Make Yourself a Solution, Not a Problem - Jordan Peterson

Do you have problems in your life that you're not addressing that you could solve and the answer is yes And it's an easy thing to figure out you sit on your bed one morning and say okay There's some things that need to be done that I don't want to do that I could do that would make things better by the end of the day What are they well your your conscience will deliver those in no time flat man, and then you might have to say okay? well, how do I entice myself into doing a few of those and And if you ask instead of trying to force yourself to do it like you're a tyrant and a slave at the same time You can usually negotiate with yourself so that you'll start to sort those things out Sort them out put your house in order and then move out move on So it's important because the thing is you have a practice domain Right there are there are things that are within your grasp that you could fix Fix them and you'll learn You'll learn because it's harder than it looks Fix them and you'll learn how to fix things and then something else will beckon as another problem that you could fix You know you all have your problems. What does that mean like there's an infinite number of problems in the world Some of them happen to be yours. Why is that I don't know exactly, but you have your problems great solve them you know one of the thing I learned as a therapist every therapist has to learn this is Because one of the things you wonder when you're first starting to be a clinician is how do you not take the Catastrophes of your clients home with you and the answer to that is because it's immoral to They're not your problems They're their problems like they're they're their life. You know your problems are your life You don't want to solve someone else's problems for them because you take away the the deep meaning That's to be found in having them work through the problems on their own, and then you steal the credit Well, I can help you with that. It's like well Yeah, maybe but I don't help you with the next problem then So in any case you sort sort out the problems that are right in front of you And you will it will make you grow very very rapidly and then you'll be able to sort out more complex problems without making them worse But the solution to a very complex problem is you should be better Person than you are because then you'd be better at solving complex problems and lots of them are coming your way So bloody well get your act together And and that's what I've been telling people and but more than that because it's more than that because that's merely Burdening people with excess responsibility. Let's say so that can be a crushing message You're not who you could be you know get your bloody act together You're whining away in the corner, and you're no good to yourself and anyone else. You know it's harsh but then there's a Nunder there's another element to that which is there's way more to you than you think you are and that you have something Necessary and vital to contribute to the world and if you don't contribute it that things will happen that aren't good And that's terrible for you and everyone else so it's not only that you that you need to do this because it's your responsibility But you you need to understand that there isn't anything better that you could do for yourself or for anyone else and people are Dying to hear that message Yeah, well, it's so amazing like it's I'm in this very weird situation right now to say the least Well if you try and you fail that could be in a micro endeavor or a macro endeavor if you try and you fail Well you have two options while you've three one is you can just ignore it and sometimes That's the right thing to do because if you tried again, it would work, and so that's the utility of persistence But you do and you never know in some fundamental sense whether you're being persistent or blind That's a tough thing to figure out most entrepreneurs who become successful have failed in a dozen enterprises before and so are they Persistent or have they failed to learn from experience like well. There's a toss-up then Then for imagine you don't ignore it okay now. You're gonna. You're gonna fix the problem Well then you have two choices you could fix the world or you could fix yourself and Let's say while fixing yourself is often at least in principle easier than fixing the world although Sometimes the world is wrong, and you're right not very often, but sometimes you know so if you're gonna fix yourself You've failed multiple times the first thing that has to happen is that the part of you that's error ridden has to die And so there is that element. That's exactly I would say in some sense the payoff of neuroticism is well Why have negative emotion it's well You get anxious so that you stop doing things that might cause your own destruction Like there's there's value in the signal But because it's so difficult to determine like if you're arguing with your wife this is constant issue in marriages is like well should she change or you and The answer sometimes is she should and sometimes the answer is you should and sometimes the answer is you both should But it's not like that's easy to figure out a priori One of the things I tried to do with my clients all the time was to I wouldn't say minimize a problem But it would be to parameterize it You know like maybe I'd have a client who was so afraid of their economic uncertainty that they wouldn't even tell me how much rent They were paid because I had clients like that and so I would Continue to inquire till I got them to admit the terrible truth about their rent And then we could narrow the problem We could keep narrowing the scope of the problem so they didn't feel like the problem meant their entire financial future was going to fall apart and and it's that and There's a catalyzation in that right that narrowing where that's actually beneficial imagine that you have a problem and then imagine that you want a solution and Imagine that there there's a particular solution to that particular problem But then imagine that you have what you might describe as a bigger problem, and that's not the problem It's the fact that you have problems because that's the real problem The real problem is the fact that you have problems, and then you might say well You don't want a solution to our problem. You want a solution to the fact that you have problems And so it's a leap of abstraction So then you might say well is there way of conceptualizing the set of all problems That's universal, and I think there is that's what religious stories try to do and and they do it using drama dramatic means because The the problem is so complex, so that's the meta problem It's so complex that we don't really know how to formulate it. That's what we're struggling towards So it's like well. What's the problem of life something like that well you could say that the problem of life And I outlined this quite carefully in in 12 rules for life The the problem of life is this we're finite and Mortal that's problem number one so so the first problem is that life is essentially tragic. It's little us against infinity and we lose and Not only do we lose But we lose in a manner that produces a substantial amount of suffering and sometimes an unbearable amount So it's a big problem, so that's problem number one Problem number two is that that's not the worst problem the worst problem. Is that that's true plus malevolence exists in the world evil exists in the world and makes that first problem even worse than it would have to be and That's universally true for everyone all the time. That's archetypal so when you when you formulate a situation archetypally You you speak about it in a manner. That's eternally true, so There's lots of ways that you and I differ but there's many ways that we're the same and so that would be what constitutes our essential humanity, let's say and what constitutes what makes us the same is that like you I'm mortal and my life is finite and my existence is characterized by suffering And I have to contend with the fact of malevolence in the world, and it's it's the the terribly destructive Character character of the natural world it's the tyrannical element of the social world and it's the adversarial element of Myself and every other individual so that's that's the malevolent element and so we're stuck with that okay fine That's the archetypal formulation of the problem. You could say that's the mythic landscape right and something like Good and evil in a world of chaos and order. It's something like that. It's very interesting You know there are games online that have that as their basic structure right the game developers have figured this out So that's pretty interesting okay, so then the question is well how do you comport yourself in a landscape of chaos and order and When the game is good versus evil something like that well then that's where the idea of the archetypal hero emerges and the archetypal hero is the person whose eyes are open and whose speech is true and Who faces both the chaos of the unknown and the tyranny of the known and Balances them right and then you think well, and that's that's the antidote to the problem That's the meta solution to the meta problem that which you most need is to be found where you least want to look That's right, it's that's right. It's the theme of the Holy Grail. That's exactly right well So there's a there's a little story that goes along with that so King Arthur and his knights are all sitting around a round table which implies that they're of equal stature essentially And they go off to look for the Holy Grail which is the container of that which redeems It's something like that, but of course who the hell knows where to look for the Holy Grail So each of the knights decides to enter the forest at the point that looks darkest to him Right and that's that's a hell of a story because first of all it shows that courage is the first Requirement right because you look for what's darkest and you go in there that's that's part of you know Jung developed that idea quite substantially with regards to his notion of the shadow and it's also I think it's also what makes this believable for people because you know the alternative is something like well, you know Look for happiness and everyone thinks well I'd rather be happy than miserable and like fair enough, you know But there's nothing about that that has any nobility and it's not believable No one believes that because everyone knows that life is bounded by tragedy and that malevolence abounds Everyone knows that so and you say, you know So there's that terrible those that terrible dark dyad of tragedy and evil and you wave the little flag of happiness in front of it It's like, you know, no one believes that that will work. But then when you tell people look You're dark. You're a monster. You really are and but that's actually useful because you cannot Survive the world without being a monster people think oh, well, that's interesting I kind of suspected that I was a monster and everyone's always said that was bad It is bad, obviously but there's something that can be done about it and that's something that week that can be transmuted into something good without being Inhibited to be good. I can be a monster, but I can be like a civilized monsters like yeah That's what you should aim at you should be Unbelievably dangerous the more dangerous you are the better and then you should control that