine billion by the way and
then it’ll decline rapidly but seven
billion people in the world and who are
you you’re just one little dust mote
among that seven billion and so it
really doesn’t matter what you do or
don’t do but that’s simply not the case
it’s the wrong model because you’re at
the center of a network you’re a node in
a network of course that’s even more
true now that we have social media
you’ll you know you’ll know a thousand
people at least over the course of your
life and they’ll know a thousand people
each and that puts you one person away
from a million and two persons away from
a billion and so that’s how you’re
connected and the things you do there
like dropping a stone in a pond the
ripples move outward and they affect
things in ways
that you can’t fully comprehend and it
means that the things that you do and
that you don’t do are far more important
than you think and so if you act that
way of course the terror of realizing
that is that it actually starts to
matter what you do and you might say
well that’s better than living a
meaningless existence it’s better for it
to matter but I mean if you really ask
yourself would you be so sure if you had
the choice I can live with no
responsibility whatsoever the price I
pay is that nothing matters or I can
reverse it and everything matters but I
have to take the responsibility that’s
associated with that it’s not so obvious
to me that people would take the
meaningful path now when you say well
denialists suffered dreadfully because
there’s no meaning in their life and
they still suffer yeah but the
advantages they have no responsibility
so that’s the payoff and I actually
think that’s the motivation say well I
can’t help being nihilistic all my
belief systems have collapsed it’s like
yeah maybe maybe you’ve just allowed
them to collapse because it’s a hell of
a lot easier than acting them out and
the price you pay is some meaningless
suffering but you can always whine about
that and people will feel sorry for you
and you have the option of taking the
pathway of the martyr so that’s a pretty
good deal all things considered
especially when the or when the
alternative is to bear your burden
properly and to live forthrightly in the
world well what Solzhenitsyn figured out
and so many people in the 20th century
it’s not just him even though he’s the
best example is that if you live a
pathological life you pathologize your
society and if enough people do that
then it’s hell really really and you can
read the Gulag Archipelago if you have
the four tit fortitude to do that and
you’ll see exactly what hell is like and
then you can decide if that’s a place
you’d like to visit or even more
importantly if it’s a light if it’s a
place you’d like to visit and take all
your family and friends because that’s
what happened in the 20th century rule
number five specify your goals the next
best predictor of lifetime success is
conscientiousness well so and although
of the two aspects of conscientiousness
say orderliness and industriousness
the better predictor is industriousness
so the question is well what can you do
about your in dose
business and the answer to that is well
that’s kind of rough too because there’s
a strong genetic component but you can
work on micro habits with regards to
your conscientiousness and I think the
best micro habits this is partly to do
with this future authoring program
processes I think the best thing you can
do with regards to your
conscientiousness is to set up some aims
for yourself goals that you actually
value and the future authoring program
helps people do that and basically it
does a situational analysis of it helps
you do a situational analysis of your
life more than a psychological analysis
I would say and so the questions are
something like well alright you’re gonna
have to put some effort into your life
and you need to be motivated to do that
and so what are the potential sources of
motivation well you could think about
them in in the Big Five manner you know
if you’re extroverted you want friends
if you’re agreeable you want an intimate
relationship if you’re a disagreeable
you want to win competitions if you’re
open you want to engage in creative
activity if you’re high in neuroticism
you want security okay so those are all
sources of potential motivation that you
could draw on that you could tailor to
your own you know your own personality
but then there are dimensions that you
want to consider your life across and so
we ask people about well you know if you
could have your life the way you wanted
it in three to five years if you were
taking care of yourself properly you
know what would you want from your
friendships what would you want from
your intimate relationship how would you
like to structure your family what do
you want for your career well how are
you going to use your time outside of
your job and how are you gonna regulate
your mental physical mental and physical
health and maybe also your drug and
alcohol use because that’s that’s a good
place to auger down you know because
alcoholism for example wipes out you
know five to ten percent of people so
you want to keep that under control and
then and then so maybe you know you you
you develop a vision of what your life
what you would like your life to be and
that associates the so the goal once the
goal is established and then you break
down the goal into micro processes that
you can implement the micro process has
become rewarding in proportion in
relation to their causal association
with the goal and that tangles in your
your incentive reward system you know we
talked about the dopaminergic
consent of reward system and that’s the
thing that keeps you moving forward and
the way it works is that it works better
if it produces positive emotion win it
can see you moving towards a valued goal
okay well what’s the implication of that
better have a valued goal because
otherwise you can’t get any positive
motivation working out and so the more
valuable the goal in principle the more
the micro process is associated with
that goal start to take on a positive
charge and so what that means is well
you get up in the morning and you’re
excited about the day you’re ready to go
and so as far as I can tell what you do
is you specify your long term ideal
maybe you also specify a place you want
to stay the hell away from so that
you’re terrified to fail as well as
excited about succeeding because that’s
also useful you specify your goal you do
that you do that in some sense as a
unique individual you want to you want
to specify goals that make you say oh if
that could happen as a consequence of my
efforts it would clearly be worthwhile
because the question always is why do
something because doing nothing is easy
you just sit there and you don’t do
anything that’s real easy the question
is why would you ever do anything and
the answer that has to be because you’ve
determined by some means that it’s
worthwhile and then the next question
might be well where should you look for
worthwhile things and one would be well
you could consult your own temperament
and the other would be well you kind of
look at how look at what it is that
people accrue that’s valuable across the
lifespan look look what so you do a
structural analysis of the subcomponents
of human existence and already did that
you need a family you need friends like
you don’t need to have all these things
but you better have most of them family
friends career educational goals plans
for you know time outside of work
attention to your mental and physical
health etc you know those are that’s
what life is about and if you don’t have
any of those things well then all you’ve
got left is misery and suffering so
that’s that’s a bad that’s a bad deal
for you so so once you but once you set
up that that goal structure let’s say
and that’s really in many in many ways
that’s what you should be doing at
universities is that’s exactly what you
should be doing is trying to figure out
who it is that you’re trying to be right
and you aim at that and then use
everything you learned as a means of
building that person that you want to be
and and I really mean want to be I don’t
mean should be even those things those
things are going to overlap and it’s
important to distinguish between those
because that’s partly and this is back
down to the micro routine analysis so as
I saying well you’re gonna try to make
yourself more industrious okay number
one specify your damn goals because how
are you gonna hit something if you don’t
know what it is that isn’t going to
happen and often people won’t specify
their goals too because they don’t like
to specify conditions for failure so if
you keep yourself all vague and foggy
which is real easy because that’s just a
matter of not doing as well then you
don’t know when you fail and people
might say well I really don’t want to
know when I fail because that’s painful
it’s so I’ll keep myself blind about
when I fail that’s fine except you’ll
fail all the time then you just won’t
know it until you’ve failed so badly
that you’re done and that can easily
happen by the time you’re 40 so so I
would recommend that you don’t let that
happen
so that’s willful blindness right you
could have known but you chose not to
okay so once you get your goal structure
set up you think okay if I could have
this life it looks like that might be
worth living despite the fact that it’s
going to be you know anxiety provoking
and threatening and there’s gonna be
some suffering and loss involved in all
of that obviously the goal is to have a
vision for your life such that all
things considered that justifies your
effort rule number six stop saying
things that make you weak I started to
pay very careful attention to what I was
saying I don’t know if that happened
voluntarily or involuntarily but I could
feel a sort of split developing in my
psyche and the split and I’ve actually
had students tell me the same thing that
has happened to them after they’ve
listened to some of the material that
that I’ve been describing to all of you
but split into two let’s say and one
part was the let’s say the old me that
was talking a lot and that liked to
argue and that liked ideas and there was
another part that was watching that part
like just with its eyes open and
neutrally judge
and the part that was neutrally judging
was watching the part that was talking
and going that isn’t your idea you don’t
really believe that you don’t really
know what you’re talking about
that isn’t true and I thought hmm that’s
really interesting so now I’ve and that
was happening to like 95% of what I was
saying and so then I didn’t really know
what to do I thought okay this is
strange so maybe I’ve fragmented and
that’s just not a good thing at all I
mean it wasn’t like I was hearing voices
or anything like that I mean it wasn’t
like that it was it was well people have
multiple parts so then I had this weird
conundrum it’s like well which of those
two things are me is it the part that’s
listening and saying no that’s rubbish
that’s a lie that’s you’re doing that to
impress people you’re just trying to win
the argument you know was that me or was
the part that was going about my normal
verbal business me and I didn’t know but
I decided I would go with the critic and
then what I’d tried to do what I learned
to do I think was to stop saying things
that made me weak and now that I mean
I’m still trying to do that because I’m
always feeling when I talk whether or
not the words that I’m saying are either
making me a line or making me come apart
and I think the alignment I really do
think the alignment is I think alignment
is the right way of conceptualizing it
because I think if you say things that
are as true as you can say them let’s
say then they come up they come out of
the depths inside of you
because we don’t know where thoughts
come from we don’t know how far down
into your sub structure the thoughts
emerge we don’t know what processes of
physiological alignment are necessary
for you to speak from the core of your
being we don’t understand any of that we
don’t even conceptualize that but I
believe that you can feel that and I
learned some of that from reading Carl
Rogers by the way who’s a great
clinician because he talked about mental
health in part as the coherence between
the the the spiritual or the or the
abstract and the physical that the two
things were aligned and and there’s a
lot of idea of alignment in in
psychoanalytic and clinical thinking but
anyways I decided that I would start
practicing not saying things that would
make me weak and what happened was that
I had to stop saying almost everything
that I was saying I would say 95% of it
as a hell of a shark to wake up and I
mean this was over a few months but it’s
a hell of a shark to wake up and realize
that you’re mostly dead wood it’s a
shark
you know and you might think well do you
really want all of that to burn off it’s
like well there’s nothing left but a
little hospital it’s like well if that
5% is solid then maybe that’s exactly
what you want to have happen rule number
seven adopt the mode of authentic being
adopt the mode of authentic being and
that is something like refusing to
participate in the lie in deception in
the lie to orient your speech as much as
you can towards the truth and to take
responsibility for your own life and
perhaps also for the lives of other
people and there’s something about that
that’s meaningful and responsible and
Noble but also serves to mitigate the
very suffering that produces say the
nihilism or the flee into the arms of
fleet or or the or the escape into the
arms of totalitarians to begin with you
need something to shelter you against
your own vulnerability rule number eight
learn from your errors you can think
about the world this way you can think
about it as your orderly little plan
that’s a place and you can think about
it as the place that things that disrupt
your plan comes from that’s another
place this is a bigger place than this
because there’s an endless number of
things that can disrupt your plan and
only a tiny number of them that can you
know that will help you work it out so
part of the question then too is like
are you the friend of your plan or are
you the friend of the thing that
disrupts your plan and I would say you
should work to become the friend of the
thing that disrupts your plan because
there’s a lot of that and then if you
become the friend of the thing that
disrupts your plan then you start to
develop strength in proportion to the to
the disruptive force and that’s really
what you want you want to be able to
implement your plan obviously but you
want to be
to take on the consequences of error and
learn from it and then then you win
constantly because even if something
goes sideways you think there’s
something to be derived from this that’s
wisdom fundamentally rule number nine
have a conversation with yourself plan a
life you’d like to have and and you do
that partly by referring to social norms
that’s more or less rescuing your father
from the belly of the whale but the way
other way you do that is by having a
little conversation with yourself about
as if you don’t really know who you are
because you know what you’re like you
won’t do what you’re told
you won’t do what you tell yourself to
do you must have noticed that it’s like
you’re a bad employee and a worse boss
and both of those work you know for you
you don’t know what you want to do and
then when you tell yourself what to do
you don’t do it anyway so you should
fire yourself and find someone else to
be but but you know what my point is is
that you have to understand that you’re
not your own servant so to speak you’re
someone that you have to negotiate with
and that’s and you’re someone that you
want to present the opportunity of
having a good life to and that’s hard
for people because they don’t like
themselves very much so you know they’re
always like cracking the whip and then
procrastinating and cracking the whip
and then procrastinating and it’s like
god it’s so boring and such a pathetic
way of spending your time rule number
ten aim high if you configure your life
so that what you are genuinely doing is
aiming at the highest possible good then
the things that you need to to survive
and to thrive on a day to day basis will
deliver themselves to you that’s a
hypothesis and it’s not some simple
hypothesis right because it what it
basically says is if you dared to do the
most difficult thing that you can
conceptualize your life will work out
better than it will if you do anything
else well how are you gonna find out if
that’s true well it’s a Kierkegaard
ian’s leap of faith there’s no way
you’re gonna find out whether or not
that’s true unless you do it so no one
no one can tell you either because just
because it works for someone else I mean
that’s interesting and all that but it’s
no proof that it’ll
for you you have to be all-in in this
game there is no more effective way of
operating in the world than to
conceptualize the highest good that you
can and then strive to attain it there’s
no more practical pathway to the kind of
success that you could have if you
actually knew what success was the world
shifts itself around your aim is you’re
you’re a creature that has a name you
have to have a name in order to do
something you’re an aiming creature you
look at a point and you move towards it
it’s built right into you and so you
have a name well let’s say your aim is
the highest possible aim well then so
that sets up the world around you it
organizes all of your perceptions it
organizes what you see and you don’t see
it organizes your emotions and your
motivations so you organize yourself
around that aim and then what happens is
the day manifests itself as a set of
challenges and problems and if you solve
them properly then you stay on the
pathway towards that aim and you can
concentrate on the on the 8 on the day
and so that way you get to have your
cake and eat it too
because you can you can point into the
distance the far distance and you can
live in the day and it seems to me that
that’s that makes every moment of the
day supercharged with meaning that
that’s how because if everything that
you’re doing every day is related to the
highest possible aim that you can
conceptualize well that’s the very
definition of the meaning that would
sustain you in your life rule number 11
set up criteria for success but one of
the main reasons that people do get what
they want is because they don’t actually
figure out what it is and the
probability that you’re going to get
what would be good for you let’s say
which would even be better than what you
want right because you know you might be
what wrong about what you want easily
but maybe you could get what would
really be good for you well why don’t
you well because you don’t try you don’t
think okay here’s what I would like if I
could have it and and I don’t mean I
don’t mean in a way that you manipulate
the world to force it to deliver you
goods for status or something like that
that isn’t what I mean I’m
something like imagine that you were
taking care of yourself like you were
someone you actually cared for and then
you thought okay I’m caring for this
person I would like things to go as well
for them as possible
what would their life have to be like in
order for that to be the case what
people don’t do that they don’t sit down
and think alright you know let’s let’s
figure it out you’ve got a life it’s
hard obviously it’s like three years
from now you can have what you need
you’ve got to be careful about it you
can’t have everything you can have what
would be good for you but you have to
figure out what it is and then you have
to aim at it well my experience with
people as being is if they figure out
what it is that would be good for them
and then they aim at it then they get it
and it’s strange because they don’t
necessarily an idea about what would be
good for you and then you take ten steps
towards that and you find out that your
formulation was a bit off and so you
have to reformulate your goal you know
you’re kind of going like this as you
move towards the goal but a huge part of
the reason that people fail is because
they don’t ever set up the criteria for
success and so since success is a very
narrow line and very unlikely the
probability that you’re going to stumble
on it randomly is zero and so there’s a
proposition here in the proposition is
if you actually want something you can
have it now the question then would be
well what do you mean by actually want
and the answer is that you reorient your
life in every possible way to make the
probability that that will occur as
certain as possible and that’s a
sacrificial idea right it’s like you
don’t get everything obviously you
obviously but maybe you can have what
you need and maybe all you have to do to
get it is ask but asking isn’t a whim or
today’s wish it’s like you have to be
deadly serious about it you have to
think okay like I’m taking stock of
myself and if I was going to live
properly in the world and I was going to
set myself up such that being would just
defy itself in my estimation and I don’t
mean as a harsh judge exactly what is it
that I would aim at sit on your bed one
day and ask yourself what’s what
remarkably stupid things am i doing on a
regular basis to absolutely screw up my
life and if you actually ask that
question but you have to want to know
the answer right because that’s actually
what asking the question means it
doesn’t mean just mouthing the words it
means you have to decide that you want
to know you’ll figure that’s out so fast
it’ll make your hair curl rule number 12
learn how to think critically the best
thing you can do is teach people to
write because there’s no difference
between that and thinking and one of the
things that just blows me away about
universities is that no one ever tells
students why they should write something
it’s like well you have to do this
assignment well why are you writing well
you need the great it’s like no you need
to learn to think because thinking makes
you act effectively in the world
thinking makes you win the battles you
undertake and those could be battles for
good things if you can think and speak
and write you are absolutely deadly
nothing can get in your way so that’s
why you learn to write it’s like what I
can’t believe that people aren’t just
told that it’s it’s it’s like it’s the
most powerful weapon you can possibly
provide someone with and I mean I know
lots of people who’ve been staggeringly
successful and watched them throughout
my life I mean those people you don’t
want to have an argument with them
they’ll just slash you into pieces and
then not in a malevolent way it’s like
if you’re gonna make your point and
they’re gonna make their point you
better have your points organized
because otherwise you’re gonna look like
and be an absolute idiot you are not
gonna get anywhere and if you can
formulate your arguments coherently and
make a presentation if you can speak to
people if you can lay out a proposal god
people give you money they give you
opportunities you have influence rule
number 13
don’t be harmless if you’re harmless
you’re not virtuous you’re just harmless
you’re like a rabbit rabbit isn’t
virtuous
it’s just just can’t do anything except
get eaten it’s not virtuous if you’re a
monster and you don’t act monstrously
then you’re virtuous but you also have
to be a monster while you see this all
the time Harry Potter’s like that too
it’s like he’s he’s flawed he’s hurt
he’s got evil in him he can talk to
snakes man he breaks rules all the time
all the time he’s not at OPD –nt at all
but you know he has a good reason for
breaking the rules and if he couldn’t
break the rules him in his little clique
of rule breaking you know troublemakers
if they didn’t break the rules
they wouldn’t attain the highest goal so
it’s very peculiar but it’s it’s very
there it’s a very very very very common
mythological notion you know the hero
has to be the hero has to be a monster
but a controlled monster Batman is like
that you know I mean it’s it’s
everywhere it’s it’s the Tor story you
always hear rule number fourteen compare
yourself to who you were yesterday rule
4 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 in 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 particularly it
becomes increasingly less useful better
to compare yourself to a previous
version of yourself and work for
improvement in that way
rule number 15 start small I know you
stated in the last lecture that the
importance for setting aims in life and
to kind of have goals to work towards
right so my question was where do you
how do you do that if you don’t know
where you want to go because that’s kind
of where I got stuck on you’re your
future off authoring program because
okay that’s that’s a good question
that’s a really good question so there’s
this notion in the Old Testament that
morality is following a sequence of
prohibitions
there’s a bunch of bad things you
shouldn’t do and then basically you’re
good enough and and and I think there’s
wisdom in that I think that’s kind of
where children start right you you I
mean I love children and all that but
they’re they’re they’re crazy little
creatures and they need to be you know
civilized and partly what you do is you
you lay prohibitions on them and mostly
what you’re trying to do is lay
prohibitions on them for the behaviors
that if they manifested would make their
life miserable
so this is why this thing that I’ve said
the people has become this crazy
internet meme but that’s to clean up
your room and which which is a lot
better and more useful than people think
it’s a lot harder to but the thing the
first thing you do I think and I learned
this in part from Solzhenitsyn when he
was trying to iron out his soul when he
was in the gulag because he was trying
to figure out how he got there how he
contributed to how he got there you know
not Stellan and Hitler even though they
were kind of a blade you know but he
wasn’t much he could do about that I
think what you have to do and this is
part of humility is you have to look
around you within your sphere of
influence like the direct sphere of
influence and fix the things that
announce themselves as in need of repair
and those are often small things you
know and they can be like your room put
it in order because the thing is it
isn’t exactly so important that your
room is in order although it is what’s
important is that you learn how to
distinguish between chaos and order and
to be able to act in a manner that
produces order and I think you can you
can do something as simple as just sit
on your bed and think okay there’s
probably like five things I could do
today so that tomorrow morning is
slightly better than this morning was at
least or at least I’m not falling behind
and those will usually be it’s like
having eat a toad in the morning right
it’s like it’s not gonna be something
you want to do there’ll be things you’re
trying to avoid there’s snakes
essentially but if you ask yourself like
you’re asking someone which i think is a
form of prayer if you ask yourself
instead of telling yourself you know
what is it that I could do to set things
more right today that I would actually
do it’s usually some small thing because
you’re not that disciplined you know
then you can go do it
and then you you put the world together
a little more
when you do that and that spreads out
but you also put your you also construct
yourself into something that’s better
able to call order forth from chaos and
that makes you just incrementally
stronger and then the next day you can
maybe take on a slightly larger task and
like you get the benefit of compound
interest if you do that it’s a
tremendously powerful technique and they
think if you do that at some point
instead of just having to fix things up
that are not good you’ll start to get a
glimmer of the positive things that you
could do you know the positive things
that you could do that would actually
constitute a vision and now that’s what
I would recommend
rule number 16 don’t make excuses when
people are beset with a catastrophe like
let’s say the death of their father that
they are prone to use that as an excuse
for not going about the business that
they should be going about because they
can say to themselves well I would
accept and accept there’s always good
reasons I mean believe me there’s always
good reasons for not doing what you
should that’s for sure the reasons pile
up day after day to not do what you
should especially because you’re you’re
aiming at things in the future you can
put them off indefinitely right because
of the demands of the day like there’s
no excuse whatsoever for not getting at
what it is that you should be doing it’s
absolutely reprehensible to justify
you’re in action with a catastrophe that
extracts mercy from other people right
there’s a tricky tricky game that’s
going well of course I can’t do that
look at the terrible thing that’s just
happened to me it’s see how okay I
understand you’re absolved of any
necessity to move forward because of
your current catastrophe it’s like well
actually you’re not and it’s rather rude
of you to use it as an excuse and it’s
certainly counterproductive rule number
17 change yourself when I was 25 or so I
probably weighed about 138 pounds I
smoked like a pack of cigarettes day I
drank tremendous amount of alcohol I was
from northern Alberta this rough little
town up and
northern Alberta called Fairview and you
know there were long winters there and
my friends were heavy drinkers and most
of them dropped out of school by the
time they were 15 or 16 went off to work
on the oil rigs and you know it was a
rough town and we drank a lot I started
when I was 14 and you know and so I was
I had a lot of bad habits let’s say and
things that were and I wasn’t in great
shape physically and I was also still
intellectually obsessed by as I am now
and so that would have been that would
have been in 85 but when I but I decided
around that about 85 84 or something
like that maybe a little earlier that I
was really going to try to get my act
together and so I started doing that I
you know I first of all I quit smoking
well that took a long time because I
eventually had to quit drinking to in
order to quit smoking and I started
working out starting playing sports
which I’d never done I had a fine town
when I was a kid and but I needed really
to get disciplined and I had to do it
because I was working on these hard
problems that you know that I’ve been
discussing with all of you and I’ve been
working on them really you know
obsessively since I was probably about
18 maybe even earlier than that got to
the point around 25 when I was in
graduate school trying to get my PhDs
doing all my research like I published
15 papers by the time I graduated with
my PhD which was but I think by a fairly
large measure the most papers that any
graduate student at that time had ever
published at McGill I think that’s right
might have been twice as many or maybe
twice as many maybe even three times as
many and at the same time I wrote maps
of meaning which was a terrible terrible
terribly difficult thing to do because I
was writing about three hours a day
doing that and I couldn’t do all that
and continue with my misbehavior you
know my sort of my what would you say my
my my hedonistic my hedonistic my
massive hedonistic consumption of
alcohol and all of that I just couldn’t
keep it up and also work seriously on
the issues that were at hand so you know
I had to stop that’s a sacrifice I had
to stop messing about and straight my
cell phone rule number 18
you’re actually tougher than you think
you never knew that and maybe you didn’t
want to take on the responsibility
because you know people play a role in
their own demise so to speak when you
had opportunity to go out and explore or
withdraw because you were afraid you
chose to withdraw because you were
afraid so it’s not only that you were
over protected often it’s that you were
willing to take advantage of the fact
that you were over protected and run
back there whenever you had the
opportunity you know so maybe you’re a
kid in the playground right and you’re
having some trouble with other kids and
you know in the back of your mind
I should deal this with deal with this
myself but you go and tell your mom and
get her to intervene and you know that
that’s not right you know that you’re
breaking the social contract but it’s
easier and so that’s what you do you run
off to an authority figure and hide
behind the Great Father right roughly
speaking well the problem with that is
you don’t learn how to do it yourself so
then you have to relearn it painfully
when you’re 40 so then you take people
out you say well what are you afraid of
rank it from 1 to 10 so 10 is what make
a list of 10 things you’re afraid of the
least the thing you’re least afraid of
will call number 10 so we’ll start with
that
okay well I’m afraid of elevators ok
well let’s let’s look at a picture of an
elevator let’s have you imagine being in
an elevator let’s go out to an elevator
and let you watch the terrible jaws of
death open because that’s how you’re
responding to it symbolically right and
you’re gonna do that at it at the the
closest proximity you can manage you
find out you go do that
it works you’re nervous as hell
especially an it from an anticipatory
perspective shaking you go out you stop
you watch it happen and you actually
calm down you do that 10 times it no
longer bothers you well what you’ve
learned that you didn’t die but more
importantly than that you’ve learned
that you could withstand the threat of
death that’s what you’ve learned and
then you move a little closer and then
you move a little closer and then you
move a little closer and finally you’re
back in what’s no longer the elevator
from a symbolic perspective it’s a tomb
right it’s it’s it’s a place of
enclosure and isolation and you learn
hmm
turns out I can withstand that and then
you’re met much more
together much more confident and that’s
often one of the things that often
happens in situations like that I’ve
seen this multiple times is that if you
run someone through an exposure training
process like that and toughen them up
they’ll often start standing up to
people around them in a way they never
did before
rule number 19 find your winning
strategy
if you concentrate solely on your career
you can get a long way in your career
and I would say that that’s a strategy
that a minority of men preferentially do
that that’s all they do they worked like
70 80 hours a week they go flat out on
their career they’re staking everything
on the small probability of exceptional
status in a narrow domain but it’s it’s
hard on them they don’t have a life it’s
very difficult for them to have a family
they don’t know how to take any leisure
activity like they get very
one-dimension now it may be that that
unit dimensionality is the price you
have to pay to be exceptional at one
thing right because if you’re going to
be something like a genius level
mathematician and you want to do that
for a scientist say it’s like you’re in
your lab you’re in your lab all the time
you’re working 70 hours a week or 80
hours a week you’re smart you’re
dedicated your unit dimensional and
that’s how you get to beat all the other
people who are doing that it’s the only
way but the problem is you don’t get
life now if you love being a scientist
and you have that kind of focus of mind
well first of all you’re a rare person
and second you’re gonna pay for it but
find more power to you but but it’s a
it’s a risky business to do that you
sacrifice a lot for it you know and I
would say most often if you’re speaking
about having a healthy life that isn’t
what you do you spread yourself out more
so you know you have a family you have
some things that you do outside of work
that are meaningful to you and useful
you you have a network of friends that
that those three things alone are four
things alone are plenty to keep you well
oriented and then if one of those things
collapses you know everything doesn’t go
now the price you pay for that is the
more you strive to optimize that balance
the less likely you are to be fantastic
please successful at any single one of
them but you might have a very you know
if you consider your life as a whole
that might be a winning strategy
rule number 20 make yourself into
something right a plumber once you know
it was the night it was the night before
we were putting drywall in our house we
were redoing a house and he had put in
all the plastic piping you know and I
was going to test the joints steel are
supposed to be glued together with this
pipe glue right and I said I told him I
had to test the joints and he said well
you don’t have to test my joints they
never leak and I thought yeah that’s
okay how about if I test them so I went
up on the third floor and filled the
pipes with water capping them in the
basement like you’re supposed to and
like half an hour later had two inches
of water in the basement there were
thirty leaking joints that was the night
before the drywallers were supposed to
show up so well so he wasn’t
particularly competent that’s the point
of that story but even more so he had
put a bunch of the plastic pipe outside
where the drywall would be so it would
have been sticking through the wall so I
spent a frenetic night you know sawing
through plastic pipe and reglue in
joints so that my well so that the dryer
owners could come in what’s the point if
you’re going to be a plumber man be a
good plumber because otherwise all you
do is go out there and cause trouble we
don’t need people to cause more trouble
we need people to solve problems you
know and so you can be a tradesman and
you can be you can make a lot of money
as a trades person it’s a bloody
reliable honorable forthright productive
way of making a living and there is a
hell of a lot of difference between a
working man who knows what he’s doing
and one who doesn’t both in terms of
skill and ethics right and you work with
someone who knows what they’re doing
it’s a bloody pleasure they tell you
what they’re gonna do they tell you how
much it will cost they go and do it it
works and you pay them perfect
everyone’s happy and that’s what happens
when you have genuine hierarchies of
competence and so you to listen to these
panderers of egalitarian gely
egalitarianism and equity and they fail
to recognize completely that there are
differences in rank between people it’s
not such a terrible thing man maybe you
wouldn’t be a great lawyer like it’s
certainly possible most people aren’t
but that doesn’t mean there isn’t
something you could be great at there’s
lots of hierarchies to attempt to climb
and if he
in one go try in another but the point
is you’re still trying to aim for the
top and what the hell are you gonna do
if you don’t try to aim for the top you
know flap about uselessly and whine
about your life it’s not helpful it’ll
just make you miserable
you’re not reliable to anyone you can’t
help out in a crisis it’s like so you
tell young people and this is another
message for conservatives like I don’t
care what you’re gonna do but go out
there and make something of yourself for
God’s sake be an honest person and work
and get to the top of whatever it is
that you want to get to the top of you
know and and and and that you stand up
for yourself like a respectable human
being and be a bit of a light on the
world instead of a blight you know and
you can tell young people that and they
haven’t been told that by anyone now and
so the young men are so hungry for that
that it’s it’s painful to watch
they’re so relieved when finally someone
finally comes up and says hey you know
you get your act together a bit
discipline yourself see if you can learn
to tell the truth concentrate on
something for a year or two you could be
a bloody world beater they think really
that’s possible wow that would be that
would be interesting that might make
life or life worth living it’s like yeah
it might so why don’t you go do it
that’s what the damn universities we’re
supposed to be teaching people they’ve
forgotten that I went to Harvard
a month ago a month and a half he used
to teach there and I talked to a bunch
of students you know and I told them
it’s not easy to get into Harvard you
know like you’re a valedictorian if
you’re at Harvard and not only are you a
valedictorian you’re way better than
most people at at least two other things
or you don’t get in and so that gets I
don’t know what the acceptance rate is
like 5% and believe me not everybody
applies so it’s a very selective school
and so why am I saying that it’s like
these are high quality kids so I told
them what I just told you it’s like here
you are at Harvard like get yourself
educated man read some books learn to
talk learn to think make yourself into
something get the hell out there and
make the world that put you here happy
that you were put there in that great
institution you know and they came up to
me afterwards and said god I wish
someone would have told us that when we
were in our first year
Jesus why didn’t someone tell the math
for God’s sake it’s supposed to be the
greatest university in the world is it
so difficult to figure that out
rule number 21 encourage others I’m
really sad to see that people are
disenchanted and nihilistic and
depressed and anxious and aimless and
and perverse and vengeful and and all of
those things it’s terrible and then to
see people question whether that’s
necessary and then to start to rise out
of it it’s like it’s so fun like last
night I was at after my talk it’s
overwhelming I don’t usually think about
these things but I was I was after my
talk last night and so all these people
line up and you know they have their 15
15 seconds with me and they’re kind of
tentative they’re excited and a
tentative when they come up to talk to
me and then they have you know 15
seconds of time to tell me something I’m
really listening to them and they’re
hesitant about whether or not to share
the good news about their life you know
and I think it’s often because when
people share good news about their life
people don’t necessarily respond
positively you know they don’t get
encouragement and people need so little
encouragement it’s just unbelievable and
so they tell me something good and I’m
like ah that’s so good you know somebody
says well I’m getting along way better
with my father I haven’t seen him for 10
years and now we get along great and
then the power of that you can’t
overstate the power of that for
individuals to get their life together
the individual is an unbelievably
powerful force and every single person
who gets their act together a little bit
has the capacity to spread that around
them it’s it’s a chain reaction and so
it’s a lovely thing to see
rule number 20 to take responsibility
one of the things that’s really
interesting about the Old Testament is
that and the Jews in the Old Testament
is that they don’t take the path of Cain
every time they’re walloped by God which
is like fairly frequently they say we
must have done something wrong and we
have to set our self right and that’s a
an unbelievably heroic attitude because
that’s the alternative to cursing fate
it’s like you take the risk
instability for failure unto yourself
and you think well if I was just maybe
if I just had my act together a little
bit more if I took advantage of every
opportunity that was put in front of me
if I wasn’t resentful and bitter then I
could have done something that would
have tilted the situation in a different
direction and like that’s almost
inevitably true
Dostoevsky I think said something like
every man is responsible for everything
that happens to him and everything that
happens to everyone else and that’s you
know that that’s that’s it’s a crazy
statement right it’s a crazy statement
and he was a pretty extreme person in
many many ways but there’s a level at
which that’s metaphysically true you
know because what happens is that it’s
you its failure to act often that’s the
most catastrophic you know I mean it’s
it’s it’s to not do the right thing when
the when the situation presents itself
and it’s very specific you know you’re
constantly in situations where you could
do the right thing if you were willing
to take a risk
that’s actually a relatively moderate
size and you know that you could take
the risk and you know that you should
take the risk and you don’t and that
happens to people all the time and then
what happens is the thing that they
didn’t oppose grows a little bit and
they shrink a little bit and that starts
a loop a rule number 23 know when to
pull back I noticed that there’s always
a group of my friends who always
criticize what I’m saying and not even
try to understand what I’m wearing I’m
coming from and I’ve always wondered how
to deal with that I mean I want to
listen to what they’re saying but they
are not understanding what I’m they’re
not trying to listen to what I’m saying
so what would you do in that situation
answer that very briefly okay there’s a
line in the New Testament that’s
relevant to that do not cast pearls
before swine and what that means is that
if people are not listening to you stop
talking to them and that’s really that
is the best piece of advice that I can
give you and what happens is is that if
you
stop talking to people who aren’t
listening to you and start watching them
instead they will tell you what they’re
up to but so if you have things to say
say them but you find people that will
listen talk to them the ones who aren’t
listening pull back because you’re
you’re devaluing what you have to say by
offering it to an audience that does
nothing but reject it and that’s a good
guideline to life in general
so pull back rule number 24 change
yourself psychologists have been not all
psychologists obviously but the
psychological profession is its neck
deep in this in this pathology has been
beating these self-esteem drum for 50
years oh no you’re okay you should feel
good about yourself like you’re fine the
way you are it’s like you think well
that’s a calming message for people it’s
like no it’s not it’s not at all and I
watch my audiences is like it’s full of
people in the audience who think I’m
suffering a lot more than I think is
tenable a whole bunch of it’s my fault
my life is not in the order it should be
I know I’m doing 50 things wrong it’s
like what the hell’s wrong with me
what’s wrong with the people around me
this is really serious and some you know
well-meaning person comes up and says oh
you’re okay just the way you are it’s
like no one wants that message it’s like
no I’m not okay the way I am I’m not
okay at all the way I am I know that and
so you know when I’m when I’m speaking
to to when I’m speaking now I say to
people oh you’re nowhere near what you
could be that’s that that’s the positive
message it’s like yeah you’re a mess but
you don’t have to stay that way as
you’re a mess you know it obviously
you’re suffering away like like so much
you can barely tolerate it it’s like
that’s okay you can do something about
it so yeah that’s the thing that that
turns the lights on it’s like you had do
something about it Oh
rule number 25 find your purpose if
you’re hungry and you eat well that’s
good but it’s over and then you’re on to
the next thing right it’s not exactly
sustaining it’s just necessary that’s
called consume Ettore reward by the way
this other reward system is incentive
reward and the incentive reward system
works on dopamine this neurochemical
dopamine which is also the neuro
chemical tracks that opiates and cocaine
and amphetamines the drugs that people
really like to abuse alcohol often for
some people activate and so you might
say if you don’t have enough
in your life then you’re more prone to
addiction and that’s definitely the case
even with rats if you take a rat you put
him in a cage by himself and he has
nothing to do and then you give him
access to cocaine he’ll get addicted to
the point where he won’t do anything but
take cocaine but if you throw the rat
back in with a bunch of other rats and
he gets to do rat things then it’s very
hard to get him addicted to cocaine and
so the purposeless rat is prone to
addiction well it’s the same with human
beings now here’s a corollary to that
which is really cool so the magnitude of
the reward you experience as you’re
moving towards a goal is proportionate
to the importance of the goal so that
means the more important the goal you
pick the more possibility there is for
the kind of reward let’s say that it’s
really a state of being that is
life-affirming and it is directly
life-affirming in that you know like if
you’re in a football game and you’re and
it’s an important football game and
maybe you break a finger and you know
normally that’s that’s a problem it
hurts and you’re gonna stop doing
whatever you’re doing but if you’re
right in the middle of the game then
you’ll be so amped up on this reward
system that its analgesic it stops the
pain it also suppresses anxiety so if
you have a purpose then its analgesic it
takes some of the pain out of life it’s
very positive in that it motivates and
energizes you and focuses you and makes
you able to remember and pay attention
and it quells fear and so those things
are all direct and so then you might
think well what’s the best possible goal
well and that’s that’s the purpose I
would say of religious training and
philosophical training it’s like just
what the hell are you doing in the world
rule number 26 tell the truth or at
least don’t lie tell the truth or at
least don’t lie yeah well it’s not that
easy to tell the truth because who knows
about the truth but you can learn not to
say things that you know to be false and
if you stop saying things that you know
to be false then your life will improve
a lot simplifies it and it puts you in
the linemen with reality and you should
be in alignment with reality because
there’s a lot more of it than there is
of you rule number 27 treat yourself
like you matter first of all you have to
yourself like you matter because if you
don’t then you don’t take care of
yourself and you become vengeful and and
and cruel and you you take you take it
out on people around you and you’re not
a positive force none of that’s good
so you suffer more and so does everyone
around you and there’s a malevolence
that enters into it none of that’s good
so that’s what happens if you don’t
treat yourself like you matter and then
what happens if you don’t treat other
people like they matter
well you lie to them you cheat them you
steal you you you enter into impulsive
relationships with them they can’t trust
you that doesn’t go anywhere they don’t
like you you you end up alone at best
and maybe like incarcerated at worst
like that doesn’t work and so you watch
the people around you who thrive
regardless of what they say they act out
the proposition that everyone matters
and then you have a functional society
and I think okay well if if if when you
act out the proposition that everyone
matters you have a functional society
maybe that’s evidence that that
proposition is true it’s like I think
it’s I think it’s true
rule number 28 don’t be arrogant if
you’re failing repeatedly then there’s
probably something wrong it’s possible
that there’s something wrong with the
way that you’re conceptualizing the
world because you have a choice right if
if you keep making sacrifices and they
don’t work there’s a binary choice and
one is well there’s something wrong with
the structure of reality and the other
is there’s something wrong with your
approach and so then you might say well
let’s take the first idea there’s
something wrong with the structure of
reality it’s like you’re really gonna
say that are you you’re really going to
come out and say I know enough to judge
the nature of being and and then the
alternative is also quite frightening
because then you know you it’s you
that’s making the mistakes and you might
be wrong at a really deep level and that
might mean that a lot of you has to burn
off and be transformed maybe even things
about yourself that you think are
admirable and that you like because your
position you know your your self
conceptualization is so warped and wrong
and that’s really daunting but you know
when people set themselves up as the
judge of being I mean I’ve written about
this a fair bit in my new book which is
twelve rules for life when people set
themselves up as the judge of being then
they take on what can only be described
as a kind of satanic arrogance because
they’ve actually taken to themselves the
moral right to criticize the structure
of existence itself it’s like you better
be careful when you do something like
that because you’re setting yourself up
as the judge of being rule number
twenty-nine listen to others there’s
another rule in my book which is rule
nine assume that the person that you’re
listening to knows something you don’t
well they do the person you’re listening
to knows some things you don’t you can
be sure of that now whether or not you
can get to them is a different matter
but if you do get to them it’s a real
deal for you that’s why you want to
listen to the other person’s arguments
it’s because you’re not everything you
could be you don’t know the pathway
forward with as much clarity as you
could and it’s possible this is one of
the wonderful things that I’ve had the
privilege of experiencing as a clinician
no because people it’s like I live
inside a Dostoyevsky novel as a
clinician people come in and they tell
me about their lives and I listen to
them and they tell me things that are
just absolutely beyond belief you know
and I learn from my clients constantly
there they’re telling me honestly about
their experience they tell me things
they wouldn’t tell anyone else because I
actually listen to them but part of the
reason I listen is because I’m desperate
to listen it’s like there’s a
possibility I’m gonna do something
stupid in the next five years that’s
gonna be like fatal and there’s some
small possibility that if we have a
decent discussion that you’ll tell me
something that will eliminate some of my
blindness so that I don’t have to fall
into that particular pit and if you have
a good sensitivity for the depth of the
pit then you know you’re pretty bloody
motivated to avoid it and so and that
and that and that dialogue is it’s it’s
dialogic it’s dial logos right it’s
shared logos it’s the way that we redeem
ourselves mutually moving forward rule
number 30 be precise in your speech I
like this one and I think I mean this is
very clearly what you do be precise in
your speech so in in Genesis one of the
things God has Adam do first so God
makes the world by speaking okay so
that’s the first thing to think about
you’re supposed to think
like in a sophisticated way about this
that the idea is that some integral
relationship between communication and
the structure of being it’s part of the
role that consciousness plays in the
world whatever that role is language
takes the chaos and makes it into things
and so God has Adam named all the
animals they’re not even really real
until they have names now those are more
implicit that’s another you know here’s
a here’s an example let’s say that
you’re having a rough patch in your
relationship and you don’t know why it’s
unnameable is it real well yeah it’s
manifesting itself in it like a
physiological discomfort then you talk
about it and you name it it’s like it
goes from this blurry thing that’s kind
of potential it goes snap and then it’s
this thing right and then that’s a
horrible thing it’s like a little
poisonous thing but it’s not a whole
foggy cloud of potential poison it’s
like this little sharp poison thing and
then you think okay it’s real it’s a
little monster but it’s not it’s little
at least and now probably we can do
something about it if we can admit to it
so it’s this precision that specifies
and like so this is a little bit of the
Voldemort effect right if you since
you’re a Harry Potter guy they wouldn’t
name right this problem we got to name
them first oh yeah you got to name them
first absolutely because the unnameable
is far more terrifying than the nameable
you see that in there was a great Blair
Witch Project terrifying move oh yeah
it’s unnamed there’s nothing terrible
happens in that movie it’s all there
unnameable it’s like what’s goin on
what’s goin on what’s goin on and no
matter how terrible the actuality is
it’s rarely as terrible as your
imagination because your imagination
like it’s an old thing it’s seen a lot
of terrible things in the history of
life like it can put monsters everywhere
and so it’s almost always better it
might be better without exception to
name the thing no matter how terrible it
is and if you can’t name it what that
means is that you’re you’re telling
yourself that you’re so terrified that
you can’t bring your attention to
bear on it and that makes you you’re the
loser instantly if it’s so terrifying
that you cannot face it it’s what rule
number 31 pursue what is meaningful
write in the book 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 a 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 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 meaningful absolutely
rule number 30 to fight for your beliefs
the first way in which you captured the
world’s attention was that University
and that’s what I want to talk about now
because the c16 law in Canada was being
proposed contextualized for us what it
is precisely that you were being that
you were opposed to in that well bill
c16 purported to do nothing but extend
human rights provisions to an excluded
group let’s say to the transgender and
non gender binary types and and that was
the federal legislation it also made it
a hate crime to to to discriminate or
harass essentially so now then the
question is well what exactly do you
mean by discriminator harass and why
exactly is that a hate crime under the
Criminal Code well there was an answer
to that the answer was well this bill
will be interpreted in light of the
policies generated by the Ontario Human
Rights Commission very large set of
policies now the Ontario Human Rights
Commission is a radically leftist
organization I think it’s the most
dangerous organization in Canada
although you could debate that and they
said are all sorts of policies about how
this these LED this legislation was
going to be interpreted and the federal
government linked to their website to
state that bill 16 c 16 would be
interpreted in light of those guidelines
so i went and read all the policies well
one of the policies was that if you
didn’t use the preferred pronouns of a
given group that you could be charged
essentially with a hate crime and i
thought no that group is that you can
talk about transgender people yeah and
so there’s all these pronouns that have
come up there’s 70 different sets of
pronouns approximately to to
hypothetically describe people who don’t
fit anywhere on the gender spectrum
which is also something that I don’t
really under
Stan I don’t understand that
conceptually like okay so now I’m comin
is compelled under Canadian law to use
the pronoun of another individuals
choice pipe on pain of law and I thought
well no that’s not acceptable it’s one
thing to put limits on what a person
can’t say like say with hate speech laws
which I also don’t agree with by the way
but that’s a different argument I think
it’s a narrower argument but to compel
me to use a certain content when I’m
formulating my thoughts or my actions
under threat of legislative action I
thought no what’s happened there is the
government has introduced compelled
speech legislation into the private
sphere it’s never happened in the
history of English common law and so I
said there’s no way I’m abiding by that
I don’t care what your damn rationale is
we’re compassionate it’s like no you’re
not no you’re not you’re playing this
radical collectivist left-wing game
you’re trying to gain linguistic you’re
trying to gain linguistic supremacy in
the in the area of public discourse
you’re doing that using compassion as a
guise and you’re pulling the wool over
people’s eyes and you’re not going to do
it with me
rule number 33 take on challenges we’re
built for struggle as human beings you
know you’re 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
10 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
rule number 34 don’t compare yourself
with others rule 4 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
in it you know what 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
rule number 35 develop resilience life
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
convinced 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 with confronting
difficulties rule number 36 get your act
together I said with Bill c16 that I
wouldn’t speak the language of the
radical leftist because I don’t think
that that language should define the
game but let’s say it does so here’s the
game the world is a battleground of
groups and the they’re battling for
power that’s it that’s the game and some
of them win and they oppress those who
don’t win so that’s how we’re gonna view
the world
okay now the left is say okay well
here’s the oppressed people the
oppressors the patriarchy type
patriarchal types they should be ashamed
of themselves and give up some power the
right-wingers the radical right wingers
look at that and they say oh I see so
the game is ethnic identity is it its
identity politics okay
we’re white males we’re not gonna lose
that’s the right wing version of
identity politics it’s like screw you if
we’re gonna divide into groups if we’re
gonna divide into tribes and I’m in my
tribe I’m not gonna get all guilty and
lose I’m gonna get all cruel and win and
that’s like then you think well there’s
people in the middle they’re kind of
looking back and forth which side of the
identity politics spectrum I am I going
to fall in do I want to go with do I
want to go what do I want to be driven
primarily by compassion and I’m am I
going to accept guilt for my historical
privilege so that’s one possibility
and then I’m the oppressor I’m the
member of the oppressor group or am I
going to say Oh to hell with that I’m
just gonna play to win well then I’m
gonna go to the right
it’s like well my sense is how about we
don’t play either of those games and the
reason we shouldn’t play them is well
the Soviets played the left-wing game
and like killed who knows how many tens
of millions of people you can’t even
count it accurately the estimates range
from twenty to a hundred million those
are pretty big error bars and that in
the Maoists maybe a hundred million
certainly 60 million so okay that didn’t
work out so well and then there’s the
Nazis like they played ethnic identity
politics and racial superiority it’s
like what do we want to play that game
see what I’ve been trying to do really
what I’ve been trying to do for the last
30 years is say look there’s heavy
temptations to play those sorts of games
but that’s not the only game in town
it’s a much better game to play
individual it’s like get your act
together stand up in the world make
something of yourself stay away from the
ideological over simple
vacations set your house in order that’s
rule 6 in the in this book so I have a
book rule in there says set your house
in perfect order before he criticized
the world and it’s a very dark chapter
about the motivations of the Columbine
High School killers and this other guy
named carl panzram who is a serial
rapist and arsonist and murderer and
these he wrote an autobiography and the
Columbine kids also wrote about why they
did what they did they’re resentful to
the core bitter bitter resentful
terrible and well I’m suggesting that
people stay away from that resentment
resentfulness and bitterness even though
life is hard and and there’s malevolence
in the world it’s like yeah you can you
can tell a story where everyone’s a
victim because we all die we all get
sick you know and and and things happen
to us that are bitter and terrible
betrayal deceit lies like people hurt us
on purpose you know so it’s not just the
tragedy of life it’s malevolence as well
it’s everyone’s a victim you can tell
that story the problem is if you tell
that story and you start to act it out
you make all of that worse that’s the
problem and it’s so this is why partly I
got attracted to Christian imagery at
least in part because there’s an idea in
Christianity that you should pick up
your goddamn cross and like walk off the
hill and that’s dramatically that’s
correct that’s the right answer it’s
like you’ve got a heavy load of
suffering to bear and a fair bit of it’s
going to be unjust it’s what are you
gonna do about it
accept it voluntarily and try to
transform as a consequence that’s the
right answer it’s the right answer
because the rest of it is tribalism and
we’re we’re too technologically powerful
to get all tribal again rule number 37
concentrate on who you could be 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
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 okay the
way you are is that you don’t have a
goal then and people need to have a goal
in order to to come to terms with their
life
rule number 38 leave your comfort zone
now this 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 so
you imagine that there’s you and there’s
the potential inside you whatever that
is you know and potential is an
interesting idea because it’s 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 too because we
know that if you take yourself and you
put yourself in a new environment new
jeans 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’ll 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 rule number 39 find your
why by 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 it’s
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
rule number forty pick the lesser risk
you’re doing a great job of modeling
courage in the face of fog 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
wise but I’m not so sure it’s courageous
rule number 41 set goals properly tell
your kid 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 at 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’s that’s a concept that was
generated by a guy named Vygotsky he was
a Russian developmental psychologist and
the smart one that’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 this 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 I’ve been a victim mmm yeah
it’s just in helpful you’re still gonna
be a victim right 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
yeah Lee number 42 find your why not
only 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 four
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 rule number 43 eat a
little poison every day the more radical
than 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 there was no
joy man like 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
harder 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
rule number 44 take responsibility so
one of the things I’ve been talking to
my audiences about is the relationship
between responsibility and meaning which
is there and what would you say it’s a
it’s a constant refrain in the book it’s
one of its underlying messages let’s say
or themes is a better way of thinking
about it 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 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 or my 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 an existential
weight that goes along with that
rule number 45 become disciplined we
kind of have this idea that while you’re
free as a child and then you let me see
if I can if I can put this properly 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 but what
comes out of that is a much grander
freedom and so in virtually every
freedom that you have in life that’s
true freedom is purchased at the price
of discipline
rule number forty-six be truthful your
best that 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
didn’t know how to 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 decline in consequence of being
repeat
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 tragedy 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 transcendent and that’s something you
know
rule number 47 provide value people came
to my website because they were
interested in well before the political
stuff blew up I had a million views on
YouTube which isn’t nothing
a million of anything is a lot but then
when the political scandal started to
break yeah then people came for them but
stayed for the content and so and that’s
really useful yeah well it’s all well
and it’s not that surprising well you
know because of what you do it’s like
people 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 doubt 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 that’s been great rule number 48
just start doing a circumambulation that
Jung talked about was
continual will return to this this
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 we’ll 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 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 incomplete 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 there’s a niche of Nietzsche
called that a 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 okay 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 over shoot 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 for
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 rule number 49 develop
communication skills I’m incredibly
nervous to talk in front of you because
you’ve got to be one of the most
formidable people that I’ve ever heard
up or ever listened to ever seen so my
question is again you’re one of the best
communicators that I’ve ever listened to
if I could be half as good at you or at
communicating as you are I would be set
how can I teach myself to do that
practice you know really like well
there’s a couple of things is helps to
read a lot it really helped 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 but 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
hich 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 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
but just that to some degree there isn’t
anything that you can possibly 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 then 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 I don’t know if
they 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 it 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
ability to communicate so practice and
rule number 50 the lasts only for a very
special bonus clip is fight for what you
stain for with our topic is the rising
tide of compelled speech in Canada my
that’s pure narcissism at work by the
way
you don’t to hijack to hijack an event
like this that other people put time and
effort into and to use they there are
their civility of the crowd and the
civility of the organizers as an excuse
to blatantly yell out your ill informed
opinions is no way to conduct a civil
dialogue it’s absolutely appalling the
people who do that should be embarrassed
do you see you know that’s that that and
mark my words
that’s the sounds of the barbarians
you know that’s all I’ll tell you again
too that you soon inchoate what would
you call it inchoate sensation is the
best formulation of their argument and
there’s not much difference between
knocking on the doors and knocking on
you so keep that in mind it’s not
amusing there’s nothing to it there’s
nothing for it the thing that’s also
quite appalling is that there’s no
evidence whatsoever that the people who
are conducting these protests know what
it is that they’re protesting against
you know I was in alright I was in the
midst of a discussion attempting to make
the case that it’s freedom of speech
that’s that is what people who have
nothing still have right so if you look
at the tyrannical structure of our
society let’s say the people at the top
have access to means of communication
everyone knows that it’s the people at
the bottom who have the right to say
what they think however badly they say
it that enables them to get a toehold
into the system into and to make their
suffering known that’s what freedom of
speech is for and so like what’s the
protest against that and I’ll tell you
you know that the radical neo-marxist
types they speak the language of power
and that’s what they’re speaking right
now and if you want to live in a world
where everyone speaks the language of
power then just let them do what they’re
doing and see what happens I wouldn’t
recommend it it’s not a pretty road and
you’re all in a position you’re on a
situation in your life now where you
have to make decisions about this sorts
of things like is this the sort of
now I’ve got a special bonus clip from
Jordan Peterson on how to take risks
that I think you’re going to really
enjoy but before that it’s time for the
three-point landing questions time to
move from just watching another video to
taking action in your life or your
business and if you’re feeling bold and
to the questions in the comments below
here we go
question number one what do you stay in
for number two what will you start doing
today and number three what poison will
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 them
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 your ear 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 hi 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 it 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 if you
had to think of one word that’s most
important to you that sums you Apple
that would be collect a little beacon if
you want more Jordan Peterson check out
the video we did on him and his 12 rules
for life it’s right there next to me I
think you’re gonna enjoy it continue to
believe and I’ll see you there people in
general now have very poor posture very
bad for the junction is like take a look at the people that are around you
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