How To ACTUALLY Build An Unstoppable Character - Jordan Peterson

If you don't know who you should be pick something pick something pick something that would be an accomplishment even do it somewhat arbitrarily because you you know maybe you have too many choices you don't know what you're interested in start somewhere aim at something do it maybe it's a six-month certificate at something maybe it's a it's an online course whatever hey something work hard at it see what happens what'll happen is Well you'll get more disciplined as a consequence of the work and so that'll make you a somewhat different person but also as you work

on it you'll figure out in more detail why it's for you or why it's not and then when you make the next decision you'll be more informed it's that's how a self-correcting cybernetic system works essentially you you you establish a name and you move towards it as you move towards it you gather information That may shift your aim but you have to move towards the aim so so in essence even if you don't accomplish what you set out to do that the lessons along the way that that that is the higher lesson at some level

yes well and and you let's say you should try to accomplish it but but I say let's say while you get halfway through it and you think I really know this isn't for me then you might say well how do you know you're not just coping out yeah and I would say Well you can you can set up a check against that by swearing when you start something that you won't switch it except for something more difficult and then because you know everybody has that tendency to rationalize their procrastination and that's a good way of

protecting yourself against that it's like I can quit this but I have to immed I have to have a better plan that's more difficult and I can jump into that and this is this is Also associated with something like the the necessary minimum of respect for tradition if you pick a goal it'll be a goal that's a social institution of some sort virtually with virtual certainty because it has to be valuable to other people to be valuable generally speaking um you want to have you don't want to be so cynical that you stop yourself from

pursuing anything because nothing's worthwhile that's not helpful and everyone knows that and you Might say well I can't get out of that cynicism and I would say well jump out of the cynicism may be very difficult try just doing something local just pick something you know if you don't have a relationship make a dating profile you don't even have to put it online but at least you have the profile you're taking a step in in that direction you don't know what's possible and you're not as much as you could be and so God only knows

what you could What you could do and have and give if you sacrificed everything to it and that's the reason Abraham is constantly making sacrifices and it's archaic right he's burning up like baby lambs but like well they're alive you know that's something and and they're valuable and that's something it's you have to admit even if you think about it as a modern person that the act of sacrificing something might have some dramatic compulsion to it you know to go out into A flock and to take something that's newborn and to cut its throat and

to bleed it and to burn it might be a way of indicating to yourself that you're actually serious about something and it isn't so obvious that we have rituals of seriousness like that now and so it's not so obvious that we're actually serious about anything and so maybe that's not such a good thing and so maybe we shouldn't be thinking that these people were so archaic and Primitive and superstitious it's possible that they knew something that we don't and certainly in the abrahamic stories one of the things that maintains Abraham's Covenant with God is is

continual willingness to sacrifice and it's so that sacrificial issue is so important because you are not committed to something unless you're willing to sacrifice for it commitment and sacrifice are the same thing and I think it's it borders on miraculous that those Concepts are embedded into this narrative at the level of dramatic action you know instead of abstract explanation people are acting this out and and that the fundamental conception is so profound that it's really quite it's quite a inspiring it's it's breathtaking really when you understand what message is trying to be conveyed you have

to make sacrifices and what do you have to sacrifice you have to sacrifice that which is most valuable to You currently that's stopping you and God only knows what that is it's certainly the worst of you it's certainly that and God Only Knows to what degree you're in love with the worst of you so well so you move from the unbearable present to the ideal future and and you can't help that you have to live in a structure like that that's your house that's another way of thinking about it and if you want to get

your house in Order and if you want it to be a place that you can live properly then you have to plan the future that is perfect and then I think well what does that mean and it means it's good for you right and one of the things that I'm I'm I do all the time with my clinical and Consulting clients is try to figure out what would be good for them but we we do more than that we try to think okay well what how can we set this up so it's really good for

you and that all the Side consequences of that are things that are good for other people and so because people are often also timid about trying to get something that's good for themselves because they feel that it's selfish or that they don't deserve it so we set it up so that well look we're going to set it up so that it's plainly obvious that this will not harm the structure of the universe for you to have what you need and to do it in a way way that's of benefit to other People there's no downside

to that and and so it's okay it's okay if you reach out and take that one of the things that's interesting about the biblical Stories the abrahamic stories as well is that God doesn't really seem to be opposed to this success of the people that he's chosen you know what happens to them is as as they progress through their journey is they they get larger flocks and they they get more Authority and they they get they get more they get Life more abundant that's what happens it's God doesn't doesn't seem to be a miser in

the Old Testament it's like if you put in the effort and you and you accept the Covenant and you make the sacrifices then you get to be successful and maybe successful beyond your wildest dreams and that that's actually seems to be okay with God and that's pretty cool given that you know that the general notion of Old Testament God is that all he's doing is casting out curses and Death you know wherever he happens to wander and I mean there's certainly no shortage of that but but again it seems to me that that's very good

news and that you also don't have to be perfect in order for to have that happen and then the other thing this is the issue about going into the unknown it's like well if you leave your country and your kin and your father's house and you go out into a land that your intuition guides you to you're going to undergo These radical Transformations this is a sacrificial transformation too because you're you're moving forthrightly and voluntarily into chaos right and that's the same as the dragon fight that's the tearless story and what will happen there is

that you will transform yourself and so the call to an ideal is also the call to a sequence of deaths and rebirths that move you closer and closer to the [Music] Ideal if you're resentful about something well first of all you should notice I'm resentful and that's kind of humiliating because no one's proud of being resentful it's a shameful emotion Alo then why are you resentful well there's only two reasons as far as I've been able to tell one is that you're you're being you're allowing yourself to be taken advantage of or you're being taken

advantage of sometimes you're not allowing yourself Sometimes you're a child being abused by their Uncle you're not allowing yourself you can't you can't do anything about [Music] it you're you're resentful because you're being taken advantage of or because you're immature it's one of those two things figure out which it is and then take the steps necessary to address it living a life without resentment is a great goal people are often resentful if they See that responsibility has been abdicated why isn't that person doing their job it's like well hey man step in at your workplace

in your family you know and you think well I don't I shouldn't have have to do that extra work well you shouldn't be a slave you shouldn't allow yourself to be tyrannized but if something bugs you because a responsibility is going unfulfilled there's a great opportunity for you and this is something I don't Think we teach young people well and one of the things you may remember this that was so striking about the tour was that I made a case fairly consistently that most people find the meaning that sustains them through the vicissitudes of life

not in happiness but in responsibility and that would bring everyone to a halt it would always make the whole theater silent it's like oh I never thought of that connection because maybe you want to avoid responsibility And you can understand why you can understand why you hide from it like Abraham one of the biblical stories Abraham he stays in his father's tent till he's like 80 and then God gets fed up and tells them to get the hell out and grow up and everything that he encounters is catastrophic he encounters tyranny um the Egyptians conspired

to steal his wife he encounters starvation and war that is what you encounter if you go out in the world you think who The hell wants that I don't want the responsibility it's like well yes you do as it turns out there's nothing better than responsibility now you know I say that with some caution I think that it's hard to say the responsibility I've been over overwhelmed by my apparent responsibility but I think it's also kept me alive and I mean that literally and so wait can you can you go a little Deeper with that

I mean when you were at your darkest moments in the last two years uh what whatever that might be um was it the feeling of many times in the last year where it would have been much easier for me just to be dead that's constant so but no but is it but no because of something in you or is it but no because of the the the people that you would have abdicated that responsibility to the People or is that is that ultimately the same saying yeah well I do think the the two aren't easily

distinguishable but it's definitely that it's definitely that you know [Music] and it's it's one of the chapters the last chapter is be grateful in spite of your suffering know you need a meaning to sustain you through suffering and it is the case That you find that in responsibility well and so it's good advice for anyone who's at work you're resentful about this and that because people aren't pulling their weight pull it see what happens you become indispensable instantly you'll know everything and know and if and maybe that job won't be for you or maybe that

relationship won't be for you but you'll take your hard acquired wisdom go elsewhere and flourish There so you know I this kid stopped me I think I wrote about this in this book kid stopped me in a restaurant one day when I was walking in he said and he he was he had a an undergraduate degree and he was working as a waiter in a chain stake place um and he stopped me and he said you know about 6 months ago I was watching one of your lectures and I decided to stop being resentful about

my job and he was resentful because he had a University degree and he's working as A waiter you know and look I don't have anything against waiters it's like a waiter can make your evening you know hooray um he said well I decided I'd start trying at my job like really trying as if it was worthwhile he said he got three promotions in 6 months like he's just rocketing up the power hierarchy well it's not power it's compet if it's well run you know and and and places are full of Opportunity if you concentrate solely

on your career you can get a long way in your career and I would say that that's a strategy that a minority of men preferentially do that that's all they do they work like 70 80 hours a week they go flat out on their career they're staking everything on the small probability of exception status in a narrow domain but it's it's hard on them they don't have a life it's very difficult for them to have a family they Don't know how to take any Leisure activity like they get very one-dimensional now it may be that

that unid dimensionality is the price you have to pay to be exceptional at one thing right because if you're going to be something like a genius level mathematician and you want to do that for or a scientist say it's like you're in your lab you're in your lab all the time you're working 70 hours a week or 80 hours a week you're smart you're Dedicated you're unid dimensional and that's how you get to beat all the other people who are doing that it's the only way but the problem is you don't get a life now

if you love being a scientist and you have that kind of focus of Mind well first of all you're a rare person and second you're going to pay for it but fine more power to you but but it's a it's a risky business to do that you sacrifice a lot for it you know and I would say most often if You're speaking about having a healthy life that isn't what you do you spread yourself out more so you know you have a family you have some things that you do outside of work that are meaningful

to you and useful you you have a network of friends um well that that those three things alone or four things alone or plenty to keep you well oriented and then if one of those things collapses you know everything doesn't go now the the price you pay for that is the more You strive to optimize that that balance the less likely you are to be fantastically successful at any single one of them but you might have a very you know if you could consider your life as a whole that might be a winning strategy one

of the things Carl Jung said I really like this he thought that men went after Perfection and wi women went after wholeness so they're different they're different value they're they're Different there's something different at the top of the value hierarchy so Perfection would be stake it all on one thing and and look for radical success not all not that all men do that because they don't but we're talking about extremes at least with regards to the men that do that the wholeness idea is more like well I want I want it's like I want one

thing in my life to be 150% or I want five things in my life to Be 80% well there there's a lot more richness in a life where you have five things operating at 80% but you're not operating in any of at any of them at 150% so and I really believe this because I've watched men and women go through their careers now for a long period of time and one of the things that there's lots of things that produce this but one of the things that I've noticed is that mostly women in their 30s

be bail out of unidimensional careers they won't do them they won't they won't put in the 80 hours a week that they would have to put in in order to dominate that particular area and it isn't the reason that they won't do it is because they decide it's not worth it and no wonder because why would that be worth it you have to ask yourself that it's like well you want to be an outstanding scientist it's like okay really really that's what You want because that means that's what you do cuz you're competing with other

people you know they're smart they're hardworking and if you want to be at the top you have to be smarter and work harder than any of them and working hard means working long hours I mean it all means working diligently but in in the final analysis it's all also an additive issue if I'm smart and hardworking and I can crank out for 70 hours a week and You do it for 30 it's like in 2 years I'm so far ahead of you you will never ever catch up we were sitting in the first row of

the plane and do you remember the guy was a young black man sort of ran onto the plane he was wearing a yellow vest he was a he was a worker working the bridge or something and he came up to you and he said I'm not supposed to be on the plane right now I'm not supposed to say anything but You helped me turn my life around I got this job because of you and what I remember more than anything else is this he had this huge smile on his face but it wasn't because you

told him to go out there and be happy it was because you told him to go out there and and fix some stuff and and I think that's exactly what you're talking about right now those experiences are so life sustaining it's so remarkable to have That happen and that's something I've had I've been immensely privileged to constantly experience although it's there's also something about it that's extremely painful you know the the the magnitude of that Joy is sort of proportional to the obstacles it had to overcome while it was attempting to manifest itself you know

and one of the things I'm sure you saw on the tour and I don't know how this affected you was this the the the depth Of hung for encouragement that exists everywhere as far as I can tell and everyone wants to be appreciated when they bring their best to the table that's why the assault the current assault on Merit is so unbelievably brutal because it will deny everyone the right to be appreciated for being their best and well you might ask well when does the best become your enemy and that's easy it's when you flee

from It so what did I learn from studying from studying the terrible situation that obtained in the mid 1980s when the Soviets and the West had tens of thousands of hydrogen bombs pointed at each other ready to go at a moment's notice why did that happen what did I learn it was simple the reason that that situation existed was because I was not good Enough I was not good enough the reason that the terrible situations in the world exist now is because you're not good enough you're not good enough you're not good enough we can

solve any problem we can solve any any problem if we used all the resources that were available to us if we live properly we have no idea what we could turn what we're in into so I would say you support Free Speech Because it's the mechanism that maintains the sanity of the individual and society and you live in relationship with the spoken truth to the best of your ability because the alternative is hell and if hell is what you want then you can remain arrogant and resentful and deceitful but if you want to work to

better the world to bring it up to what it might be then you speak forthrightly you clarify yourself and You act properly in the world and then you see what happens and this is the final thing I'll say I spent a long time studying The Sermon on the Mount it's a key document it's Christ's commentary on the Ten Commandments in a sense the question being if you codify the rules by which a society might function is there something within the structure of the rules that rises above them that acts as the fundamental principle from which

They're all derived it's the ultimate question of human ethics what is the highest principle and the answer that's put forth in The Sermon on the Mount is quite straightforward aim at the the highest possible good that you can conceive of whatever that is that you can conceive of that serves as your God for all intents and purposes having aligned yourself with that good speak the Truth and see what happens that's the Act of Faith The Act of Faith is whatever the truth reveals is the best of all possible worlds regardless of how it appears to

you now it's a guess right it's a it's something you stake a bet on well what do you think the best of all possible worlds will be brought into being by deceit it seems unlikely you know that doesn't work in your own life you tangle yourself up in your own lies right one Lie breeds 10 and 10 breeds 100 and maybe you put the consequences on down the road and you don't fall into the pit for five or six years maybe you've even forgotten why you fell in when you finally do fall in but everyone

knows that everyone knows that you don't get away with anything and so the issue is well what would happen if you just said what you thought stupid as it is inaccurate as it is and listen to people criticize you in Response to shape you and make you more articulate what would your life be like and the answer to that is and I know this to be true I've worked with many many people on precisely this problem your life gets better and better and better and richer and deeper but that comes with a heavier and heavier

burden of responsibility well that's okay okay you use the observation of your own capability to Bear Responsibility to butress yourself against the Terrors of being finite you say weak and miserable as I am I can still stand up to the terrible tragedy of life and Prevail and that's good [Music] enough we have to conserve the idea that the individual has an infinite responsibility to the direction of being and we know that you know perfectly well that you live in a relationship with your own conscience and when you violate The moral order that's part and parcel

of your soul you're ashamed and hide and bitter and then you get angry you can't show your face to other people you can't even look at yourself in the mirror and you know perfectly well that's true even though you may not know what to do about it or how to get out of it it's there's a moral order built into human beings if there wasn't there's no way we could even communicate with one another because there'd be no rules of Communication there'd be nothing that we mutually wanted or expected from each other you know one

of the things I figured out is that we're all appalled when we run into another person who is not yet the Redeemer every person you ever meet you're you're dissatisfied with because they're not who they could be and you're broadcasting that message at everyone all the time you're not who you could be you're not who you could be you're not Who you could be I'm not who I could be and we're all facing each other with our emotional displays pleading with each other to become that which we could become and everyone knows it but we

won't do it and it's no wonder the postmodernists they're the they're The Logical conclusion of the nitian Dilemma God is dead value the value structure collapsed the Spectre arises of all Value structures collapsing that's the postmodernist Dogma all value structures have collapsed they're only there for the purposes of exclusion they have no intrinsic value it's a very very powerful argument that's why it dominates the universities that and the fact that it allows people to dispense with their moral responsibility which is something that's never discussed by the postmodernists but you have to give the Devil his

due what's the problem with postmodernism well if all value structures have collapsed then there's nothing to do because in order to do something one thing has to be better than another because otherwise why do it and so people who are ensconced in the postmodern tradition are undermined by their own philosophy they can deconstruct their own deconstruction in which case they Might as well just sit there and do nothing which would actually be preferable to what they're doing now so how do they extract themselves from that dilemma they do it illogically but they don't care because

the postmodernists first of all don't believe in logic that's a reflection of the logos which they've dispensed with dialogue they don't believe in because that's a reflection of the logos which they've Dispensed with logic and dialogue are irrelevant well that does bring up the problem of what to do well the postmodernist finessed that by reverting to the Marxist doctrines from which postmodernism emerged and so they say well yeah you can't get any direction from postmodernism but we don't we're not going to worry about that because we don't worry about such things what we'll do is

just use slight of hand to push forward the communitarian doctrines out Of which our original hypothesis emerged and everyone says well we'll turn a blind eye to the Paradox because we actually need something to do and plus to the degree that we're communitarian we can take out our nihilistic resentment and arrogance and ingratitude on every single person we deem to have something more than we have and so if you're wondering why certain values can exist in the absence of any value you have to look no farther than to Understand that people who are desperate and

chaotic will still be angry and disted RVE and they can manifest that perfectly with the moral mask that says well I'm not really after what you have because you have a little more than me I'm speaking on behalf of these people who have even less it's like it's absolute nonsense it's so funny watching Yale students complain about the privileged they're in the top on10th of 100th of a Percent of people who've lived in in the entire history of the planet much less just the people that are on the planet now they're dominating Patriarchs in training

right they're baby representatives of the patriarchy and all they do is complain about that tiny tiny infimal fraction of people who have slightly more than they have now it's appalling and they're idiot professors Pat them on the back and send them out the world to do that instead of teaching Them how to [Music] live well as as far as I can tell the alternative is a proper return to the past and that is precisely to journey into the chaos to look at the worst possible thing and to pull the dead father up from the chaotic

depths that's how you stop being a puppet someone whose strings are being pulled by forces they do not understand behind the Scenes you find out what's great about your culture this thing that's provided us with everything that we see in this room this amazing warmth that we're experiencing when it's 30 bloody below outside the fact that the electricity is on and that computational resources are working and that we can all sit here peacefully and that no one is hungry in fact we're too fat that's our big problem oh no we have so much stuff we

getting fat yeah well that's a good Problem to have we should have some gratitude for what's been produced that's brought us to this point and we need to wake up and understand what we're doing that's what the psychoanalysts were trying to do in the 20th century that's what all the great clinicians were trying to do and I would say above all else that was what Carl Yung was trying to do he believed firmly that the idea of the Divine spark within the individual was a was a metaphysical Reality by which he meant a reality that

actually transcended and and and existed superordinate to the physical reality a more real reality that's whatever Consciousness is something we understand from a scientific perspective not at all that's been represented in our mythologies as far back as we can push them as an independent agent in the world giving rise to form that's how we treat each other that's how we recognize ourselves that's how we judge each other You make your bed and then you lie in it and everyone knows it and that's not to say that you're not subject to random and chaotic circumstances and

the tragedy of life just because you can do some things doesn't mean you can do everything but you can do some things and if you don't do them then Things Fall Apart yeah well we're not animals in a zoo like we're not we're not camels in a zoo we're not herbivores you know and And just because we have enough straw doesn't mean we're we're going to lose our unbelievable capacity for destructive creation and it we don't know how to harness that you know and I've been trying I suppose in some sense to to meet that

desire for a call to Adventure with what I'm writing and and with my lectures and and and to use responsibility in this moral domain as a as a as a battle that's of sufficient intensity to engage young people in Particular property it's like G get yourself together see how difficult that is see what you can do put yourself together stop doing the things you know to be wrong and see what happens put yourself together and there's been an unbelievable response to that and I think it's harmless in some sense or as harmless as such things

can be because it is focused it's like change you leave the other people alone or if you want to change them maybe you can do it through Example you know but they're not your they're not the problem you have enough problems with yourself it's like well what are you complaining about you've got enough to eat it's like fair enough you know who wants to starve right and so it's even hard to fight against well I should be grateful for that and yes you should but it's not enough and and you think about where we came

from our our ancestors what they struggled against and from From the time we were you know from from our animal forebears all the way up to where we are now whatever we're made for it's not it's not it's not twinkies and and and and and and and TV you know it's not willful blindness and the comfort that brings it's it's not enough and and so we need this adventure and and well and that's that's something we're going to all have to contend with Because if we don't get the adventure right then we'll get it wrong

and it'll lead us in terrible [Music] places one of the things I've said that people have repeated many times and that it's in memes and you can buy it on you know merchandise items and that sort of thing um a good man is a very dangerous man who has himself under control and no one ever says that so you Say to young men look like your job is to be as dangerous as you Poss possibly can be in every possible Direction and to control that right not to be harmless and and and slothful and and

contemptible even in your own eyes and that way you get the power of the Shadow you don't have to dispense with the anger and the aggression you can integrated it and that's way better I mean I I had a remarkable conversation with Joo willink I I felt it was Remarkable it it was very engrossing and willink he's he's unlike me in many ways I mean he's a physical specimen of sort of unparalleled proportions to begin with he's about 2T thick you know and he's this military guy highly disciplined and also extraordinarily morally integrated and he's

he's an admirable person because the danger is right there under the surface but it h he has it rather than it having him and We we're uncomfortable with the idea that that that's the proper route for socialization we teach our children try to teach our children that only you know Cooperative games are access acceptable and they know in their hearts that that's a complete bloody lie it's not technically sustainable it's not even conceptually correct I'm not saying I've solved it I talk to bejor about this a lot it's like I love your message wouldn't it

be Wonderful to eradicate absolute poverty and he does this great job technically of rank ordering Global concern doing a cost benefit analysis that's methodologically rigorous and saying look we can we can demote money here we'll get a 20 to1 return it's mostly in Child Nutrition as it turns out couldn't we do an immense amount of good with targeted spending and the answer is clearly yes we could eradicate child um poverty in the next 15 years we probably Will we could do great things but we don't know how to sell it and that's a huge problem

I've never had more of a response from a crowd than when I draw a relationship between responsibility and meaning without fail that brings the crowd to silence and it's because that connection hasn't been made explicit sufficiently I I would say is that we find meaning in responsibility and there is a messic call that's embedded in this and you can Translate that into get yourself together see what you could become and you know much of Beyond order is exactly that push your limits move Beyond yourself discipline yourself but move beyond that discipline don't let that order

constrain who you could be because it's not a high enough order yet and and I would say it looks like that is attractive to to young people and per perhaps specifically to young men but not only to Young and not only to the Young so well that's a problem that we have to address is you know we are doing a lot of things right but we're not it's not romantic enough the clinical experience and my lecturing experience has been unbelievably positive in the main and the clinical experience was positive because I was always on the

side of the per of the part of the person that was oriented towards their their own health and Improvement that was part of our Contractual pact in some I'd often Make That explicit it's like I'm not here for unconditional positive regard I'm on the side of the part of you that wants everything to be better and we're going to discover where that is and we're going to work to facilitate it and people love that and it was so gratifying to engage in that work it was constantly positive I worked with a huge variety of people

from people who were had nothing no gifts and and were just Off the edges of the world to people who were unbelievably talented and gifted the whole gamut and that was that was absolutely wonderful to see that range of people and the lecturing has been the same way like the the lecture to I did was immensely positive too much positive even you wouldn't think that would be possible but it is possible um and I I'm very positively oriented towards human beings in the main despite I think we're great flawed And terribly but but no wonder

no wonder I mean the burden we bear is is absolutely it's absurd the existentialists made much of that we haven't absurd existence we're aware of our own mortality God and we're animals we're aware of our own mortality what a burden and yet here we are and much of the time we're not corrupt and horrible it's a miracle so you know it's a word of encouragement and that's what people are Responding so positively to in a in a time where everyone is told this story that you know human activity is all a struggle for power and

that we're fundamentally a destructive force and that we should Reign ourselves in and and I'm I I'm not selling that message it's a word of encouragement you're you could be more than you are and wouldn't that be great for everyone including [Music] you one of the things Soul nits and said About Hedonism he said the doctrine that life is for happiness is invalidated by this the first sound of the Jack Boots kicking in your door and so then the question is well what do you do in the face of suffering when your philosophy is hedonic

is he is hedonistic and the answer is collapse and that means that happiness as it aim is is shallow and weak it cannot withstand suffering obviously because when you're suffering you're not Happy and if the purpose of life is to be happy then suffering when you're suffering your life has no meaning and then if you're suffering and there's no meaning in the suffering then you're really suffering that's really hell but then you think and this is something that's really heartened me I talk to my audiences especially to the young men say look first of all

don't aim at being happy because that's just not going to work especially when the Storms Come And The Barbarians are beating at the gate you can just forget about that and there's going to be times in your life where you're suffering so much you can't believe it and so you're going to need something a hell of a lot more robust than happiness to get you through that and then you might say well what's more robust than happiness or maybe even what's more robust than pain and then you could say well how about Adventure how about

Adventure how about we go out and sail the Uncharted Seas you know how about we go and Jesus I talked to a guy the other day he's a driver for me down in the down in Nashville where I am ex-military Guy special forces guy tough is a bloody boot now works as a cowboy out in Montana you know a real character perfect Bloody American archetype he knew he wanted to be in the Special Forces when he was five so I Talked to him for like half an hour trying to figure out what motivated him you

know and he told me probably 10 stories about his life all very colorful and deep anecdotes battle and and rescue and physical privation and discipline and every 10 minutes he said I was looking for a new challenge and then I was looking for a new challenge and then I'd already done that so I was looking for a new challenge and for him Life was nothing but a sequence of impossible mountains to climb and that's exactly what he wanted and that's what I think we all want you know in in the story of Abraham when Abraham

is perfectly happy in his father's tent eating peeled grapes and you know having his diapers changed even though he's 80 years old and God calls him out to to Adventure and it's very C catastrophic right cuz Abraham encounters tyranny and starvation and War and conspiracy to Steal his wife and his own proclivity to lie cowardly and this is all like in the that's his first sequence of Adventures and you think well what the hell's going on here it's certainly not the case that God called him out to be happy and I think the right moral

to draw from that story is that God so to speak has called us out for something far greater than mere happiness far so much greater than happiness that happiness pales in comparison he's Called us out for the adventure of our life that's of sufficient moral Integrity to justify the suffering and that's something and if you tell people that if if you let them know that you know well that makes them stand up and cheer right cuz deep in their heart they know that's true they're hearing that Spirit of Adventure calls you to be a patriarchal

despoiler of the planet and that demoralizes young men and that's of course exactly the Point because demoralized young men aren't oppressors although yes they are and they're not despoilers of the planet although yes they are and so so happiness it's like you know that's just that's just happiness is a side effect of moral Venture you know and if it comes along you should be bloody thrilled but as an name it's for it's for narcissistic three-year-olds as a name the Hallmark of true sovereignty is The willingness of the elite let's say The Talented the productive the

Blessed the gifted to to justify the unequal division of talent by serving to ameliorate the catastrophic suffering of the dispossessed now n you warned about that right he thought that Christianity would devolve in some sense into the woke nightmare that it has devolved into but I think he failed to give the devil his entire due the notion that the highest Is the highest because it voluntarily serves the lowest that's a deadly idea and I don't think it's an ideological idea at all I think it's an idea that removes the Paradox of human existence and so

and that so there's that but then there's another insistence in both Judaism and Christianity and I'm not saying it's limited to those doctrines by the way that the way to deal with suffering is not to avoid it or to circumvent it with A shallow Hedonism but to face it intensely headon and voluntarily in its full manifestation and so one of the things I've realized About the Passion story which which Yung regarded as an archetypal tragedy and in some sense a limit case right a story so tragic that you cannot write a more tragic story right

is that it drags The Observer and so that's all of us in the in Christendom through the entire catastrophe of human existence right so It confronts you with the mob the mob that's after you that you are also part of it confronts you with moral relativism in the face in the shape of Pontius pilot it confronts you with the oppression of the totalitarian state of foreigners let's say in the CA in the in the guys of Rome it confronts you with the Betrayal of your best friend it confronts you with the willingness of the crowd

to punish The Virtuous and free the criminal and that's the story Of barabus and Christ and pajo told me the other day Jonathan Paso that an alternative name for barabus was Jesus and that what the crowd did was pick the political revolutionary over the spiritual leader and that's perfect and then it confronts you with the reality that we all face our own mortality and too early and the fact that sometimes the innocent and virtuous are punished and so it and then of course there's the horrible tragic Torturous death all of that and that's all signified

by the image of the crucifix and what what what we're doing to ourselves even though we don't know it I'm speaking mostly psychologically although somewhat theologically is that we're exposing ourselves to the ultimate catastrophy of human existence while simultaneously manifesting the faith if the faith that if we face that unflinchingly that will resurrect us instead of killing Us that's quite powerful something man it's something it's something I've been puzzling out for a long time but particularly for the last 6 months I'm going to write about that in my new book but and when I talk

to my audiences about that you know and I would especially say this has an impact again on demoralized young man and say look we don't know the limits to the expansion of your personality if you're willing to face things without Deception that's that that's a variant of that radical honesty we're already talking about don't live by lies well life is rif with Injustice atrocity and suffering and so what do you do with that do you avoid it there's good physiological evidence by the way that if you take two groups of people and you subject one

group to a stressor involuntarily and you get the other group to take on the stressor voluntarily that the pattern of Psychophysiological response is entirely different it's entirely different emotionally motivationally and in terms of the damage it does and so the involuntary imposition of a threat is stressful and damaging but the voluntary acceptance of a threat is invigorating and revivifying [Music] but you know it would be nice if we could be optimistic and I think again the problem with being optimistic is That it's naive so then the question is is there an optimism that's not naive

and I think there is and the optimism that's not naive isn't just a a visualization of how strong people can be so one of the things that I I tell people I told my students in my class in maps of meaning here's a goal you want to be the person at the funeral of your father father that everyone can rely on how would that be you want to be the person who's broken and and and useless And adding to the misery in the corner and look I'm not making light of people's grief you know I

understand grief but who do you want to be when there's a crisis right do you want to be the person that everyone can turn to for strength it's like why the hell not why not that as a goal that'd be a good goal because then if there's a crisis and there will be it won't be such a bloody crisis because there'll be someone there That can deal with it you know so when I went and talked to these people at the funeral home I envisioned that I thought okay well this is something you have to

contend with if you're going to be alive and adult you have to contend with death and suffering and you have to be ready for it and you have to be there for the person because that's all they're going to have and so there's a goal man and in this time of nihilism you know it's what's the point Of life people ask and and they're taught that at universities what's the point of life everything's interpretation Humanity's a cancer on the planet you know well how about no how about not that how about that there's something to

us people say this courage they say they talk to me about my courage fairly frequently and that's not right exactly like I just learn to be afraid of the right Thing and I really mean that I mean I saw an endless repetition in my clinical practice and in my own private life when my eyes were open the consequences of not saying what was true it's like whatever hell you might fall into into by opening your mouth when you have something to say that isn't popular it's nothing like the hell that you're going to envelop yourself

in if you lose control of your own tongue in mind and I like I said in my clinical practice I Never saw anyone get away with anything even once and so all you have in a situation like that is what is the truth now you know of course you only have your approximations to the truth but that's better than nothing and so you need to be afraid of the right thing and you should be afraid of contaminating your soul with deceit that's what you should be afraid of that will definitely do you in and I

know exactly how what Happens is you know garbage in garbage out the old programmer saying goes and so you'll fill your head with nonsense and no one will call you on it except you but you can steal that voice if you try hard enough you just wait until you get in real trouble you know one day there'll come a point where you have to make a decision and the decision is the difference between life and death or Worse between someone else's life and death or Worse between health and the Suffering that's worse than death and

because you've compromised yourself to such a degree you will not be able to rely on your judgment and you will make the mistake you shouldn't make and then you're done and that will absolutely happen so you tell mistruths voluntarily at your exceptional Peril and you avoid the unpleasant truth that you might have to delve into in all their messiness at your absolute Peril and the Peril of Everyone around you and so if you see that you become afraid of that that's Hell and Hell is worse than death so and I mean that most sincerely no

the existential psychotherapists in the 50s taking a page from haiger talked about thress right the arbit nature of our existence I mean here you are you you have the ethnicity and race that was bestowed upon you you had no choice in that you're the victim and the Beneficiary of this particular historical moment you know you and you're the victim and beneficiary of all the atrocity and the wonders of the past you deal with your own emotions you deal with the the fact of this specific time and place all of that and there is a sense

of well there's a sense of mortality certainly that's a Associated that with finitude and mortality and you can easily say in some sense that we're all Victimized deeply by our own susceptibility to vulnerability and tragedy and I think that's true but but then the question is well what's the best way of dealing with that and falling prey to it when my daughter was young she was very ill and one of the things we told her repeatedly and which I think she did very well to her credit was often she was too ill read to be

able to go to school because she couldn't wake up in the morning and she Was in pain and but she needed to go to school and well one of the things we told her was don't use your illness as an excuse right because you're already in trouble kid you know you got your problems and it there're serious but if you can hold on to the distinction between the part of you that can in spite of this and the part that can't because of it and not blur that distinction then that's one more thing You have

on your side while you're attempting to struggle through this and to her credit she managed that and quite pristinely and that was extraordinarily helpful it was very difficult it times uh after she had had her hip replaced she she couldn't get around that well and so we decided to put her in a motorcycle course which was rather a terrifying thing to do since she just had a hip replacement but she needed to have a scooter to get around and so she Went with her mother to this motorcycle uh course and they were driving motor motorcycles

not scooters and at one point one of the people who was being trained wiped out on the motorcycle and you know it was rather traumatic let's say and uh she woke up the next day and was too afraid to go to the course and so we said well you know it's understandable why don't you just get in the car and go to the course and see when you get there if you Can manage it and she got herself out of bed and went and Managed IT and then she passed the course and then she had

a scooter and could zoom around the city for the next couple of years and so that was really good but it was was very hard to draw that line right because in some sense she'd been victimized by this arbitrary illness and you know you you tend as a parent to have an outpouring of empathy the empathy that can destroy under those circumstances because you You coddle the person more than is absolutely necessary right and you have every reason to because they're suffering like mad but you want to be a victim and be a tragic figure

you know and you might say yes but you wouldn't if you thought it through so and then if someone asked me that question say in a clinical setting I would do a little analysis of it's like okay well you're suffering from this traumatic experience you want to Get over it we'd have to figure out what the Practical steps might be and that might be finding somebody to talk to or there's other ways of dealing with it but you delve into the Practical realm to sort of address that no Nostalgia for catastrophe I think that's what

that means is that when you leave what's not good you wash the dust off your feet and you don't look back and that's a very harsh Lesson it means that there's no excuses whatsoever for not getting up and getting at it that's what it means and it means that it even means that when people are beset with a catastrophe like let's say the death of their father that they are prone to use that as an excuse for not going about the business that they should be going about because they can say to themselves well I

would accept and accept there's always Good reasons I mean believe me there's always good reasons for not doing what you should that's for sure the reasons pile up day after day to not do what you should especially because you're you're aiming at things in the future you can put them off indefinitely right because of the demands of the day but these stories they say a variety of things you know especially in combination they say when you leave somewhere terrible do not look back there's no Nostalgia that's That's the letting the dead parts of yourself go

and then if you're going to follow the good there's no excuse not to do it and that and it means no excuse whatsoever ever under any circumstances and then it's taken even further with regards to familiar relationships it is you can't even let them stand in your way and I think that's all true and I think I've seen virtually all of that in my clinical practice like there's no Excuse whatsoever for not getting at what it is that you should be doing and I think there's something else that's going on here especially in the New

Testament stories which is even may maybe worse which is if it's absolutely reprehensible to justify your inaction with a catastrophe that extracts Mercy from other people right there's a tricky tricky game that's going well of course I can't do that look at the terrible Thing that's just happened to me and say okay I understand you're absolved of any necessity to move forward because of your current catastrophe it's like well actually you're not and it's rather rude of you to use it as an excuse and it's certainly counterproductive well one of the things that I think

can be really useful and this is also a skill that will serve you well for the rest of your life is to start using a schedule like like a Gmail calendar and And schedule in studying time for example now so I've got some thoughts about using a schedule people often don't like schedules because it's like developing your own Tyrant you know it's okay well here's a whole bunch of things I have to do tomorrow that's my schedule and I better stick with it or I'm a bad person I'm a failure and that's not the right

way to go about it the scheduling what you want to do with the schedule is design the day that you Would like to have now some of that's going to involve responsibilities that you have to live up to or your life will get worse right so but I would say if you're trying to start learning how to manage your school stress is like schedule in 10 minutes of homework maybe before you go to school in the morning if you can get up you probably can't because teenagers have a hard time getting up in the morning

but Start with 10 minutes see if you can train yourself to sit down for 10 minutes after dinner some regular time and do 10 minutes of homework and that's it put that in there as a goal and then maybe if you've done your 10 minutes of homework you can schedule in I don't know 15 minutes of playing a video game if you want some sort of reward but start start figuring out how to organize your day so that you get to do the things that you want to do and you do Some of the things

that you have to do in a manner that you think you could actually do in a manner that would be sustainable across time and that like the part of your brain that makes you anxious is really unhappy if you don't have a a plan and so one of the fastest ways to start to deal with too much negative emotion too much stress related negative emotion is to make a plan and to make it concrete and so I would say and a Schedule is an unbelievably useful way of doing that and you think in my mind

well in your mind well why am I filling out this calendar for the week so I know what I'm doing so that I'm not anxious so that I'm doing things I want to do so I have something to look forward to and so that I'm doing things that I have to do so that my life doesn't go spiral downhill and make myself might make me more miserable and resentful and bitter and so you can start to use a Schedule as your friend and like that'll take a year of practice to get good at so if

it doesn't work well in the first week don't give up just keep doing it until you get yourself disciplined and are able to stick more and more to your plans and that that's un that will help you so much in your life you just can't believe it so what you want to do is chop up that overwhelming Infinity into a set of manageable tasks and and you want to Think well you know some of those tasks might be like well maybe you could put some order into your room you know or maybe you could make

your room a little bit more beautiful or maybe you could think of one thing around the house that you could do that would actually be helpful and and and you're doing that to improve your life that's the point you're not doing it because someone's shaking a stick at you and telling you that this is what you have to do if You're going to be a good person that's not the point point and you also with your schedule you think well I'm going to design this schedule for someone I like and that person that I'm designing

the schedule for that I like is going to be me and so it isn't the the schedule of a slave master to a slave it's a negotiated schedule that you arrange with yourself so that you can have a decent life but it's it's it's a very powerful tool to have a calendar at your Disposal and if you can learn to use that young just put a few things in it put in your classes put in a few assignments put in some things that you might want to do just just start stupidly and badly and you'll

get good at it over and and assum you'll get good at it over about a year and that'll change your life like if you if you if you uh learn to listen to people if you decide that you're not going to say things that you know to be untrue and That and if you learn how to schedule your time your life will change for the better so much that you won't believe it and that will keep happening more and more and more and more as you get older so it's a great it's a great thing

to start practicing when you're if you could start practicing that with when you're a teenager and you get that under control by your by the time you're 18 you'll be absolutely deadly you'll be so far ahead of other people who don't do Any of that that that you won't believe it and that'll just continue to you'll just continue to acrw benefits as a consequence well the thing is is that or one of the things is is that you know you are going to be putting up with other people's problems and troubles for the rest of

your life and what you want to do is live your life in a manner that makes all of that tolerable and so I would say with the Scheduling and and with the attempt to speak honestly and with the the development of goals that are valuable to you you're going to be occupied enough with your own life and and see enough of the quality of that life so that you'll be able to actually be able to tolerate a fair bit of noise and stress coming at you from other directions and I would also say that the

more that you put yourself together in in the manner that we've already Discussed the the better other people will treat you and the less unnecessary suffering and distress that you're going to encounter and I would say and I'll close with this I would say to your viewers don't underestimate the utility of getting your act together another thing you can do is this is like deciding that you're going to stop saying things that you know not to be true the other thing is you could decide To stop doing things that you notice make you weak and

it it's a game that you're playing with yourself it's like you're out with your friends you do something maybe because you think it'll make you popular and you notice that that makes you feel kind of subordinate and weak and think aha I shouldn't do that again I don't know exactly what it is that I did wrong but it made me feel weak it made me feel Like I was coming apart at the seams it's not the thing I should repeat so you try to do things that make you stronger you try to say things that

make you that make your speech more true and accurate you try to aim at things that you think are worth attaining and you get yourself disciplined in an order and that will do there's nothing else you can do in your life that will be of more benefit to you and to other people simultaneously and if you could start That when you're a kid man I tell you you'll be so far ahead you'll be so far ahead by the time you're 18 or 19 that it'll be like you're in a different Universe in order to have

any positive meaning in your life you have to have identified a goal and you have to be working towards it and there is a technical reason for that and the technical reason as far as I can tell is that the circuitry that produces the Kind of positive emotion that people really like is only activated when you notice that you're when you're proceeding towards a goal that you value and so that means that if you don't have a goal that you value you can't have any positive emotions so technically that's the incentive reward system and it's

the underlying circuitry is dopaminergic and when that circuitry is activated then it's part of the exploratory circuit it makes you it Gives you the sense of being actively engaged in something worthwhile and that's you know you tend to think of positive emotion is something produced by reward but there's two kinds of positive emotion one is the reward that's associated with satiation and that's consumatory reward and that's the reward you get when you're hungry and you eat but the thing about eating when you're hungry is that it destroys the framework within which you were Operating right

it's time to eat while you eat and then that framework is no longer relevant so the consumatory reward eliminates the value framework and then you're stuck with well what are you going to do next and so the consumatory reward has with at its own problems but the incentive reward is constantly what keeps you moving forward and incentive reward because it's dopaminergic also is analgesic literally analgesic so if you're in pain you take Opiates and that that will cut the pain but so will psychomotor stimulants like cocaine or amphetamines and so it's literally the case that

if you're engaged in something that's engaging and you're working towards a goal that you're going to feel less pain and you can see this happening with athletes who you know they'll break their thumb or something or maybe sometimes even their ankle and they'll keep playing the game of course afterwards they're suffering Like mad but the fact that they're so filled with gold directed enthusiasm means that well the pain systems are in some sense shut off so that's an interesting thing because what it suggests I mean then you could imagine I might say well how happy

you are you that you've made a certain amount of progress and if you think about it what you'd say is well it depends on how much progress and in relation reltionship to what so hypothetically you're going to Be happier if you've made quite a bit of progress towards a really important goal and then you have to think through what it means for a goal to be really important because that's not obvious now you could say you're in this class and you're listening to some information and maybe there's two reasons for that you might find the

information interesting per se but let's forget about that for minute you need to listen to the information so that you can do well on The assignments so that you can do well in the class you need to do well in your classes so that you can finish up your degree you need to finish up your degree so that you can find your place in the world you need to do that so that you're financially stable and maybe you can start a family and have a life and that's all part of being a good person something

like that and so that's a hierarchy of goals and you might say that being a good person would be the Thing however vaguely thought through that's at the top of that hierarchy and then when you're doing things that serve the that ultimate purpose then you're going to find those more meaningful and that meaning is actually produced as a consequence of the engagement of this exploratory circuit that's nested right down in your hypothalamus it's really really old it's as old as thirst and it's as old as hunger it's really an old system and so you want

to have that Thing activated [Music]