Jordan Peterson's Life Advice Will Leave You Speechless _ One of The Most Eye Opening Videos Ever

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 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 eight on the day and so that way you get to have your cake and eat it too because 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 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? 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 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 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 family and and children and 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 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 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 you 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 be if I do it I'm gonna get irritated and resentful and also if I do it, it's gonna 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 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 plan 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 it that's how the world is set out at the moment But it's something that you really need to know because you've got to watch if you're if you're 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 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 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 were probably running at about 51% of our capacity Something mean you can think about this yourself 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 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 $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 $50,000 a year and you are doing that right now And it's because you're young wasting $50,000 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 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 twenty times more efficient That's the burrito 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 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 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 ten 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 could 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