A Complete Guide To Becoming A Powerful Human Being - Jordan Peterson

I had lots of clients and students who were chaotic in their orientation to life they didn't know what to do and they didn't know what to do about not knowing what to do it's like I don't know what to do with my life and I don't know what to do about my ignorance and my ACT my reaction to that in some sense wasn't exactly the reaction of a a clinician because not a typical clinician because typical clinicians are Liberal Protestant in their fundamental orientation and they tend to think of psychological development as something like self-actualization

right it's really a self development process but I I that wasn't my my observation partly influenced by the developmental psychologist Shan P I had a more communitarian view of human development than that and my observation was that most people find the the Cardinal meanings in their life not as a Consequence of the development of their self whatever that is but in to other people in in the adoption of responsibility you know because you're told be responsible and it's a finger wagging thing again you know that if you were a good person you be responsible you

do your duty but no one ever says well because that's where you find the abiding meaning in your life and you need that meaning to sustain you through suffering and that's definitely the case You know I was very ill for a number of years and a lot of what got me through that wasn't my own special nature let's say but the support of my family and the support of my friends and the support of the broader Community made a huge difference not only psychologically because I knew people were supporting me but also practically you build

yourself a community you sacrifice yourself in the service of other people not so much Because you should although you should but because that is where meaning is to be found and you need a deep meaning to sustain you through tragedy that's the ark and you find that deep meaning and you know there's a notion that it's better to give to receive than to receive it sounds like a Hallmark reading card in some sense and and people are cynical about that too I yeah you say that because you should be good and think that and but

if you watch Yourself you'll see that it's true because one of the things that's been really uh pronounced element in my life is that you know people thank me from time to time from for things that I've done or said and there isn't a better experience than that you know that you've put something out that's actually a manifestation of what you truly believe and the consequence of that is part of the Redemptive process for someone else there is nothing that's Better than that zero nothing in fact I don't think there's anything that's even in the

same conceptual Universe of that in terms of its intrinsically rewarding properties there's nothing better than to have people as perhaps particularly people you've never met tell you that what you have been doing has had a cellary effect on their lives that's and so that's a hell of a fine thing to aim for and why not aim for it you know because you could do it if you put I Don't I wouldn't even say say necessarily that you put other people first because I think that's a mistake but I do think it's the case that you

treat other people at in the manner that you would wish to be treated if you were treating yourself properly and that's also a sophisticated thing right to learn to treat yourself properly because that doesn't mean you get to fulfill every momentary whim because that's what you do when you're two and two-year-olds Can't live without their parents you know you have to be wise enough to govern your current behavior in light of the future and that's really what it means to be an adult it's what it means to to Forstall gratification and and to and to

attain the responsibility of an adult and the reason that you should do that because you should is because it's actually better in in all ways it's it's a it's a a Panacea for suffering to adopt that Responsibility so I would tell my clients and students as well it's like well let's just take a look at where other people find meaning you know and and we'll see how your life matches with that do you have an intimate relationship yes or no the right answer is yes now maybe not for you and maybe you don't right now

and maybe you have your reasons not to because you're a singular person in that regard but probably not cuz that's like a third of Life and so if you don't have that that might be one of the reasons you're not doing so well and the fact that you don't have it might be an indication that you're not oriented in the proper direction oh I can give you an example of that I had many people questioned me when I was just on tour this is a question that came up quite rapidly often um in the Q&A

sessions how do I find the right person when I'm dating how do I find the person who's Right for me when I'm dating and I got that or on the Internet uh I got that question like three times in a row and I thought because I always think this what about that question what's wrong with that question something wrong with that question how about how do I conduct myself so that I am the best possible partner now that's a whole different right that's a whole different conceptual universe and virtually no one add asked that question

and I would say Well if you want an answer to the first question which is how do I find the person who's right for me you actually start by asking the second question which is what can I bring to the table for someone else and if you're really good at bringing something to the table for someone else hey man people might be lining up to be your partner and if they're not then you might think well maybe I'm just not bringing the right thing to the table and that's worth Thinking especially if you're desperate you're

lost and you're alone it's like hm maybe they got this wrong and I you know I usually sort of top that with the suggestion that even if you did find the person who was perfect for you and they're that perfect what makes you think they wouldn't take one look at you and run screaming away and they likely would if they were that perfect because you know really are you that much of a catch and if you think you are you know That might be part of the problem um so so look so that's one right

intimate relationship so I would say to you at the crossroads develop a vision for your relationship you know there's a gospel saying which is of course impossible to comprehend or believe knock and the door will open ask and you will receive seek and you will find and people think well no way the world's not constituted like that it's like it goes back to the idea of aim if you don't aim At it you're not going to hit it and you know it might also go back to a question about what do you mean by ask

and what do you mean by want because it isn't just some casual request you know you're praying to God I wish you know I wish I could find my wallet or something like that as if he's the the Casual granter of Magical Wishes like like the like a fairy with a magic wand you know it's not that asking means asking means something like this I am willing to give Up everything that I'm doing wrong so that I can put things right if I could know what right was and that's a non you're on your knees

when you say that man and maybe if you're on your knees you get the answer and so that's worth thinking about so you know if you knocked and you wanted to walk walk through and you asked and you wanted to learn you know and you sought because you wanted to find maybe you would receive And be answered and find but not without aim and so I might say well look if you could have the relationship you wanted you get to have the relationship you want and need but you have to know what it is and

so then you need a vision of that it's like and a and a developed Vision you know no I need to find the person right for me it's like what do you mean by that no how about how are you going to treat your partner when they come home From work how about something that concrete or how would you like to be treated when you come home from work or what sort of partner do you want in relationship to their attitude towards children you have to make it real you know like it's the story of

your own life which by the way it is and then maybe you find it because at least once you've developed the vision if it manifests itself you'll recognize it that's something Why don't you set your family right no you need siblings maybe you don't have them set your relationship with your parents right fix your relationship with your father with your mother with your siblings the same thing and what sort of relationship do you have with want to have with your children you know if you could have what you wanted I had a very good relationship

with my children my daughter as I said was very ill so that Made things complicated but I had a great relationship and still do with my son it's it's one of the lights of my life and we concentrated on making that relationship pristine you know both of us and my wife as well and so you imagine well I want my son to love me I want my son to respect me and vice versa I want a child who can make mature decisions I want someone I can rely on I want someone who other people gravitate

towards CU I can have what I want if I'm Willing to make the proper sacrifices and so that's that's a good thing could you set your family straight well well you need a job or a career so what can you offer and what can you bring the world in that regard and not and then I would say well if you're thinking about Career Success in this Tower of Babel Manor then that's a temptation but you might think well how much could good could I do if I had the opportunity in the shortest possible Period of

time if I went all in and then that's there's a name man there's a name and then you might think well what would that look like you know if I was a light to my community if I was a light to the people I work with who would I be if I was like that and and then you can conceptualize that and you can see when you deviate from it and why couldn't you correct for the deviations and move towards that and then you might say well are you Going to make productive use of your

time outside of work productive and generous use of your time productive generous and meaningful use of your time how about that you're going to control your your susceptibility to Temptation regulate your alcohol and and drug use cuz alcoholism takes out lots of people regulate your sexual Temptation can control yourself for some reason that's worth controlling yourself for you know because there's something to being CTIC There's at least the momentary pleasure it's not nothing and you're not going to sacrifice that if you have any sense unless you sacrifice it to something clearly better here's some items

so you you guys can do a quick Big Five on yourselves and I'll tell you the upside and downside of it so if you're orderly you follow a schedule how many of you follow a Schedule okay and how many of you don't okay so one thing I would recommend is that you [Music] do and I'll I'll tell you why like intelligence is a very good predictor of academic performance and there's not a lot you can do about your intelligence I mean you can squander it but it's very difficult to improve it conscientiousness well it's a

trait too So it's hard to work on but we know that conscientious people get better grades and it's reliable and it's a powerful effect and so if your time use is organized then the probability that you're going to be successful is very high so one of the things you might think about is make friends with a calendar like Google Calendar or something like that and I can tell you some tricks about that because really it is important like and I'm not kidding Around about this if you're low and conscientiousness it's really going to trip you

up as you walk through life there's not very many advantages to it that I've been able to see and I'm not assuming that just because you don't follow the schedule you're low in conscientiousness but it is one of the items that Mark it um the only Advantage I've seen so far to being unconscientious is that if you become unemployed it doesn't bother you as much And I mean that that actually turns out to matter in some situations so like you know if a big company has to shed 50% of its employees it's the conscientious people

are going to suffer themselves to death for it and the unconscientious people they're not going to care anyways because they weren't working anyways so doesn't matter if they have a job or not so here's one way of thinking about making use of a schedule often people are afraid of schedules because they Think of them as a trap you know you make a schedule and it's like this little prison that you have to live inside and you know and all you're doing in your schedule is putting down things you have to do or should do and

so you know there's not a lot of fun in that and so not only is it a trap or a prison but it's kind of an unpleasant one but a way to work with the schedule in a lot more sophisticated way is to to think well I'm going to plan the next week say Cuz you plan it day by day but we'll take the week as the unit level of analysis and think well I'd like to plan a week I'd like to have and then your schedule all of a sudden becomes a tool for increasing

the quality of your life and that's a whole different issue you know because you might think what what's the emotion that you suffer assuming you suffer one of these emotions if you have an essay that's due and you're not doing it like Would you regard that as a pleasant emotion or unpleasant emotion okay so you think you can characterize the unpleasantness like what kind of emotion is it it's guilt okay anything else frustration frustration yeah so you're sort of frustrated with yourself yeah yeah you need slap right you think I need a slap so okay

so guilt anything else anxiety restlessness so that's kind of An agitation yeah it's cuz your body knows you should be doing something but it you know you're not pointing it in the right direction so it's shame is that reasonable so okay so the reason I was asking you about that is because you know most of the negative emotions are associated with neuroticism but some of them seem to be associated with conscientiousness and the conscientious negative emotions seem to be guilt and shame fundamentally and so Recent Research and really recent I only got this paper like

a week ago I think it's about four months old seemed to indicate that conscientious people feel less guilt but they're more guilt prone so if they don't do something that makes them guilty but they organize their time so they are doing the things they're supposed to do so then they don't feel guilty so anyways back to the schedule so all right you think about your week and you think about your day And you think well how would you improve the quality of a given day or a given week well one of the ways of improving

it is to not put yourself into the situation where there are things hanging over your head that you have to feel guilty and ashamed about cuz that's a very unpleasant way of being and you know if you have an essay that's doe in a week week and you're procrastinating then the fact that you have to do that essay can ruin the whole Week and even when you're doing something that's positive hypothetically it's kind of that horrible kind of positive that you experience when you know that you should be doing something else and so that's when

you end up watching YouTube videos about like dancing cats or something like that you know and it's it's a it's at best it's a guilty pleasure it's not a pleasure at all you think like what the hell am I doing watching videos of dancing cats You know but then you that you're procrastinating and that's low quality very low quality existence so if you use your schedule you can think okay well here's sometimes that I'm going to do this work and then you can also sort of ask yourself about that when you're designing your schedule cuz

you don't want to design a schedule like your Adolf Hitler telling yourself what to do you know because you're not going to comply with it then what you have to do If you're going to design a schedule is you have to ask yourself all right I'm going to set aside some time to study over the next week or to do this essay or whatever it is how much time would I actually spend studying an hour or two a day might be a worthwhile thing to schedule in and I would say don't schedule in more than

that to begin with because then you'll fail and then you'll stop using the schedule and so the other thing you want to do is you want to Schedule in things that you want to do and then you want to look at the day or the week and you want think you want to think hey that's a week I'd like to have if I had a week like that it would be good you know I'd be caught up so so that all that negative emotion doesn't happen have to acrew and I want have done a bunch

of things that I'm interested in doing and at the end of the week I'd be in better shape than I was at the beginning and if you treat a Schedule like that so that what you're using it is to design the days and weeks that you want to have instead of using it as this little you know jail that you have to put yourself in that you're not going to do anyways then you can learn to use them and that's one thing you can do to make yourself more industrious more conscientious follow a schedule [Music]

I've told people to learn to use a schedule and people often hate schedules Because they act as their own tyrants right they say well you have to do this unpleasant thing and then here's another unpleasant thing you have to do and then you have to do this unpleasant thing and you do that for about 3 days and you think hell with this I'm not doing that you know and you fall off the wagon that isn't what you're supposed to do with a schedule you're supposed to use it to design the days that you would like

to have if you were taking care of yourself And so some that is you know you wake up in the morning and you think here's five things I have to do that if I don't do my life will be worse it's like paying bills for example or or or taking out the garbage it's like you have to do those because otherwise things degenerate so you got to put some of those in the schedule because otherwise tomorrow is worse than today and that's a bad trajectory but you also want to build in things you know you

got to act In some sense like you're dealing with a relatively recalcitrant 9-year-old it's like so well here's some things you have to do but here's some things that if you do you could reward yourself with and if you get the balance there between obligation and reward right then you'll find that you're motivated to do the things and and that's what you want to do you want to do that so it's sustainable across days and weeks and months and so you got to you got to Treat yourself like a good boss would treat a valued

employee and not like a tyrant would treat a slave because the slave will Rebel and you know people say well I I don't follow through on my plans it's like well a they're probably not very well formulated and maybe you're doing them because of an external moral obligation or something they're really your plans right and B you're acting like a tyrant and a slave and that's a bad relationship to have with Yourself treat other people as you would like to be treated it works both ways you also treat yourself like you treat other people properly

so that's a necessary thing and often people don't do that but the scheduling is really [Music] important okay now this young man told me that his life lacked purpose and Direction and meaning and that he was nihilistic until he started he read Zen In The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Which is is a book I actually like quite a bit I've read it three times at different Decades of my life and one of the things that's very interesting about that book is that it's an examination of the idea of quality of the idea that there are

qualitative distinctions between things and that we have an instinct to make qualitative distinctions and so a qualitative distinction is simply this is better than that which is a Judgment okay now what ratzinger is hypothesizing is that the person enough you know how you the idea the modern ideas is you're supposed to accept yourself I think that's an insane idea by the way really I think I can't think of a more nihilistic idea than that you're already okay it's like no you're not and the reason you're not is because you could be way more than you

are so what do you want to be you want to be okay as you Are or do you want to strive towards what's better and this young man this Australian he said that the reason that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had such a impact on him was because he wasn't happy with his current mode of being right he didn't consider the manner in which he conducted himself sufficient and the fact that the author of Zen and it was persk laid out the notion that you could make qualitative distinctions and there there really was

A difference between good things and bad things or great things and evil things it gives you Direction it gives you gives you the possibility of moving upward and and ratzinger is pointing out at least to some degree that human beings are insufficient in and of themselves and need the movement upward and so they need to conceptualize something like the highest good and then to strive for that and the thing is is that there isn't any difference between Conceptualizing the good and being judged because if you're going to conceptualize the good and move towards it what

you have to do is separate from yourself all those things that aren't good and leave them behind and that's why the Redeemer and the judge are the same thing and one of the things that's really appalling I think about our modern world is that we're rejecting the notion of qualitative distinctions you say well we don't want to hurt anybody's Feelings by saying that one thing is better than another it's like okay fair enough it's not fun to be cast off with the Damned that's for sure but if people are in fact insufficient in in their

present condition which seems to be the case me try finding someone who isn't then If you deny the possibility of qualitative distinction because you want to promote a radical egalitarianism then you remove the possibility of redemption because There's no movement towards the good and it seems to me that it's a catastrophe to sacrifice the good for well it's a catastrophy to sacrifice the good for the equal because for us to be equal would be mean as far as I can tell that we would all be equally unredeemed and miserable [Music] what we mean by soul

is something like animating spirit and you might say well what's a spirit and well that's actually Rather easy to answer so when a child of four is Playing House let's say when a child of four is playing house she acts out the role of the mother but acting out that's a strange thing right because she doesn't literally duplicate in her actions or her Perceptions in the game what she observed her mother literally doing so for example she didn't go into her mother's bedroom when her mother awoke and watched her turn Her head in a particular

way to awaken and count the number of blinks so that she could mimic that in her play and you know you think that's absurd but it's not absurd if it's just mimicry it's not it's unbelievably sophisticated so what the girl does is she watches her mother manifest maternal Behavior across a vast array of instant and she integrates that with the image of the mother she's received from all the books she's been read and all the Little movies she's watched the Disney movies and so forth and she abstracts out the animating principle of the maternal and

then she embodies that in play and usually with a little boy and that's practice for what's going to come later it's unbelievably sophisticated and she's embodying a spirit and the spirit there is the abstraction of the central animating principle from multiple embodiments of its manifestation and if you think children Can't do that well then you don't know anything about children because they do that all the time in their pretend play which is a necessary precursor to healthy psychological development and so part of what we refer to as the soul is the presence of that Spirit

or maybe even the capacity of embodying such spirits and it's very difficult to know how deep that goes you know I had a vision at one point of all the men in my life who've been particularly Influential in a benevolent way you know and so and you think well just the miror notion of the idea that there could be a benevolent way that would unite the acts of benevolence across a series of men that's all comprehensible to you that's you take that as a matter of course when you say that there are such things as

good men and you can identify them right something stable about whatever is good across multiple manifestations of of incarnation let's say and I saw that Transform into the the father person of the Trinity as the embodiment of that benevolent Spirit now I don't have any idea what that means metaphysically because who does but but that that Spirit manifesting itself within is certainly part of what we refer to when we talk about the soul and you can see that shine through people I mean it's part of what gives someone Charisma it's part of what elicits the

instinct to imitate in you you know and You see that even in simple things when you see a remarkable athlete do something incredibly athletic to put the goal to put the soccer ball the football ball through the net to score the goal and everybody leaps to their feet in celebration of that well that's that's a celebration of the Divine capacity to hit the target dead on and it grips you at such a a low level way down inside your soul that you're compelled to your feet to cheer and you don't even know What you're doing

but you enjoy it that's for sure and that enjoyment is also a sign of the depth and utility of that response you see this in all all the things that people do that are you know so-called popular entertainment it's unbelievably sophisticated the soul is participating in that in the fullest extent and you know you can say well there's no use for the religious there's no necessary use For the religious terminology it's like well until you come up with a better word there's plenty of use for it because it's a very complex and deep phenomena and

to you know just cast it into the realm of superstition in some casual manner is it's just not helpful not in any possible it's not helpful scientifically it's not helpful ethically it's not helpful existentially try treating someone for a while as if they don't have a Soul just really I mean it just you know treat them like a deterministic machine if that's your belief really act it out you'll be like the most hated person in town in about 15 minutes well I mean what do you make of practical evidence like that I mean you interact

with people as if they're free Souls capable of choosing between good and evil that's what you do all the time and maybe you can Addle yourself out of that by some ridiculous rationalist ideology but that Just means you're kind of a gabbling fool and it's just going to make you trip over things you don't even notice in all of your social interactions [Music] I don't care how you think philosophically or ideologically you bloody well know that what I just said is true so and that's true even when you're interacting with an infant or a small

child it's true when you're dealing with someone who's elderly and And virtually incapacitated in every way you still see that Divine spark for lack of a better term and we do lack a better term by the way you see that everywhere if your eyes are open and if you're willing to see it to the degree that you're responsive to that then your actions are Guided by love and your words are Guided by truth I started doing what I'm doing back in say probably 1985 because I realized that one of the Pathways to totalitarian catastrophe was

deceit at the individual level this is something that Soulja niton made very much of Orwell as well Huxley as well these great thinkers concluded in the aftermath of these totalitarian catastrophes that there was an integral link between pathology at the individual level which was fundamentally the willingness to use deceit in an instrumental manner I'll lie to you to Get what I want and authoritarian catastrophy and that it was a direct causal link and actually by that argument I think that's literally true and so partly what I'm doing I hope is helping people walk through thinking

about why telling the truth is a good idea not not only for them not not as a top down Shakey finger moral injunction don't lie you shouldn't lie but in an in a detailed manner to explain the relationship between the instrumental Use of Deceit and the collapse of civilizations and that connection is way closer than people think you know so one person has influences a thousand people for sure in their lifetime and sometimes a lot more than that and a th you know the next rung out from that a th000 time a th000 is a

million and the next rung out from that is a billion and so you're always at the center of a concentric Circle that two rungs out contains a billion people well it turns Out that what you do matters and basically what I'm doing as I hope is touring and talking to people face to face in these lectures for example and making the case that it's a terrifying case everyone says well we want meaning in our life it's do you now do you now because you might ask yourself what's the more threatening possibility that nothing you do

matters which means you can pretty much do whatever you want that's the upside of that nihilistic Claim no responsibility right and why why not pursue narrow focused Hedonism since nothing matters anyways so that's the shadow of nihilism or everything you do matters and it's a lot more terrifying to contemplate that is that you will be held accountable for everything you do and I believe that firmly partly as a consequence of my clinical experience I never saw any one of my clinical clients ever get away with anything even once And you think well people get away

with things all the time it's like no they don't they might gain a narrow advantage in one dimension in the short term but you know let's say that you you're you use deceit in your business practices first of all that doesn't work very well because people will figure you out so as a longterm as a as a long-term strategy it's terrible it just doesn't work no one is going to play with you if you're A cheat but let's say that someone asked me someone asked me the other day well what about these dictators that that

uh you know ruled their whole life and and they were at the top of the hierarchy let's say and they had all the power Stalin's a perfectly good example it's like didn't he win well everyone stellin ever talked to lied to him because they were absolutely bloody terrified of him his country was a nightmare it was a hell or as close as We've been able to produce with the possible exception of the Nazis and the maoists but it was up there in terms of hell and did he rule yes but he ruled hell and if

you think that's a victory well go ahead and try it and see how much of a victory it is you know Milton Satan said I'd rather rule in Hell than serve in heaven it's like fair enough go ahead use deceit use instrumentality rule in Hell you'll be the ruler see how much good it does you see where that Takes you it takes you somewhere terrible and so I've experienced despite my love for the psychoanalysts very frequently what I'm doing as a therapist is helping people have a life that would work you know and you can

parameterize that it's like what do you need how about some friends that feel kind of like that how about an intimate relationship with someone that you can trust that maybe has a future that'd be good how about a career that Puts you in a dominance hierarchy somewhere so at least you've got some possibility of rising some possibility of stabilizing yourself and a schedule in a routine because no one can live without a routine you just forget that if you guys don't have a routine I would recommend like you get one going because you cannot be

mentally healthy without a routine you need to pick a time to get up whatever time you want but pick one and stick to it because otherwise you Disregulated your circadian rhythms and they regulate your mood and eat something in the morning I've had lots of clients who've had anxiety disorders I had one client who was literally starving very smart girl she there's very little that she liked she kind of tried to subsist on like half a cup of rice a day she came to me and said I have no energy I come home all I

want to do is watch the same movie over and over what like Is that weird and I thought well it depends on how hard you work you know it's little weird but whatever it's familiar you're looking for comfort so I did an analysis of her diet it's like 3/4 of a cup of rice it's like you're starving eat something you know you'll feel better so she modified her diet and all her anxiety went away and she had some energy it's like yeah you got to eat So a schedule that's a good thing man your brain

will thank you for it it will stabilize your nervous system with a bit of a plan that's a good thing you need a career you need something productive to do with your time you need to regulate your use of drugs and alcohol most particularly alcohol CU that does in a lot of people um you need a family like the family you have your parents and all that be nice if you all got along you could work on That that's a good thing to work on and then you know you probably need children at some point

and that's life that's what life is and if you're missing you know you may have a good reason to not be operating on one of those Dimensions it's not mandatory but I can tell you that if you're not operating reasonably well on four I think I mentioned six if you're not operating reasonably well on at least three of Them there's no way you're going to be psychologically thriving and that's more pragmatic in some sense than psychological right human beings have a nature there's things we need and if we have them well that's good and if

we don't have them well then we feel the lack and so behaviorists behavioral psychologists concentrate a lot more on that sort of thing you know it's practical it's like strategizing make a career plan figure out how to negotiate Because that's bloody important figure out how to say what you need figure out how to tell the truth to people figure out how to listen to your partner in particular because if you listen to them they will actually tell you what they want and sometimes you can give it to to them and maybe they'll return the favor

and if you practice that for like 15 years well then maybe you're constantly giving each other what you want well hooray that Would be good and then there's two of you under most circumstances and it's better to have two brains than one because people think differently because of their temperament mostly and so the negotiation is where the wisdom arises and it's part of the transformation the psychological transformation it's attendant on an intimate relationship and one of the fundamental purposes of a long-term intimate [Music] Relationship for the first time in my life really I believe this

to be the case conservatives really have something to sell to young people and they have the they can sell the meaning of responsibility because young people are bre of meaning and most people find meaning in responsibility and and when the right talks about responsibility they kind of do it in that finger wagging way that makes conservatives unpopular among young People you should be responsible it's like yeah you should why well because your life is chaotic and meaningless and you're stuck in this Juvenile surreality and it's really painful for you and you're anxious and aimless and

goalless and then you look at people who have a life because maybe you could have a life and you think well what does that life consist of it's like well well you have a committed intimate relationship there's one you have friends that you're Honest with and and playful with so you have a group of friends you have a job or a career know you you you learn how to use your life your time outside of work in a productive engaging way you regulate your susceptibility to the multitude of hidis temptations that are in front of

you um you pay some attention to your mental and physical health you make a goal some goals for the future that are concrete well well there's seven things You can do they're all responsible things why because then your life will have some meaning now you might say well what's the ultimate meaning it's like get those things straight first they're not nothing and maybe you won't be so damn miserable and bitter and resentful and angry and aimless and anxious and frustrated and disappointed and ashamed if you had five of those seven things going well this is

so useful man if if you get good At doing this your life will get so much better you can't believe it is watch the people around you and whenever they do anything that you would like to see repeated on a regular basis tell them exactly what they did in detail with you know be positive about it obviously and and just indicate that you notice and because I saw this when I was grading student essays you know and so I taught this seminar for a long time and I was trying to teach kids how to write

They were in their fourth year of University in the honors psych program you'd think they'd bloody well already know how to write but they didn't and so I'd have them write a four-page essay on a given topic and then they had to rewrite that to a six-page essay and then they had to rewrite that to an age eight page essay and the first essay I graded I was only five % of their grade and I told them I'm going to cut you into ribbons but it doesn't matter cuz It's you know 5% of your grade

and so they could tolerate that and generally by the third essay they had written the best thing they'd ever written in their life and they learned so fast it was unbelievable but one of the things I noticed was that they did a little testing with the first essay they hand in something it was just like God formulaic boring they weren't in it at all you know there was nothing of the person in there there was no thought There was just the kind of psycho Babble that they'd learned especially if they were in faculties of education

and and it was dry and dull and and everything about it was wrong and so those are hard to grade right what's wrong with my essay the words aren't right the phrases they're not so good they're not organized well into sentences the sentences aren't sequenced well in the paragraphs the parag paragraphs don't make a coherent argument and the entire Thing is empty but other than that no problem it was often easier just to rewrite those essays than to grade them no so in any case though one of the things I did learn was that even

in an essay like that there is usually like one sentence or two sentences buried on like page three that was an actual thought and reasonably clearly stated and somewhat gripping you know it was like the person popped out from all the background rubbish and Said what about what about this and if you saw that and checked it and said hey you hit the mark right there the next essay would be like 2/3 that and that was really fun to see and then maybe by the third essay maybe it was all like that and then they

were really thrilled it's like wow I wrote this you know and sort of the culmination well it was a fourth year seminar was the culmination of their their career as a psychology Undergraduate so that was great fun but you can do that in your own household if if if if the envious part of you isn't jealous of the revelation of the goodness of of the person and so here's the opposite attack if you want to do this so imagine that you're a man who's managed to attract a mate who and he believes he's punched above

his weight so this woman is more attractive let's say more vivacious more Desirable than he deserves so that's going to grate on his soul a fair bit right partly because her shining casts a dim light on his lack of utility let's say and so you can imagine someone like that being prone to jealousy for obvious reasons and so the best Tack to manage in a situation like that if you're that man is to wait till your wife dresses herself up in a particularly attractive Manner and then either fail to notice by Occupying yourself with something

trivial while she's attempting to gain your attention or by criticizing her directly for what she's just managed to do and if you do that 50 times let's say you can be sure that she'll never reveal her attractiveness to anyone else for the rest of her life including you and you'll get exactly what you deserved so that's the opposite of watching people carefully now I learned this in part from Skinner BF Skinner the famous Animal behaviorist because he was he used all sorts of reinforcement contingencies to shape animal behavior and Skinner was unbelievably good at this

he trained pigeons in World War II to guide missiles by pecking at photographs so they could map the photographs onto the missile trajectory viewing the territory underneath and Peck accurately enough to guide the missile to its destination that was discontinued as the technology For guided missiles develop but Skinner could do that and you know we think pigeons well they're not that bright like they're smarter than you think pigeons that's why they can live in cities that's not easy for a bird to pull off you know you know it's not their natural habitat and so but

Skinner although he would use punishment technically speaking which is the uh the application of a certain amount of pain or threat which is the use of anxiety But what he believed was most effective was reward but it required a tremendous amount of attention so for example if if Skinner was trying to train a rat to climb up a little ladder and then across the ladder and then maybe do a perette and come down which he could do with no problem he'd wait he'd just watch the rat and then when it get close to the ladder

he'd give it a food pallet now his rats were starved by the way down to 3/4s of their normal body weight so they Were pretty eager to work for food it's not something you necessarily saw in the methodology section of the papers but um well and that's not a critique of of Skinner it's just an indication of how simplification takes place in laboratory experiments but in any case he'd wait for the rat to get near the ladder and give it a food pellet and soon the rat would be hanging around the ladder quite a lot

and then now and then just more or less randomly the rat would put a paw up On the ladders food pallet well then the rat would hang around the bottom of the ladder with pow well if he did that continually through observation he could get the rat to do pretty much anything that you could imagine a rat could do and then maybe some things you couldn't imagine and this isn't a manipulative technique by the way although it can be used that way it it's not effective unless you do it with a certain degree of wisdom

you want to think well what do You want in your house how about peace tranquility happiness and humor something like that it's not a bad first pass approximation and you got to get that in your head it's like do you want that or do you want the Delights of endless martyrdom because you have to make a choice and you might think I wouldn't pick martyrdom it's like really really you wouldn't he you'd pick peace and happiness and humor and so everywhere you go that's all you're ever Surrounded with it's like highly highly improbable so don't

be so sure you're aiming up but if you can Orient yourself in that direction and then and carefully and and knowing full well what the hellish alternative is because you need to know that then you can watch and see well when when is this manifesting itself in the people around me and then you can tell them in detail I noticed son I noticed today we're having a discussion at dinner you know and you Made a spectacularly witty remark right at the right time and it was provocative but not annoying and so good work and then

the kid thinks oh my God he notice and then he's like twice as funny the next day and maybe not in some unbearable Manner and that really works it really works but like I said you have to quell the envy that would otherwise beset you and you have to want to aim up and then you have to not be jealous of the other person's goodness and you have To be extremely attentive but man as a transformation technique even in extraordinarily difficult relationship which goes back to your point there isn't anything I know of that's more

[Music] effective if you want people to appreciate having you around learning how to listen that is that is a skill that is absolutely unbeatable and this this uh uh technique of summarizing to their satisfaction that works like a Charm and it's not you know you might be a little awkward when you first try it and might feel a little manipulative because you're not that good at it but if you get if you get expert at it it's and you have the greatest conversations with everyone you know I had people in my clinical practice who were

extraordinarily impaired intellectually and suffering from all sorts of assorted pathologies in addition to that and if I was listening to them properly they were As fascinating as anybody I had on the say more able and competent end of the spectrum and you learn so much because there is nothing that people won't tell you with if you listen it is absolutely amazing what people will tell you and so quickly they'll reveal things they didn't even know about themselves and they need to know those things often they've been hidden for years it's so rewarding and then this

this use of attentive reward that's also it's it's It's a it's it's fun in a game likee sense once you learn to play it cuz you're watching you think I'll just wait this person's going to do something good sooner or later it's like Pat good good work and people are so thrilled that that little manifestation of goodness in their heart that managed to sneak out past their cynicism and boredom was recognized they're so what is it what is it it it it it restores their faith in What's good inside them it really does it's unbelievably

powerful and so that can work if you're if you're embroiled in a difficult relationship you know and you can't escape easily or maybe you can't escape on moral grounds that listening that's that helps a lot you might have to listen a lot but that use of judicious reward man that's a powerful [Music] technique what's my advice to young men Seeking a woman for marriage and family yeah well okay fine that's the same qu second question that's that's pretty straightforward man I mean you can't eliminate the necessity of being attracted to one another that's important and

that's mysterious you know um so for example here's a funny thing if you one of the things we know that attracts people to one another is bilateral Symmetry and so if you take men and you rank them by the symmetry of their faces and then you give the asymmetrical men t-shirts to wear clean t-shirts for a day and the symmetrical men clean t-shirts to wear for a day and then you give the t-shirts to women and you have them rate the the odor the women rate the odor of the symmetrical men as more attractive than

the odor of the asymmetrical man and then and there are other uh factors that determine sexual Attractiveness that are based on biological factors that are so that deeply embedded in terms of smell for example so uh women also tend to uh not be sexually attracted to the o to the scent of men who's who have if I remember correctly it's RH factors that would make for potential trouble in child birth and the often the reason that the women give for not preferring the scent of those men is that they smell too much like their Brother

something like that so there's weird mysterious things that determine whether or not people are sexually and physically attracted to each other and I think it's very important that that's part of a marital relationship the next most important thing is trust man it's like there there's no marriage that's successful without trust you guys you got to tell each other the truth and one of the reasons that Yung believed that marriage as a and an oath and a Carl Yung as a bond was necessary it's really wise it's like you know telling the truth to someone is

no simple thing because there's a bunch of things about all of us that are terrible and weak and reprehensible and shameful and all of those things and they kind of have to be brought out into the open and dealt with and you're not going to tell the truth about yourself to someone who can run away screaming when you reveal who you are and so the the marriage bond is Something like okay here's the deal I'm going to handcuff myself to you and you're going to handcuff yourself to me and then we're going to tell each

other the truth and neither of us are going to get to run away and so our once we know the truth then we're either going to live together in mutual torment or we're going to try to deal with that truth and straighten ourselves out and straighten ourselves out jointly and that's going to make us us more powerful And more resilient and more and deeper and wiser as we progress together through life and and I think that's absolutely brilliant because if you leave a back door open man you're going to use it that's for sure and

the oath is there and this was yung's commentary on the spiritualization of of the human pair Bor by Christian marriage for example which which emphasized uh the the what would you call it the subordination of both members of the Marital Union to a higher order uh personality that was embodied in the figure of the logos so the idea is that in in the Christian marriage for example the man isn't the boss and the woman isn't the boss the boss is the mutual personality composed by the seeking of Truth in both of them and that's conceptualized

as their their joint subjugation to the logos and that is absolutely dead on man it's like the ruler of your marital life should be Your vow to tell each other the [Music] truth like in hard times during your life when you've done something stupid and idiotic that might take you down and you don't have anybody that you can turn to you know if you have a partner that you can trust you can go say Hey you know I a big Financial mistake man and it's really torturing me and I feel like a complete idiot and

it's really dangerous and the person there is going To help you figure out what to do about it and they're going to know that when they make a stupid mistake and they're bloody well going to that they can come and talk to you and that you guys are going to work your way through it and that's a big deal and there's a couple of things our culture gets really wrong and one is it devalues marriage that's really a very bad idea because marriage is marriage is like a third of your life and maybe more and

kids are a third of Your life and your your your life outside of marriage and kids is a third of your life you know approximately speaking and to miss any of that is a massive massive mistake now having said that I will also say that for some people missing one or more of those is necessary because they have a reason you know maybe they're brilliantly creative artists and they need to devote themselves entirely to their career or they're outstanding in some way and so They need they can justify the sacrifice of one part of that

Tri out of being to another part but for but generally speaking it's a very dangerous thing and and it it it shouldn't be done and also kids get an absolutely terrible rap you know because kids are delightful if they're well- behaved one of the chapters in my new book is called don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them and you can do that especially if you discuss it thoroughly With your spouse your the person that's helping you discipline the kids and children are the best company because they're really enthusiastic about everything they

love doing new things they really love you so they're happy that you're around um all you have to do is make sure they're not too hot and they're not too cold and they've had something to eat and they're not too tired and you don't expect them to stay engaged in something for longer than They can manage cuz we used to take our kids when they were little out to restaurants for example and they could sit there no problem behave really nicely when they were two and three but they couldn't do it for more than about

45 minutes you can't push your luck but I also noticed with little kids is that they got antsy and unreasonable about 5 to 10 minutes before the adults did too it's just the adults were too stupid to notice the kids would notice right away So um so back to marriage well you look for someone that you're attracted to that you love and then you look for someone that you can bloody well trust and then you tell them the truth and and that way maybe you can get through life and you can have someone to weave

the Rope of your being with and together to make to make your joint rope stronger and you can have some continuity in your narrative and you can have children and then you can have grandchildren and like You can have a life man and there's nothing you're so fortunate if you can manage that and so okay so there's that one so what's my advice to young men seeking a woman for marriage and family yeah well and also you know marry someone you think would be a good mother and that has enough sense generally speaking to know

that she wants children now some women don't want children and fair enough and some women perhaps shouldn't have children that's also Possible but the general rule of thumb is especially once a woman's you know in her mid 20s if she doesn't know that she wants children or won't admit it unless she has a viciously important reason then she's not oriented properly psychologically she she she isn't she doesn't know what's important an in life now that might also be the case with you and it probably is but as a rule of thumb that's a really good

[Music] One the root to Optimal the root to to quality of life and productivity has been laid out by other people we we kind of know what the parameters are you need to do something that other people find as useful and and and you have to regard it as useful as well or at least you have to be entertaining there has to be something about you of value to other people that you have to Pursue with a fair bit of diligence so you have to play a productive social role probably need friends probably need an

intimate relationship and if it could be medium to long-term in Intimate relationship perhaps all the better that's what most societies hold up as ideal could assume well there's probably a reason for that I think one of the reasons is is that your life get it's fragmented otherwise Badly fragmented you know it's because every time you have a long-term relationship and it and it fragments it's like your identity is blown into pieces you get fragmented across time it's it's not it's not good it breaks you into pieces and you don't necessarily recover that well it makes

everything much more impermanent and unreliable all of those things so it it introduces a tremendous amount of uncertainty into your life and It also means that you don't have anyone around that you can really trust and that's bad CU if you have someone around you can really trust then you have two brains instead of one and like you probably need two brains to to manage your way through life it's pretty complicated [Music]