"FOLLOW This Life Advice To CHANGE Your Future In 2023!" | Jordan Peterson
This is a YouTube video titled "FOLLOW This Life Advice To CHANGE Your Future In 2023!" featuring a detailed conversation between Jordan Peterson and Lewis AI recorded in October 2022. The content is an in-depth discussion on motivation, goal setting, overcoming suffering, and personal development. Jordan Peterson explains his self-authoring program and shares insights on how having aims in life provides meaning and helps manage suffering, while Lewis AI actively engages by asking clarifying questions and reflecting on the topics discussed. The dialogue covers themes such as ethical accomplishment, confidence, dealing with doubts, and the importance of physical and mental discipline.
Chapters
Now you've got your thing to aim at. Think, well, I'm motivated because I got my thing to aim at. It's like you're not as motivated as you could be because you don't yet have your thing to run away from. Because if you really want to be motivated, you want to be, you don't have a noble aim. And if that isn't imbuing your life with sustainable meaning, then you fall prey to all the catastrophe, the pain and the anxiety and the anger that that suffering generates. And that makes you bitter.
Because what I'm hearing you say is that, and correct me if I'm wrong, we must have an aim in our life no matter what stage of life we're in. And if we don't have some type of aim, even if for a few months of an aim of going somewhere or direction, we're gonna, the suffering is gonna be even more suffering. Pointless. Because we're already gonna face the greatest challenges in life. That's right. You're stuck.
We're already struggling.
That's right.
There's no way out.
Diversity is coming no matter what.
That's right.
If we have big goals or small little goal or whatever it may be, But it's going to be less suffering if we have an aim.
Yeah, well, not only it's worse than that even, because the suffering is... It has zero meaning. Well, the suffering is pain, and the suffering is anxiety and uncertainty, and the suffering is hopelessness, but the consequence of all that is that you get bitter, and when you get bitter, you get mean, and you get cruel, and you start to hurt yourself and other people. So it's not only that if you don't have a goal, you suffer, it's that if you don't have a goal, you suffer, and then you get cruel and bitter and resentful, and then you start to actively try to make the world a worse place. And so, because you can't suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and you can't become bitter without becoming cruel. So you need an aim. The question is, then the question of course, what you should aim.
Yeah, better aim.
Better aim, that's for sure. So then the question is, what should your aim be? Now we have a program. It's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today. I have this website called selfauthoring.com and that program helps people write about their life. And so there's a past authoring program. To establish your aim, you have to know where you are. It's like you're trying to orient yourself on a map. You can't orient yourself on a map unless you know where you are. You also have to know where you're going, right? So those are the two relevant things. The past authoring program helps people write about their lives. So it's a guided autobiography. We ask people to break their life up into six epochs, six sections, and then to write about the emotionally important events in those epochs and to detail out why the positive things happened and why more of that could conceivably happen in the future and to detail out why the negative things happened and to try to understand why with a name to not replicating them in the future. Because the purpose of memory isn't to remember the past. the purpose of memory is so that you figure out what went wrong when something went wrong so you don't duplicate it in the future. So that's the purpose of memory. And the past authoring program can help people catch up. And you know you have to catch up if you have memories that are older than about a year and a half that still cause you emotional pain when you think about them. Or if you dwell on them, they come spontaneously back to mind. It means that there's part of your life that you haven't mapped out properly. and it still has emotional valence that's gripping you. You're still holding onto that story. Or it's still holding onto you. You haven't let it go. Yeah, well you haven't been able to navigate your way through it. There's a pitfall there that you fell in and you don't know how to avoid similar pitfalls in the future and that's why your brain won't let it go. Because it's saying that's what the anxiety systems do. It's like, this happened to you, it wasn't good. This happened to you, it wasn't good. This happened to you, it wasn't good. Fix it, fix it, fix it. that will never go away unless you fix it.
How do you fix it?
Well, you have to figure out why it happened.
Right?
That's the first thing is like, how did you, how was it that that situation rose to pull you down? And that's not simple. That's why, well, that's why we have the writing program, because it's complicated to think it through. But you, but if you face it and you, and you meditate on it, let's say, and so you do this voluntarily, there's a pretty high probability that you'll be able to Decrease the probability that will be repeated in the future.
So... Go ahead, I don't want to cut you off.
Oh, well, the second part of the program helps people do an analysis of their virtues and their faults, same sort of idea. What's good about you that you could capitalize on? What's weak about you that you need to fix so that it doesn't bring you down? Right, and that's the present authoring. But the future authoring program is probably most relevant to you and your listeners because you're interested in helping people establish aims. And so we already talked about the fact that you need a name in life or that's where you derive your meaning and without that things go to hell and as literally as that can be taken. And so but it's not easy to ask people to say, well it's easy to ask them, what do you want in your life? It's a very hard question to answer because it's too vague and grand. So we help in the future authoring program, we help people break that down. It's okay, so here's the situation. Put yourself in the right frame of mind. So what's the right frame of mind? It's like rule two in this book. Treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. You're someone that you are responsible for helping. So what that means is you have to start from the presupposition that despite all your flaws and insufficiencies, that it's worth having you around and that it would be okay if things were better for you. So you need to take care of yourself like you're taking care of someone you care for. So there's a bit of a detachment in that. And then the next thing is, okay, so now look three to five years down the road. Okay, you get to have what you need and want, assuming you're being reasonable, and that you actually want it, which means you're willing to make the sacrifices that would make it possible.
What do you mean by reasonable?
Well, that's the next thing. Well, within your grasp, that would be something.
What if something is out of your grasp, but you still push hard enough to get it?
Well, then you need an incremental plan. Got it. You need to break that goal down into steps.
Crazy goal within a year that's like, you haven't even done the work to.
Master a skill yet. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, well that's it.
And you can have a high end.
Goal and more power to you if you do. Well, you need a pathway to it. You know, if it's 10 stories up above you, you need a staircase to get there, right? And so you have to build the staircase too. And so in the future authoring program, so you're asked first of all, okay, you get to have what you want and need. That's the proposition. But you have to aim at it. You have to define it and aim at it. So then the first thing is, okay, If you could put your family together the way you wanted it to be, what would that look like? And so that might be your siblings and your parents, but that also might be your wife or your husband and your kids, assuming that you're at that point in your life. If you could have the family you wanted, what would that look like?
Right?
Okay. Career, same thing. You get to have the career or the job that is within your grasp, necessary and suitable for you if you were taking care of yourself. Are you going to educate yourself? Because you're not as smart as you should be. There's a lot more things you need to know. So you've got to keep learning and moving forward. So you need to plan for that. How are you going to take care of yourself mentally and physically?
Right?
So how are you going to avoid the catastrophic temptations, for example, of drugs and alcohol? Because that pulls a lot of people down. You need a plan for that. You're going to be a social drinker? How much are you going to drink? How much is too much? What about your drug use? You've got to regulate that so it isn't a pitfall. How are you going to use your time meaningful and productively outside of work? Because you need to plan for that. So that's, and there's one other that's a six-minute mindset, right? Yeah, I think there's seven initial questions and I don't remember the last one. Oh, intimate relationship, of course. So you have, do you want a long-term stable intimate relationship? And if you do, then how would you like that to lay itself out? You've got to have a vision for that because if you don't have a vision, you're not going to aim at it. And if you don't aim at it, then you won't even see the opportunities when they arise. That's the thing that's so cool. I wrote about this in chapter 10, which is be precise in your speech. It's a chapter about the fact that aims structure your perceptions. So, for example, once you aim at something, your brain, literally the perceptual structures in your brain, in your visual cortex, reorient themselves to calculate a pathway to the aim. And then what they show you in the world is obstacles to that path. and open pathways to the path. That's actually how the world reveals itself. Just like when you're driving in a car and you have a map and you aim at a particular place, then all the things that are related to that place show up in the world. It's exactly the same thing. Because you are traveling through time and space, and you need a map. And so after you answer these seven questions and you're encouraged to do it badly, Because you don't have to be perfectionistic. Just complete it. Right, because a bad plan is better than no plan. It gives you something to improve. So even if your aim is vague, and even if it's off target, if you start aiming and you see you're off target, then you can shift and you can make it more precise.
You start to recognize what you don't want in that. Yes, exactly. Say, oh, I thought I wanted this, but I don't. So let me re-navigate and figure out.
What I do want. Exactly. And you might have to try a bunch of things. Well, you will have to. you can be. That's why you shouldn't get perfectionistic about it. You will absolutely be wrong, but you won't be as wrong as you would have been if you were aimless.
Right. Right.
So it's a.
So there's a bit of.
No man's land. No man's land is worse than. No man's room is a bit worse than a bad path. Yeah, that's exactly right. I like that. That's a good one. That's a good one. And it's right. It's right.
You don't want to be in no man's land. Why did you use that phrase? Because that's right. That's exactly right, I think. For me, the idea of walking around aimlessly is like the worst idea in the world. It's like zero purpose, zero mission, zero certainty at all. It's like walking around in no man's land aimlessly. But it's funny too because in no.
Man'S land everybody's shooting at you. Because that's a military term. No man's land is the space between two enemy positions. You bet. So if you're aimless, you're also at a place where everything is shooting at you. Dang. Yeah, so it's a very good metaphor that came to mind. Yeah, well that's why we worked on it. That's very, very cool. So then we say to people, okay, look now, okay, now you've thought about this for a while. It's nice to do this over a couple of days too, because then you get to sleep on it and that helps reorient yourself. So then, okay, now you write for 20 minutes, don't worry about grammar, spelling. This isn't a composition exercise, right? You get to have what you want three to five years down the road. What does your life look like? Hypothetically. Write it out. Write it out. Okay. So then that's the first part. The second part of the exercise. So now you've got your thing to aim at. You think, well, I'm motivated because I got my thing to aim at. It's like you're not as motivated as you could be because you don't yet have your thing to run away from. Because if you really want to be motivated, you want to be going somewhere.
And you want to be not going somewhere else.
Which typically is a pain. Yes, pain or anxiety.
Some domain of suffering and guilt.
I don't want to feel this anymore. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So the other thing we ask people is, okay, now take stock of your weaknesses and imagine that you let them multiply. You got hopeless and you augured in and things were as bad for you as they could be in three to five years.
What are some examples of weaknesses that people might have?
They lie, they procrastinate, they avoid, they're grandiose, they're narcissistic, they're undisciplined, they're nihilistic, they're aimless, all of those things, right? Victim mentality. They take the quick way out, they pursue impulsive pleasures, they sacrifice meaning for expediency, they don't take care of their basic responsibilities, they fight stupidly with their parents, they don't negotiate properly with their spouse, they are bitter at work because they haven't said what they have to say, they haven't thought through what they're doing tomorrow, they drink too much, they smoke too much, they take too many drugs, they don't regulate their Don't work out, yeah. Yeah, so there's like, and everyone knows, man, everyone knows, and everyone's got a set of weaknesses that they know about. And so we say, all right.
What are some of your weaknesses, like three weaknesses that you know right now you could still work on, and then three things that you think are really.
Well, a lot of things, a lot of things are things that I've taken care of in my life. Like I used to smoke when I was a kid, I smoked a pack a day, I used to drink a lot, I didn't work out. Like, I wasn't nearly as disciplined as I should have been. I wasn't as careful with what I was saying. like, I, and I, my most likely negative outcome probably would have been, I really like to drink. Like, alcohol is a really good drug for me.
Is that why you did a thesis on that?
Well, partly. It was mostly because the opportunity came up for me to, to investigate drug and alcohol use. But I came from a little town in northern alberta. It was a heavy drinking town, and, yeah, and that, that could have been a real trap for me.
Right.
You know, and. and, and, and so anyway, so we have these people say, okay, now you know your weaknesses and you know what particular hell you would descend to if you allowed yourself to descend into it because you've probably had a taste of it. It's like you really let that go and you're in a terrible place in three to five years because you haven't done what you should do. What does that look like? It's like everybody write it down. Yeah, write it down. So you know, because one of the things you want to have behind you, let's say you have to do something difficult, like go confront your boss. It's like, well, maybe hope isn't enough to encourage you to do that. You think, well, no, if I don't encourage... If I don't go confront my boss carefully and intelligently, then I'm gonna hate my job and then I'm gonna drink more. Then I'm gonna end up in that little hell place that I designed for myself. It's like, oh, I'm not going there. I don't want to talk to my boss or I don't want to confront my wife or my husband, whatever it.
Is, or my father or my children for that matter. But if I don't, Then I'll resent myself or resent this person.
-And I'm gonna end up going down this terrible pathway. It's like, because sometimes when you're moving forward, you have to do something difficult. You might think, well, why bother? And the answer is, well, so I don't end up in hell. How about that? Oh yeah, oh yeah, there's that. -Yeah, because it's deep.
If you don't experience the pain now or the difficulty now, you're gonna have a deeper pain later. -Yeah, yeah, that's life. -Much deeper pain later. And that's why I think that you mentioned at one point is like, putting ourselves in structured pain, like structured sense of feeling pain throughout the day, whether it be the tough conversation. I don't want to do that. It's painful, but I'm going to because I know afterwards it's gonna probably feel better.
It's a bit of a sacrifice, right? So you sacrifice stability in the present for a gain in the future. That's the big discovery of human beings. Sacrifice works.
Exactly. Were you a big athlete growing up?
No?
No.
Well, I was a small kid and I skipped a grade. Although I skied and I went cross-country skiing and that's individual sports things mostly with my dad.
You understand then, in order to improve as an athlete or in any sport, you have to put yourself through daily pain. Yeah, right. If you want to achieve that model of excellence that you watch someone playing basketball as a child and you see someone living this model, it's gonna be 15 years of deliberate pain.
Yeah, that's a discipline. That's it. Yeah, well I worked out for a long time with weights, you know.
So you know, you felt it every day. you don't want to push through the pain, but you knew that it would.
Get you a greater result. Yeah, well, and it's easier not to do it than to do it, but not in the long run. Yeah, exactly. You know, I really seen the benefits, for example, for weightlifting, because I've watched people, because I'm 58, 50, how old am I? 56. Great. No, I'm serious, so I'm getting older and I really noticed the difference between people and when they age, between people who laid down a good physiological platform when they were young and those who didn't, because by the, if you haven't, worked out weights particularly, I would say. You start to get pretty soft in your 30s and your cardiovascular system starts to go and really early. The whole other thing too is the best thing you can do to maintain cognitive ability isn't to do exercises like lumosity. It's not brain exercises that keep you sharp, it's exercise. So if you're 50, both cardiovascular and weight lifting, if you're 50 you can restore your cognitive function to the level of a 30 year old. through exercise.
Your mental function through physical activity.
Yeah, well your brain is a very demanding organ and if your cardiovascular system is compromised then you get stupid. And so yeah, it's really small.
Because the less you move and the bigger you get, the more stupid you become.
Yeah, well you compromise, you compromise its function because the brain is, it's the organ that uses more, it's very metabolically demanding and so if your not in good physical shape, then one of the things that suffers most greatly is your cognitive function. And so that's quite an interesting thing to see how tight that linkage is. So in the next part of the program, we have people, Now it's okay, now you've got your vision.
Yep.
Even if it's a bad one, it's still okay.
That's right.
Well, it's better than no vision at all, right? It's something that you can improve. Well, think. You're trying to get through a territory you don't understand. And here's your option.
No map.
A map that's not so good but has some things about it, or a great map. Well, obviously the great map is the thing you want, but the map that's something is way better than the map that's nothing. Plus, as you explore, because of your map, you can start to fill in the details.
And you start to learn, you start to overcome stuff, and you start to master skills on your journey, right?
Yeah, well that's the other thing too, is like, let's say you aim at something and you develop some skills along the way, and then you get like a third of the way there and you think, oh, that's not for me. It's like, well, yeah, fair enough, but now you've still got the skills you developed. You know exactly why it's not for you now instead of vaguely.
You don't have to keep going after that.
Exactly, exactly.
Well, and you have a rationale. And then you can bring that wisdom back, even though it's not perfect, you can bring it back to your next plan.
And so.
And take responsibility for the next steps. Yes, yes. And so as you plan, you get better at planning, which is the crucial thing. So then we say to people, take your positive vision and make it into eight stateable goals, right? So and then rank them in a hierarchy because you need to know what...
Like a top goal and then incremental goals.
Yeah, and that's the other thing is break the goals into incremental goals so that you have a reasonable probability of succeeding. So because what you want to do, this is also what you want to do with the kid. You don't tell your kid, Here's an impossible thing. Why don't you go out and fail? You say, Here's something worth going after. Here's a step you could take that would push you beyond where you are, but that you also have a reasonably high probability of succeeding at. They call that- Within a time frame.
Within some time frame.
That's the other thing. You have to parameterize it with regards to time frame. That's right. And that puts you in the zone of proximal development. And that's a concept that was generated by a guy named Vygotsky. He was a Russian developmental psychologist and the smart one. It's where the idea of the zone comes from, to be in the zone. And when you're in the zone, you're expanding your skills in a manner that's intrinsically rewarding because you're succeeding. And so you want to set if you're good to yourself, you think, okay, I need to set a goal, but.
I need to set a goal that.
Someone as stupid and useless as me could probably attain if they put some effort into it.
Right.
And then you've got it perfectly because it's not so high that it's grandiose or impossible that you fail necessarily and then justify your bitterness. It's like, well, I could do well.
Because that happens to people.
It happens all the time. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's like, it's.
Yes, exactly.
Well, I set a goal and I didn't attain it, so I'm not going.
To set any more goals.
Right.
It's like, no, you set a goal that was inappropriate for the time frame. That's right. You didn't calibrate it properly.
And.
And you're playing a trick on yourself because you wanted to fail so that you could justify not having to try.
And being a victim.
Yeah.
Which isn't helpful. You're still going to be a victim. There's no way out of that, man. So, you know, because life is this. Life is a challenge that in some sense can't be surmounted. So there's no way out of your problem. But there are certainly proper ways of dealing with it. Yeah. And so you lay out those eight steps.
Yeah.
Right.
Lay them out.
And then the next thing is, okay, you need a rationale for them because you're going to have doubts and other people are going to put up obstacles.
Is that a meaning you mean? Is that a meaning?
A rationale means a meaning. Yeah, yeah, a justification. It's like, okay, so here, what sort of justification is a good justification for your goals? It's easy. Why would it be good for you? Okay? Why would it be good for your family if you attained that goal? Why would it be good for the broader community? Because if it's a good goal, it.
Should be good for you.
That's fine. But if it's a really good goal, it should be good for you in a way that's good for other people. Win, win, win. Yes, exactly. And if you're gonna decide what your goals are, Why not set up the ones that benefit the largest number of people simultaneously? Yes, if you can do that. You should start with your own concerns because you have to take care of yourself. Yes, put your own oxygen mask on, then put your child's oxygen mask on. Yes, put your own oxygen mask on. Yeah, right. And then you can, as you build up the basis of competence locally, you might develop enough skills so that you can expand that outward. And it also gives your goal a certain amount of nobility. So if someone challenges you and says, well, why are you doing that? That seems stupid. You could say, I'm doing that because it helps me take care of myself, but it benefits my family. And here's the reasons why. And this is the repercussions out into the broader community. And like people aren't, people who are putting up objections and doubts aren't, aren't armed to deal with that kind of response. And then when you have those doubts.
In your mind that plague you, which.
They, and go back to your reason. You go back to your reasons. You say, why? That's right. Say, why am I doing this? Oh, yeah. because well, I have to take care of myself because otherwise I'm pathetic and useless and bitter and cruel and then I'm going somewhere terrible so that's a bad idea and here's how it would help my family and here's how it would help the community and that's good enough set of reasons for unless I can think of better ones.
Right. Right.
Without better ones, that's good enough. Because I think the question comes back to after, you know, someone could go down the rabbit hole and say, why, why am I doing this and why is this, you know, Meaningful for me and I think a lot of people go back to well, why am I here in the first place? Yes, yes why am I here?
Hmm.
What is the meaning of my life? And is this real or is this just some dream world?
Well, and then that then people do.
Go back to that and then they get stuck on that. Yeah, what none of this even matters because why am I even here?
Well, the thing is is that that's a self-defeating set of propositions in some sense because the consequence of being stuck there is There's no reason you're stuck there to begin with is because you're not very happy about the fact that life is intrinsically tied up with suffering. Because you wouldn't be asking that question to begin with. Okay, so if you let that pull you in and take you down, all it does is make the suffering worse. It's not helpful. And then the cascade that we talked about happens. You suffer stupidly and pointlessly. You get better, you get cruel, you make everything worse. It's like, that's your answer, is it? You're going to make everything worse. It's bad enough you're going to make it worse. Mostly people won't do that consciously. So you think, well, what's the alternative? Well, here's one. If you have a sufficiently noble purpose, the suffering will justify itself. And I think that's empirically testable. And I do believe it's the case because I've watched people do very difficult things, like people who work in palliative care wards. So all they're ever dealing with is pain and death. And they can do it. They get up in the morning, they go to work, and they take care of those people. They lose people on a weekly basis. and yet they can do it. And what that shows is that if you turn around and you confront the suffering voluntarily, you find out that you are way tougher than you think. It's not that life is better than you think. Life is as harsh as you think. It might even be worse. But you are way tougher than you think if you turn around and confront it. And so then what you discover is that there's a spirit within you that pursues, that can pursue something meaningful, that has the resilience and the strength to contend properly with the catastrophe of existence without becoming bitter. That's actually the central. So, and then I would say that's one of the central themes of 12 Rules for Life, is that make no mistake about it, like the first noble truth of Buddhism, life is suffering. This is true, and it's worse than that because it's suffering contaminated by malevolence. That's the baseline. But, and so that's very pessimistic. But the optimistic part is that you are so damn tough you can actually not only deal with that, you can improve it. It's like, oh, well that's a horrible situation, but it turns out that I'm armed for the task. Well, that's a great thing for people to know. And I do believe, I think the fact that we're armed for the task is even more true than the fact that life is catastrophe contaminated by malevolence.
Do you need to know that you're transforming yourself in order to attain the goal, or do most people just think, I got to take these steps to make it happen, but they don't realize they're becoming better human beings.
It depends on what you mean by realize. They have the sense of satisfaction and confidence that would indicate that, although they might not be able to make what that means explicit. But I would say it would be better to make it explicit. It adds one other dimension of possible motivation.
How do you think people lose confidence? We've talked about gaining it, but how does someone, how could someone like yourself who's accomplished so much, who's got millions of followers, who is financially successful, has a great marriage, how could someone lose confidence once they've built it?
Illness.
That'll do it.
That's one way. Death of someone, loss, I mean, there's lots of ways of having the rug pulled out from underneath you. Moral error, as the stakes get higher, as we already discussed, the consequences get larger. Ingratitude, that's a big one. you can succumb to the temptation to believe your own egotism. That's a big mistake. There's lots of ways that things can go sideways, that's for sure.
So it sounds like, you know, we start off with a lack of confidence when we're pointed at, you're inadequate in this thing. And we go down a journey of, you know, building ourselves and overcoming the challenges and diving into the fear to, to have these small wins to build confidence. And then the more successful we become, the more we succumb to losing that confidence again when a lot.
No, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say necessarily that you become more susceptible to that. But you asked, how can that happen? How can that loss occur? I think, I think I still believe that you know, genuine accomplishment, but it's ethical. It's always ethical accomplishment. I believe that to be the case. Genuine ethical accomplishment is the best source of security, but it's not un- unerring.
When you mean ethical accomplishment, do you.
Mean doing something good, right?
Whether people know about it or not, just. Good and right for yourself? Is that what I'm hearing you say? Or does someone else need to acknowledge that this was good and right?
I think if you've done it for yourself, that's good. But if you do it and other people are in on it and along for the ride, that's also good. And sometimes that's better to bring people along. If it's just a matter of them acknowledging it, well, there's value in that, too. I mean, you know, you, people say, well, you shouldn't care what people think of you. It's like, well, of course you should. Psychopaths don't care what people think of them. Now, you shouldn't care so much what people think about you that you're willing to lie to maintain whatever it is that you think they value. Like, there are places beyond which that becomes counterproductive, clearly, but. Of course, well, I mean, I read the comments in YouTube particularly, and I pay attention to them. And if, you know, 30 people say something like, here's something I do, and I probably did it to you. When I'm interviewing, I interrupt more than a certain percentage of my audience would like.
That's my comments is like, just let them speak, you interrupt too much. So I just try to shut up more now.
Do you know the joke?
What's the joke?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
The interrupting cow. Moo. Sorry, that's a stupid joke. It's a stupid joke. Anyhow, so I read those and that's what people think. And then I think, okay, I should probably try to interrupt less, but I get excited and And then with Zoom, there's a lag and it's so yeah, that makes it harder. But I do pay attention and you should pay attention.
I think.
When, you know, I hear a lot of people say, don't let the opinions of other people hold you back from taking action on your goals. Because I think a lot of people will listen to other people's opinions and they feel scared to do something based on Someone saying, I told you so, or you couldn't do this, or you're not good enough. How do we overcome that? Those opinions that keep us playing small, that hold us from putting our creation into the world or going after our dreams.
Well, generally, someone else's comment is unlikely to bring you to a halt unless you value that comment. So imagine you're going to pursue a goal. But you're full of doubts. And so 40% of you is doubts and 60% of you is pursuing the goal. And then five or six people object and they object using the doubts. Well, you're, you're, it's, that's going to be really hard on you.
So how do we overcome self-doubt?
Well, partly what that means is you, you probably haven't thought it through completely. like, what are you doing and why? And if you have a bunch of doubts and they haven't been addressed, then you're vulnerable at that point. And it may be that your goal is not everything it could be. And it may be that your strategy isn't fully fleshed out. And so you have to have a conversation with your doubts and take them seriously and see if you can construct a goal that you're on board with. And then a doubt pops up because someone criticizes you and triggers a doubt and you look at the doubt and you think, okay, here's the doubt and this is why what I'm doing maybe won't work. But then you think, but this, I've thought this through and I've thought this through and I've thought this through and that all works. And so, No, that isn't going to stop me. So I look and I think, well, I'm writing something. Why? Well, I want to figure out this problem. I want to think about this problem. Why? Well, it's an engaging problem, but it's a problem that many people seem to have so that discussing it and figuring it out seems to be useful.
Why?
Well, because the more of us who take problems seriously and try to address them and communicate about them, the fewer problems we might have. And the less suffering there'll be. And suffering doesn't seem to be a good thing. Unnecessary suffering. Maybe we could work towards it. And maybe that's what I should be doing. And that seems to be what's ethical. And. And that's it. Like, and you might say, you might say, well, What if you doubt that doing what's ethical is right? Well, it's not that easy to construct an argument that supports the idea that having more unnecessary suffering in the world is good. So I would say, you know, you want to put yourself on firm moral foundations. And people talk about morality all the time. this is what you should do or you're a bad person. It's arbitrary. You know, it's got this ring of patriarchal tyranny. But that's based on a misapprehension of what morality is. It's like, do you want to be tortured by your conscience? Like, how pleasant do you find it to be tortured by your conscience?
It's horrible.
How horrible? Like, is there anything worse?
It was excruciating.
Yeah.
I don't know if there's anything worse.
I mean, it's up there.
You gotta live with it. Yeah. For as long as you have it.
Yeah.
Well, I think that's a universal experience or near universal experience. So you live ethically when you're not violating your conscience. Well, there isn't anything better than that. That might not be good enough. It might not even be good. Let's say you manage it. Things can still come along and take you out sideways. But the purpose of living ethically is so that you have some peace. And it's real. The ethical torment and the peace that emerges as a consequence.
Sorry, I want to interrupt.
No, no problem.
What is the biggest doubt you face? at this stage of your life and how are you working to overcome it?
The biggest doubt I have is whether or not I'm going to be healthy enough to continue. By far, that's, it's, it's, and it's a continual, it plagues me continually, continually, every second. I'm so ill.
How are you navigating that?
Well.
With great care and effort, I mean, I wake up at 8, even though my sleep is not restorative at all. It's disrupted, and I don't know why. so I sleep, but it's not restorative. I've had my sleep monitored, so I don't go into deep sleep. I get up at eight, period. I sauna for 45 minutes. I walk seven miles. I work out. I write. I do my work. I. I stick to a very specific schedule and. I hope that that's, that I can manage that and that I'll improve across time.
Yeah.
So, but, we'll see. But it's touch and go all the time.
You want to bridge that gap from the highest abstraction down to the lowest level of behavior so that it becomes implementable. That's how philosophical concepts take on their meaning, right? Because they have to, they have to have some impact on the way you see the world and the way you act in the world or they're not fully realized, they're not understood. Partly what we mean, I would say, when we say that we understand something, it's kind of a strange phrase to understand something, but it means to be able to embody it in a shift of view and a shift of action. And then you've got it. It's graspable. It's in your hand.
Embody something in a shift of view.
Well, they're the same thing, eh? Because your perceptions are very tightly linked to your actions because of course when you're acting, you're aiming at something, you have to be devoted towards some aim, some target. We play that out in sports all the time. That's why sports are so entertaining for people, is because they dramatize the idea of aim, and not only of aim but of the pursuit of excellence in pursuit of that aim. That's the game, and the reason it's a spectacle and the reason that people participate in it is because it dramatizes something absolutely essential about life. And so you want to take philosophical abstractions and you want to use them to structure your aim. And then your perceptions organize around that aim. And then you act it out. And then you've got it. Then it's become part of your life. It's not just a philosophical abstraction that floats free in space.
Why is there so much conflict in in the world is it because there's so many different perceptions that people have, what they think should be right or what they should not?
Sure. Well, part of it is part of it, of course, there's conflict because we have real problems and so life is actually difficult. Independent of the psychological foolishness, let's say, independent of the obstacles that we put in our own path. It's already fatally challenging. Life is the ultimate challenge.
We will die.
Yes, yes.
There is a challenge.
Yes.
Uncertainty, fear, pain, all those things.
Yes, everything that goes along with suffering is a challenge. And it's the full challenge because it takes everything you have. And so part of the reason we disagree is because there are complex problems to solve. And then we also disagree because we're willfully blind and because we're more ignorant than we should be and we're not everything we should be. And we tilt towards malevolence from time to time and we betray each other and ourselves. So we take a bad lot in many ways and make it worse. Now, not always, obviously, and we don't have to, but that's sort of the baseline that we're working against. I think people are most disappointed in life when they're disappointed in themselves. They see that they've made things worse than they had to be, even though the baseline can be pretty brutal. So, yeah, so the book and all my lectures, I suppose, are put forward in an attempt to take the high-level philosophical abstractions and to make them into something that's actionable.
And to take the next best action in your life to improve your life, so we don't have to suffer as much.
Well, and hopefully also so that people around you don't have to either. So one of the things I've been talking to my audiences about is the relationship between responsibility and meaning, which is, what would you you say it's a constant refrain in the book. It's one of its underlying messages, let's say, or themes is a better way of thinking about it. If you start with the presumption that there's a baseline of suffering in life and that that can be exaggerated as a consequence of human failing, as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and self-betrayal and deceit and all those things that we do to each other and ourselves that we know that aren't good. That amplifies the suffering. That's sort of the baseline against which you have to work. And it's contemplation of that often that makes people hopeless and depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and all of that. And they have the reasons. But you need something to put up against that. And what you put up against that is meaning. Meaning is actually the instinct that helps you guide yourself through that catastrophe. And most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility. So if you think, for example, if you think about the people that you admire, well, you think about when you have a clear conscience first, because that's a good thing to aim at, which is something different than happiness, right? A clear conscience is different than happiness.
That's better.
Yeah.
You're not better.
Guilt in yourself. You're not feeling bad about yourself.
That's right. you feel that you've justified your existence, right? And so you're not waking up at three in the morning in a cold sweat thinking about all the terrible things that you've involved yourself in.
What you said to someone that you shouldn't have said or how you acted or lied.
What opportunity you lost or yeah, or the things that you've let go that you should have capitalized on and all of that. And so if you think about the times when you're at peace with yourself with regards to how you're conducting yourself in the world. It's almost always conditions under which you've adopted responsibility.
Right.
At least the most, the most guilt, I think, that you can experience, perhaps, is the sure knowledge that you're not even taking care of yourself so that you're leaving that responsibility to other people, because that's pretty pathetic. And I, unless you're Psychopathic and, you know, and you're living a parasitical life, and that, that characterizes a very small minority of people and an even smaller minority think that's justifiable. But most of the time you're in guilt and shame because you're not, not only are you not taking care of yourself, let's say, so someone else has to, but you're not living up to your full potential. And so there's an existential weight that goes along with that.
So you suffer even more when you don't take care of yourself or take the best actions or do the work that you know you you can do and you rely on someone else to support you financially, emotionally, physically, whatever it may be.
Yeah, well, because you're not only, you're not only not being what you could be, you're interfering with someone else being what they could be, right? So, you're not only a void, you're a drain. Jesus, that's a catastrophe.
But we usually don't even know it when we're in that situation because we're in a depressed state or we're... Or.
We don't want to see it. you know, you wake up at 3:00 in the morning and you know. And so, and then you think of the people that you, so you admire yourself or perhaps you can at least live with yourself when you're taking responsibility, at least for yourself. And so that settles your conscience. But then if you look at the people that you spontaneously admire, and so the act of spontaneously admiring someone is the manifestation of the instinct for meaning.
Right?
So this is partly why people are so enamored of sports figures, because the sports figures are playing out the drama of attaining the goal, of attaining a certain kind of, let's say, psychological and physical perfection in pursuit of the goal. That's the drama. And to spontaneously admire that is to have that instinct for meaning latch onto something that can be used as a model, and then that model should be transcribed into something that's applicable in life. You know, and you really like to see in an athletic performance, you really like to see someone who's extremely disciplined and in shape do something physically remarkable and to stretch themselves even beyond their previous exploits because you really like to see a brilliant move in an athletic match. But you also like to see that person ensconced in a broader moral framework so that not only are they trying to win and disciplining themselves in pursuit of that victory and then stretching themselves so they're continually getting better, but they're doing it in a way that helps develop their whole team and that's good for the sport in general and that reflects well on the broader culture.
They're a great leader on their team, they're positive, they're good sportsmen against the competitors, they're not negative towards the other people, they're lifting them up to like the ultimate human.
That's right, so that they can work for their own improvement in a way that simultaneously works for the improvement of their team and for sport and then to the degree that that spills over into the broader culture so much the better. So that's all being dramatized in an athletic event. And it's really, it's not philosophical, it's concrete, right? It's dramatized in the world and that's what the games represent. And so, well, and it's partly because, well, in some sense life is a game.
It is.
It is in that you're always, the analogy is that in, in life, like in sports, you're, you're, you're setting forth a name and then arranging your perceptions and your actions in pursuit of that. And then you also generally do it while cooperating and competing with other people.
Right.
So that's also the game-like element as well. All of that's dramatized in Athletics.
Yeah.
That's like philosophy for people who aren't philosophical. And I'm not being smart about that. You know, it's like it really is. philosophy for people who aren't being philosophical, because it's played out, you know? And you can see it, too. You can see the spontaneous appreciation for the human spirit manifest itself when you see people rise to their feet spontaneously in a sports arena when they see someone do something particularly remarkable. See an athlete who's extremely trained stretch themselves beyond what you'd think is a normative human limit, and everyone celebrates that, like, spontaneously. continuously. So it's quite something to behold.
So take me back to responsibility and meaning when we're watching sports or someone do this act. What does this do for us in terms of responsibility and meaning?
Well, it helps us figure out what we can imitate.
It gives us a model.
Yes, it's a model.
It gives a model of something that I respect.
Well, even what philosophy is, or even theology for that matter, is an abstract model. Like it's laid out in words. Now, the problem often is, is it becomes so abstract that people don't know how to bring it back down to embodiment. Yes. Whereas something like. Like the drama of a sports event is sort of Midway between philosophy and action.
Right.
And so it's. It's not entirely abstracted because it's not.
Only coded in words, it's acted out. Visual. You can see an example of what.
Just happens, and you can try to reverse engineer how they did that. Well, yes, exactly. Well, at least you the fact that you admire the person means that you might start to try to act like them. Now, it's not easy and maybe that would mean that you start to discipline yourself with regards to a particular sport. But it might also be that you start to mimic or are at least affected in some way by their their sportsman sportsman-like behavior, right? Which is the ground of a certain kind of ethic because if you can play well with others which is sort of the hallmark of a good sport, then that actually means that you're a reasonably sophisticated and civilized person. It's really important to learn to play well with others. That's the ground of ethics. If you can do it there in.
That setting, then hopefully you could translate it into life setting.
Well, right. That's exactly right. That's the goal. Well, that's what you hope for. Yeah, that's the goal of this. So if the goal of the game is to put the ball through the ball into the net, net, then the goal of having games is to produce people who can take proper aim no matter where they are.
What are the keys to building confidence when you feel insecure, afraid or scared of being embarrassed, whether it be dating someone or a career or anything? What's the keys to building confidence so that you're attracting what you want?
Look, I read some of your biographical history before we talked today. And You tell a story about being picked last, and then you compensated for that.
Yes.
Now, Alfred Adler, by the way, the psychoanalyst, the associate of Freud, built his whole theory around compensation of that sort. Inferiority complex plus compensation. But it's adaptive, right? Like you got picked last, it embarrassed the hell out of you. So what did you do? You decided that is not going to be me.
Never again.
Right.
Never again.
Okay, now you did say, you know, that you adopted a maybe too, what, inflexible model of what it meant to be masculine as a consequence. But when I read that, I thought, yeah, but still you, fair enough, it wasn't the new you that you adopted wasn't optimal in all possible manners, but it was definitely improvement over the previous you. Exactly.
I wasn't big last again, that's for sure.
Right, well exactly. Okay, so the first thing I would say is that if you feel insecure and less and ashamed and all of that, that you have to take stock. And look, I have an exercise online at selfauthoring.com, there's three exercises there. One helps you write about the past, one about the present and one about the future. The present authoring program helps you assess your faults and your virtues. Okay, well if you have some faults, and you feel insecure and inferior because of that, well, you should. Now, it shouldn't be so much that you're crippled by it and unable to take action. You shouldn't be beating yourself into the ground because you're not everything you could be because no one is. And if you beat yourself into the ground, then you can't get up and improve. But you have to differentiate. It's like, okay, to what degree am I being hard on myself? Counterproductively critical, hearing the voice of my too harsh and angry father in my head, adopting inappropriate stereotypical representations of masculine competence. How much of my self-criticism is ill-advised? Fair enough. And you want to deal with yourself with a certain amount of care. But then along with that, there's the, well, fix your weaknesses. you know, if you're ashamed of being ignorant, you're shown up at a party because, you know, you claim to knowledge that you don't have and someone exposes you. Well, you can be angry at them and you probably will, but they've actually done you a favor. They pointed out an inadequacy is a pathway that you can travel down.
Right.
A recognized inadequacy is as soon it's such a gift in some sense, if if it's accurate, I'm in it, because you think, well, what should I do? What should I do with my life? That's a real complicated question. Oh, here's an inadequacy. Excellent. You have a goal now, rectify it. Now you still have to think strategically and figure out how to rectify it and do it step by step. But Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist, pointed out.
That.
The person for therapy to be successful, the person has to want to change. So they have to have recognized that they have a problem. If someone is mandated by the court to attend therapy, it's very difficult for the therapist to convince them that they have a problem. Once you're convinced you have a problem, it's like away you go. You know, I know it's still technically difficult. It requires discipline and all of that. There's no magic solution, but if you're plagued by feelings of inferiority, you should rectify the most obvious inferiorities.
Right.
Focus on those first over optimizing strengths, would you say?
No, not necessarily. Not, not necessarily. I'm. And you don't have to redress every. Like, I can't. I'm a terrible jazz musician. You know, it's not a.
It's not a thing where you hold shame around or like.
Well, it's not an impediment.
Yeah. Yeah.
I would say that you have to rectify an inadequacy when it's clearly an impediment to your goal, or you have to shift goals. But if you're shifting goals because of an inadequacy related impediment, then you have to ask yourself, is your desire to shift the goal reliable, or are you just taking the easy way out? You can protect yourself by picking a different goal that's more difficult. That's a good mental hygiene. practice because sometimes you should switch goals rather than rectifying inadequacies. But you can fool yourself then and that's not good.
And if someone is goalless, lazy, unmotivated, not sure what they want to do, what would be a few key steps to get started to turn their life around or to find the motivation for something greater than where they're at?
Well, I think a fair bit of that's probably to be found in, you can find it in shame, you can find it in guilt, you can find it in conscience, you can find it in anger, you can find it in.
Interest.
And engagement and beauty. There's lots of pathways. If you're angry about something in the world, well, you know, That's an indication that that's in some sense your problem, right? It's speaking to you in a moral sense. This shouldn't be that way. Well, maybe you're the person who should do something about it in some manner. Maybe it'll take your whole life to figure out how to do that. But it's bothering you for a reason.
So.
The negative emotions can be a pathway to transformation. I'm not trying to romanticize them. They can crush you completely and leave you with nothing.
Yeah.
Right? For sure. And they can go badly astray.
But.
Shame, that's a good one. What am I ashamed of? Well, can you fix any of that? Because you might ask yourself, let's say you're so ashamed and so crushed that you're nihilistic and you can't see any hope for life. You're just done. You might think, well, what if I was less ashamed? Like, I'm not going to jump off the bridge today. I'm going to wait a year. I'm going to work on these things that I'm ashamed of. And just see, like, does my life improve enough so that I'm not so bitter about it now or I'm not so hopeless about it now? And my experience has generally been that that works. It works. And then some of it's practical knowledge too. It's like you can get a really long way with very small changes, incremental changes.
Yeah.
Micro habit changes. So aim low.
Don't have big goals or big transformations.
Well, you can, but the problem with a big goal is that it's daunting enough so that it might paralyze you and there's a high probability of failure. Imagine that you're your own child. Okay, now imagine you love this child and you would like him, we'll say him because it's you and I talking, to succeed. Now you have an ideal for this child you would like him to grow up to be the best he can be, better than you, the best man he can be. That's what you want for your son. If the good part of you is talking, you definitely want him to be better than you are, but you want him to be the best he could be if your vision is unclouded. Okay, but then you offer him a goal. It's like, well, do this. Well, can he do it? Well, if he can do it without a second's thought, there's no challenge in it. There's no developmental impetus. It's not in the zone of proximal development. You want a goal that you can do, but that requires some improvement on your part. Because You want to attain the goal that's satisfying, but then you want to make yourself into the thing that can attain goals. And so you want to push yourself. You want to push yourself a bit far.
Yes.
And there's an ample psychological literature that suggests that that's where maximal motivation is to be found.
Interesting.
So you're pursuing a goal, but you're also pursuing the goal of transforming yourself at the same time. You're doing both of those at the same time.
You know, you think, what's the worst thing that can happen to you? Well, I think the worst thing is that you do something really horrible and you screw up your life and everyone's life around you. That's the worst thing. You have to live with it. Yes, yes. And you have to live with knowing you did it.
It's like, that's rough, man. That's sin.
It's worse than dying.
Yes.
Because then you don't remember.
Right.
No, we don't remember it. There are worse things than dying. Yes, there are. No, no, no. That's a bad thing. thing, man. But I think the hardest existential situation that I've been in is the situation with my daughter because she was very, very ill and she had rheumatoid arthritis. She had arthritis, it wasn't rheumatoid type and she had 40 affected joints. That started to bother her when she was two but really manifested itself fully when she was six. And some of the medical treatment helped But when she was 15, 14, 14 through 16, first her hip disintegrated. And so she had that replaced after walking around on it for a good year, and then her ankle disintegrated on her other foot, and she had to have it replaced. And so there were two years of absolutely brutal pain for her, like brutal, daily, excruciating pain. And we were really running around trying to figure out what to do about it, because the hip wasn't too hard to replace, you know, because surgeons are actually pretty good at hip replacements. But ankles are still so many bones. Touch and go.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so, and just watching that and, and, and, well, watching what it was doing to her because she was in enough pain at one point, it just about broke her, you know? And, I mean, you know, you and I, you've probably been in a situation where you were in pain for a night and couldn't sleep. It's like, yeah, fine. So multiply that by five and extend.
It over two years.
Think of Jesus Christ. Yeah, and she was on huge doses of opiates and so that was sedating her and so that made her look drunk in public and she can only stay awake for about six hours a day and she had to take Ritalin to stay awake because otherwise she was just sleeping all the time and it was a very bad autoimmune condition and so it wasn't only manifest in the joint deterioration and the pain because arthritis is also very painful. and 40 joints happens to be quite a lot.
-Oh my gosh. -Just one joint.
-Yeah, right. No, it was absolutely brutal beyond belief.
-As a father or a parent, how do you navigate that emotionally yourself?
-Yeah, well that's what that chapter is about. I mean, so what do you do when things are too much? Well, one of the answers is you narrow your timeframe. Another answer is you look for occasions of grace and beauty where you can get them. So when she had a dog, that really helped.
Yeah.
You know, so that was something that was with her all the time. And we tried to put things in her life that. That she. She could care for. She had a whole raft of pets, although she was allergic to almost everything. So most of them were lizards.
Oh, yeah, I know. We get her again. Here's a guinea pig.
It's like, oh, I love this guinea pig.
It's such a pain.
And then, you know, three hours later, she'd have a big We'd have to.
Take the guinea pig back to the pet store.
Like, hairy dog or something.
So the dog, luckily the dog she could tolerate and so we had the dog for her. But one of the things you do when you're in a situation like that, it's just a bloody ongoing nightmare, is that you shrink your time frame. It's like, well, what are we gonna do in a year? It's like, oh, God, we can't even think about that. Six months, no, three months. Yeah, a week, tomorrow.
Today, the next hour.
Yeah.
So, that's what you really shrink your time frame till you can tolerate it. So, you're not planning out years.
Yes. Because then you'll go crazy.
Yeah.
It's too much uncertainty. You think, okay, how can I make the next hour the least amount of awful possible? That's what you do at someone's deathbed.
You know, you shrink your time frame and that's what you have to do. How does that play into the self-authoring program if you have this vision for yourself and you're mapping out a year, two, three, five years ahead.
Yeah, well sometimes you know, you have to re-navigate. Yeah, that's right, you have to re-navigate, you have to say no. Fit it into that. Yeah, because even the best laid plans of mice and men go astray, you know, I mean that's part of being alive and so you have your map, but you know, if you get a flat tire along the way, you still have to stop and fix your car, maybe the bloody thing bursts into flames, you have to get a new car, you know, so I mean, your asset towards your goals can be punctuated by unexpected catastrophe. And then, well, then hopefully you've made yourself into a resilient person at that point, and the catastrophe is no worse than it has to be, and you're not making it worse. I mean, one of the things we were fortunate about is that by the time she got really ill, my relationship with my wife was pretty well put together, and my relationship with my son, who's younger than her, was also well put together. And so he was an absolute trooper, man, because most of, for a lot of his teenage life in particular, there was a huge amount of focus on the suffering of his sister. And we were, like, right up to here with that. It was just, it was enough. And he conducted himself admirably. He didn't, if he caused trouble, we didn't know about it. He kept it to himself, you know, and I don't mean he was hiding. I mean, he dealt with it, right? And he spent a lot of time. home and he didn't do any unnecessarily stupid things and he put up with his sister and his parents who were on edge a lot without adding additional catastrophe and misery and grief to it and when she was a little bit crazy and was leaning on him too hard or bothering him he was there to support her and it was massively helpful and you know I wasn't any more, my wife and I weren't any more crazy towards each other than we had to be and so There wasn't like any additional stress during those periods of time. Stressful enough. Sunk us.
Yeah, yeah.
Any extra would have been like, yeah, it was done.
That's right, that's right. How are you able to compartmentalize or just focus on your career at that time, you know, lecturing or writing or whatever it may be at that point in time?
Well, that's also part of the vision of hell. It's like, well, what's the alternative? You let things go and you make them worse.
It's like, Not showing up and yeah.
Just- no, no, there's no excuse for that.
How did you say... Was there a compartmentalizing of like, okay it's nine o'clock or eight o'clock in the morning, I'm going to work?
-Yeah. -And then... -Yeah. Well, we made rules and we talked about some of them. Like some of the rules were we didn't talk about my daughter's illness after eight o'clock at night. That was the rule. It's like no sanity. -Well, it's a war. You wear yourself out in a week, you're dead and everyone suffers a lot. So you've got to keep going through however long this this is going to be. And so what do you have to do?
Well, you have to sleep.
You have to sleep or things are going to go bad. Yeah, that's right. It's time to stop talking and go to sleep.
So you have to cut off.
Yeah, well, and I had learned some of that because I've been a clinical psychologist for a long time. And so I've been dealing with people's problems and you learn how to, you know, you think, well, how can you go home when, when you have all those problems to contend with? It's like, well, A, they're not your problems.
They're not going away right now.
No, and they're not going away and having them bring you down is not helping the person who has the problem. It's the same with my daughter. It's like have my wife and I deteriorated as a consequence of her condition. A that would have been horrible for her because then she would have had to bear the weight of watching her illness destroy her family.
Right.
Which have that guilt.
Oh Christ, yes. I mean that's one of the terrible things about having a very that illness is that not only does it do you in, but you can see it taking its toll on the people around you. I think that might even be worse. I mean, this is gradations of hell, but still that's so you also can't allow that to happen. If you have a loved person around you and they're ill, you have a moral obligation not to let it tear you down, because then it's on them. That's no good. And you think, well, how can you remain healthy and strong in the face of the terrible suffering of someone who's close to you. It's like, well, you want to suffer? Well, that's it.
The alternative is worse. You want me to get sick and.
Get overweight and not be able to.
Take care of you or me?
Right, and then we both drown faster.
Not helpful. What about, did she ever go through a place where, I guess some people do this where kids who have some type of autoimmune or some type of disease or whatever it may be, they didn't necessarily, you know, they were born with it or it happened somehow. It's not like they ate something themselves, they weren't necessarily responsible, you should say, right? I mean, was she responsible for causing all these, you know, all the pain in her body? Or was it just something that happened?
Well, that's what we told her. It's just, well, this life, Kit.
It's not you.
We also told her very, very many, many times, and we were very careful about this. Do not use your illness as an excuse. As soon as you do that, you can't tell the difference between the illness and your character. So don't let it turn you into a victim, even though obviously it's a catastrophe. We were very clear about that and that wasn't her fault, but that she still had to bear up under it as well as possible and to do everything she could and not use it as an excuse. And we talked to her about that a lot and we're clear about it. And I've seen this, it's one of the things I really dislike about what the universities are doing. doing with disability? It's like everybody gets a disability. It's like, well, no wonder because people have hard lives. You know, it's like, it's very rare to find someone who isn't suffering under an undue load of some sort. There's something wrong with family.
Or there's something wrong with anxiety, whatever.
It's like any type of... Or there's something wrong in their family that's serious or they have terrible economic pressure. Like there's something wrong. It's like, okay, we should make allowances for you. It's like, oh yeah? what allowances? What exactly does that entitle me to? Well, I tell you, man, that's a murky place. You do not want to go because then you don't know anymore. It's like, well, what's my responsibility? I mean, I have this undue burden to bear. Well, how does that mitigate my responsibility? Well, the answer is as little as possible. You don't go there because you get confused. And as soon as you get confused, well, then the illness has not only got you physiologically, it's got you psychologically. and then you're in deep trouble. And so we were also very, very careful. And to her great credit, as far as I can tell, like, I wouldn't say she never used her illness as an excuse, because never is a lot, you know, or never is an extreme. But she certainly withstood the temptation to do it habitually and to warp her character as a consequence. And she did figure out what was. wrong with her and fixed it. And so now she doesn't have any of these. She's healthy now while she still has some residual damage from everything that happened. Like I just found out yesterday, she went to Chicago to have her ankle checked out because it isn't working very well. And they told her that she had to have the old replacement taken out and a new one put in. But in her realm of catastrophe, that actually constitutes news that's not as bad as it could be. So, strangely enough, so it's not like she's out of the woods, but-- so.
You taught her from an early age, then, and it started to cut you off. Yep, no, no, no problem. That even though she had a, you know, let's just, for the state of the conversation, a physical disability, right? She wasn't as able-bodied physically as a majority of people, is that clear to say? That you told her, like, never allow that to give you special privileges.
Well, never allow that to be-- no, it wasn't that exactly. never use that as an excuse to not do something you could do. That's the thing. Yes, because it's the, there's a deception element there. It's like, well, I don't want to do that. And I have this illness. That's right. Don't use your illness as a means of getting away with something. Because you'll blur the line.
Then you'll constantly use that for the rest of your life. Right.
And if you do that a hundred times, you'll be so confused about what's illness and. and what's not that you'll not know. You won't know anymore. And maybe you won't be able to figure it out again. And then you're in a very bad place. You know, there were some things that she had to have done that were allowances, like when she was doing exams, she had to type because she couldn't write. She wasn't writing, you know, and she couldn't sit on the floor cross-legged so she had to sit in a chair, like things that she actually couldn't do. But she still did the work.
Yes, she still did the work. She said, oh, I can't take the test. I can't do the exam at all. But she was able to do it with different circumstances.
Yes, right, right, right. And the consequence of that was that once she figured out that most of what was causing her, what was bothering her, all of it by the looks of it, was a consequence of a set of extreme sensitivities to almost every sort of food. So she hardly eats anything now. The only thing she eats is beef. That's it. Salt, water. That's it.
Nothing else.
That's it.
Yeah, that's it. And she's been eating that way for, well mostly for about three years, but almost completely for a year.
And she feels fine.
She's 100%. She has no symptoms.
No vegetables, no supplements.
That's it. Beef, salt. I'm serious. She never cheats.
Wow. Never.
Because she doesn't want to feel pain and suffering. Yes. Well it takes, if she eats the wrong thing, she has a terrible, a catastrophic emotional and physical reaction for a month.
Wow. She essentially eliminated all food and try one thing at a time.
And so, okay, that didn't work. Let's try this. And took about three years to figure it out. So, yes, wow is right. I can't. It's absolutely Beyond comprehension. It's a diet that I follow almost. Almost entirely now. Just beef, salt and water.
Yes.
I've been eating that way for about three months, and I've been on an extremely low carb diet for about two, two and a half years, something like that.
Wow.
So because both my wife and I have autoimmune symptoms. Yeah. And she got all of them.
Your daughter?
Yes. So she got all of them.
That's the worst.
That's combined by a thousand. Yes, that's right. So, and so, but when she sorted out what was wrong, she convinced me to also try what she was doing. And it's been extraordinarily helpful for me, too.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, you know, who would have guessed it? So anyway, so what you do when things are too much for you is you you narrow your time frame. I also in rule, in chapter 12, you know what? There's a fair bit of discussion in there about fragility and vulnerability, which is really what you confront when you have a sick kid. It's like, oh my God, how can the world be constituted so that a child can unfairly suffer in this manner? It's like, okay, here's a way of thinking about it. All right, take away everything from your child that makes them vulnerable. Let's say you have a three-year-old. It's like, well, three-year-olds, they're kind of cute. They run around, they're little and they're vulnerable, obviously. But that makes them cute and attractive and lovable. All of the vulnerability that's built into that, so you think, well, you remove that one by one. Well, they're eight-foot tall now, and they're made out of steel, and their parts are replaceable, and they have artificially intelligent brain. Like, you replace them. Obviously, this is hypothetical. With a superhuman robot that doesn't die. It's like, yeah, fine, but where's the three-year-old?
Right.
So one of the things I thought about when I was writing this was, you know, when you love someone, especially when you love someone, you love them not only despite their fragility, but also because of it. And so then that's the price you pay for it. It's like, well, you wouldn't, they wouldn't be who they were if they weren't, they wouldn't be who they were if they weren't fragile. and limited in their particular way. And the fact you like to have them around, you think, oh, well, then I mean, I guess you think that that fragility and vulnerability is justifiable. It's like, well, then you can't allow that, its existence to make you bitter, because you can't have it both ways. You can't have them being vulnerable and cute and interesting and small and needing care, but striving to develop and grow. You can't have that without them also being prone to pain and destruction and vulnerability. And so take your choice. And then what do you do? You teach them to be strong. That's what you do. You don't get rid of the vulnerability. You teach them to be strong. And that's also a theme that runs through the book in many, many ways, is that you don't protect your children. In fact, you do the opposite. You expose them to the world as much as you possibly and you make them strong. That's the best antidote to their vulnerability, not to protect them. There's no protecting people. We already established that life's a fatal game. There's no protecting people. But you can definitely make them strong, and maybe you can make them strong enough to transcend that. That's the goal, man.
So is there anything that you wish you would have done differently with your daughter or your son that you didn't do?
[Fnal: 1].
Not of any great significance. I mean, I have wishes, I suppose, from time to time that things could have been different. I spent less time on the positive aspects of my son and my daughter because we were contending with catastrophe so frequently. and so, you know, both my kids have a variety of interesting talents and it would have been better, perhaps, to have had the time to develop those more thoroughly. But, you know, and my son, well, he, I wouldn't say he didn't get as much attention as he needed. He didn't get as much attention as I would have liked to have paid him. But by the same token, it isn't obvious that it's been bad for him because It required him from a very early age to grow the hell up. And we relied on him right from the time he was a young kid to make intelligent decisions. We assumed he would make intelligent decisions. He was consulted with regards to decisions. And so, and it also made him into someone who is very self-sufficient and capable of taking care of himself. So it might have been nicer for me, I suppose, to have spent more time with him. but he lives down the street from me now and I spend time with him and we have a great relationship and so it's just, it's you know and he has a very good relationship with his sister and so it turned out as well as it could have. That didn't mean that those years in there, they were brutal. There were some brutal times, man. One night in particular, like she was in absolute agony. and I couldn't get it under control. And I could see, well, because I am a clinician, I could see. I thought, God damn it, I'm gonna end up taking her to Cam H. That's the psychiatric hospital, because it looks like it's gonna break her. God damn it. I couldn't see a way to resolve it, but it pushed her right to the brink, but not over. And there was another episode after she had her hip removed. replaced. She was put in a rehab home hospital for a while, and she was the youngest person in it by, like, 60 years. And they treated her terribly. It was a terrible place. Mean, mean, blind nurses and very, very badly run. And they traumatized her. The hospital was a worse experience than the damn surgery. And so that, that was, that took her quite a while to recover from, but she did recover from it.
Do you ever think Now, since you're a clinical psychologist and you've done all this research and work and studies, do you believe that your daughter was meant to experience this for you to kind of test your ability to be with her? And do you think she would have been able to grow in the way she is now with someone who didn't have the practice that you had?
Well, I think it was fortunate for all of us that Well, my wife too, like my wife had worked in palliative care as a volunteer and she was a massage therapist for a long time. She's very good at it and my wife has a real, she's a really tough person and if you don't need help and you want it, she'll cut you into ribbons. But if you need help, she will really help you. So she's really good at differentiating between people who actually need help, in which case she is right there and people who could stand up on their own. And if you can't stand up on your own and you could, if you could stand up on your own and you aren't, you don't want to be around her because she will put you in your place. And it was so funny because our kids used to bring their friends over all the time when they were teenagers, which we actually quite liked. But we had a rule for the teenagers, which was, we're really happy you're here. But if you do something stupid and you never get to come back, that's actually okay with us.
Right?
And so they knew that and it was no joke because we were happy they were there and they were welcome, but we were perfectly happy to dispense with them if they misbehaved. Forever.
And so, but what was really funny.
Was that the kids would come over, the teenagers would come over and they were pretty afraid of me to begin with. But after being around for a couple of weeks, they were way more afraid of my wife. So yes, so that was very funny. Yeah, because she's, you know, she's quite a pleasant person. and she's not a, she's only five foot two, so she's, but although she's, you know, she's imposing enough because she's also in good physical shape, but it was, because I'm actually kind of soft-hearted and she's not soft-hearted although she can really take care of people who need to be taken care of. So, no, so I think, you know, Michaela had a fortunate, fortunate circumstance in that sense because both of us had a lot of experience dealing with catastrophe. and so when it came along, we were overwhelmed by it. But it wasn't because we didn't know what we were doing. We knew what we were doing. It was just even though we did know what we were doing as much as might be possible, that doesn't mean that we could deal with it because it was, well, it took us, it took us, what, must have been seven or eight months to arrange the ankle surgery. And there was a waiting list in Canada at that point of, I think, three years. Actually, they wanted to fuse her foot, which is a really bad thing for someone young. And so we looked in India, we looked in, oh Christ, we looked all over the world for ankle surgery, like really everywhere. And finally, the government in Canada was actually quite helpful. We found a private clinic in Vancouver that did the surgery and the Ministry of Health in Ontario was quite helpful to us at that point.
How do you cultivate your own personal inner peace? amongst the different changes that have come up, whether, you know, the fame, the health challenges, personally, maybe challenges with family or friends. How do you personally keep a level of inner peace amongst the chaos?
I walk a lot. I exercise a lot. A lot. Like, I'm walking about seven miles a day now and working out as well. And so, and that's necessary. I take solace.
If you didn't walk and work out, where do you think you would be? Really?
Definitely. Yes. Yes, definitely.
Is that physically because you wouldn't be physically taking care of your body or because mentally and emotionally your peace would be chaotic and it would drive you to die?
That.
Wow.
Yeah.
So that you were saying, sorry, I was interrupting you.
Sorry about that. Peace, that comes to you if you're fortunate. And sometimes it doesn't come. I try to do things that I think are worthwhile. that seem worthwhile and that gives me solace, I suppose. So I'm writing, I'm talking to people who I find interesting about things that I think are crucially important. I'm trying to learn. and to communicate as a consequence of talking to these people. I'm trying to do what I can for my family and my friends and to do what I can beyond that as well in a variety of different ways. Those are all useful endeavors and they keep me going.
What have you found to be the best practices of managing mass attention, whether you want to call it fame, mass attention, mass audience, people being fanatical about your message, your work, you as an individual.
Luckily, that hasn't happened too much, the fanatical side of things. You know, I've had the odd brush with people who were a little more persistent than was probably good. And, you know, I could see lurking signs of mental health issues behind that. But fortunately, very little of that has happened. And that's certainly all for the good.
Because you're not living in LA, that's probably why.
Well, it could be. But for whatever reason, I've been pretty fortunate about that. I talk over what I'm doing with the people around me all the time. and try to keep it on the proper pathway to the degree that I'm able to do that. And to see if what I'm doing is justifiable and ethical. And we're all terrified of this, you know, to a degree that is very difficult to communicate. You know, we live in a time where if you make a mistake, you can be shredded. And I would say to some degree, the more visible you are, the more thorough the shredding.
Oh, right.
And so the cost of an error, an ethical error, is unbelievably high. The cost of the appearance of an ethical error is extremely high, much less the cost of an actual ethical error. And so we're very careful to act ethically in every manner possible. Appearance and reality.
Because everything's being watched. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I can, I have no idea how any of this looks from the outside, but my reputation has been on the line publicly many, many times. And partly, sometimes outright accusations, sometimes.
As.
A consequence of things I hypothetically said, sometimes as a consequence of newspaper articles that, you know, have taken a particular twist. And God only knows how many times a consequence of my own inadequacies and errors. But every time that rises up as an issue, there's a two-week period where No one in my family knows if this is the time that it's just going to go to hell.
Really?
Where it's all- oh, absolutely. Sure. Well, look at how many people it happens to. And look how people respond, band one, back into their hole. Chase a company for that matter.
Have good intentions. Maybe someone doesn't like those intentions, but have good intentions. Is how do we, as human beings, Think about reputation and does reputation even matter anymore if anyone can try to tear your reputation down? Should we be focused on having a good reputation?
Yes. And how do we- Yes, but you should be more focused on deserving a good reputation.
What does that mean?
Don't do things you know to be wrong.
And even if you- Don't lie.
Yeah. Don't lie. Don't be careless. You, I mean, especially if you're.
See.
I'm fortunate, I suppose. I put all my lectures online. So virtually everything I've ever said to a student is, I mean, obviously not, but A non-biased sample of everything that I've ever said to students is available. Well, it hasn't come back to bite me.
Right.
And that's hundreds of hours. Why? Well, because I've been fortunate enough not to have said anything fatal. And, you know, Maybe that's because I'm careful with my words. I don't want to attribute too much virtue to myself in relationship to that. I know that good fortune plays an immense role in how things turn out for people and that you can get unlucky. But you know, one rule I didn't write down is, act so that you can speak of what you do. So there's two domains of lying, right? So one lie is a statement, the other lie is an action. You know it's wrong. You do it anyway. It looks to me like that's becoming riskier and riskier.
Right.
People aren't doing that anymore because they're getting caught.
Yes, and the consequences are dire. Well, but then you think about this, you tell me what you think about this. One of the things that Carl Jung taught me again was that, you know, as we become more technologically powerful.
The.
Quality of our individual morality becomes an increasingly pressing social concern because if each of us are far more powerful than we once were, for good and for evil. And so with this technological prowess comes an associated ethical demand. And I don't see a flaw in that argument. I don't see how that can be anything other than true. If technology multiplies your power, then it multiplies the cataclysmic consequences of your own immorality. Right.
And if you did one thing 10 years ago and someone finds it, It could haunt you, it seems like, is what's happening.
There's no doubt about that. Not only could it, it will.
It will.
In all likelihood, you know, and that's a problem too, because of course people do make mistakes, you know, and I'm perfectly pleased that my teenage years aren't stored on YouTube, for example. It must have been terrifying.
It's been gone a long time ago.
Well, it must be terrifying to be a teenager. Now, knowing that your drunken foolishness at a party could become the next viral YouTube video.
I mean, yeah, I was lucky enough never to, I've never been drunk in my life. And that was a conscious decision because my brother actually went to prison for drugs when I was a kid. And, I was in a prison visiting room many weekends for many years and witnessing the consequences of doing certain things. So for me, I was like, I don't want to touch any of this stuff. I don't even care if it's like, I'm gonna sell it, but I'm never gonna take anything. And I. But it doesn't mean that I didn't do bad things. Like, you know, I cheated, I lied, I stole, you know, I did all these things that I'm not proud of when I was 10 to 13 until I got caught, and I was like, oh, my con. My actions actually affect. a lot of people. And I remember the shame.
Well, it's normative behavior. I mean, if you look at adolescents, imagine there are adolescents who break rules all the time, including criminal, including legal rules. Okay, well, they tend to become criminal. It's too much. But then at the opposite end of the distribution are adolescents who don't break any rules, and they tend to develop in internalizing disorders, depression, anxiety disorders, that sort of thing. So they're two constraints. So there is a certain amount of exploration of rule breaking that's a normative part of healthy development. And, but, but now, you know, you could take a chunk of that, a video of it, a record of it, and it's permanent. Can you imagine not being able to forget your past?
Painful. So painful. And not even you forgetting it, but the world knowing your past, seeing it or witnessing it.
Yes, and sort of un, un, what, unexpectedly and at any moment.
Yeah. Right.
What's your, what's your greatest fear with the fame and the acknowledgement that you have at the level of you have it? What's the, the greatest fear you have moving forward?
Or.
Oh, that all. That all do something to, you know, that all betray the people that.
That.
That I've been speaking to with, you know, that all be insufficient to the challenge in some manner.
Yeah.
Ethically, particularly. But more than that, even just physiologically, let's say. so that's, that's definitely it.
Well, no, I never thought it was for nothing, but I certainly, I certainly doubted whether or not we were going to be able to figure out, figure this out.
Yeah.
But if you thought, you know, and at that time, you're extremely educated research, you know, you'd seen a lot. Did you, did that give you a fear of, like, well, if I can't figure this out, then no one can.
Of course.
Of course. Well, her, her prognosis was multiple early joint replacements. And that was like, that was the good news because the bad news is, well, how many? And how many can you stand? And when does that kill you? Like, you know, so her real prognosis was plenty of pain with an early death, you know, because, well, even now, even now, you know, like the surgeon who talked to her yesterday said, well, because he talked to her about the risk of amputation in the future, it's like, well, this is the second joint It's like maybe this would last 15 years. We don't know what the hell's going to happen then. Well, so our response to that is that's 15 years from now. It's like who knows. Well, things are better now for how people understand how to replace an ankle than they were. I think it was 10 years ago that she had this one replaced and it helped. It wasn't perfect. Her hip is perfect. The ankle has always been trouble, but way less trouble than it was. And so, well, you struggle forward the best you can and so I suppose she could adapt to an amputation if that was necessary, but at the moment it isn't necessary. But multiple amputations is not something to really be looking forward to when you're 16. You know, and they were gonna put her on corticosteroids to control her inflammation and that would have produced Cushing's disease and so that makes your face all puffy and it makes you gain weight and so it's very physically disfiguring. So we decided not to go down that route.
And.
Yeah, well, but you know, it's worked out. Thank God. It's quite the miracle. And she had a baby a year ago and we were never sure that was going to happen.
So congrats.
Thank you. Yes, that's for sure. So now we have this respite where she's healthy. And the last time I saw her, she was looking great. Like she just glowing. She's so healthy. I can't believe it. It's just That's amazing.
Beyond belief. Congrats on all the hard work you've done to make it a possibility. Yeah, well done.
We avoided the worst excesses of hell during the catastrophe. So that's something.
Yeah.
And it did allow her the space to figure out. And my wife had always thought that diet had a relationship to it. And we investigated that. Like, there's a good literature that shows if you have arthritic symptoms and you stop eating, if you fast, they go away. So that's interesting. It's like, well, food must be causing it. Yeah, but once you start to eat again, no matter what you eat, comes back. It turns out, no, not no matter what, almost no matter what, because she's sensitive to virtually everything, but she isn't sensitive to meat. And so it turns out that if you eat meat, you can live. So that's a big difference between being sensitive to everything. and not being sensitive to one thing.
Yeah.
And so, so it's, it's a harsh diet. It's made traveling difficult, although I can eat in restaurants because most restaurants can cook a steak with nothing on it. And that's made things much easier while I'm traveling. But whatever, whatever. It's working. And so thank God for that.
Amazing. Do you believe, do you think hypothetically, if your daughter was healthy and never had any of these complications, that you would be the man you are impacting people, that the success, the attention you'd be getting, do you think you'd have.
As much... -Well, I wouldn't have written the 12th chapter. -That's for sure.
-Do you think in general, you would still be able to have the ideals, the belief, the fortitude that you have to reach people and really impact people.
Yeah, I think so. But I know what you're saying. Your question is, well, to what degree is adversity character building? And the answer to that is plenty. But I was already, like I said, and it was the same with my wife, we weren't naive people. Because I had an extensive clinical practice, I was dealing with heavy level adversity always.
It wasn't your daughter.
No, no. But there were other problems in my family and so forth that I dealt with as well. And so we were already, we'd already, I think, garnered most of what we could from confronting adverse situations. Now did that add a different level to it?
It.
Probably fire-tested our relationship, our familial... it probably brought our family closer together, all things considered. I saw the same thing happen when my wife's mother died. She died of prefrontal dementia and she developed it quite young, about... it started to really manifest itself in her early 50s and she died when she was 70 and she fell apart over, you know, 18 years and she was very physically healthy. and her husband, who was quite the man about town when he was a young guy, real extrovert, he was a real character in our hometown, he took care of her so well it was absolutely jaw-dropping. Every time she slipped he'd step up to the plate and he took care of her until he couldn't lift her out of her chair anymore and he was getting old too and so she wasn't in an old age home for very long and then we were around when she died, you know, over the couple of days just before her death. And her family, her sister is a palliative care nurse, her other sister is a pharmacist, and Tammy's had the experiences that I already described. And then her father really stepped up to the plate. So the whole family gathered around for that. And they acted impeccably throughout it, I would say. They took care of their mother very carefully while she was dying, and they pulled together. And one of the consequences of that, which was so interesting, is that although their mother died and that was a terrible loss, their bonds that connected them, all of them, strengthened to the point where I would say that was almost compensation for the loss of their mother. So that was really interesting to see what happens even in a dire circumstance if people do what they can. Now, I'm not saying that that's going to work for every situation because I know people get cut off at the knees. sometimes you hit a tragedy that while it's fatal, you know, that you cannot rectify. It's a real catastrophe. But it was very interesting watching that because they were alert and awake around the deathbed and they weren't fighting with each other at all. There was no familial squabbling because you can imagine that that would happen because everyone's stressed. And then you can just imagine how terrible that would make something that's already awful. There was none of that. They focused their attention on her. her, you know, they gave her water when she needed it and they watched her and they made this terrible thing the least amount of awful it could be. And it definitely pulled them together. Like that whole family, including me, is closer because of what they went through and also how they went through it. And it's probably the case, well, I would say it definitely advanced the maturity of my son. because he was called. And I told him, look, kid, like, you can't add anything to this. We're, we're up to here.
Yeah.
You have to conduct yourself properly because otherwise everything's going to shake and fall. We can't have more of this. You can't bring any, anything unnecessary into this. And it was an All-Star it was, it was remarkable. And, and he, he was only in grade 10 when most, most of this happened. And your friends are pretty damn important. when you're in grade 10 and he stuck around a lot to be helpful. So yeah it was really good for him, man. Yeah well he's a good character.
He's amazing.
He's quite something. And he was very helpful. He was very helpful to his sister. They had their fights obviously well and she was often unreasonable and no bloody wonder. Well when you're strung out and you.
Can'T feel anything but pain.
Yeah God she went through so much like even watching watching her withdraw from the opiates because she was on them for about a year and a half. She just quit. As soon as she was done her surgery, she was like, I'm not taking these anymore. And she had formication, which is the sensation of ants crawling under your skin. She had that for like a month. And, God, unbelievable. She was, she just, just sailed through it. It's like, I'm done with these. Yeah.
Yeah.
You guys have been through a lot.
Yeah.
What's your, what's your biggest fear now? Moving forward in your in your own life.
Oh, making a mistake at the moment because like I've been I've been the subject of so much public attention in the last two years and like I've been in a situation where well even things I didn't say have also almost been fatal because people take them out of context, right, you know, but I'm my biggest fear has been that I do something careless and and, and that there are, like, serious cascading consequences to it.
You feel like you've done something careless or.
Well, everyone's done something careless.
Right.
You know, but I've been pretty careful. I mean, I was fortunate. So when this political Scandal blew up around me in, in Canada, when I opposed some legislation that I thought was reprehensibly constructed, you know, the, the, the radicals on the left in particular came after me hard. And, but I was fortunate because, you know, they called me every name under the book and went after my character. And, you know, I suppose there was some degree of, of, that was understandable to some degree, because if you stand up against something, if you stand up against the radical right, well, maybe you're communist. Might not, probably not, because you don't have to be a communist to not like the radical right. But if you stand up against the radical left, well, maybe you're a Nazi. Well, probably not, but you might be. And so it's certainly in the interest of the people who are proponents of the philosophy of the radical left to assume that you're a Nazi, because then they don't have to deal with you. And so that's what happens. You throw yourself into the fray. People try to localize you, and they do that by saying, well, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, maybe you're this. It's like, well, yeah, maybe not, too. But I already had 250 hours of lectures up on YouTube at that point, so people could actually go and see what I had said, because virtually every word I'd ever said to students in a professional capacity, not every word, because I didn't tape every lecture. But I taped multiple years of lectures, and so people went over those with a fine tooth comb trying to find out if there's anything I'd ever said that was, and they couldn't find anything. And that was because I've been I was very careful with what I say. Ever since I was about 25, I started paying attention to what I was saying and trying very hard not to say things that I would try very hard not to say things that something in me objected to. So, and well, that seems to have provided me with a buffer. And so people came to my website because they were interested in, well, before the political stuff blew up, I had a million views on YouTube, which is nothing. A million of anything is a lot. But then when the political scandal started to break, yeah, then people came for them, but stayed for the content. And so, and that's been really useful. Yeah, well, it's not that surprising. Well, you know, because of what you do, it's like, there's a great hunger for information that is practical and useful and that helps people find meaning in their lives and orient themselves. There's a great hunger for that. And most of my lectures were derived from solid psychology, some of it experimental, some of it biological, some of it from the domains of neuroscience, a lot of it from great clinicians. It's not surprising that people find it helpful because Well, great clinicians were great because they were really helpful. And so to distill that and to offer it to people in a digestible form, to have that have a good effect on them, well, that's what you'd expect. That's what the whole discipline is about. And so that's been great. These public lectures that I've been doing, so I think I've done 50 of them in about 45 different cities now in about three months. And the average theater size is between 2500 and 3000 people. And they're unbelievably positive events because people come there and we talk mostly about the political spectrum and why there's room for voices on the left and why there's room for voices on the right and where the parameters of that should be, because both of those can descend into extremism and that's not good. And the role of individual responsibility and individual sovereignty and the necessity for people to develop the sorts of things that we already talked about. And virtually everyone that's coming there, they're not coming for political reasons, even though that's the story you hear from the more ideologically possessed journalist types, because they see the world that way. They can't imagine anything else could possibly be happening.
How have you learned to manage the mindset around the wealth that has come to you? the level of wealth that has come to you? How have you managed it? How do you deal with it now as it keeps coming in? I'm assuming more comes in with every book and success. And what were your thoughts about money before this level of money came to you?
I'd never made any bones about being an evil capitalist. But I'll give you an example. So I built this, I told you about this software that that online program that helps people write out their past and their present and the goals for their future. We tested the future part of that to see if it worked and it worked quite well. It was effective. And I sell it. Why don't I give it away? Well, because that's not the right price. Pricing decisions, money is very, very complicated and pricing is very complicated. Pricing is value. It's like, well, is the right price for something zero? Well, probably not, first of all, because it doesn't take zero to make it or sustain it. Like there's an infrastructure, customer service infrastructure. There are people working on constantly who could be making new things. If you can't sell it, what makes you think it's worth anything? If you can't sell it, what makes you think you've got your communication Right. You can use price as an indication of whether what you're doing works. If no one will pay for it, maybe it's no good. Or maybe you're not talking about it properly. So I wanted to make things that would work, that would work in the marketplace. It was a challenge. There's the challenge aspect of it too. So I never had contempt for money. and money for me was always, well, it was a challenge. That's one thing. And for many people who are motivated by money, money actually serves as a challenge. It's like, can I, can I make more of this? It's, it's a competition in some sense, like a game. Because you might think, well, they want all the things. It's like, yeah, sort of. No, you kind of if you're sensible, you sort of max out on things pretty rapidly.
Can only buy so much and use it.
Well, and it did, yes. And I'm not hedonistic in a manner that money would aid in some sense.
Of course.
Partly because I'm not 16. You know, I'm 60. So what am I going to do with it? And I've also learned be careful what you buy because it's not clear who owns who when you buy something. Like I knew this very rich couple and they had like six houses. Well the poor woman, the female member of the couple, all she did was worry about the houses. Like one house is bad enough because it's always falling apart. Six big houses fall apart all the time. So, you know, and you think well poor her, she had six houses. It's like, yeah, yeah, I know the problems of the rich, right? Don't we wish, Don't we all wish we had those? Yeah, fair enough. But there's still a point to be made there. I put together a financial team. I also had to abandon my supervision of my financial affairs because I couldn't manage them. But fortunately, I had put together a team and people stepped in to manage it. And that's gone as well as could possibly be expected under the circumstances. yeah. And so, and that, that is a source of security. And I have accountants who do taxes, and I hate doing my taxes. I, everyone does, but maybe I hate it even more. It seems to bother me a lot. In any case, that's one thing that, that having this money has been useful for me, is that I don't have to do my taxes now. I have experts who can do that, but I've farmed it out to people and hopefully not too carelessly.
So, so for someone that wants to attract more wealth, gain more wealth, make more money, what do you think needs to happen psychologically for them in order to create that beyond the actions, the doing, the solving the challenges?
Oh, well, a big part of it is, well, discipline. Like hard work, what is it? You work 15% more hours, you make 40% more money. I think that's the data Warren Farrell accumulated. It's part of the reason men make more money than women, because they work slightly longer hours, but it actually produces a disproportionate return. People who make money aim at it, generally speaking. I'm not talking about people who inherit wealth, but it's pretty easy to squander money, even if you inherit it.
If you don't have it, you want to make more. Yeah.
Yeah, well, conscientiousness, which is dutifulness, industriousness, orderliness, amount of time, effort put in, that makes a difference. It makes a difference. I would say if you're trying to produce a product and introduce it into the marketplace, there are things you should definitely know. The product should work, it should be reliable. You have to put your customer service in place. If you despise sales and marketing, you're making a massive mistake. That's casual contempt. It's really hard to sell something. Hardly anybody is a good salesperson. It's an extremely demanding job and you can, oh, he's a salesman. It's like, yeah, you try it. I wouldn't sell out. Well, that's because no one ever offered you the opportunity to sell out. If you have 10 opportunities to sell out and you reject all of them, it's like, great, claim moral victory. Until someone, until you're in that position, you're just not of interest. That's why you're not selling out. You have to understand the marketplace. You have to communicate with your customers. It's complicated and difficult. So don't despise the necessary components, right? All of these things are important. The product, the engineers, the people who work on it, the creative inspiration, that's the entrepreneurial end, make the product that's extremely necessary. All the communication strategies, those are crucially important because if you have a product and nobody knows about it, then who the hell is gonna buy it no matter how good it is?
So.
You despise the things that are necessary to your success at the expense of your success.
Mm-. So you got to reframe the way you think about those things.
Yeah, we have to look at it. It's like sales. It's like, okay, well, you're not gonna sell anything then. So that's the end of that problem. So, or maybe you have moral qualms about engaging in the capitalist enterprise. Well, good luck carrying that along with you. And if you, maybe the qualms are well merited. It's like, okay, put aside a percentage of what you make. to do something, you know, what would you call it? Clearly not self-centered and generous with. You can do that. I mean, the products that I'm selling, some of them are, what would you say? They have less ethical impact than others. I do do some merchandising.
Why.
The merchandising of. Of me was taking place anyways.
You might as well do it yourself.
Well, I had my. I got my son involved in it. I thought, well, you know, there's a market. People want this. We might. We might as well put up a genuine place. I mean, lots of the merchandise that's being produced related to me. I leave it alone. I let people do that. I don't bother them. I don't chase them down.
If.
If they can make a living. you know, putting my quotes in acrylic blocks or making posters, it's like, that's fine as far as I'm concerned. But we have some things, posters and so on that, and people want them. So if they want them, I don't see that it does any harm. You know, you might think it's kind of cheap. You know what? You know. You know what I mean? It's like. It's. It's like the disnification of philosophy, but I am interested in communication. I'm interested in communicating with the public. This is sales and marketing. You know, most academic work languishes. Yeah. Well, I don't have contempt for my readers, listeners, and viewers. I like them. I hope they do well. If they want a poster of the 12 rules and they find that useful, hey, okay. If they find a lobster tie funny, good, it's fine with me. And there's a bit of, you know, there's a bit of humor to it. And I can use that and so can my message. A little bit of levity would be wonderful. When my health fell apart and I was in the hospital for multiple hospitals for long periods of time, you know, I stopped doing everything I was doing and everything I was doing was difficult. My clinical practice was difficult. The professorial job was difficult. The company I was running was difficult. The writing was difficult. The podcasting and interviewing was difficult. Yeah, the lecturing was difficult. It was all difficult. And I'm not complaining about the difficulty. I actually loved that. That was fine. I'm not complaining about it at all. But because it was difficult, I have to be in really good shape to do it. And so then I wasn't in really good shape. And so because I wasn't really good shape and everything I had done was difficult, I didn't know what to do. And I couldn't get back on top of things because it was like trying to jump into a car going 200 miles an hour. You know, it's like, well, what I did, what I started doing back in December, really, is when I started working again, although I had been writing to some degree over the last two years. I started doing podcasts like this and they're not easy.
Yeah.
You have to be again, I'm not complaining. I love doing them. They're really interesting. But you have to be engaging and you have to be sharp and you have to not say anything stupid and you can't be too emotional and you can't be angry and. Or that has to be very controlled and you have to pay attention and focus and you have to line people up and it's technically difficult. You have to advertise it. You have to get the social media right. You have to monitor the social media. You have to stay up on current events and you have to see who you're going to talk to and it's complicated. And I have people helping me and they're helpful and great. But there was no, well, I'm going to go five, There's no beginner have a YouTube channel that a million people watch.
Right?
So, and it's something you can really screw up publicly and catastrophically. It was very daunting. Very, what I should have done when I was in my 20s and 30s is that I should have cultivated some activities that were less demanding. Look, I went to a baseball game when I lived in Boston. It was the only baseball game I think I ever went to. No, I've probably gone to two or three, but it was the first time I'd gone to a baseball game, a professional baseball game. I thought, Jesus, baseball, who would go watch that? So bloody slow. It's like nothing happens. It is slow. It's so slow. It's nothing happens. And I have like 50 other things I should be doing. And I went there and then I realized I was looking at all these people and I thought, they're not even paying any attention to the baseball game. They're like talking to their friends and they're drinking beer and they're eating popcorn. And then I thought, yeah, that's the point, fool. That's the point. They're going there for that. Like, you get to talk to your friends now and then someone hits a baseball and you can look at that and that's kind of interesting. And you can eat popcorn and it's like they're relaxing. They're not, you know, climbing Mount Everest. They're just relaxing. Right. And you know, one of the things I've learned, this is a good thing to talk about. It's really dangerous to be casually contemptuous.
What does that mean?
Well, I've seen many professors who are contemptuous of business people.
Right.
Well, they don't have businesses and they're angry that the business people can make all sorts of money. And so, and that's a whole skill set they don't have. And so maybe they'd have to feel inadequate about that if they thought about it. And then I've talked to lots of business people who regard professors as in the ivory tower and an easy job. It's like, yeah, will you try lecturing and see how easy it is about a complex subject and publishing? It's not easy. It's really hard, just like your job. Casual contempt stops people from investigating things that might be good for them. When I realized that about the baseball game, I thought, There's no contemptuousness here, like clue in, clue in, clue in. There's something here that these people aren't just stupid and going out to a baseball game because they're stupid. It's very easy for us to call people who are doing something that we're not doing stupid. It's like, don't be so sure about that. And it would have been better for me if I would have had a wider variety of skills that weren't so high intensity. I play ping pong with my son. That works out good. Probably could have had another sport or two. I could have had some leisure activities that I got good at. Music might have been good. That weren't so demanding. See what I. I tried to do. If I saw something was difficult, I wanted to master it. I was driven to do that just to see how far I could go in these multiple directions. And that left me vulnerable to one thing. It left me vulnerable to being in a situation where I wasn't healthy enough to manage it.
So you think if you would have had these other leisure hobbies, things that you did for fun and play, you wouldn't be in potentially in this situation?
Well, it would have been easier to get going again, that's for sure. It would have, I think, like, I'm, you know, I'm trying to sort it out. But someone asked me the other day, you know, do you regret the pathway that you've taken? And that's a question that's worth considering. And the basic answer is, well, I don't know, I guess in some sense, because if you become extremely ill, especially if it isn't clear why, you don't know what you might have done to contribute to it because you don't know what it is. And people say, well, you know, you went on this 160 city tour in a year. Maybe that was too much. It's like it didn't seem like too much. I really enjoyed it, actually.
Right, you had fun.
It was great.
Dave told me all about how amazing it was and every night in this.
City and it was great. But it was also very intense. And I did expose myself to a lot of misery. you know, meeting people, so many people, so many thousands of people. I opened myself up to a tremendous amount of misery and. And longing and pain, and that was very emotionally impactful. But I can't say with certainty that what the consequence of that was.
Right.
I mean, I'd worked as a clinical psychologist for decades, and I had to deal with people who were in trouble all the time, and that was actually an extraordinarily positive Enterprise. because although I was dealing with very serious issues and people were in trouble, they were on a good path and getting better. And we were collaborating in that. So it was lovely enterprise. I loved it. I loved it. In deep conversations, meaningful conversations devoted to making things better. It was great.
So.
It'S tough to know, I guess then.
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's what I have observed, however, is, you know, so I've been opening up my day to work more and more. So now I work from 3:30 to 6:00 fairly intensely every day. And I started one day a week and then it was two and then it was three. And then I could see, was I better when I was working or was I better when I wasn't working? And the answer was clear. I was better when I was working. And it wasn't just clear to me, it was clear to the people who were watching me. And so it looks to me that that also indicates that it probably wasn't the work that hurt you.
Interesting.
I think it's possible that just too many things happened at once. That's possible. It certainly distracted me. And so maybe I wasn't paying attention to exactly the right thing. So, but, but I don't know. I can't, I don't know yet. And maybe never will.
So that's, that's one skill you wish you would have developed, you're in your kind of your 20s. What's maybe two other skills you wish you would have developed?
That's pretty much, that's, that's as far as I've got with that line of thinking.
Yeah.
Um, what do you think of the skills that people should start to develop in their 20s in general? to make them better human beings, more potentially open to success financially, relationship, health-wise, what are two or three things that everyone should focus on in their 20s?
Well, it certainly doesn't hurt to be in good physical condition. So we can walk through it. Stop drinking too much. How do you know if you're drinking too much? You regret what you do when you're drinking. It's interfering with other important goals. It's causing you financial distress. It's getting you in trouble with your friends or your family. It's getting you in trouble with the police. Okay? So stop abusing substances if you can, right? If you see that they're hurting you. Um, an alcohol is particularly pernicious in that regard.
So.
Physical health, are you in decent shape? Are you strong and coordinated? And if you're not, well, you'd be better if you were. You'd feel better, you'd be more effective, you'd live longer, you'd be less sick. And you really see that mount up. Like if someone's been in shape once in their life, they age way better. And it's also a really good way of maintaining your cognitive ability. Like, you know, you, you hear about those exercises that you can do online to make you smarter and keep your cognitive ability intact. Those don't work. There's no evidence that they work. People keep saying that they make you smarter, they maintain your cognitive function. Psychologists have studied that for 50 years, hoping that one of those things will work. trying all sorts of creative tacks. They don't work. Exercise works. Cardiovascular and weight lifting. You start to decline in your fluid intelligence at about the age of 25. And it's a linear Trend downhill, and it can accelerate as you get older. It's just like this. Quite ugly. If you exercise, you stave that off. So that's really useful. Maintain your relationships. and, and Foster them. They're un. So when I look at successful people, they're really good at something. They're reliable.
Right.
You can count on their word. They're generous, and they have a wide, wide connection Network which becomes more and more valuable as you get older.
Yeah.
So it's one advantage that older people really have over younger people. They have a connection Network, and a connection Network is huge.
Well.
You could be connected to a thousand well-connected people. Okay. That means you are connected to the entire world.
Right.
It's unbelievably valuable. And that's one of the things that's so absolutely remarkable about the situation that I'm in right now. As far as one of the great benefits is I can contact pretty much anybody and they'll talk to me. It's like, really? That's so cool. I'm interested in infrastructure for reasons I won't get into, but I'm interested in infrastructure development. I think it's a good method of wealth transfer. It's a good solution to the problem of inequality and employment. I reached out to a leading expert on infrastructure last week, see if he'd talk to me. I thought, I don't know anything about infrastructure except that it's worn to a frazzle and we should do something about it. You know, he agreed to talk. Having a connection network is of an inestimable value.
It's huge.
Reliability, generosity, you can work on both of those. Philosophical sophistication, it's very useful because it orients you properly. you have a sophisticated sense of the world. You find, for example, that doing things for other people is actually more rewarding than virtually anything else you can do. You know, when you hear you should be of service to other people, well, if you actually watch yourself, you pay attention to yourself and you do something that helps someone else and it genuinely helps them, I defy you to find another experience that is that satisfying. It's actually quite stunning how satisfying that is. And so that's a very useful thing to realize.
And why is helping another person the most satisfying thing for probably most people when they're, if they're, you know, out of their ego of, like, I want to buy more things to make me happy in this moment, why is that? Such a satisfying thing for human beings.
There's no better strategy for, there's no better life strategy. I mean, imagine, I could give you a quick sort of technical example. So imagine I take two people and I say, okay, I'm gonna give you $100 and you have to give some of it to the person right beside you. and they can either agree or disagree with the split, but if they disagree, you don't get anything. Okay, so a classical economist would say that the person should take the 100, offer the person next to them a dollar, and the person should accept it because why not? They get a dollar instead of nothing. And that's the solution. But what happens is that if you don't offer that other person something close to 50-50, They're likely to tell you to go to hell. Yes, very, very, and you think, you get nothing, too. You think, well, why would people do that? Because they just reject $50 and who cares? And the answer is, well, we don't just play one game with other people. We play a repeating game. And so imagine we did this. So imagine it's a crowd and they're all watching you and I offer you $100 and you have to share it with the person next to you and you say, Would you like to take $70? And the person says, well, I'm not sure that's fair to you, but if it's okay, yes. But then everyone else sees that and now they all have an opportunity to pick who they're going to play with next. Well, you're not going to get picked last, are you? Remember what you told me? You didn't want to get picked last, right?
I did not.
Okay, so what you did was you turned yourself into an athlete.
A machine.
Okay.
Okay, great. So, but imagine we expand that game.
Yes.
And we say, you want to be the person that everyone wants to play with.
Yep.
Well, then all you have in your whole life is invitations to play. Well, how, and how are you going to be that person? Be productive, straightforward, generous, make everyone else.
Better around you, and they're going to want to play with you.
Absolutely. So there you go, and then you get to play.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, how is that not the best possible deal? It's clearly, see, so the reason.
If.
The ethical argument is put properly, it is by far the most compelling argument. It's like if you want to have everything you could possibly want and more, then be a good person. The better a person you are, the more likely that is to happen. That doesn't mean that you're completely protected against getting cut off at the knees, but there's no better strategy.
That's it.
And you can even think about it selfishly, and I talk about this to some degree beyond order. Let's say that you want to be selfish. You think that's the best possible strategy. Why should I care about others? Okay, let's say you should only act in your own best interest. well, then it's like, well, what's your best interest? Well, what does interest mean? And what does you mean? What's in your best interest? Your best interest. Three Mysteries. What's your, what's best, what's interest? Okay, well, there's you, but you aren't just you right now. You're you and you tomorrow and you next week and you next month and you. in five years and you in 10 years and you when you're a pensioner, you're a community of selves stretched across time. And so if you were enlightened and selfish, you would act in a manner that would benefit that entire community across time. And I don't think that's any different than acting on the best possible part for other people. I think they're the same problem. So I think as soon as human beings discovered the future, we were no longer singular individuals. We're instantly each a community. And then the community ethic prevails. And the community ethic is, I want to win in a way that makes you win. That's the best possible victory.
If I win and no one else wins, then what's the point?
Well, you think it's a zero-sum game. It's either you or me. Or maybe I want the comparative status. But I would say even if you want the comparative status, let's say you just. You're motivated by that.
What.
What would confer upon you even hypothetically more status than to be the most popular person while being chosen for games? I mean, you think about the, just think for a second about it, because it struck me that biographical piece. Alfred Adler, who is the psychologist that I talked to you about earlier, he said one of his claims was that many people have a, like a, a stark memory that sets the course for their life.
That's true.
Right.
Moments.
Yeah.
And you have exactly that. You So Adlerian psychology would be of great interest to you, I suspect. But partly, you see, what happened was you had a true revelation. You thought, if I'm being picked last, something is wrong. And that's absolutely right. It's unbelievably right. And you played it out first in the athletic domain, but you have to start somewhere. So that's a good place to start. Jocko was telling me when we talked this week, he's this tough character, man. You know, and he could have, and I'm not telling tales out of school here, he could have been a criminal, no problem. And he knows that perfectly well. And I'm not saying that as a slur on his character, partly because I believe the Nietzschean dictum that a lot of morality is just cowardice. Whatever he might be, he's not a coward. And so, and just because you obey the laws doesn't mean you're moral. Just might mean you're afraid. In any case. So the question is, well, what socialized this brute? Well, he was taught in the Navy Seals. Take care of your team. That's your fundamental purpose. And he noted, and we had a long discussion about this, the successful guys, man, you know they've got your back.
Wow. Right.
You know that above all.
Yeah.
And if you aspire to a leadership position among those brutes, let's say, and you aren't someone they know to have your back, they're not following.
You'Re not going to make it.
Yeah. You're not going to make it. And so that's, this is why the discussions of power that are so prevalent in, in modern culture bother me so much. It's like you think male hierarchies are predicated on power. You really think that they are when they've gone rotten? But when they're not rotten, that's not what they're predicated on at all. The capacity, the exercise power, that's really important. You need that. It has to be part of you for you to be admirable. It's like you could be a badass son. a bitch. Yes, I see that. And that way I'm somewhat intimidated by you. And that's actually a testament to your moral virtue that you have enough force and power to be intimidating. But then if you can encapsulate that and take that potential for power and harness it to this broader good, well, that's unstoppable. And a real functional hierarchy. That's what it is.
Yeah.
I know how important your wife is to you. And it's actually the first thing you write about is the importance of the 50 years you've been in love with your wife. I'm curious, what is the thing you love most about your wife? That's my first question.
I think it's very difficult to say exactly why you're attracted to someone.
It's.
There's lots of factors, and many of them aren't. known to you, really. She's very, she's provocative. She's witty and sharp. And so there's always an element of game playing. Like, it's not dishonest game playing, but there's a teasY, flirtatious, provocativeness that characterizes her quite deeply. She's no pushover by any stretch of the imagination and I find that constantly interesting and intriguing. It's particular, it's, it can be somewhat hard on me when I'm not feeling well, but when I'm up and functioning properly, then that works out extremely well.
What's my purpose? What am I aiming at? Well, I'm going to, I did a series of biblical lectures last last year, I did 15 lectures on Genesis. I'm going to continue doing that. So in November, I'm going to start with the Exodus stories. And what I'd like to do over the next 15 years is make my way through the whole corpus of biblical writings. So that's one major goal. I want to write another book. I've written half of it already, which will be a follow-up to 12 Rules for Life, because I actually had laid out on a site called Quora 40 rules. And so I'll do that. and write another couple of books, I suspect, over the next few years. The touring I'm going to continue. I have 10 cities coming up in Canada and another 20 in the US and then 12 in Europe and I'm going to go to Australia in February and then back to Europe I think in April. So there's lots of touring on the horizon and it's for the reasons I already described. I'm having, I don't The lectures differ every night, although there are themes that constantly emerge. And I'm using those as an opportunity to have a detailed and engaged discussion with the audience about how we might proceed forward individually and collectively so that we can make things consciously better and why that's associated with necessary meaning and why that's a moral obligation. So it's a dialogue about responsibilities. and not rights, even though rights are only important insofar as they set up the space for you to shoulder your proper responsibility. And as a sovereign citizen, you have the responsibility for the integrity of the state resting on your shoulders. And it's something that if you don't take seriously, then the state shakes, and that's not good. And so I'm trying to convey that to people. It's like you have, there's actually something that you need to do. You need to take care of yourself. you need to take care of your family, you need to take care of your community. And if you don't do that, then there'll be hell to pay. And it's on you, right?
Each of us.
And it's hard for people to grasp that. Well, they don't want to, first of all, maybe because they don't want the responsibility, but then they don't get any meaning, then they suffer, then they get bitter. That's not good. So it's like, which of these are you going to pick? But it's also salutary to people because. It's useful for everyone to know that if you don't live up to your potential, that you leave a hole in the fabric of being and it's filled by something approximating hell. And unless that's what you want, then you shouldn't be doing that. And so, and it's perfectly possible to have a serious discussion with 3,000 people about this, and they're right on board with it all the way. And so that's really something amazing to behold. And one of the things I've realized is, oh, these new technologies, the technologies you're using, enable these long-form discussions. Turns out that people are smarter than we thought.
Right.
TV narrowed it, right? It's like 30 seconds. Say your complicated thing in 30 seconds. Like, can't. And so we were viewing the population through this narrow window, and everyone looked kind of stupid. It's like, now the Windows fully open. It's like, oh, look at that. You people like 40-hour Netflix specials that are incredibly complex, right? And you like three-hour Joe Rogan discussions that are complicated. You'll follow the whole thing. It's like, oh good, we're smarter than we thought. Thank God for that, because we better be. So that's where I mean, that's the future.
That's your purpose.
Yeah.
Okay, question number two. You've got the 12 Rules for Life. Make sure you guys again go pick it up. Get it right now. What's the link as well?
-Selfauthoring.Com and I put up a code which is GREATNESS. -Greatness.
Yes.
-You get 20% off the whole suite.
Two for one.
So, you can give the suite to your friends too.
-Selfauthoring.Com.
Yep.
-Not slash greatness. Just the code is greatness. -Just the code is greatness.
Yeah.
And the thing that I would say to to everyone. If you're going to try this exercise, which I would recommend, do it over a few days and don't do it perfectly. Just do it.
Get it done.
Do a bad first draft, right? Which is an important principle in life. A bad first draft is a great thing to have.
-That'S good. You're also on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. So, we'll link all that stuff up as well.
And your website.
What's your main website? -Jordanbpetersen.com -Perfect. Okay. So, make sure you guys book, subscribe to everything, get the self-authoring.
The future authoring for you university students out there, the future authoring program decreases your probability of dropout if you're in a college program, university program by somewhere between 25 and 50%, especially if you're kind of aimless. It works better. If you already got a plan and you're implementing it, you've got a good direction then, you know, it's not as helpful because you're already halfway there. But if you're kind of lost and you do this, it'll help you not only establish your goals, but stick to them. It really helps. We've done three very detailed published peer reviewed studies showing that this really works.
Powerful.
Yeah.
And it doesn't hurt you either. That's the other thing.
That's great. What would you say would be the keys to your success of 50 years of loving each other and being in a, what seems to be a healthy functional relationship when in society today, it doesn't seem like many of those.
Well, we really do our best not to lie to each other about anything. And we also have fights when they're necessary. We don't let things, we don't hide things in the fog. That's the title of chapter three of my new book, Don't Hide Things in the Fog. And we work through our issues. If we have a dispute, We do our level best to get to the bottom of it, to find out what in the world's causing it, whose needs to change and why and how and when, and then how we can progress forward into the future without having that issue dog us or drag behind us or interfere with us at all. And that means a fair bit of confrontation, I would say. But less so over the years as we've settled more and more things. But everything's out in the open. Everything that we can get is out in the open. You can't have a relationship without trust. And you trust your partner courageously if you're not naive, knowing that you can be hurt and that you can be deceived and that you can also do both of those things. So you offer your partner your trust as an invitation to them to be honest and forthcoming and well, and then issues come up and you delve into them and straighten them out. And we also attend to the relationship. I'm not going to refer back to this new book continually, but it's relevant in this context. It's chapter 10, Plan and Work Diligently to Maintain the Romance in youn Relationship. And we do that as well. And it is effortful. I mean, we try to have, throughout our relationship, we tried to have romantic dates one to three times a week. And they require preparation and cooperation and the will to do it and the will to put yourself on the line. the desire to make that a priority even when other things are more pressing. We both want it to work. That's another thing. We're committed to it and not interested in finding another relationship. And so far we've been fortunate and that's worked. We have fun together. We love our kids. We have had joint projects of all sorts together. renovating houses, traveling, raising our children, now our grandchildren. But all of that is the most important thing as far as I'm concerned is to not to lie to your partner.
You mentioned you don't have a relationship if you don't have trust or if there's not trust in the relationship. How does someone, if someone is not trusting the other partner, How do you cultivate trust? If you're 100% honest with that person, if you are transparent about every action you make in your life, if you're, you know, they have access to whatever they want to see and you're constantly creating trust, but for whatever reason, they still might be jealous or insecure or not believing you. How does someone get someone to trust them? Or is it not about them at that stage and it's about the other person and their insecurities?
Well, it depends very much on the particulars of the situation. You know, so I don't know if there's a generic answer to that. I think that you can establish the ground rules explicitly, you know, and have a discussion about it. Are we going to lie to each other or not? Are we going to tell each other the truth to the degree that we can to make that an actual goal and to talk through the consequences of doing that and not doing it? And then I would also say, whenever a hiccup occurs in the relationship, maybe you don't call it out at each hiccup, you know, because you have to have a certain amount of silent tolerance in any relationship to let small infractions go. But if they repeat, my rule is three times. And it's the rule that I share with my wife. If something happens three times that is causing emotional upset, anger, jealousy, disappointment, resentment, frustration, any of those things, anything that you don't want to experience and that you especially don't want to experience repeatedly, then you can call it out. And if you have three examples, your case is much better made than if you just have one. And I would also say that when you call it out, you know, you could say, look, we were at a party the other night, and you were. It looked to me, I felt as if you were paying too much intense intent attention to Dave. There was some flirting going on there. That's what it looked like to me. There was some flirting going on there. and you know, that made me uncomfortable. Well, you don't say, well, you were flirting, stop doing it. You say, well, this is how it looked, this is what it looked like to me, and here was my response. And then you want to think, and maybe I'm a damn fool and blind and jealous and stupid, and I'm misinterpreting, or maybe it was a harmless flirtation of the sort that people will engage in. because it adds a little bit of spice to a social interaction. You want to find out. Like it's really convenient if it's the other person's fault, except then you're laden with living with that person. So it really doesn't help you anyways. But it's convenient because then they have to change. But you've got to think about this over the long run. You're going to be interacting with this person on a minute by minute basis for decades. if you're the idiot and that's causing trouble, then you should find out. So you want to say, well, look, this is what I saw. What's your explanation of what's going on? And then they'll offer you their Viewpoint, and hopefully they'll do the same thing. They'll think, well, this is my intent, and maybe they have to go think about it, but this is my intent, and this is what I saw. And I think you're being oversensitive in that situation. And you peel back the explanations layer by layer until you both agree on what happened and more importantly on what you're going to do about it in the future. And that's really hard, and especially if there is something going on that's not straight, because that will require quite a bit of digging. It'll probably result in anger and tears. and to fight. And that's very unpleasant. It's easier in the short term to avoid that, but hopefully the consequence of that is you don't have to have that fight again. You have to come to a negotiated agreement about that situation. And you have to pay attention to your own uncomfortable negative emotions in order to manage that and not and not pretend that everything's all right or that you're nicer than you are or that you're less jealous than you are or less blind or. See, one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst about marriage, was that there is a reason marriage was a vow. Like the vow is that you stick together. Okay, so now imagine that's a vow. Okay, you do not get to leave, period. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, on the upside, it means that you don't have to be alone. It means that your family will have continuity over decades. It means that the narrative of your life won't be fragmented and broken by divorce or sequential divorce. It means that your children can grow up and maybe have their children within a continuing family. It means that your children will be able to maintain relationships with the grandparents on both sides and the cousins. Like it's a big deal to maintain that. There's huge advantages in it. It means that you'll have someone there when you're not well and so will your partner. And it'll means that you have someone to share all of the positive things of life with. So there's huge advantages to it. Okay, so why does it have to be a vow? Well, I don't think you can tell the truth to someone who can run away. Because if you tell the truth to someone and they can run away, then they'll run away.
Right. Right?
Because you're a mess, man. And not just because of your own inadequacies, but because human beings are so complicated and have such dark corners. and have had, you know, unresolved problems in their life sometimes that stem back generations and are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways. And you can't, it's very, very difficult to reveal that except to someone who can't run away. Now, that, you know, I'm not saying that people should never separate. I am saying though that it's better not to if you can manage it. But then the other thing too is if you can't run away then you're motivated in a different way. It's like I'm stuck with this woman and she's stuck with me and unless we want to have this same goddamn fight over and over and over for the next who knows how long, why don't we straighten it out? and then we can put it behind us. See, the vow gives you a kind of desperation that is another motivation to actually solve the problems. And if you've got a way out, you can always stay hidden. You can guard yourself, you can protect yourself, and even protect that part of yourself that thinks that it can leave if things get too bad. Now, the problem with that, in my estimation, is that you're going to drag your stupidity into the next relationship.
Right.
Always do.
Right.
Well, generally speaking, right? And so now you can get very, you can, you can, under unfortunate circumstances, you can get tangled up with someone who's not playing a straight game with you and won't, and it's just impossible.
But.
I'm not talking about the limit cases, you know, I'm talking about the average case, the average amount of, unhappiness and trouble. It's still plenty. And then the other. Sorry, just one more thing. I'd add to that. You also have to, in some sense, shake the illusion that the other person is somehow not you. You're so tied up with them that there's no difference between you and them in some sense, is that what's good for her is going to be good for you and vice versa. One of the things we try to do too, the two of us, is we try to say yes to each other. Now there's rules that go along with that, which is well, I'm going to say yes to you, but that sort of means that you shouldn't ask me unreasonable, you shouldn't make unreasonable demands. I'll say yes as much as I possibly can and then you'll do that in return and then we get yes out of the deal. instead of no, that's also a huge plus. So that's, that's. Is there anything else about you, you want, you wanna, you want, you have to want the best for the other person and you and for the relationship. And in, within that Confine, you want tell each other the truth.
Yeah, the truth is huge. And I heard you mentioned jealousy and insecurity at some point that message. Is there room for jealousy and insecurity in a relationship? Is there a healthy amount of jealousy that people should have in a relationship? Or does jealousy and insecurity only cause more suffering and pain in a relationship?
Well, I think there's a reasonable amount of proprietary interest, let's say.
I mean.
In a classic monogamous relationship, a marriage, there's sexual fidelity as a crucial element of that. And maybe you'll make an arrangement that differs from that, but it's not easy to chart uncharted territory like that. I mean, if you want to have an adventure like that with a partner, a monogamous adventure that also includes sexual exploration. Well, maybe you can pull it off, but I doubt it. It's really complicated.
Let's say you're not having sexual exploration with other people and you're telling each other the truth and you're being honest. Is there room to be jealous or insecure in that relationship? Or does jealousy Typically cause more harm than it does, you know, spice and good, I guess.
I think jealousy probably causes more trouble than good, but that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the proprietary interest. Should you care if your partner pays undue attention to someone of the opposite sex they find attractive? Well, probably you should care. you might even say something about it. They might even be happy about that, right? Because it indicates that you noticed and that it matters to you. Now, I think it Shades into jealousy when it's harmless interactions. It's interactions that would be regarded as harmless by a third-party Observer, let's say. I know that's a very difficult line to draw that are being magnified. as a consequence of insecurity on the part of the observer, or there's envy where your partner is attracting attention, status, success, any of those things, and you're jealous of that. That's not helpful. You should be pleased. The optimal situation is for you to be pleased when your partner is successful. I don't think competitive couples I don't think competition between people who are in a monogamous relationship is useful particularly. It's not zero sum competition. I mean, you can compete in a game like sense.
Right.
Fun, playful competition, but not- yeah, but not existential competition.
You're on the same team. That's the point.
Right.
You know, and if one of you is feeling left behind for one reason or another, it's time to throw that out on the table and say, look, I'm. I'm playing second fiddle here far too often. What can we do about that? Well, it looks like you need a. And, like, I've got an adventure. It looks like you need one, too. Well, how can we rearrange the situation so I have my adventure? And then it's up to that person, too, to figure out what obstacles they might be putting up in their own pathway, right? That's stopping them. And then they have, you know, their. angry at you for getting in the way, but it's actually a consequence of them using you as a convenient excuse for not doing something difficult. Those things all have to be sorted through. It's very hard. These conversations are extremely difficult. It's no wonder people avoid them. I also think people are not taught to negotiate at all. And that's a real shame. First of all, you figure out what you want. this is what I want. Then you tell the person, then you strategize with them so that you can get what you want and they can get what they want and you both know what that is and a way you go together. And that usually comes out, it's usually obscured and hidden and comes out awkwardly and difficulty and with difficulty if it comes out at all. And people fool themselves into thinking that it's okay what they're doing. I'm sacrificing myself for the children and that's okay. I'm sacrificing sacrificing myself for my husband's career and that's okay. I'm working at a job I can't stand because I need to support my wife and children and that's okay. I mean sometimes that is okay but it has to be out clear in the open, talked about, negotiated, discussed. You know, I think there's, you can be a slave or a tyrant or you can negotiate. Those are your options. and we default to slavery and tyranny because that doesn't require any cognitive effort. And then we pretend that everything's all right. And then it blows up in our faces and we end up divorced. Right.
So we got to learn how to negotiate.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and then you have to notice that there are things that you want, right? And you have to tell yourself what those are. And then you have to let the other person know. And then they can deprive you of them because they actually know who you are. And so that's a big risk.
But.
If you do lay it out and negotiate, then you have two people working in the same direction and they each bring their different viewpoints to bear on the problem and sometimes that'll save you, you know, that additional cognitive complexity you have because there's two of you instead of one. It can make you much more effective.
What happens when we feel like our partner is depriving us of what we want if it's not, you know, infidelity or something of the likes of being with other people, but something else that we want in our life. A goal.
Well, actually, that happens all the time.
Right.
Because people, generally speaking, men would like to have sex more frequently than women. So that's a sticking point in many relationships.
But.
Forget that for the moment. We might just as well say that the probability that one partner and the other partner are going to have exactly the same level of sexual interest, say with regards to frequency, is quite low. So there's going to be friction there. So what do you do? Well, you negotiate about it. It's like, well, I'd like to have sex 15 times a week. Well, I'd like to have sex once a week. Okay, well, you know, the logical, the logical, meeting point there would be in the middle. But then that has to be planned out. And you also have to say exactly what you mean. Well, exactly what do you mean by sex? because there's all sorts of variations of sex, ranging from just intimate closeness to full-fledged sexual activity of various sorts. And the various sorts matter too. And these are painful discussions often. It's very funny in some sense that people will do and desire things that they won't talk about.
Right.
They'll engage in the act, but they won't engage in the negotiation. And they won't admit what they want.
Why is it so hard for us to admit what we want?
We're ashamed of it. That's easy with sex. Sex and shame regulates sex. You know, people say, well, you shouldn't be ashamed of sex. It's like, well, really? Really? No, that's a stupid theory. We arrest people who expose themselves in public. Why? Well, because we don't want people masturbating in public. We assume they should be ashamed enough not to do that. Shame regulates sexual behavior. So we're embarrassed about our desires. And, you know, naively you'd think, well, you can just shed that. Well, first of all, no, you can't. And second of all, it isn't obvious at all that you should. What you might be able to do is to determine how to play out your sexual life in the confines of your relationship in a manner that neither of you do find shameful. But that's, that's just think how hard that is. Like, you know, you think, well, that's what I want. It's like, but then you think about, how unlikely that is and how difficult it would be to attain it. You know, you could say that if that ever happens to you in your life once, you're lucky, you know, that it's perfect. Now, I, I think that's pessimistic because I, I believe that solutions to that problem can be negotiated, but it's not. It's what everyone wants, but it's. an extraordinarily difficult thing to bring about. So let's say you want the ideal romantic evening. Well, okay, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to put yourself in reasonable physical shape? So you're attractive? Are you going to make a playlist and put some time into it? Are you going to buy some candles? Are you going to buy something nice to wear? Are you going to wear it? Are you going to dare to wear it? That might be true for you and for your partner. Are they going to dare to wear it? Are you going to be smart enough if they do wear it to respond in a way that makes them feel confident and increases the probability that they'll do it again? Are you going to do whatever is necessary to make yourself physically attractive in that moment? Are you going to have the kids put away. Have you got the day-to-day aggravations with each other that are dragging you down and making you resentful under control so that you actually do want to give your partner some pleasure? Like, these things are very hard. Yeah, but they're not impossible. They're. And they're worth it. But it's not surprising that people don't do it. And then. Then the next. Well, then there's the shame part too, as well. Okay, just exactly what is permissible or desirable and when? And when should you, when are your kinks counterproductive? Exactly. You know, we can't, we certainly can't have that discussion as a culture. You know, on the one hand we think we're so split on this. On the one hand, we think any sexual misbehavior should be subject to the harshest of punishments and everything goes and is acceptable. It's like, well, good luck having both of those ideas.
Right.
It is so interesting to me to watch this. You know, there's just outrage, constant outrage about sexual misbehavior. And, and fair enough. Like, I, that would be surprising.
When you mean, when you mean sexual misbehavior, it means someone cheating or someone having an affair or what? sexual misbehavior?
Yes, or unwanted sexual attention or sexual harassment. And I'm not saying these things don't happen or that they're not nefarious and awful. Obviously they are. It's no wonder that happens. But at the same time, we also are obsessed with the notion that any sexual interest of any sort whatsoever, with the possible exception of sexual interest in children, is absolutely laudable. Well, sorry, you can't have both of those things.
Right.
Right. So.
And because we want both of them, insist upon both of them, then we can't even have a discussion. We can't have a discussion about pornography. It doesn't look to me like pornography is really a very good idea. I don't think it's helping anyone. Now, you know, there might be codicils to that, freedom of expression, some potential educational utility, the pleasure that's a consequence of sexual utilization of pornographic material. But I would still say, seeing all that, that it's not a net social good. It doesn't do the people who produce it or who consume it any good. And I don't believe that anyone feels like a better human being after utilizing pornography for sexual gratification. Now, you might say, well, that's because they've been shamed about sex since they're born. And, you know, and that's a consequence of our crooked culture. And, you know, in a utopian world, we wouldn't have that. shame and yeah, no, it's way more complicated than that. And I, I read something in one of the YouTube comments in my video the other day. I was talking to Abigail Schreier about the apparent fact that today's teenagers are having much less sex. One person commented that There's the shame that men feel when sex is a spectator sport rather than a participatory act. And then you think, well, you know, the mere fact that you're watching two other people, one of whom isn't you, having sex instead of having sex really implies something either about your, it implies something about your desirability. It's pretty hard to shake that, isn't it? Or your courage. Why is it that you're sitting there alone at night with your laptop on your lap? What the hell's wrong with you? Well, nothing. It's just we should dispense with sexual shame. It's like, no, probably not. That's probably not the answer. Well, so that was all, you know, why do people have a hard time negotiating about sex or talking about it? Well, it's no bloody wonder. It's sex is such dynamite.
What's the, I agree. This could be a four hour conversation on that. I'm curious.
Yeah, well, that would be a good conversation. We need to have about a 50 hour conversation about that.
You should do a series on your YouTube channel about that. I'm curious about the biggest challenge you've had overcome personally in your marriage that you're really proud of that you overcame in the last, I don't know if you've been married for 50 years, but I know you wrote that you've loved your your wife for 50 years. But what's the hardest thing that you had to overcome as a man or a human being in this relationship that you're extremely proud of, that you did, in fact, overcome it, or you've improved upon it in a major way?
I don't know if I'm proud about it. Proud of it. Like the. The success at these things seems so unlikely and so dependent on. Good luck in some sense that, you know, mostly I'm, if things go well for me, I'm generally grateful that I escaped from the axe, you know, rather than being proud of it. We did a good job of working through our, our attitude towards how we were going to treat our children. So we were on the same page all the time, pretty much all the time. and so the kids couldn't, we didn't let the kids appeal to one of us or the other. We really participated in their upbringing and we talked all that through and that's good. We have good relationships with our kids, both of us, and that was really necessary too because my daughter got unbelievably sick for massive amounts of time and my son, we had to ignore him a lot. because he just wasn't dying. So it was like, kid, sorry. Like, we got a problem here. And you.
And.
And he was great, man.
He.
He just rode through that like a. Like a master.
But.
If we hadn't sorted out our child rearing philosophy, let's say, we would have. It would have sunk us for sure. Well, because it was so close to the edge that, you know, few marriages survive the death of a child and no wonder, you know, but the serious illness of a child is also an unbelievable stressor.
And.
You know, we sailed through that as well as could be hoped. You kind of know that because you look back and you think, well, do we regret Right? And of course, there's the odd regret. You know, one thing when you have a sick child, you have this terrible conundrum all the time of, well, how hard do you push them? When do you allow the illness to be a reason that they aren't doing something? When do you allow them to use the illness as a reason that they're not doing something? Well, it's really, it's really, really hard to get that right. And sometimes we pushed harder than we should have and misunderstood too. And, but at least we did that together. And my wife, you know, I've seen many, many women protect their children from the father. They don't trust him. And so every time he interacts with the child, they'll do something disapproving. A look, they'll put him down. Now, it's not like men don't do that to their wives. There's all sorts of tricks that men have for their wives. Men are very good at turning their wives into, drudges, for example, for a variety of reasons, which we can go into.
But.
If you don't trust men, you won't let them have a hand in the children, the discipline of the children. You know, when you think of discipline, you think of punishment, threat and dad saying, no, that isn't discipline. Discipline is Discipline, if you discipline someone properly, they become disciplined, right? That means they're competent.
They're organized, they have structure, they have, yeah.
They can control themselves. So I'll give you an example. My son is quite a disagreeable person by nature. So he's very masculine. He's very high in emotional stability. So he doesn't have much negative emotion. And he's relatively low in agreeableness. he's. And that's. That's typical masculine pattern. That the two big personality differences between men and women are agreeableness, women are higher, and neuroticism, tendency to feel negative emotion, women are higher.
So.
So what that meant was that when he was a kid, he was a stubborn little pup. It was hard to get him to do what he didn't want to do. And, you know, that's the mark of a character that is hard to stop. So there's real advantages to it, but. Kids who are disagreeable are a handful because they think, I'm not doing that and you can't make me.
Right.
He was really quite good at that.
And is it one of your rules from the first book, like don't let your kids do anything that would make you dislike them?
Yes. And we should talk about that because that's such a good rule, I think. But then I used to, the rule for him was, you know, he'd push the limits in a variety of ways, and he was really good at that and quite persistent at it. And I'd talk to my wife and say, look, Julian's getting a little too pushy here. We have to crack down on him and stop him.
And.
And this is what I see. And she'd say, this is what I see. And we'd think, well, this is what we're going for a week. He isn't going to get away with anything. Like the line, man. It's like, kid, he'd be three or three and a half at this time. Sit on the steps. Sit on the steps. And if he wouldn't, because he was stubborn, well, I'd bring him over and put him on the steps. Like it was, you're going, if I say you're going to sit on the steps, you are absolutely going to sit on the steps. So it was so interesting to watch him because he'd be angry, you know, because he got interfered with. He didn't get to do what he wanted to do. And he'd be, and he would go and sit on the steps, but he'd be like mad as hell on the way there, arms pumping up and down and just, You go sit on the steps like, you know, like this, just overcome with anger. And the rule was, as soon as you get yourself under control and you can act like a civilized human being and you want to have a good day, then you come and tell me and all, that's it, you're done. But it had to be real. And look, my, my, my, my, criteria for accepting his statement was whether or not I liked him when he said it. You know, if he was still being a, if he was still misbehaving and, and bending the rules, he, he wouldn't be genuine when he talked to me.
Right.
But if he came and said, okay, Dad, like, I've had enough. I'm, I'm, I've got myself under control. I'd rather have a good day. And as soon as he said that, I liked him. It was like, hey, man, you're back.
In the Do what you want to do. Yeah.
Well, I didn't want him to sit on the steps anymore. I liked having him around.
Sure, sure.
So, but our, you know, we were on board with that. And so the discipline, so the thing is, see what was the discipline aspect, which is what I was talking about, is he learned how to integrate it into his personality. And I could see him doing that, sitting on the steps. He was, it was just this aggression circuit, which is unbelievably powerful, was just dominating him. And he just, Force it. Get it under control. Get it under control. Calm down. Bring yourself back into the social world. And it was a victory for his developing ego, you see, because he wasn't defeated by his own impulses. And that's discipline, you see. Then you're not defeated by your own impulses. And so discipline has the wrong connotation. I was encouraging him, you, can master this, man. And it worked. And it was so useful to us later because when Michaela got so sick, he was together. We could rely on him. So it was necessary. And it hasn't stopped being necessary. And he's a very reliable person. who does what he wants. It's a great combination.
Yeah, that's beautiful. When do you feel the most loved, Jordan? When what's happening around you or when you're creating something or when you're with people, when do you feel personally the most loved?
It's when I'm with my family, when I'm with my kids, when I'm with my family, friends too. And that's even been more the case over the last couple of years because My family and friends have been so unbelievably loyal and helpful to me and my family as we've had our troubles. Terrible, terrible troubles over the last couple of years. They've been so unbelievably reliable and helpful, amazing. Certainly people have gone out of my way for me in a way that I don't believe I would have done for them.
Really?
Well, look, I saw my father-in-law when, when, and I write about this in, in Beyond Order. No, I read about it in 12 rules more, I think. But it doesn't matter. He's a, like, he's a really extroverted guy, disagreeable guy, too. Masculine guy, extroverted, assertive. Everybody in the little town I grew up in knew who he was. He was a performer, you know, the life of the party. and a good businessman, but a real character.
And.
He did his own thing. But then his wife got prefrontal dementia when she was quite young, 55. And man, he took care of her for 15 years.
Wow.
It was unbelievable. And it was so interesting too, because if we offered to help him, he would accept it right away. And anything that we could do that would, like I suggested one time, for example, that he buy a digital readout sign so that if he went out, he could type in where he was going on the sign and it would just repeat over and over. And some recordings in the bathroom to help his wife remember what to do. And he would just implement those, accept and implement them right away. But he, this guy who was, who lived his own life, who, who was a, a very extroverted social person. not someone who you would have regarded as soft and caring. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just that that wasn't him. It wasn't Mother Teresa, you know? He just, he cared for her in a way that was absolutely astonishing. And I saw that also in my friends and my family in the care that they've offered to Tammy and I over the last two years. Mind boggling. Mind boggling. But I would say the place I like to be the most is in a family situation. When there's no elephants under the rug. And everyone's playing. If you ever have that, you should consider yourself fortunate, beyond belief, because it's unlikely and you can lose it at any moment.
Yeah.
I've been in. I was in the hospital more or less for a year and then another year with Tammy, and I thought I'd lost all of that. Never get it back. It was very Dreadful. And so now when it happens, I mean, I've always been grateful for it when it happens. Strive for that, you know. the animal experimentalists have demonstrated that the ones who study play, this is Jaak Panksepp in particular, but there's a variety of them who study play. Brilliant scientists. Play is a circuit, it's a mammalian circuit, it's a specialized circuit. And it's very important developmentally for that circuit to be given free reign to play. It's how children play out roles in the world that they're eventually going to adopt. They play mother, they play father, they play all these different roles. And that's how they learn to be those things. The role of the father is to put up security so that play can occur. So the security is there. That's the walls, they fortify the walls, man the walls, guard the walls. But within the walls, then that's where play can take place. And play is very easily disrupted. Hunger, thirst, any emotional state, any motivational state can supersede it, even though it's very, very important. So you have to have the walled garden in place before play can occur.
Remove the fears, yeah.
To make it safe so that experimentation can take place within. that's paradise, right? It's a walled garden. That's what paradise means, is a walled garden where structure and nature, the walls and the garden, are harmoniously interacting and where eternal play can occur. That's paradise. And so you get a glimpse of that when everyone's together, often at the table.
Not fighting.
And, and, and, and also not, not fighting.
Right, right.
You know what? Yeah, but not like, it's when everyone's at each other's throats, but no one's saying anything. Well, we're not going to talk about. We're not going to bring that up. We're not going to discuss that.
Because that's not a dice either.
Yeah.
No, that's pretense. And, and to see that, that negotiation is the eradication of the need for that pretense. It's like you got a problem with me. Let's sort it out.
Right.
Because we're going to carry it with us. You want to do that? So people wonder why I engage in conflict. I hate conflict. It's. And I find it very stressful. But conflict delayed is conflict multiplied.
Oh, that's so true. It's worse to have lingering conflict for. months, years, decades then the pain of direct conflict that can hopefully resolve and move on.
Yes, absolutely. Well, and as the conflict is delayed, it's the reasons multiply and the persons who are involved because they're avoiding, demean themselves and get weaker and less confident. And so it's a vicious circle. it's better to notice. You've. There's this. There's a line in the New Testament. Christ talks about prayer. And so you imagine that as communion with God. So you could imagine that as an attempt to. To confer with the ideal or maybe to even occupy that space for a while. Well, he says, Christ says, if you have a problem with your brother, you fix that first. Go pray later. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's it. That, that's, that's, that's wise. And, and that's a good thing. You know, if you're, if you're angry with your, the people who are close to you, if you're resentful, I read a lot about that in chapter 11. Resentment is so useful. It's so useful. It's so horrible, so toxic, it's so destructive, but. It's so informative. If you're resentful, you're either being oppressed and not standing up for yourself or you're whiny and should grow up. And both of those things are really useful to realize. And all you have to do is notice that you're resentful and want to do something about it. Okay, I'm resentful. Okay, am I immature? Are people picking on me or I am immature? If people are picking on me, do I have something to say or something to do? I should do it. It's a gateway to improvement, resentment, or you can let it foster it and let it devour you and take you places that no one with a clear mind would ever want to go. Hell, that's resentment, man. That's the pathway to hell. And if you don't believe in hell, you don't have any imagination. That's my sense of things.
When you are constantly reflecting on who.
You are, where you've been, the journey.
You'Ve gone through, the journey you can continue going through, the feeling's always there. You don't allow the world to pull you so fast that you forget.
You don't allow yourself to pull you.
So fast that you forget.
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