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 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
called 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 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 judging 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 a with 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 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 the 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 Reed
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 of the physical that the two
things were aligned and and there’s a
lot of idea of alignment 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 well
there’s nothing left but a little ha 5
percent of you it’s like well if that 5
percent is solid then maybe that’s
exactly what you want to have happen it
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 gonna 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 too in order to
quit smoking and I started working out
starting playing sports which I’d never
done I had a fine time 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 why 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
straight my cell phone do 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 gonna 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 a 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
those three things a loner 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 fantastically
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
we’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 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 okay
well
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 and from an
anticipatory perspective shaking you go
out you stop you watch it happen and you
actually calm down you do that ten 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
[Music]
you’re lost and the problem with being
lost is when you’re lost you don’t know
where to go and the problem with not
knowing where to go is there’s a million
places that you could go and a million
places is too many places for you to go
without dying
so being lost is not good so you need to
know where you are and you can kind of
tell if you don’t know where you are
it’s quite straightforward if you are
haunted by reveries of the past for
events that are older than approximately
18 months if they continue to come up in
your mind over and over and your dreams
over and over you haven’t extracted the
world out from your past experiences the
potential is still trapped in the past
and to confront the potential means to
confront the dragon of the past and of
course that’s terrifying and it can
seriously be terrifying so you’re
navigating your navigator you’re a
sailor on an ocean man that’s what
that’s what you are you’re a mobile
creature you’re going from point A to
point B all the time you know it’s
sitting there glued to a rock like some
brainless you know sea creature there’s
a funny little creature called a Hydra
very simple little creature in its
juvenile stage it has a brain because it
swims around but then when it turns into
an adult it latches itself to a rock and
promptly digests its brain because if
you’re just sitting on a rock and you’re
not moving you don’t need a brain so but
that’s not our issue right we’re we’re
zipping around in the world and so we’re
navigating agents so to navigate there’s
two things you need to know the first is
where the hell are you exactly precisely
right razorsharp
what’s good about you and what’s bad
about you by your own by your own
reckoning you don’t have to you can ask
other people but this is a game you play
yourself it’s like as far as I’m
concerned I’m taking star what is it
that’s okay about me and what needs some
work and you got to watch to not be too
self-critical when you’re doing that too
because that can just be another kind of
there’s another rule in my book which is
rule 9 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
is 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
they’re they’re telling me honestly
about their experience they tell me
things they wouldn’t tell anyone else
cuz I actually listen to them but part
of the reason I listen is cuz 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 and that and that dialog 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 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 and definitely 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 your 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 a
yeah 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 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 to 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 – you listen to these
panderers of egalitarian al gala
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 you fail 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 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 then 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
being 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 finalist
someone finally comes up and says hey
you know you 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 were
supposed to be teaching people they’ve
forgotten that I went to Harvard a month
ago a month and a half you used to teach
there and I talked to a bunch of
students you know what 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 like it’s 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 it’s like Jesus
why didn’t someone tell them that for
God’s sake it’s supposed to be the
greatest university in the world is it
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 when 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 have 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 the 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
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 but 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 and
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 work 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 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 ape and you can concentrate on the
on the eighth 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 everyday 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
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 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
called 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 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 judging 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 a with 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 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 the 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 Reed
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 of the physical that the two
things were aligned and and there’s a
lot of idea of alignment 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 well
there’s nothing left but a little ha 5
percent of you it’s like well if that 5
percent is solid then maybe that’s
exactly what you want to have happen it
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 gonna 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 too in order to
quit smoking and I started working out
starting playing sports which I’d never
done I had a fine time 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 why 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
straight my cell phone do 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 gonna 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 a 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
those three things a loner 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 fantastically
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
we’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 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 okay
well
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 and from an
anticipatory perspective shaking you go
out you stop you watch it happen and you
actually calm down you do that ten 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
[Music]
you’re lost and the problem with being
lost is when you’re lost you don’t know
where to go and the problem with not
knowing where to go is there’s a million
places that you could go and a million
places is too many places for you to go
without dying
so being lost is not good so you need to
know where you are and you can kind of
tell if you don’t know where you are
it’s quite straightforward if you are
haunted by reveries of the past for
events that are older than approximately
18 months if they continue to come up in
your mind over and over and your dreams
over and over you haven’t extracted the
world out from your past experiences the
potential is still trapped in the past
and to confront the potential means to
confront the dragon of the past and of
course that’s terrifying and it can
seriously be terrifying so you’re
navigating your navigator you’re a
sailor on an ocean man that’s what
that’s what you are you’re a mobile
creature you’re going from point A to
point B all the time you know it’s
sitting there glued to a rock like some
brainless you know sea creature there’s
a funny little creature called a Hydra
very simple little creature in its
juvenile stage it has a brain because it
swims around but then when it turns into
an adult it latches itself to a rock and
promptly digests its brain because if
you’re just sitting on a rock and you’re
not moving you don’t need a brain so but
that’s not our issue right we’re we’re
zipping around in the world and so we’re
navigating agents so to navigate there’s
two things you need to know the first is
where the hell are you exactly precisely
right razorsharp
what’s good about you and what’s bad
about you by your own by your own
reckoning you don’t have to you can ask
other people but this is a game you play
yourself it’s like as far as I’m
concerned I’m taking star what is it
that’s okay about me and what needs some
work and you got to watch to not be too
self-critical when you’re doing that too
because that can just be another kind of
there’s another rule in my book which is
rule 9 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
is 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
they’re they’re telling me honestly
about their experience they tell me
things they wouldn’t tell anyone else
cuz I actually listen to them but part
of the reason I listen is cuz 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 and that and that dialog 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 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 and definitely 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 your 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 a
yeah 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 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 to 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 – you listen to these
panderers of egalitarian al gala
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 you fail 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 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 then 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
being 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 finalist
someone finally comes up and says hey
you know you 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 were
supposed to be teaching people they’ve
forgotten that I went to Harvard a month
ago a month and a half you used to teach
there and I talked to a bunch of
students you know what 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 like it’s 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 it’s like Jesus
why didn’t someone tell them that for
God’s sake it’s supposed to be the
greatest university in the world is it
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 when 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 have 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 the 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
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 but 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 and
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 work 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 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 ape and you can concentrate on the
on the eighth 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 everyday 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
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