"THIS IS Why Most People Are LAZY & UNMOTIVATED IN LIFE!" | Jordan Peterson & Lewis Howes

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: when there's no elephants under the rug, and everyone's playing, if you ever have that, You should consider yourself.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

Is there anything you, any skills you wish you would have developed in your 20s that you didn't develop sooner? Maybe you have them now.

I've really thought about that. I've really thought about that recently.

What will those few skills be that you wish you would have developed and you wish everyone would develop?

Well, 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. 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 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 gonna 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. 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. you know, and, and, well, when I realized that about the baseball game, I thought there's, there's no content, no contemptuousness here. Like, clue in, clue in, clue in. There's something here that, that these people aren't just stupid and going out to a baseball game because they're stupid. You know, 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. you know, 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 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, you're 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 in every night in this city.

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 longing and pain. And that was very emotionally impactful. But I can't say with certainty that what the consequence of that was. 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. 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. 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 me. I think it's possible that just too many things happened at once.

Yeah.

That's possible. It certainly distracted me.

Right?

And so maybe I wasn't paying attention to the exactly the right thing. So, 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.

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 physical, 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. 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 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 foster them. 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. 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 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, you think nothing. 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. 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? 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 you, let's say that I, 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 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, yeah, 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 gonna make it.

Yeah.

You're not gonna 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 of 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.

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. 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 particularly, it's, it's 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. And so, yeah.

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. Our. If we're. 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 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 and 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 we, 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 attention to Dave. There was 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. 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 a 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.

Right.

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 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. 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. 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, not just because of your own inadequacies, but because human beings are so complicated and, and have such dark corners and, and, 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 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 to tell each other the truth.

Yeah, the truth is, is huge. And I heard you mentioned jealousy and insecurity at some point that, 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, Their sexual fidelity is 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 exploitation 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. Yeah. 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 playing second fiddle here far too often. What can we do about that? Well, it looks like you need it. 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, they're 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.

Oh man.

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 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 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, if, well, if you, 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, sexually, 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. you know, 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, 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 think that's pessimistic because 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. You know, 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, but they're not impossible. 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. nepharious 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 be 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.

Mm-.

And I read something in one of the YouTube comments in my video the other day. I was talking to Abigail Shrier 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's. 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 is 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? 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. this out.

You should do a series on your YouTube channel about that. I'm curious about the biggest challenge you've had to 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 success of 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 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. that. That's. That's good. We have good relationships with our kids, both of us.

And.

And that was really necessary, too, because my daughter got unbelievably sick for massive amounts of time, and. 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 survived 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, she, 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 them 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. And that's typical masculine pattern. 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 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? 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 them and stop them. 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, errr, he'd 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 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.

Bending the rules, he wouldn't be genuine when he talked to me. But if he came and said, okay, Dad, I've had enough. 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 party.

Do what you want to do, yeah.

Well, I didn't want him to sit on the steps anymore. I liked having him around.

So, 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 and I write about this in Beyond Order. No, I write about it in 12 Rules More, I think, but it doesn't matter. 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 it and implement them right away. But he, this guy who was, who lived his own life, who was 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 rein 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, fighting, 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.

Ooh, 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. 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 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.

And what we. You mentioned Paradise being a safe space where we can play and have fun and feel protected. But a lot of times, at least in the last year, I'm seeing more and more in the world that the anxiety, stress, depression. challenges of the mind or the heart and the body have seemed to come to the surface for a lot of people even more. And it sounds to me, and it looks to me like when I'm connecting with people that a lot of things from the past, past memories, past pains, hurts, traumas are being brought to the forefront for a lot of people with the chaos of the now. How do we start to heal the memories of the past, the traumas of the past, so that they don't keep hurting us in the presence.

Well, the first thing I would say.

Is.

You know, sometimes there's a crisis in well-meaning mental health professionals rush in to discuss the trauma while it's still happening. That's a really bad idea. People are generally traumatized because something actually horrible happened. And dwelling on it in the moment just makes it worse. It's not like anybody has a solution. Here's how you should understand this. You know, someone's just shot up your kid's school. Here's how you should understand this. That'll make it all better. It's like, no, it won't. If you have old baggage. That often comes up if you're having an argument with someone, doesn't it? You know how it is. This is partly why people don't like to have a dispute within a relationship because it's a thread and you pull on that thread and just God. Oh, that we had another rule. Do not agree with something you don't agree with. Ooh, like if we're gonna if we decide, you and me, that we're doing this, we don't go back and say, well, I didn't really mean it. We don't get to play revisionist with our history. So if you don't agree, don't agree. Fight, object, or hold your peace. Because you see what happens with couples is there's a little fight. And then one says to the other, yeah, but you did this. And then that person says, yeah, I know I did that, but then that was because you did this and each this gets bigger until what's on the table is why the hell should we stay together at all?

Right.

And so every fight becomes why the hell should we stay together at all? So that's another thing you want to do is you want to have the fight about this thing.

Not about everything.

Not everything. It's like, okay, you were flirting. I think you were flirting more than you should have been. Okay, so I go away and I think, well, okay, maybe I was. Okay, well, then we have to have a discussion about why. And maybe we can solve that. But mostly what we have to do is figure out how to not have that happen again. Okay, so we're gonna go see the same couple again. What is it that you want me to do? so I'm the flirtatious one, let's say. What do you want me to do? Well, you have to figure that out. It's like, no, I'm stupid. Like you. We're equally stupid. I need to know what would satisfy you. And you need to figure out what would satisfy you. So I know. And that, like, that's also extremely useful is let your can establish your conditions of satisfaction. Make them explicit. Let the other person know.

Yeah, you can't read someone's.

Mind. We're very bad at that. We're bad at reading our own minds, for that matter. Yeah.

So.

If we, if I have a fight with, with Tammy, let's say, sometimes I remember to say, okay, what, what do you want me to do right now? What can I do? What, what should I say and mean? You know, and you think, well, You shouldn't let the other person put words in your mouth. Well, fair enough. You know, I'm not asking for something false. I'm saying, I'd like to not have this happen. Can you see a way out? Is there something I could do to increase the probability that that's the route we could take? And, you know, sometimes that works. But the other person has to let you know what they would find satisfying.

You mentioned sexual shame. and it triggered something in me about just the shames of the past that people tend to hold on to. I think I might have mentioned this to you the last time we talked. I'm not sure if you know, but I was, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man that I didn't know. And for 25 years, I held on to the secret, the shame. And if anyone ever knew about this, then I would never be loved. I, you know, right.

Because you feel contaminated. They permanently Yeah, I would, you know.

I wouldn't have any guy friends. No girls would find me attractive. My parents would disown me. You know, I went down the rabbit hole of these stories of, you know, I'm the only one this has ever happened to. I never saw any examples of this happening to you. Right. And, about eight years ago, I started to really heal that and start sharing that shame and many different therapeutic experiences that allowed me to start the healing process. I'm curious from your perspective with all the work that you've done, what is the best approach for someone to really heal their shame? Whether it's around sexual abuse or trauma or just anything, whether it be small or big or any type of shame that they might have, how does someone release shame in a healthy manner so that it doesn't make them a prisoner of these emotions of the past that hold them back.

Well, you hinted at a few things when you just described what. What happened to you is you said, well, first of all, you know, I thought I was the only person this had ever happened to. It's like, no, it's a universal human experience to one degree or another. Now, you know, I'm not saying everyone was sexually abused, and I'm certainly not saying that some people. aren't sexually abused to a degree that's so extreme, it's unimaginable where there are others, you know, get off relatively lightly. But it's still, it's, it's well within the realm of normative human experience that sexual, that sex goes wrong in some way. At least you regret something that's happened, something you've done or something that was done to you. So putting it in to When you're the only person that something has happened to, that's really not good, right? Because it alienates you even from yourself. You have no idea what to do with that. And so that's sometimes why people find it such a relief to have their illness diagnosed. It's like, oh, there is, this is known, there's a category. Other people have had this experience. Maybe there's a pathway through it. so just knowing that you're not the only person like that can be very helpful. Updating, it's like how you were how old?

Five.

Okay, well, one thing to realize when you're 25 and you were abused when you're five is that you're not five anymore.

Right.

Right.

That the person to whom that happened is no longer there. You're there, but so, you know, you might feel afraid of relationships, you might feel afraid of all sorts of things, but. A lot of that was, you're sort of feeling that like that residual five-year-old. I tell a story about one client I had, she was abused by her older brother and she told me this story and I drew a picture in my head while she was, you know, I kind of pictured her of at five and this teenage, hulking teenager, you know, taking advantage of her. But as she told the story, I realized that her older brother was only a year, two years older than her. Well, he was seven. Was like, okay, well, they were. She wasn't the victim of a tyrannical male. In some sense, she. They were two badly supervised children. Now, that doesn't mean that what he did was right, but she was still the five-year-old in the memory, but she was 27 when or so when she came to see me. And so the first thing I did was just. point that out. It's like, think about the seven-year-olds you know, right? For a five-year-old, a seven-year-old is an adult. But for an adult, a seven and a five-year-old are clearly both children. Well, that just changed things somewhat. It made her feel less vulnerable in the moment. What your brain wants from you in relationship to a traumatic memory is indication that you're no longer vulnerable to the same problem. That's what memory is for, right? You remember something bad and you process it so that you change your interpretation or your behavior or the situation or whatever you can change so that it isn't going to happen in the future. And that'll, if you do that thoroughly, you'll generally let yourself rest.

It's to, you have the memory to protect yourself from it happening again.

Well, that's the purpose of memory in general. You make sense of your past behavior so that the good things that happen to you can be duplicated and the bad things can be avoided. It's not to make an objective record of the world. It's to make a functional map of the world that you can apply to the future.

And so, how do we let that go? How do we disassociate something that happened a year ago, 10, 20 years ago, that is no longer happening, but is seems to be triggering us?

Oh, it's very, It's very difficult. Well, I would say, you know, one of the things you need to develop if you've had an experience like the one you had, perhaps, because I don't know the details, you probably need a theory of malevolence. You need an explanation. It's like, how could a person do that? Well, you have to have an it.

What if the explanation isn't good? They were just bad person.

They just, well, then you need a philosophy of bad. you need a philosophy of evil. You have to understand it so that you're no longer a victim of it. You have, because otherwise you can't put the event in a, in a context.

Right.

You know, and sometimes that means the development of real, a real philosophical sophistication. And that can help because then, you know, then you can start to separate out malevolence from benevolence, because maybe you're afraid of any intimate relationship now because it's been contaminated with that. and everything's fuzzy and foggy. And so you need to understand the person who did that, at least to some degree, so that you can separate that person out from all the other people around you who. That you encounter in situations that might be reminiscent of it, you know, so you. You felt vulnerable for app for. Perhaps you felt ashamed. All those things have to be gone through. What do you think? you know, when you're ashamed, when does. What elicits that? What are the eliciting cues? What do you think when that happens? All of that has to be taken apart. I said in this Beyond Order book that, you know, if you have a memory older than about 18 months, that still bothers you, right? It's still got emotional resonance. They write it out.

Older than 18 months ago or.

Yeah, no, older than 18 months ago or more.

Got it.

Yeah. Otherwise it's not really in the past, right? It's still happening. That whether you should delve into something, how you should delve into something traumatic that's currently happening is a whole different issue. But if it's an old memory and it still bothers you, it means that you haven't decomposed that experience sufficiently to detach it from the emotion. So imagine when something terrible happens to you, you don't understand it. So then you might say, well, if you don't understand something that's happening to you, how can it be terrible? Because it doesn't terrible mean that you understand it. And the answer is, well, you understand things in stages. And the first way you understand a terrible thing is by freezing in terror or running. That's the understanding. It's not conceptual, it's embodied and emotional. And so event terror, that's the first category. Okay, now the next question is, how do you get it out? How do you get out of the terror?

Well.

You realize that nothing truly dangerous is happening. Well, what if something truly dangerous did happen? Then you elaborate your view of the world to the point where you're no longer vulnerable to that terrible thing. And that's extremely difficult. So the memory of something terrible stays terrible until you effortfully process it and decompose it into, well, often into a much more sophisticated map of the world. And it's really hard to do that.

What'S the thing in your life that was the hardest to do to deconstruct after the event so that it didn't consume you emotionally from the initial terror? Because you study this, you practice this, you teach this stuff, but when, you know, as a practitioner teaching it, is there a, was there a time where you were like, man, this is really hard for me to understand?

Oh, absolutely. It's chronic. I mean, that state is chronic for me at the moment, I would say, partly because I've become so insanely famous and I have difficulty with that for sure. It's very difficult to understand. I'm, I'm, and so, and I wouldn't say I've managed it. I'm managing it, I suppose. But, and then health trouble that has hit my family and me has been so devastating that I haven't managed that either. Like, you know, that's the thing. I suggest to people, no, that isn't even that. It's that what have I found that you do about terrible things? Generally, you don't run from them, especially if they're not avoidable in the future. Generally, you stand, confront, decompose, understand, adapt. But just because you generally do that and it's the best bet doesn't mean it's definitely going to work. It's just the best shot you have at it. You know, it'd be lovely if something always worked, but if something always worked, people would never get sick and die.

Right?

And we do all the time.

So.

We do our best, but that doesn't mean that that always works, but it's still the best that can be done. It's still better than all the alternatives.

So 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. 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.

Yeah.

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. I've had the odd brush with people who were a little more persistent than was probably good. And 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, you're not living in LA, that's probably why.

Well, it could be, could be. But for whatever reason, I've been pretty fortunate about that.

Yeah.

Um, 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, 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.

Yeah.

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, and I. I mean, I can. I. 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, Ben. You know, it doesn't take a very big Twitter mob to chase anyone back into their hole. How do we- Chase a company for that matter, back into its, on its heels. I mean, isn't that, doesn't, does that, is that how it looks to you? I mean, what do you think about this?

Yeah, I'm just curious, you know, as people, individuals, whether it be me, you, or anyone, wants to build something, wants to have a goal and aim, as you talk about, and go after this thing that they care about and share their opinion, share their voice, 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. Yep.

Don't lie. Don't be careless. 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 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, and I'm, I'm perfectly pleased that my teenage years aren't stored on YouTube, for example. It must have been terrifying 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 not 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 internalizing disorders, depression, anxiety disorders, that sort of thing. So there are two constraints. So there is a 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. 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 I'll betray the people that I've been speaking to with, you know, that I'll be insufficient to the challenge in some manner, ethically particularly. But more than that, even just physiologically, let's say. So that's definitely it.

Did you ever have a goal to impact as many people? Was that part of your life's mission that I want to reach more people than outside of the classroom and sell 5 million copies of my books and be so well known that you are? Was that ever a mission or was it always just, I want to learn and teach and if 10 people watch, great. If 10 million people watch, Great.

I probably knew. I knew when I was working on my Maps of Meaning book that I was, look, I tried to write about the most serious problem I could find in the most serious way I could manage. And I thought, well, if this is a serious problem and I'm addressing it seriously, it's probably a serious endeavor and will have the consequences of that, whatever those might be. And when I started to lecture about what I had been thinking about and learning about, the impact was obvious.

And.

Unique in some sense. I mean, there are my lectures, the most typical response I got from students in my classes was, especially in the class on my first book, Maps of Meaning, was this course changed how I looked at everything. And I would say- My life, the.

World, the universe, God.

Yeah. Or they'd say, well, I've learned all these things. I don't know how to talk about them with anyone else, which was the same sort of thing. And a lot of the public commentary on my work is similar to that. But, you know, in some sense that wasn't a surprise because what I learned changed the way I looked at things completely too. Absolutely, completely one hand, like completely in a revolutionary way. And so, and I, I, I had a sense of that from, I don't know how old, very young.

You had a sense of that?

Four, five, you know, young.

You had a sense that your life would impact millions of people?

Yes.

Was it kind of like an inner dialogue or an inner calling or something that was...

It was like a dream, sort of. Or the memory of a dream.

That's crazy.

Look, I talked to Jocko Willink the other day. I'm looking forward to releasing that. It was such a good conversation. It was such a good conversation with him. He made such this immensely tough person, tough guy. Very. He knew he wanted to be a soldier from the time he was like three. And he said, and don't be thinking that it was for any high noble reasons. I mean, he's quite funny, but I just wanted to... He would just destroy. He states, it's like, this is my character. This is who I am. It's me. And you know, with my kids, I could see who they were. They were the same person right from the time they were born. They developed and unfolded and all of that. But it was the unfolding of something that was there. It was the bringing of something there to light. It's. It's shocking and surprising to me constantly and exactly what I expected at the same time, and. That seems completely paradoxical. It's sort of like one part of me knew and accepts it, and the other part is too old and too much the way that I was to adapt to it.

Yeah.

I saw a clip from an interview of your daughter and your wife together. I think it was on your daughter's podcast. And Your wife was mentioning something about how you were smitten over her for, I don't know, a period of time. Maybe this was years, but she was never showing the interest in return.

Oh, just glimpses of it, just enough to keep me interested.

Right.

But she wasn't going to date you, or be committed, I guess, or whatever she said, until...

I can tell you what she's like. It's easy. One day I went over there. I was about 13. to her house. I was delivering papers, and it was her paper route. I'd taken it over. And. And so she was there with one of her friends, and my wife, Tammy, she was very popular among all the boys, even when she was in grade three and four. Like, there was, like, 10 of us. It wasn't a very big town, and we were all in love with her.

Yeah.

Except for one guy who was not just out of spite and. this is true. Like, I can remember this very clearly. Anyways, I went over there when I was. She was a friend of mine when I was a kid, but there was always this romantic interest part of it, even when we were very young. And we didn't see much of each other when we were around 13. You know, girls mature faster than boys. And I was also one year behind. In any case, I went over to her place one day delivering these newspapers, and. she was talking to her friend Hazel, blonde girl who was very attractive girl as well. And they were talking about getting married and they were, you know, being kind of cynical and smart ass about it. And Tammy said to her friend, I don't want to change my name when I get married. I'm going to have to marry some wimp. And she turned around and looked at me and smiled and she said, Jordan, would you like to get married?

Wow.

And I thought, and she was playing like it was a poke and it was, you know, genuinely poke, but she knew I liked her. And so, you know, it was one of those barbs that's funny because it's close to the bone. Right, right. Well, that's where real humor exists, right? It's right on that cutting edge. And so that was her. She was provocative like that. And I told her that story when we decided to get married and I said, Well, you're Tammy Peterson, not Tammy Roberts. And so that, you know, I got the last laugh in that story, but it took like 20 years.

For sure.

Yeah.

She had mentioned something like, you know, he wasn't suitable or ready for me until you were.

And I'm like, oh, she, you know, it's typical. Like as soon as she found out that I was attractive to other women because I was, you know, vaguely competent, then she swooped in for the kill.

Exactly. So I'm curious, 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, there, 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. Yep. 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. 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. 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.

You. You.

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. If you're ashamed of being ignorant, you're shown up at a party because 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. A recognized inadequacy is as soon as it's such a gift in some sense, 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, it's not a thing where you hold shame around or.

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.

That 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 not, 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. 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. And so 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, Yeah, 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.

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, you know, 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 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 of- no.

No, 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 still believe that genuine accomplishment, but 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 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. Um, when I'm interviewing, I interrupt more than a certain percentage of my audience would like.

I get, 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. Sorry, that's a stupid joke, but it's a stupid joke. Anyhow, so, you know, I read those, and that's what people think, and. And then I. I think, okay, I. should probably try to interrupt less, but I get excited and then with Zoom, there's a lag and 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 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 you know, maybe it 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. You know, 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. that seems to be what's ethical and that's it. And 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. It's got this ring of patriarchal tyranny, but that. That's based on a misapprehension of what morality is. It's like, do you want to be tortured by your conscience? Like how, I mean, how pleasant do you find it to be tortured by your conscience?

It's horrible.

How horrible? Like is there anything worse?

Excruciating.

Yeah.

I don't know if there's anything worse.

I mean, it's up there.

You've got to 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.

Right.

Well, there isn't anything better than that. That might not be good enough. It might not even be good. Like, 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.

Yeah.

And it's real. The ethical torment and the 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 an. It's a continual. It plagues me continually. Continually every second.

Yeah.

I'm so ill.

How are you navigating that?

Well, I I. With great care and. And effort. I mean, I. I wake up at eight. Even though I'm not, 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 8, period. I sauna for 45 minutes. I walk seven miles. I work out. I write. I do my work. 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.

I've got about 14 minutes to be respectful of your time until I, you're, you've let me know that that's our time we've got. So, I want to ask a different question and get to the final few questions to be respectful of time. And before I ask this question around money and the psychology of money, I want people to make sure they get this book beyond order, 12 More Rules for Life, and make sure you pick up your other book as well, which is amazing, which is 12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos, but make sure you get a copy of this book or a few copies and get them for your friends because it'll be extremely life changing when you start going through this. I haven't heard a lot of people talk to you about money. Maybe I've just missed it and maybe you've talked about it a bunch, but I haven't seen it.

That's a good question. Yeah, definitely.

I don't want to make assumptions, but If I was making assumptions, college professors aren't typically multimillionaires. Am I fair to say that's semi-accurate? If you're a professor, you're not making millions, you're not this financially abundant human, you have maybe a good salary, but you're not bringing in financial abundance at the next level. And I'm not going to try to assume where you're at financially before you became more famous in the YouTube and the media in the books, but I'm assuming that you've accumulated a lot more money than what you had, let's say five years ago. 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. Well, 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 girls goes 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 make more of this? 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 I buy so much and use it?

Well, 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, 'cause it's always falling apart. Six big houses fall apart all the time.

Oh man.

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 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. And so, and that is a source of security. And I have accountants who do taxes and I hate doing my taxes. Everyone does, but maybe I hate it even more. It seems to bother me a lot. In any case, that's one thing 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're not earning 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. No, I wouldn't sell out. 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 going to 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.

Success.

So you got to frame the reframe the way you think about those things.

Yeah, we have to look at it's like sales. It's like, okay, well, you're not gonna sell anything then. Yeah. So that's, that's the end of that problem. So, or maybe, you know, you have moral qualms about engaging in the capitalist Enterprise. Well, you know, good luck carrying that along with you. You know, and if you, maybe the qualms are well Mer, are 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 me was taking place anyways.

So 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 like the disnification of philosophy. But I am 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.

Yeah. Where can people see some of your stuff? What's the best site to go to?

Oh, if you just go to a YouTube channel, there's a little bar underneath it that's JBPMerchandise.com. merchandise. I mean, it's absurd, right? There's also that element of absurdity, which I kind of, and a surreal element to it that I find kind of interesting and ridiculous and perplexing and hallucinogenic. It's very, very strange.

It's all fun, you know? It's all fun. I want everyone to go buy a lobster tie and posters and The book. I want everyone to get beyond order. Get a few copies for your friends as well. I've got two final questions. But before I ask the questions, Jordan, I want to acknowledge you for a moment because I know you went through a lot of you're still going through a lot of pain and challenge and adversity since the first time I interviewed you a few years ago to now. And I also know that you went through a lot of pain and adversity. with your kids, with your daughter specifically, and other challenges that have happened in your life. And, I acknowledge you for continually showing up in a time of uncertainty, in a time of maybe a loss of hope at different moments, in a time of physical pain, in a time of lack of sleep, continually and non-restorative sleep. The fact that you continue to show up and serve is truly to be acknowledged. And I'm so grateful that you take the time to come on my show and share this knowledge because I know the impact it'll have in the service of the message and all the work that you're doing for your own content and everyone else's that you're being on. I'm really grateful that you've decided to continue to show up.

Well, whatever I might be doing for other people, they're certainly doing that for me. So I'm grateful to have the privilege, the immense and staggering privilege of being attended to. It's amazing, you know, it's so. So I don't. Whatever I might be. What would you say? Sacrificing. for it, I'm gaining equivalently. I've had so much support from people. It's just absolutely staggering.

And so, we appreciate you and you're making an impact on our lives and we hope you're balancing and taking care of your health as well. That's the most important. I asked you two questions in the last interview that I'd love to ask you again. I'm not sure if you're going to remember them, but I want to see if you have the same or different response. The one question is hypothetical. It's called my three truths question. I would like you to imagine that many, many years away, you get to choose the last day on earth for yourself, but you eventually gotta go. And you accomplish everything you want to create into the world. You see your work come to life, the impact, the family, everything happens, and it's magical, right? But for whatever reason, you got to take all your work with you. So you got to take beyond order, all your content, your videos, podcasts, all got to go with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three truths, the three lessons, the biggest lessons you've learned in your life that you'd want to share with the world. And this is all we would have of your content left behind. What would you see? What would you say would be your three truths?

I would say have the faith, strive to manifest the faith necessary to Make things better rather than worse. Pray that you have enough terror.

To be.

Frightened out of your own deceit. and strive to be grateful regardless of regardless that would be that's good enough.

Yeah. I think one of. One of your rules is be grateful in the suffering. Right.

In spite of. Yeah, that's the last rule. And the one that I've wrestled with most, I would say, over the last. Especially the last two years.

Yeah, that's probably got to be the hardest. to find.

Yeah, well, you know, people have their reasons. I outlined them in chapter 11. Why are you bitter? Well, here are the reasons. Oh, well, those are real reasons. No wonder, you know, you listen to someone tell you about their life. It's so typical, so frequent, catastrophic occurrences, you know, and yet people stumble forward positively. and it's a miracle. And a lot of that is, it's see that chapter, be grateful in spite of your suffering. It's really a chapter about, in some sense, about faith and courage. And it's, it's an act of faith and courage to be grateful because there's reasons not to be. And so it's like, it's a decision. And it's not like you make the decision and then you've got it, you've done it right, and then you have it. It's, it's a constant ongoing decision and the temptation to not, to be ungrateful, to be bitter. It's always there and compelling, rationally compelling, it's easy, emotionally compelling.

Yeah.

But it makes everything worse.

Oh, it's so true. It's so true. It's like eating candy. You know, it tastes good for a moment and then you feel sick for hours.

So.

You said you had three questions?

Now this is my final question right now.

Okay.

So my final question is what's your definition of greatness?

The capacity and the capacity to utter and abide by beautiful truths.

Jordan Peterson, thank you so much. Make sure you guys get the book Beyond Order. Subscribe to Jordan's podcast, YouTube, Everywhere Else Online, and Jordan, it's been a pleasure, my friend. Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you very much for the invitation, and thank you to everyone who's watching and listening. Much appreciated. If you're looking for more greatness in.

Your life, make sure to check out this video right here. And also check out our free PDF, the Three Secrets to Unlock the Power of youf Mind to Help youp Change youe Life. Download it right here.

The lesson that I learned from her is go do it now. Like stop talking. Just go do it. If you don't have an excuse, then you shouldn't be wasting time.