Jordan Peterson's Life Advice Will Change Your Future — Most Underrated Speech

You should be a monster, you know, because everyone says well you should be harmless virtuous. You shouldn't do anyone any harm You should sheath your competitive instinct. You shouldn't try to win. You know, you you don't want to be too aggressive You don't want to be too assertive. You want to take a back seat and all of that. It's like no Wrong, you should be a monster an absolute monster and then you should learn how to control it Do you know the expression it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war right? Right. Exactly That's exactly it. Yeah, and that's exactly right. And so when I tell young men that they think well lots of them are competitive They're low in agreeableness, you know, because that's part of being competitive temperamentally. It's like is there something wrong with being competitive? There's nothing wrong with it. There's something wrong with cheating. There's something wrong with being a tyrant There's something wrong with winning unfairly. All of those things are bad, but you don't want people to win What's the difference between trying to win and striving? Well, 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, you know, the hero has to be The hero has to be a monster But a controlled monster you have to be a bit of a monster so that you can say no part of how you regulate your interactions with other people is to negotiate and You cannot negotiate unless you can say no You can't do it and it's causes conflict to say no and if you don't like conflict Which is basically the definition of being agreeable then you can't tolerate the conflict And so then you can't negotiate on your own behalf. And so then you keep losing and you're bullied and you know It's it's not good. Then you get resentful and it's really not good. So you have to develop your inner monster a little bit and and That makes you a better person not a worse person. It's weird, but that's just how it is Don't sacrifice Who you could be for who you are? Which means if you have to choose to transform in a positive direction or maintain your current position then it's better to Transform in a positive direction. Who are you? You're the thing that transforms who you are But on top of that you're the thing that transforms who you are You are the thing that isn't you're the thing that becomes and you should put the thing that becomes at a higher place than the Thing that is that means you also have to allow yourself to shake off those things about you that you might be pathologically attached to Habits and people for that matter ways of thinking all of those things you have to allow yourself to shake those off And that's more like a burning Every time you try to learn something you're gonna make a mistake because what do you know? So you're gonna make mistakes and if the rule is every time you make a mistake You're gonna go jump off the bridge. Then that's not a useful Problem-solving strategy and so when you make a mistake, you don't get to beat yourself to death with a club You've got a problem something has objected to you. Then the question is well, what does that mean? Well, maybe you're not looking at the world, right? Maybe your goals are wrong. Maybe you're not acting properly Hey So I figured something out that I thought I'd tell you about This took me like 30 years to figure out and I figured it out on this tour So there's this old idea, you know that you have to rescue your father from the belly of the whale right from some monster That's deep in the abyss. You see that in Pinocchio for example, but it's a very common idea and I figured out why that is I think so Imagine that we already know from a clinical perspective that you know If you set out a path towards a goal Which you want to do because you need a goal and you need a path because that provides you with positive emotion, right? So you set up something is valuable. So that implies a hierarchy you set up something is valuable You decide that you're gonna do that instead of other things so that's kind of a sacrifice because you're sacrificing everything else to pursue that and then You experience a fair bit of positive emotion and meaning as you watch yourself move towards the goal and so the implication of that is the the better the goal the More full and rich your experience is going to be when you pursue it so that's one of the reasons of That's one of the reasons for developing a vision and for fleshing yourself out Philosophically because you want to aim at the highest goal that you can manage Okay, so you do that and then what you'll find is that as you move towards the goal There are certain things that that that you have to accomplish that frighten you, you know Maybe you have to learn to be a better speaker a better writer or a better thinker You have to be better to people around you or you have to learn some new skills and you're afraid of that Whatever because it's gonna stretch you if you if you pursue a goal and it's and so that'll put you up Against challenges. Okay, so all the clinical data indicates well the opposite of safe spaces as Jonathan Haidt has been pointing out that what you want to do when you Identify something that someone is avoiding that they need to do because they're afraid you have them voluntary can voluntarily confront it And so you break it down what you try to do If you're a behavior therapist is you break down the thing they're avoiding into smaller and smaller pieces Until you find a piece that's small enough so they'll do it and it doesn't really matter as long as they start it You know, then they can put the next piece on in the next piece And what happens is they don't get less afraid exactly they get braver They get they get it's like there's more of them. You can and then here's why so imagine you do something new and That's informative, right? there's information in the action and then you can incorporate that information and turn it into a skill and turn it into a Transformation of your perceptions. So there's more to you because you've tried something new. So that's one thing. The second thing is There's good biological evidence for this now that if you put yourself in a new situation Then new genes code for new proteins and build new neural structures and new nervous system structures Same thing happens to some degree when you work out, right? Because your your muscles are responding to the load, but your nervous system does that too? So you imagine that there's a lot of potential you locked in your genetic code And then if you put yourself in a new situation, then then the stress that's the situational stress That's produced by that particular situation unlocks those genes and then builds new parts of you So that's very cool because who knows how much there is locked inside of you. Okay. So now here's the idea So let's assume that that scales as you take on heavier and heavier loads That more and more of you you get more and more informed because you're doing more and more difficult things but more and more of you gets unlocked and so then What that would imply is that if you got to the point where you could look at the darkest thing So that would be the abyss, right? That would be the deepest abyss if you could look at the harshest things like the most Brutal parts of the suffering of the world and the malevolence of people and society if you could look that look at that Straight and and directly that that would turn you on Maximally and so that's the idea of rescuing your father because imagine that you're like the potential Composite of of all your all the ancestral wisdom that's locked inside of you Biologically, but that's not going to come out at all Unless you stress yourself unless you unless you challenge yourself and the bigger the challenge you take on the more that's going to turn On and so that as you take on a broader and broader range of challenges and you push yourself harder Then more and more of what you could be turns on and that's equivalent to transforming yourself into the ancestral father Into all because you're you're like the what would you call it? You're the consequence of all these Living beings that have come before you and that's all part of your Biological potentiality and then if you can push yourself Then all of that clicks on and that turns you into who you could be that's and that's the re-representation of that Positive ancestral father. So that's why you rescue your father from the belly of the beast The Greeks had the Maxim know thyself How did we come to know ourselves in terms of our personalities and more importantly potential? well One of the first ways to come to know yourself is to understand that you don't You know, you can learn to kind of watch yourself like you're watching a stranger, but you have to adopt a position It's a position of radical humility. I would say humility in two senses, so one sense would be the humility of Recognizing your ignorance. So you have to understand that you don't know who you are That's not easy to understand because you think you know, but then you know, you remember you can't control yourself very well You're not very disciplined. You're full of flaws. Maybe you don't know yourself as well as you think but it's hard to get low enough to Understand how deeply it is the case that you are ignorant about who you are Now there's an upside to that too Which also is that you're also ignorant about who you could be and so the discovery of that, you know is Some reward for the horror of determining who you actually are Then I would say well Then you watch yourself and you attend to your conscience and you see you watch yourself like you're watching a stranger You watch what you say and you listen you think what what sort of person would say that and how am I reacting? Emotionally when I'm communicating in that manner, you know, is that making me feel stronger weaker? Is it filling me with shame? Is it helping my confidence? Am I laying out a lie? Am I deceiving myself and other people? Am I adopting this personality at parties that is designed to impress and to amuse and it comes across as nothing but self-centered narcissism What are my dark fantasies? What are my aggressive fantasies? What is it that I'm willing to do? What am I interested in so that I'll spontaneously pursue it? What do I procrastinate about it? Why what am I unwilling to do? What do I think is good? What do I congratulate myself for accomplishing and what do I berate myself for failing to confront and to implement Those are all incredibly complicated questions and you don't know the answers to them So that's the start and then in terms of potential Well, you'll discover a little bit more about your potential as you discover who you are Especially the darker parts of yourself because then you discover your potential for mayhem. There's some real utility in that it's actually something that strengthens you because the first thing that a realization like that can in fact produce is The ambition to incorporate that dangerousness into a higher-order personality and that can make you implacable I can make you someone who can say no when you need to say no You know that can make you someone who won't avoid necessary conflict so that's unbelievably useful And so that's one of the potentials that you might discover You sort of have to detach yourself from your thoughts and your and and what you say So you got to assume you start by assuming that what you say and what you think is not necessarily you and of course That's just the case because a lot of what you think in fact Most of what you think and most of what you say are the opinions of other people There are things you've read or things people have told you and you know that That's a benefit in some ways because you get all those thoughts that other people have spent a long time formulating But it's a disadvantage in that it's not exactly you Okay, so you detach yourself from that You're no longer your thoughts or or or the things that you say or maybe you're no longer all of them And now what you're gonna try to find out is Which of your thoughts and things that you say are you and maybe so you cannot Utilize the rest or maybe so that you can correct the rest because they're not Representative of yourself as a as an integrated being they don't take everything into account My sense is being that you can tell when you're saying something. That's not authentic By feeling out whether or not it makes you weak or strong Now, you know sometimes when you're conversing with people you can say something that embarrasses yourself now Nietzsche said for example Everyone has perjured themselves at least once in the attempt to maintain their good name Something like that. It's not an exact quote, but I've got the gist of it, right? So maybe you're saying things to impress someone or you're saying things to remain Part of your political group or your social group or whatever or maybe you have attributes personal attributes That might be positive that you're ashamed of and so you're not going to speak about them. So there's a falseness about your self-representation Watch for two weeks and see Make a rule that if you start to say something and it makes you feel weak It's hard to describe exactly what that means to me. What it means is that I can feel things coming apart Sort of in my midsection. So I think it's an autonomic Phenomena and The the subjective sense is of a falsehood It's like I've just stepped off the solid ground and onto something that that doesn't support me Well, and it it feels like a self-betrayal. So that's existential inauthenticity You could feel it right away and then the rule is shut up if that happens stop talking and Then feel around and see if you can find some words that you can say in that situation that don't produce that Sensation and so then you can check yourself You can see all you have to do is listen Like you would listen to someone else and you have to feel you think do I actually believe that? Is that actually my thought and really i'll tell you what you'll find is 95% of what you say Has nothing to do with you. So it's quite shocking to do this because you'll start to say something and you'll think Oh That doesn't feel quite right like it doesn't make me feel solid when I say it There's something about that that i'm subordinating myself to something or hiding in some way It's very difficult to figure out exactly what you're doing, but you'll find out that almost everything that's abstractly represented Carl jung said people don't have ideas ideas have people And that's something to really think about because then you want to watch and see what ideas There are floating around in your head and start to figure out where they came from because it's highly probable that they're controlling you Just like a marionette Is controlled by the puppeteer? It's very very similar the other thing you do to discover your potential is to Well, you challenge yourself you know, it's like rule four in my book 12 rules for life is compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to some who someone else is Today and that's kind of a good way to start this. It's like well Take a bit of a look at yourself and think about what's not so good that you could improve That you should improve by your own standards and that you would improve You know and set yourself a little goal You know, maybe you're not studying at all At your university or maybe your work and you've got this stack of paper there, you know And you haven't looked at that damn stack for like a month and you know that you should be And you're bothering yourself at night because you're avoiding that Think i've avoided that stack of paper completely for one month I'm quite a coward when it comes to whatever snakes might be hidden in that stack of paper how about tomorrow I just like put that stack of paper in front of me on my desk and I I glance through it for 15 seconds see if I can do that. It's like well you set yourself a goal of improvement, you know, it's a humble goal because Really? Are you such a coward that the best that you can bloody? Well manage after a month of avoidance is 15 seconds of exposure to a stack of paper You know, it could easily be you've been avoiding it You're obviously afraid of it. And so the situation could be that dismal and dire And you might think well, geez, it's no Bomb to my ego. It's no it's not fostering the strength of my ego to Recognize myself someone who could only withstand 15 seconds of exposure to that thing I'm afraid of and so that's a form of humility too. It's like There's things you could do to improve and you know what they are And there's small steps that you could take that you might take that would put you in that direction And then the question is are you big enough to take those small steps, you know, are you capable of? grappling with the fact that you're Fundamentally flawed to the point where you have to break things down into almost childlike steps in order to manage them And the answer to that is yeah, you are and that's the lot of I don't know if it's a lot of everyone Most people have things they avoid, you know, and they're afraid of so I would say to some degree. It's the lot of everyone People vary in the degree to which they've conquered that and you do meet people from time to time who are extraordinarily disciplined But most of the time they've got disciplined in exactly this manner Through slow incremental improvement and then you challenge yourself. It's like well, could I do this? That would be better And you find out and then you think well Is there something slightly larger and more challenging that I could do that would be better? And you try it and you find out and as you try it and you find out Generally, you get better at it and you can take on larger and larger challenges, you know, you take responsibility for yourself that's part of standing up straight with your shoulders back, it's like Take on the world man Only at the level that you can manage You know when you're ignorant and biased and deeply flawed and immature. It's where everyone starts You don't want to bite off more than you can chew, but it doesn't mean that you can't wrestle with part of reality You know some part that's small enough so that you have a good shot at victory And to put yourself together The first step towards that is to allow yourself to be a fool, right? it's because You don't know what you're doing You have to admit that and there's going to be a loss of ego or destruction of ego arrogant ego that necessarily Accompanies that but you need the loss of that arrogant ego because it's precisely what's interfering with your movement forward You know, it's part of the adversarial process Mythologically speaking that stops moral progress You're too proud of who you think you are to notice what you're like so that you could change properly You don't want to sacrifice that part of yourself. It's probably associated with some delusion that Helps you maintain A positive although very fragile self-image, you know in the absence of genuine effort It's not to be recommended You know yourself by watching and paying attention It's watching like you're a snake Because the snake watches like cold-bloodedly with no emotional reaction Just to see what's there It doesn't allow Symbolically speaking doesn't allow What is wanted or desired to interfere with what is observed? So you watch yourself like that as if you don't know who you are Well, that's the beginning and then you challenge yourself continually To see how far past yesterday you can push today and tomorrow and to continually experiment with expanding the domains not only of your competence, but of your ability to increase that confidence and The upper limit to that is proportional to the moral effort that you put into it the more that's guided by The highest of all possible visions, right? The alliance with the highest of all possible conceivable good the more it's accompanied by truth in speech and action the more you will develop your potential you also I suppose have to be Willing to undertake that as an adventure because it's a hell of a thing to bear that kind of responsibility It takes a person out of the ordinary. It takes them out of themselves There's an alienation and an isolation that goes along with that and a great sorrow all of that together but there's deep meaning to be had in it and it's And there isn't anything better that you can do 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 there's no better pathway to self-realization and the ennoblement of being Than to posit the highest good that you can conceive of and commit yourself to it Do you really have anything better to do? And if you don't well, why would you do anything else if you orient yourself properly? And then pay attention to what you do every day that works I actually think that that's in accordance with with what we have come to understand about human perception because what happens is that The world shifts itself around your aim Because you're a creature that has an aim you look at a point and you move towards it It's built right into you And so you have an aim. 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 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 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 People's lives aren't what they would like them to be And so then you ask why? Well forget about tragedy and catastrophe because that's self-evident and we're not going to discuss that Although the degree to which you bring about your own tragedy is always indeterminate But I would never say that every terrible thing that is visited on a person is something they deserved I think that that's a very dangerous presupposition Especially because everyone gets sick and everyone dies But one of the main reasons that people don't 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 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 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 You know, you may formulate an idea about what would be good for you And then you take 10 steps towards that and you find out that your formulation was a bit off And so you have to reformulate your goal, you know, so 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 and 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. You don't get everything 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 justify itself in my estimation and I don't mean as a harsh judge exactly What is it that I would aim at? What do you say to those viewers that don't pursue their dreams and are locked in 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. 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 If you need to change your job, too Let's say you have a family 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 The first thing that you want to do is figure out imagine you were taking care of yourself Like you were someone you cared for which is rule number two, by the way, essentially Then you should figure out well if you could have what you needed and wanted What would it be? What sort of friends would you have? What would your family relationships look like? How would you conduct yourself with your children? How would you educate yourself? You need to think through how it is that your life could be Properly arranged if you had that ability and then you can aim at that A lot of you are going to find yourself embedded in bureaucracies And you know and there's that for better or for worse and one of the things that are going to is going to happen to Is that people are going to ask you to do stupid and ridiculous things And the fact that they're asking you to do stupid and ridiculous things is going to do two things three things to you One is it'll warp you so that you'll pretend that you agree with it And then eventually you will and like good so much for your soul And then the other thing is is that it'll demotivate you because you'll think why should I be? Like slaving away at this job when you know i'm being pecked to death by morons with stupid rules The third thing that it'll do is make you resentful and irritated and that will also undermine your motivation And make your life miserable. And so you might think well, what should you do about that? And the answer to that is You should object At the earliest possible point because first of all you'll find that if you do if you object to radical stupidity When it first emerges you kind of make people aware of the fact that what they're doing is radically stupid and they'll usually back off And so then they won't torture you to death So, you know you have to take a risk which is oh no what happens if I complain about this, but you know It's another one of those situations where you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't so if you complain That'll cause some trouble Although usually it causes way less trouble than you think because people are generally not very courageous And if you push them with some strength on a when they're doing something absolutely moronic They'll usually back off because they don't know what to do when they're being challenged And then you won't have to put up with it for the rest of your life. Do not do things, you know to be stupid Stand up and say look that's dumb. I'm not doing it And if they ask you why then you can say well a I think it's stupid B if I do it i'm going to get irritated and resentful and also if I do it, it's going to decrease my motivation So i'm not doing it. And then if they push you too hard, it's like hey, it's time for a different job And that might be the best thing that ever happened to you because if the Structure you're in is going in that direction and you can't stop it It's like get the hell out of there and find something else So it's not that hard to find a job when you already have a job That's another thing to keep in mind too, you know, whenever you're working and you will be Especially in the world that the world of today where jobs are relatively uncertain You should always have an escape route planned And it should be active because if you don't have an escape route and you can't get away You can't say no And if you can't say no, you can't bargain and if you can't bargain you're a slave So those that's how that's how the world is set out at the moment It's probably always been like that But it's something that you really need to know because you got to watch if you're if your being is objecting to someone To something that someone is forcing you to do Maybe you're right Maybe you shouldn't be doing it and lots of people end up living meaningless lives 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 people 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 10 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 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 the 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 we're probably running at about 51% of our capacity Something I mean you can think about this yourselves How many hours a day you waste or how many hours a week you waste and the classic answer is something like four to six? 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, you think well, that's 20 25 hours a week. It's 100 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 20 an hour, which is a radical underestimate 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 going to last nearly as long And so if your life isn't everything it could be you could ask yourself Well, what would happen if you just stopped wasting the opportunities that are in front of you? You'd be who knows how much more efficient ten times more efficient 20 times more efficient That's the Pareto distribution. You have no idea how efficient efficient people get it's completely it's 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 genocidal or all of those things all Bundled together in an absolutely pathological package If people stop 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 are are Are major causes of suffering and the failure of individuals to adopt the responsibility that they know they should adopt And that's the thing that's interesting too is that You know, there's this idea that that people have that people have a conscience And you know what the conscience is. It's it's this Feeling or voice you have in your head just before you do something That you know is stupid telling you that probably you shouldn't do that stupid thing. You don't have to listen to it strangely enough But you go ahead and do it anyways And then of course exactly what the conscience told you was going to happen inevitably happened so that you feel even Stupider about it than you would if it happened by accident because you you know I knew this was going to happen. I got a warning It was going to happen and I went and did it anyways and the funny thing too Is that that conscience operates within people and we really don't understand what the hell that is So you might say well what would happen if you abided by your conscience for five years or for 10 years? What sort of position might you be in what sort of family might you have what sort of relationship might you be able to forge? And you can be bloody sure that a relationship that's forged on the basis of who you actually are Is going to be a lot stronger and more welcome than one that's forged on the basis of who you aren't Now, of course that means that the person you're with has to deal with the full Force of you in all your ability and your catastrophe and that's a very very difficult thing to negotiate But if you do negotiate it Well, at least you you have something you have somewhere solid to stand and you have somewhere to live you have a real life And it's a great basis upon which to bring children into the world for example, because you can have an actual relationship with them instead of Torturing them half to death which is what happens in a tremendous a tremendously large minority of cases