Jordan Peterson REVEALS His 12 Rules That Will CHANGE YOUR LIFE! | Lewis Howes

Jordan Peterson 0:00 Well, if you have some faults and you feel insecure and inferior because of that, well, you should. Now, it shouldn't be so much that you're crippled by it and unable to take action. You shouldn't be beating yourself into the ground because you're not everything you could be, because no one is, and if you beat yourself into the ground, then you can't-

Lewis Howes 0:24 When you feel insecure or afraid or, or scared of being embarrassed, whether it be dating someone or a career or anything, what's the keys to building confidence so that you're attracting what you want?

Jordan Peterson 0:36 Well, look, look. You- I read some of your biographical history before we talked today, and you tell a story about being picked last.

Lewis Howes 0:44 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 0:45 And then you compensated for that.

Lewis Howes 0:48 Yes.

Jordan Peterson 0:48 Now, there- Alfred Adler, by the way, the psychoanalyst, uh, associate of Freud, built his whole theory around compensation of that sort. Inferiority complex plus compensation. But it's adaptive, right? Like, you got picked last, it embarrassed the hell out of you.

Lewis Howes 1:03 Yep.

Jordan Peterson 1:03 So what did you do? You decided, "That is not going to be me anymore."

Lewis Howes 1:07 Never again.

Jordan Peterson 1:08 Right.

Lewis Howes 1:09 Never again. Yes.

Jordan Peterson 1:10 Okay. Now, you did say, you know, that you adopted a maybe too, what, inflexible model of what it meant to be masculine as a consequence.

Lewis Howes 1:20 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:20 But when I read that, I thought, "Yeah, but still, you... Fair enough. It wasn't... The, the new you that you adopted wasn't optimal in all possible manners, but it was definitely improvement over the previous you."

Lewis Howes 1:34 [laughs] Exact- I wasn't picked last again, that's for sure.

Jordan Peterson 1:37 Right. Well, exactly. Okay, so, so, so the first thing I would say is that if you feel insecure and less and ashamed and all of that, that you have to take stock.

Lewis Howes 1:46 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:47 And look, I have an exercise online at selfauthoring.com. It's, there's three exercises there. One helps you write about the past, one about the present, and one about the future. The present authoring program helps you assess your faults and your virtues. Okay, well, if you have some faults and you feel insecure and inferior because of that, well, you should. Now, it shouldn't be so much that you're crippled by it and unable to take action. You shouldn't be beating yourself into the ground because you're not everything you could be, because no one is, and if you beat yourself into the ground, then you can't get up and improve. But you, you, you f- you have to differentiate. It's like, okay, to what degree am I being hard on myself, counterproductively critical, hearing the voice of my too-harsh and angry father in my head?

Lewis Howes 2:37 Right.

Jordan Peterson 2:37 Um, adopting inappropriate stereotypical representations of masculine competence. How much of my self-criticism is ill-advised? Fair enough, and you wanna deal with yourself with a certain amount of care. But then along with that, there's the, well, fix your weaknesses.

Lewis Howes 2:58 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 2:59 You know, if you're ashamed of being ignorant, you're showing up at a party because, you know, you claim to knowledge that you don't have and someone exposes you. Well, you can be angry at them, and you probably will, but they've actually done you a favor. They pointed out... An inadequacy is a pathway that you can travel down.

Lewis Howes 3:18 Ooh.

Jordan Peterson 3:19 Right? A recognized inadequacy is, assumed it's such a gift in some sense, if, if it's accurate. I'm in it... 'Cause you think, "Well, what should I do? What should I do with my life?" That's a real complicated question.

Lewis Howes 3:30 Right.

Jordan Peterson 3:31 Oh, here's an inadequacy. Excellent, you have a pl- you have a, a goal now. Rectify it. Now, you still have to think strategically and figure out how to rectify it and do it step by step and... But Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist, um, pointed out that the per- person, for s- for therapy to be successful, the person has to wanna change. So they have to have recognized that they have a problem.

Lewis Howes 3:59 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 3:59 If the, if someone is mandated by the court to attend therapy, it's very difficult for the therapist to convince them that they have a problem. Once you're convinced you have a problem, it's like away you go, you know? I know it's still technically difficult. It requires discipline and all of that. There's no magic solution. But if you're plagued by feelings of inferiority, you should rectify the most obvious inferiorities.

Lewis Howes 4:24 Right. Focus on those first over s- optimizing strengths, would you say?

Jordan Peterson 4:30 No, not necessarily. Not, not necessarily. Um, and you don't have to redress every... Like, I can't, I'm a terrible jazz musician.

Lewis Howes 4:39 [laughs] Right.

Jordan Peterson 4:40 You know, and I'm, I'm-

Lewis Howes 4:41 It's not a, it's not a, it's not a thing where you hold shame around or, like, you know-

Jordan Peterson 4:43 Well, it's not an impediment.

Lewis Howes 4:45 Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 4:46 I would say that you have to rectify an in- inadequacy when it's clearly an impediment to your goal, or you have to shift goals. But if you're shifting goals because of an inadequacy-related impediment, then you have to ask yourself, are you, is your desire to shift the goal reliable, or are you just taking the easy way out?

Lewis Howes 5:06 Right.

Jordan Peterson 5:06 You can protect yourself by, by picking a different goal that's more difficult. That, that's a good mental hygiene practice, because sometimes you should switch goals rather than rectifying inadequacies. But you can fool yourself then, and, and that's a, that's not good. One of the things I've been talking to my audiences about is the relationship between responsibility and meaning.

Lewis Howes 5:31 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 5:31 Which is the, um, uh, what would you say? It's a, it's a constant refrain in the book.

Lewis Howes 5:35 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 5:35 It's one of its underlying, um, um, messages, let's say, or themes is a better way of thinking about it. Um, you know, i- if you start with the presumption that there's a baseline of suffering in life and that that can be, uh, exaggerated by, as a consequence of human failing, as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and self-betrayal and deceit, and all those things that we do to each other and ourselves that we know that aren't good, that amplifies the suffering. That's sort of the baseline against which you have to work. And, and, and it's contemplation of that often that makes people hopeless and depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and all of that.

Lewis Howes 6:13 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 6:13 And, and, and they have their reasons. But you need something to put- Up against that. And what you put up against that is meaning. Meaning is actually the instinct that helps you guide yourself through that catastrophe, and most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility. So if you think, for example, if you think about the people that you admire-

Lewis Howes 6:35 Mm

Jordan Peterson 6:35 ... well, you think about when you have a clear conscience first.

Lewis Howes 6:38 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 6:38 'Cause that's a good thing to aim at, which is something different than happiness, right? Um-

Lewis Howes 6:42 A clear conscience is different than happiness.

Jordan Peterson 6:44 Yeah, it's better.

Lewis Howes 6:46 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 6:46 That's better.

Lewis Howes 6:47 'Cause you're not guilting yourself. You're not feeling bad about yourself.

Jordan Peterson 6:49 That's right.

Lewis Howes 6:50 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 6:50 You feel that you've justified-

Lewis Howes 6:51 You're clean

Jordan Peterson 6:51 ... you've justified your existence, right?

Lewis Howes 6:53 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 6:53 And so you're not waking up at 3:00 in the morning in a cold sweat thinking about all the terrible things that you've involved yourself in.

Lewis Howes 6:58 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 6:59 You know?

Lewis Howes 6:59 What you said to someone that you shouldn't have said-

Jordan Peterson 7:01 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 7:01 ... or how you acted or lied or-

Jordan Peterson 7:02 Mm, what opportunity you lost or, or, or, or-

Lewis Howes 7:05 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 7:05 ... yeah, or, or the things that you've, that you've let go that you should have capitalized on-

Lewis Howes 7:10 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 7:10 ... and all of that. And so if you think about the times when you're at peace with yourself with regards to how you're conducting yourself in the world, it's almost always conditions under which you've adopted responsibility.

Lewis Howes 7:22 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 7:22 Right? At least the most, the most guilt, I think, that you can experience perhaps is the sure knowledge that you're not even taking care of yourself, so that you're leaving that responsibility to other people, 'cause that's pretty pathetic. And I, unless you're psychopathic and, you know, and, and you're living a parasitical life.

Lewis Howes 7:40 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 7:40 And, and that, that characterizes a very small minority of people, and an even smaller minority think that's justifiable. But most of the time, you're in guilt and shame because you're not, you're, you're not, not only are you not taking care of yourself, let's say, so someone else has to, but you're not living up to your full potential, and so there's a existential weight that goes along with that. So-

Lewis Howes 8:02 So you suffer even more.

Jordan Peterson 8:04 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 8:04 When you don't take care of yourself or take the best actions or do the work that you know you can do-

Jordan Peterson 8:09 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 8:10 ... and you rely on someone else to support you financially, emotionally-

Jordan Peterson 8:14 Mm

Lewis Howes 8:14 ... physically, whatever, you know, home, whatever it may be.

Jordan Peterson 8:16 Yeah, well, 'cause you're not only, you're not only not being what you could be, you're interfering with someone else being what they could be, right? So you're, you're n- you're not only a void, you're a drain.

Lewis Howes 8:26 Right.

Jordan Peterson 8:27 Jesus, that's a catastrophe. And-

Lewis Howes 8:28 'Cause we usually don't even know it we're in the, when we're in that situation-

Jordan Peterson 8:31 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 8:31 ... 'cause we're in a depressed state or we're-

Jordan Peterson 8:33 Or we don't wanna see it.

Lewis Howes 8:34 Mm. That's true.

Jordan Peterson 8:35 You know, you wake up at 3:00 in the morning and you know. And so, and then yous think of the people that you... So you admire yourself, or perhaps you can at least live with yourself when you're taking responsibility at least for yourself, and so that settles your conscience. But then if you look at the people that you spontaneously admire, and so the act of spontaneously admiring someone is the manifestation of the instinct for meaning, right? So, and this is partly why people are so enamored of sports-

Lewis Howes 9:03 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 9:03 ... figures.

Lewis Howes 9:03 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 9:03 Because the sports figures are playing out the drama of attaining the goal, of attaining a certain kind of, let's say, psychological and physical perfection in pursuit of the goal. That's the drama. And to spontaneously admire that is to have that instinct for meaning latch onto something that can be used as a model, and then that model should be transcribed into something that's applicable in life. You know, when you really like to see, in an athletic performance, you really like to see someone who's extremely disciplined and, and in, and in shape-

Lewis Howes 9:32 Mm

Jordan Peterson 9:32 ... do something physically remarkable, but, and, and to stretch themselves even beyond their previous exploits, because you really like to see a brilliant move-

Lewis Howes 9:40 Yes

Jordan Peterson 9:40 ... in, in an athletic match. But you also s- like to see that person ensconced in a broader moral framework, so that not only are they trying to win and disciplining themselves in pursuit of that victory, and then stretching themselves so they're continually getting better, but they're doing it in a way that helps develop their whole team-

Lewis Howes 9:59 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 9:59 ... and that's good for the sport in general and that reflects well-

Lewis Howes 10:02 Right

Jordan Peterson 10:02 ... on the broader culture.

Lewis Howes 10:03 They're a great leader on their team.

Jordan Peterson 10:04 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:04 They're positive. They're good, uh, sportsmen w- against the competitors.

Jordan Peterson 10:08 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:08 They're not negative towards the other people. They're lifting them up, too.

Jordan Peterson 10:11 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 10:11 Like the ultimate-

Jordan Peterson 10:12 That's right, so that they-

Lewis Howes 10:13 ... human.

Jordan Peterson 10:14 That's right. So that they can, they can work for their own improvement in a way that simultaneously works for the improvement of their team and that, and, and for the sport, and-

Lewis Howes 10:21 Well-

Jordan Peterson 10:21 ... and then to the degree that that spills over into the broader culture, so much the better.

Lewis Howes 10:25 Right.

Jordan Peterson 10:25 So that's all being dramatized in a, in an, in ath- athletic event, and it's really, it's not philosophical. It's concrete, right? It's dramatized in the world, and that's what the games represent. And so, well, and, and it's partly because, well, in some sense, life is a game.

Lewis Howes 10:42 It is.

Jordan Peterson 10:42 It is, in that you're always... The, the analogy is that in, in life, like in sports, you're, you're, you're setting forth an aim and then arranging your perceptions and your actions in pursuit of that aim. And that you also generally do it while cooperating and competing with other people.

Lewis Howes 11:01 Right.

Jordan Peterson 11:01 So that's also the game-like element as well. All of that's dramatized in athletics.

Lewis Howes 11:05 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 11:06 That's like philosophy for people who aren't philosophical. And I'm not being smart about that.

Lewis Howes 11:10 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 11:10 You know, it's like it really is p- philosophy for people who aren't being philosophical, 'cause it's played out, you know? And you can see it, too. You can see the spontaneous appreciation for the human spirit manifest itself when you see people rise to their feet spontaneously-

Lewis Howes 11:25 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 11:25 ... in a sports arena when they see someone do something particularly remarkable. See an athlete who's extremely trained stretch themselves beyond what you'd think is a normative human limit.

Lewis Howes 11:35 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 11:35 And everyone celebrates that, like, spontaneously. So it's quite something to-

Lewis Howes 11:39 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 11:39 ... to behold.

Lewis Howes 11:40 And so taking it back to responsibility and meaning-

Jordan Peterson 11:43 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 11:43 When we're watching sports or someone do this act, what does this do for us with, in terms of responsibility and meaning?

Jordan Peterson 11:49 Well, it, it, it, it helps us figure out what we can imitate.

Lewis Howes 11:54 Gives us a model.

Jordan Peterson 11:54 Right. Yes, it's a model. Right.

Lewis Howes 11:56 Here's a model of something that I respect.

Jordan Peterson 11:58 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, even what philosophy is, or even theology for that matter, is an abstract model. Like, it's laid out in words. Now, the problem often is, is it becomes so abstract that people don't know how to bring it back down to, to embodiment.

Lewis Howes 12:11 To embodiment, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 12:11 Yes. Whereas something like, like the drama of a sports event is sort of midway between philosophy and action, right?

Lewis Howes 12:18 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 12:18 And so it's, it's not entirely abstracted, because it's not only coded in words. It's acted out.

Lewis Howes 12:23 It's visual.

Jordan Peterson 12:24 Mm.

Lewis Howes 12:24 You can see an example of what just happens.

Jordan Peterson 12:26 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 12:26 And you can try to reverse engineer how they did that.

Jordan Peterson 12:28 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, yes, exactly. Well, at le- at least you, the fact that you admire the person means that you might start to try to act like them.

Lewis Howes 12:36 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 12:36 Now, it's not easy. And maybe that would mean, maybe that would mean that you start to discipline yourself with regards to a particular sport, but it might also be that you start to mimic or are at least affected in some way by their, their sportsman- Sportsman-like behavior, right

Lewis Howes 12:50 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 12:50 ... which is the ground of a certain kind of ethic. Because if you can play well with others, which is sort of the hallmark of a good sport, then that actually means that you're a reasonably sophisticated and civilized person. It's really important to learn to play well with others. There isn't-

Lewis Howes 13:05 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 13:05 ... that's the ground of ethics.

Lewis Howes 13:07 And if you can do it there in that setting, then hopefully you could translate it into a life setting.

Jordan Peterson 13:11 Well, well, right, that's exactly right. That's what you-

Lewis Howes 13:12 That's the goal

Jordan Peterson 13:13 ... well, that's what you hope for.

Lewis Howes 13:14 Right.

Jordan Peterson 13:14 Yeah, that's the goal of the s- so if the, if the goal of the game is to put the ball through the, ball into the net, then the goal of having games is to produce people who can take proper aim no matter where they are, right? That's exactly what we're trying to do-

Lewis Howes 13:29 Mm

Jordan Peterson 13:29 ... with, with, with, with athletics. So, um, uh, so I've been talking to my audiences a lot about that, about the... And, well, and there's more to it too because y- if the background of life is, is there's a, there's an ineradicable component of suffering, and that's complicated by, let's say, malevolence and the proclivity of people to betray themselves and others, which, which complicates it and makes it worse, then the, if you don't have a noble aim and, and, and if that isn't imbuing your life with sustainable meaning, then you fall prey to all the catastrophe, the pain and the anxiety and the anger that that suffering generates, and that makes you bitter. [instrumental music plays]

Lewis Howes 14:13 What is the thing you love most about your wife? Uh, that's my first question.

Jordan Peterson 14:21 I think it's very difficult to say exactly why you're attracted to someone. It's, there's lots of factors, and many of them aren't known to you really. Um, she's very... She's provocative. She's witty and, uh, sharp, and so there's always an element of game playing.

Lewis Howes 14:42 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 14:42 Like, it's not dishonest game playing, but there's a teasy, flirtatious provocativeness that characterizes her quite deeply. Uh, she's no pushover by any stretch of the imagination, and, um, I find that constantly interesting and intriguing. Um, it's partic- it's, it's, can be somewhat hard on me when I'm not feeling well.

Lewis Howes 15:07 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 15:08 But when I'm up and functioning properly, then that works out extremely well. And so-

Lewis Howes 15:16 Yeah. What would you say would be the, the keys to your success of 50 years of loving each other and being in a, what seems to be a healthy, functional relationship when in society today, there doesn't seem like many of those?

Jordan Peterson 15:32 Well, we, we really do our best not to lie to each other about anything, and we also have fights when they're necessary. We don't let things, we don't hide things in the fog. That's the title of chapter three of my new book, Don't Hide Things in the Fog. And we work through our issues. Our, if we're, if we have a dispute, we do our level best to get to the bottom of it, to find out what in the world's causing it, whose needs to change and why and how and when, and then how we can progress forward into the future without having that issue dog us or drag behind us or interfere with us at all. And that means a fair bit of confrontation, I would say. But l- less so over the years as we've settled more and more things, but everything's out in the open. Everything that we can get is out of, out in the open. You, you can't have a relationship without trust.

Lewis Howes 16:40 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 16:40 And y- you trust your partner courageously if you're not naive, knowing that you can be hurt and that you can be deceived, and that you can also do both of those things. So you offer your partner your trust as an invitation to them to be honest and forthcoming and, and, well, and then issues come up, and you delve into them and straighten them out. And we also attend to the relationship, um, in... I'm not going to refer back to this new book continually, but-

Lewis Howes 17:13 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 17:13 ... it's relevant in this context. Um, it's chapter 10, "Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship," and we do that as well. And it is effortful.

Lewis Howes 17:26 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 17:26 I mean, we t- we try to have, throughout our relationship, we've tried to have romantic dates one to three times a week, and they require preparation and cooperation and the will to do it and the will to put yourself on the line, and the, the desire to make that a priority even when other things are more pressing. Um, w- we both want it to work. That's another thing. We're committed to it-

Lewis Howes 17:56 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 17:57 ... um, and not interested in finding another relationship. S- and so far we've been fortunate, and that's worked. Um, we have fun together. We love our kids. We have had joint projects of all sorts together, renovating houses, traveling, raising our children, now our grandchildren. Um, but of all of that is, the, the most important thing as far as I'm concerned is to, not to lie to your partner.

Lewis Howes 18:26 You mentioned you don't have a relationship if you don't have trust or if there's not trust in the relationship. How does someone, um, if someone is not trusting the other partner, how do you cultivate trust? If you're s- 100% honest with that person, if you are transparent about every action you make in your life, if you're You know, they have access to whatever they wanna see, and you're, you're constantly creating trust. But for whatever reason, they still might be jealous or insecure or not believing you. How does someone get someone to trust them? Or is it not about them at that stage, and it's about the other person and their insecurities?

Jordan Peterson 19:10 Well, it, it depends very much on the particulars of the situation. Um, you know, so I don't know if there's a generic answer to that. I think that you can establish the ground rules explicitly, you know, and have a discussion about it. Are we gonna lie to each other or not? Are we gonna tell each other the truth to the degree that we can to make that an actual goal, and to talk through the consequences of doing that and not doing it? And then I would also say whenever a hiccup occurs in the relationship, maybe you don't call it out at each hiccup, you know, because you have to have a certain amount of silent tolerance in any relationship to let small infractions go. But if they repeat, my rule is three times.

Lewis Howes 20:00 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 20:00 And it's the rule that we, I share with my wife. I- if something happens three times that is causing emotional u- upset, anger, jealousy, disappointment, resentment, frustration, any of those things, anything that you don't want to experience and that you especially don't want to experience repeatedly, then you can call it out. And, and if you, if you have three examples, your case is much better made than if you just have one. And I would also say that when you call it out, you know, you could say, "Look, uh, we were at a party the other night, and you were... It looked to me, I felt as if you were paying too much intense intent- attention to, um, Dave."

Lewis Howes 20:45 Mm-hmm. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 20:45 "There was flirting going on there. That's what it looked like to me. There was some flirting going on there. And, you know, I, that made me uncomfortable." Well, y- you don't say, "Well, you were flirting. Stop doing it." You say, "Well, this is how it looked. This is what it looked like to me, and here was my response." And then you wanna think, "And maybe I'm a damn fool and blind and jealous and stupid, and I'm misinterpreting. Or maybe it was a harmless flirtation of the sort that people engage in because it adds a little bit of spice to a social interaction." You wanna find out. Like, it, it's really convenient if it's the other person's fault, except then you're laden with living with that person-

Lewis Howes 21:27 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 21:27 ... so it really doesn't help you anyways. But it's convenient because then they have to change. But-

Lewis Howes 21:32 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 21:32 ... you've gotta think about this over the long run. You're gonna be interacting with this person on a minute-by-minute basis for decades. Um, if you're the idiot and that's causing trouble, then you should find out. So you wanna say, "Well, look, this is what I saw. What's your explanation of what's going on?"

Lewis Howes 21:54 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 21:54 And then they'll offer you their viewpoint, and hopefully they'll do the same thing. They'll think, "Well, this is my intent," and maybe they have to go think about it, but, "This is my intent and this is what I saw, and I think you're being oversensitive, um, in that situation." And you peel back the explanations layer by layer until you both agree on what happened and, more importantly, on what you're going to do about it in the future. And that's really hard and especially if there is something going on that's not straight.

Lewis Howes 22:28 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 22:29 Because that will require quite a bit of digging. It'll probably result in anger and tears and a fight, and that's very unpleasant. It's, it's easier in the short term to avoid that. But hopefully the consequence of that is you don't have to have that fight again.

Lewis Howes 22:45 Right.

Jordan Peterson 22:48 You have to come to a negotiated agreement about, about that situation. And you have to pay attention to your own uncomfortable negative emotions in order to manage that and not, and not pretend that everything's all right or that you're nicer than you are or that you're less jealous than you are or, or, or less blind or... See, one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, about marriage was that there is a reason marriage was a vow. Like, the vow is that you stick together. Okay, so now imagine that's a vow, okay? You do not get to leave, period.

Lewis Howes 23:29 [laughs] Right.

Jordan Peterson 23:30 Okay, so what does that mean? Well, on the upside, it means that you don't have to be alone. It means that your family will have continuity over decades. It means that the narrative of your life won't be fragmented and broken by divorce or sequential divorce. It means that your children can grow up and maybe have their children within a continuing family. Um, it means that your children will be able to maintain relationships with the grandparents on both sides and the cousins. Like, it's a big deal to maintain that. There's huge advantages in it. It means that you'll have someone there when you're not well, and so will your partner. Um, and it'll means that you have someone to share all of the positive things of life with. So there's huge advantages to it. Okay, so why does it have to be a vow? Well, I don't think you can tell the truth to someone who can run away.

Lewis Howes 24:29 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 24:29 Because if you tell the truth to someone and they can run away, then they'll run away.

Lewis Howes 24:35 Right.

Jordan Peterson 24:36 Right? Because-

Lewis Howes 24:37 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 24:38 ... you're, you're a mess, man. And not, not just because of your own inadequacies but because human beings are so complicated and, and have such dark corners and, and- And have had, you know, unresolved problems in their life sometimes that stem back generations-

Lewis Howes 24:55 Mm

Jordan Peterson 24:55 ... and are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways. And you, you can't re- It's very, very difficult to reveal that except to someone who can't run away. Now, that, that... You know, I'm not saying that people should never separate. I, I am saying, though, that it's better not to-

Lewis Howes 25:16 Mm

Jordan Peterson 25:16 ... if you can manage it. But then the other thing, too, is if you can't run away, then you're motivated in a different way. It's like, "I'm stuck with this woman, and she's stuck with me. And unless we wanna have this same goddamn fight over and over and over for the next who knows how long, why don't we s- straighten it out and then we can put it behind us?" See, the, the vow gives you a kind of desperation-

Lewis Howes 25:43 Mm

Jordan Peterson 25:44 ... that is another motivation to actually solve the problems. And if you've got a way out, you, you can always stay hidden. You can guard yourself. You can protect yourself and even protect that part of yourself that thinks that it can leave if things get too bad. Now, the problem with that, in my estimation, is, is that you're gonna drag your stupidity into the next relationship.

Lewis Howes 26:07 [laughs] Right. Always do, right?

Jordan Peterson 26:08 Well, generally speaking, right? And so now y- you can get very... You can, you can... in under inf- unfortunate circumstances, you can get tangled up with someone who's not playing a straight game with you and won't. And, and it's just impossible. But I'm not talking about the limit cases, you know.

Lewis Howes 26:32 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 26:32 I'm talking about the average case, the average amount of unhappiness and trouble. It's still plenty. And-

Lewis Howes 26:42 A-

Jordan Peterson 26:42 ... then the, uh... Sorry, just one more thing-

Lewis Howes 26:43 Go ahead. Yeah, yeah

Jordan Peterson 26:44 ... I'd add to that. You also have to sh- in some sense shake the illusion that the other person is somehow not you. You're so tied up with them that-

Lewis Howes 26:55 Mm

Jordan Peterson 26:56 ... there's no difference between you and them in some sense, is that what's good for h- her is gonna be good for you and vice versa. One of the things we try to do, too, the two of us, is we try to say yes to each other. Now, there's rules that go along with that, which is, "Well, I'm gonna say yes to you, but that sort of means that you shouldn't ask me unreasonable... You shouldn't make unreasonable demands." I'll say yes as much as I possibly can, and then you'll do that in res- return, and then we get yes out of the deal instead of no. Um, that's also a huge plus. Um-

Lewis Howes 27:39 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 27:39 ... so that's, that's... Is there anything else about... You, you want to, you, you wanna, you want... You have to want the best for the other person-

Lewis Howes 27:49 Mm

Jordan Peterson 27:49 ... and you and for the relationship.

Lewis Howes 27:52 And-

Jordan Peterson 27:52 And in, within that confine, you wanna tell each other the truth.

Lewis Howes 27:56 Yeah. The truth is, is huge. And I, I heard you mention jealousy and insecurity at, at, at some point in that, that message. Is there room for jealousy and insecurity in a relationship? Sh- Is there a healthy amount of jealousy that people should have in a relationship, or does jealousy and insecurity only cause more suffering and pain in a relationship?

Jordan Peterson 28:22 Well, I think there's a reasonable amount of proprietary interest, let's say. I mean, in a, in a classic monogamous relationship, a marriage, their sexual fidelity is a crucial element of that. Um, and maybe y- you'll make an arrangement that differs from that, but it's not easy to chart uncharted territory like that. I mean-

Lewis Howes 28:48 Mm

Jordan Peterson 28:48 ... if you wanna have an adventure like that with a partner, a monogamous adventure that also includes sexual exploration, well, maybe you can pull it off, but I doubt it.

Lewis Howes 29:00 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 29:00 It's really complicated.

Lewis Howes 29:01 Let's say you're not having sexual exploration with other people sh- and you're telling each other the truth and you're being honest. Sh- Is there room to be jealous or insecure, uh, in that relationship, or does, does jealousy typically cause more harm than it does, you know, spice and good, I guess?

Jordan Peterson 29:24 I think jealousy probably causes more trouble than good, but that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the proprietary interest.

Lewis Howes 29:32 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 29:33 Should you care if your partner pays undue attention to someone of the opposite sex they find attractive? Well, probably you should care. You might even say something about it. They might even be happy about that.

Lewis Howes 29:47 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 29:48 Right? Because it indicates that you noticed and that it matters to you. Now, I think it shades into jealousy when it's harmless interactions, it's interactions that would be regarded as harmless by a third-party observer, let's say-

Lewis Howes 30:05 Mm

Jordan Peterson 30:05 ... I know that's a very difficult line to draw, that are being magnified as a consequence of insecurity on the part of the observer. Or there's envy, where your partner is attracting attention-

Lewis Howes 30:17 Mm

Jordan Peterson 30:18 ... status, success, any of those things, and you're jealous of that. That's not helpful. You should be pleased. The optimal situation is for you to be pleased when your partner's successful.

Lewis Howes 30:31 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 30:32 Um, I, I, I don't think competitive couples... I don't think competition between people who are in a monogamous relationship is useful particularly. It's not zero-sum competition.

Lewis Howes 30:46 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 30:46 Um, I mean, you can d- compete in a game-like sense.

Lewis Howes 30:51 Right. Fun-

Jordan Peterson 30:51 You know, like-

Lewis Howes 30:52 ... fun, playful competition, but not-

Jordan Peterson 30:54 Yeah, but not, not existential competition.

Lewis Howes 30:57 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 30:57 You're on the same team. That's the point.

Lewis Howes 31:00 Right.

Jordan Peterson 31:00 You know, and if one of you is feeling left behind for one reason or another, it's, it's time to throw that out on the table and say, "Look, I'm, I'm playing second fiddle here far too often. What can we do about that?"

Lewis Howes 31:12 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 31:12 "Well, it looks like you need a... And like I've got an adventure. It looks like you need one too. Well, how can we rearrange the situation so I have my adventure?" And then it's up to that person too to figure out what obstacles they might be putting up in their own pathway-

Lewis Howes 31:29 Huh

Jordan Peterson 31:29 ... right, that's stopping them, and then they have... You know, they're angry at you for getting in the way, but it's actually a consequence of them using you as a convenient excuse for not doing something difficult. Those things all have to be sorted through. It's very hard.

Lewis Howes 31:44 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 31:44 Like, these conversations are extremely difficult. It's no wonder people avoid them. I also think people are not taught to negotiate-

Lewis Howes 31:52 Oh, man

Jordan Peterson 31:52 ... at all. They, they... And that's a, that's a real shame. First of all, you figure out what you want. This is what I want. Then you tell the person, then you strategize with them so that you can get what you want and they can get what they want, and you both know what that is, and away you go together. And that, that usually comes out... It's usually obscured and hidden, and, and comes out awkwardly and difficulty, and, and with difficulty if it comes out at all. And people fool themselves into thinking that it's okay what they're doing. I'm sacrificing myself for the children, and that's okay.

Lewis Howes 32:25 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 32:25 I'm sacrificing myself for, um, my husband's career, and that's okay. Um, I'm working at a job I can't stand because I need to support my wife and children, and that's okay. I mean, sometimes that is okay, but it has to be out clear in the open, talked about, negotiated, discussed. Um, you know, I think there's... You can be a slave or a tyrant, or you can negotiate.

Lewis Howes 32:49 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 32:49 Those are your options.

Lewis Howes 32:51 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 32:52 And we default to slavery and tyranny because that doesn't require any cognitive effort.

Lewis Howes 32:56 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 32:57 And then we pretend that everything's all right, and then it blows up in our faces-

Lewis Howes 33:01 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 33:01 ... and we end up divorced.

Lewis Howes 33:03 Right. [gentle music] What would be a few key steps to get started to, to turn their life around or to find the motivation for something greater than where they're at?

Jordan Peterson 33:19 Well, I, I think a fair bit of that's probably to be found in... You can find it in shame.

Lewis Howes 33:25 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 33:26 You can find it in guilt. You can find it in conscience. You can find it in anger. You can find it in interest and, and, and engagement and beauty. There's lots of pathways. If you're angry about something in the world, well, you know, that's an indication that that's, in some sense, your problem, right? It- it's speaking to you in a moral sense. This shouldn't be that way. Well, maybe you're the person who should do something about it in some manner. Maybe it'll take your whole life to figure out how to do that. But it's bothering you for a reason, so the, the negative emotions can be a pathway to transformation. I'm, I'm not trying to romanticize them. They can crush you completely and leave you-

Lewis Howes 34:14 Right

Jordan Peterson 34:14 ... with nothing.

Lewis Howes 34:15 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 34:16 Right? Uh, for sure, and they can go badly astray, but shame, that's a good one. What am I ashamed of? Well, can you fix any of that? Because you might ask yourself, let's say you're so ashamed and so crushed that you're nihilistic and you can't see any hope for life. You're just done. You might think, "Well, what if I was less ashamed?"

Lewis Howes 34:40 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 34:41 Like, I'm not gonna jump off the bridge today. I'm gonna wait a year. I'm gonna not... I'm gonna work on these things that I'm ashamed of and, and just see. Like, does my life improve enough so that I'm not so bitter about it now, or I'm not so hopeless about it now? And j- my experience has generally been that that works. It works. And then some of, some of it's practical s- knowledge too. It's like you can get a really long way with very small changes, incremental changes.

Lewis Howes 35:10 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 35:10 Micro habit changes, so aim low.

Lewis Howes 35:15 Don't have big, big goals or big transformations overnight.

Jordan Peterson 35:17 Well, you can, but, but the problem with a big goal is that it's daunting enough so that it might paralyze you, and there's a high probability of failure. And so imagine that you're your own child.

Lewis Howes 35:29 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 35:30 Okay, now imagine you love this child, and you would like him, we'll say him because it's you and I talking-

Lewis Howes 35:37 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 35:37 ... to succeed. Now, you have an ideal for this child. You would like him to grow up to be the best he can be, better than you.

Lewis Howes 35:46 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 35:46 The best man he can be. That's what you want for your son, if the good part of you is talking.

Lewis Howes 35:52 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 35:53 You definitely want him to be better than you are, but you want him to be the best he could be-

Lewis Howes 35:58 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 35:58 ... if your vision is unclouded. Okay, but then you offer him a goal. It's like, well, do this. Well, can he do it? Well, if he can do it without a second's thought, there's no challenge in it. There's no developmental-

Lewis Howes 36:10 Mm

Jordan Peterson 36:10 ... impetus. It's not in the zone of proximal development. You want a goal that you can do but that requires some improvement on your part.

Lewis Howes 36:19 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 36:20 Because you want to attain the goal. That's satisfying, but then you wanna make yourself into the thing that can attain goals.

Lewis Howes 36:29 That means you have to trans-

Jordan Peterson 36:29 And so you wanna push yourself.

Lewis Howes 36:31 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 36:32 You wanna push yourself a bit far-

Lewis Howes 36:33 You have to transform. Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 36:34 Yes, and, and, and there, there's an ample psychological literature that suggests that that's where maximal motivation is to be found.

Lewis Howes 36:42 Interesting.

Jordan Peterson 36:44 So you're, you're pursuing a goal, but you're also pursuing the goal of transforming yourself at the same time. You're doing both of those at the same time.

Lewis Howes 36:53 Do you need to know that you're transforming yourself in order to attain the goal? Or do most people just think, "I gotta take these steps to make it happen," but they don't realize they're becoming better human beings?

Jordan Peterson 37:03 They... It depends on what you mean by realize. They, they, they have the sense of satisfaction. And confidence that would indicate that, although they might not be able to make what that means explicit. But I would say it would be better to make it explicit.

Lewis Howes 37:19 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 37:19 It, it adds one other dimension of possible motivation.

Lewis Howes 37:26 How do you think people lose confidence? We've talked about gaining it, but how does someone... How could someone like yourself, who's accomplished so much, who's got millions of followers, who, you know, is financially successful, has a great marriage, how could someone lose confidence once they've built it?

Jordan Peterson 37:44 Illness.

Lewis Howes 37:46 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 37:47 That'll do it. That's one way. Uh, death of someone.

Lewis Howes 37:54 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 37:55 Loss. I mean, the, there's lots of ways of having the rug pulled out from underneath you. Um, moral error.

Lewis Howes 38:06 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 38:07 Um, as the stakes get higher, as we already discussed, the consequences get larger. Ingratitude.

Lewis Howes 38:13 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 38:13 That's a big one. Um, uh, s- you can succumb to the temptation to believe your own egotism. That's a big mistake. Um, there's lots of ways that things can go sideways, that's for sure.

Lewis Howes 38:30 So it sounds like, you know, we, we start off with a lack of confidence when we're pointed at, "You're inadequate in this thing." And we go down a journey of, you know, building ourselves and overcoming the challenges and diving into the fear to, to have these small wins to build confidence, and then the more successful we become, the more we succumb to [laughs] losing that confidence again, uh, when a lot more is at-

Jordan Peterson 38:58 No, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say necessarily that you become more susceptible to that. Um, but you asked how can that happen?

Lewis Howes 39:06 Right, right, right.

Jordan Peterson 39:06 How can that loss occur? I think, I think, I still believe that, you know, genuine accomplishment, but it's ethical. It's always ethical accomplishment.

Lewis Howes 39:17 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 39:17 I b- I believe that to be the case. Genuine ethical accomplishment is the best source of security, but it's not un- unerring. Um-

Lewis Howes 39:28 When you mean ethical accomplishment, do you mean-

Jordan Peterson 39:30 Doing something good right.

Lewis Howes 39:32 Mm-hmm. Whether people know about it or not, just good and right for yourself. Is that what I'm hearing you say? Do, or does someone else need to acknowledge that this was good and right?

Jordan Peterson 39:43 Um, I, I, I think if, if you, if you've done it for yourself, that's good. But if-

Lewis Howes 39:48 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 39:48 ... you do it and other people are in on it and, and along for the ride, that's also good, and sometimes that's better.

Lewis Howes 39:54 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 39:55 To bring people along. Um, if it's just a matter of them acknowledging it, well, there's value in that, too. I mean, y- you know, you, people say, "Well, you shouldn't care what people think of you." It's like, well, yeah, of course you should. Psychopaths don't care what people think of them. Now, you shouldn't care so much what people think about you that you're willing to lie to maintain whatever it is that you think they value. That, like-

Lewis Howes 40:21 Mm

Jordan Peterson 40:21 ... there are places beyond which that becomes counterpr- productive, clearly. But of, of course, well, I mean, I read the comments in YouTube particularly, and I pay attention to them. And if, you know, 30 people say something, like here's something I do, and I probably did it to you, um, when I'm interviewing, I interrupt more than a certain percentage of my audience would like.

Lewis Howes 40:49 I get... [laughs] That's my comments, is like, "Just let them speak. You interrupt too much." [laughs] So I just try to shut up more now. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 40:56 Do you know the joke?

Lewis Howes 40:58 What's the joke? [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 41:00 Knock, knock.

Lewis Howes 41:01 Who's there?

Jordan Peterson 41:03 The interrupting cow.

Lewis Howes 41:04 The interrupting cow. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 41:05 Moo. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 41:07 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 41:08 Sorry. It's a stupid joke, but... [laughs] It's a stupid joke. Anyhow, uh, so, you know, I read those, and that's what people think, and, and then I, I think, "Okay, I should probably try to interrupt less," but I get excited and, and then with Zoom there's a lag and-

Lewis Howes 41:23 It's... Yeah

Jordan Peterson 41:24 ... that makes it harder. But I do pay attention, and you should pay attention, I think.

Lewis Howes 41:32 When, you know, I hear a lot of people say, "Don't let the opinions of other people hold you back from taking action on your goals," because I think a lot of people will listen to other people's opinions, and they feel scared to do something based on someone saying, "I told you so," or, "You couldn't do this," or, "You're not good enough." How do we overcome that, those opinions that h- keep us playing small, that hold us from putting our creation into the world or going after what we want?

Jordan Peterson 42:00 Well, generally, someone else's comment is unlikely to bring you to a halt unless you value that comment. It... So imagine you're going to pursue a goal, but you're full of doubts.

Lewis Howes 42:16 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 42:17 And so 40% of you is doubts, and 60% of you is pursuing the goal, and then five or six people object, and they object using the doubts.

Lewis Howes 42:28 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 42:29 Well, you're, you're, it's, that's gonna be really hard on you.

Lewis Howes 42:34 So how do we overcome the self-doubt?

Jordan Peterson 42:35 But partly, well, partly what that means is you, you probably haven't thought it through completely. Like, what are you doing, and why?

Lewis Howes 42:44 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 42:45 And if you have a bunch of doubts and they haven't been addressed, then you're vulnerable at that point. And y- it may be that your goal is not everything it could be, and it may be that your strategy isn't fully fleshed out.

Lewis Howes 43:03 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 43:03 And so you have to have a conversation with your doubts and take them seriously and see if you can construct a goal that's- That you're on board with

Lewis Howes 43:17 Right

Jordan Peterson 43:17 And then, then a doubt pops up because someone criticizes you. It triggers a doubt, and you look at the doubt and you think, "Okay, here's the doubt, and this is why what I'm doing, you know, maybe won't work." But then you think, "But I... But this, I've thought this through, and I've thought this through, and I've thought this through, and that all works. And so, no, that, uh, that isn't going to stop me." [instrumental music] I've seen many, many women protect their children from the father. They don't trust him, and so every time he interacts with the child, they'll do something disapproving. A look. They'll, uh, they'll put him down. Now, it's not like men don't do that to their wives. There's all sorts of tricks that men have for their wives.

Lewis Howes 44:03 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 44:03 Men are very good at turning their wives into, uh, drudges, for example, for a variety of reasons which we can go into. But i- if you don't trust men, you won't let them have a hand in the children, the discipline of the children. You know, and when you think of discipline, you think of punishment and threat and Dad saying, "No."

Lewis Howes 44:25 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 44:25 That isn't discipline. Discipline is... Discipline, if you discipline someone properly, they become disciplined.

Lewis Howes 44:32 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 44:33 Right? They, that means they're competent. They're-

Lewis Howes 44:36 They're organized. They have structure. They have... Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 44:38 They can control themselves. So I'll give you an example. When my son is quite a disagreeable person by nature.

Lewis Howes 44:44 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 44:44 So he's very masculine. He's very high in emotional stability, so he doesn't have much negative emotion, and he's very, and he's relatively low in agreeableness. He's, um, he's... And that's, that's typical masculine pattern. Now, the two big personality differences between men and women are agreeableness, women are higher, and neuroticism, tendency to feel negative emotion, women are higher. So, so what that meant was that when he was a kid, he was a stubborn little pup. It was hard to get him to do what he didn't wanna do. And, you know, that's the mark of a character that is hard to stop, so there's real advantages to it. But it, kids who are disagreeable are a handful because they think, "I'm not doing that, and you can't make me."

Lewis Howes 45:29 Right. Is it, is it-

Jordan Peterson 45:29 And he was really quite good at that

Lewis Howes 45:31 And is it one of your rules from the first book, like don't let your kids do anything that would make you not like them?

Jordan Peterson 45:36 Dislike them.

Lewis Howes 45:37 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 45:37 Yes, and the re- uh, we should talk about that because that's such a good rule, I think. But then I used to, the rule for him was, you know, he, he'd push the limits in a variety of ways, and he was really good at that, and quite persistent at it. And I'd talk to my wife and say, "Look, Julian's getting a little too pushy here. Um, we have to crack down on him and stop him. And, and this is what I see." And she'd say, "This is what I see." And we'd think, "Well, this is what we're going... For a week, he isn't gonna get away with anything."

Lewis Howes 46:07 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 46:07 Like, the line, man. It's like, "Kid," he'd be three or three and a half at this time, "sit on the steps."

Lewis Howes 46:13 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 46:15 "Sit on the steps." And if he wouldn't because he was stubborn, well, I'd bring him over and put him on the steps. Like, it was, "You're gon- if I say you're going to sit on the steps, you are absolutely going to sit on the steps." So it was so interesting to watch him because he'd be angry, you know, because he got interfered with. He didn't get to do what he wanted to do. And, um, he'd be s- and he would go and sit on the steps, but he'd be like mad as hell on the way there, arms pumping up and down, and just rr. He'd go sit on the steps like, you know, like this, just overcome with anger. And the rule was, as soon as you get yourself under control, and you can act like a civilized human being, and you want to have a good day, then you come and tell me, and all... That's it. You're done. But it had to be real. And l- look, my, my, uh, r- my criteria for accepting his statement was whether or not I liked him when he said it. You know, if he was still being a s- uh, if he was still misbehaving and, and bending the rules.

Lewis Howes 47:22 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 47:23 He'd, he wouldn't be genuine when he talked to me.

Lewis Howes 47:25 Right.

Jordan Peterson 47:26 But if he came and said, "Okay, Dad," like, "I've had enough. I'm, I'm, I've got myself under control. I'd rather have a good day."

Lewis Howes 47:33 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 47:33 And as soon as he said that, I liked him. It was like, "Hey, man, you're back in the party."

Lewis Howes 47:37 Do what you wanna do, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 47:38 Well, I didn't want him to sit on the steps anymore. I liked having him around, so.

Lewis Howes 47:41 Sure. Sure.

Jordan Peterson 47:43 So but our, you know, we, we were on board with that. And so the discipline, so the thing is, see, what was the discipline aspect, which is what I was talking about, is he learned how to integrate it into his personality, and I could see him doing that sitting on the steps.

Lewis Howes 47:56 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 47:56 He was, it was just this aggression circuit, which is unbelievably powerful, was just dominating him, and he'd just force it, get it under control, get it under control. Calm down. Bring yourself back into the social world. And it was a victory for his developing ego, you see, because he wasn't defeated by his own impulses, and that's discipline, you see.

Lewis Howes 48:19 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 48:19 Then you're not defeated by your own impulses. And so discipline has the wrong connotation. I was encouraging him, "You can master this, man."

Lewis Howes 48:32 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 48:32 And, and it worked, and it was so useful to us later because when Mikhaila got so sick, um, he was together.

Lewis Howes 48:43 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 48:43 We could rely on him.

Lewis Howes 48:44 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 48:47 So it was necessary. [instrumental music]

Lewis Howes 48:49 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 48:49 And it hasn't stopped being necessary, and he's a very reliable person. [instrumental music]

Lewis Howes 48:57 Correct me if I'm wrong. We must have an aim in our life, no matter what stage of life we're in.

Jordan Peterson 49:03 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 49:03 And if we don't have some type of aim, even if for a few months of an aim of going somewhere, a direction-

Jordan Peterson 49:09 Mm. Mm

Lewis Howes 49:09 ... we're gonna, the suffering's gonna be even more suffering.

Jordan Peterson 49:11 Mm. Mm. Pointless.

Lewis Howes 49:12 Because, because we're already gonna face the greatest challenges in life.

Jordan Peterson 49:15 That's right. You're stuck with it.

Lewis Howes 49:16 We're already struggling.

Jordan Peterson 49:18 That's right. There's no way out of that.

Lewis Howes 49:19 Adversity is coming no matter what.

Jordan Peterson 49:20 That's right.

Lewis Howes 49:21 If we have big goals or-

Jordan Peterson 49:22 Mm

Lewis Howes 49:22 ... small little goal or whatever it may be-

Jordan Peterson 49:24 Mm

Lewis Howes 49:25 But it's gonna be less suffering if we-

Jordan Peterson 49:28 Mm

Lewis Howes 49:28 ... have an aim.

Jordan Peterson 49:29 Yeah. Well, and, and, and not only that, it's worse than that even, because-

Lewis Howes 49:33 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 49:33 ... the suffering is pain.

Lewis Howes 49:34 'Cause there's zero meaning.

Jordan Peterson 49:35 Well-

Lewis Howes 49:35 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 49:35 ... well, the suffering is pain, and the suffering is anxiety and uncertainty, and the suffering is hopelessness, but the consequence of all that is that you get bitter.

Lewis Howes 49:43 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 49:43 And when you get bitter, you get mean, and you get cruel, and you start to hurt yourself and other people. So it's not only that if you don't have a goal, you suffer, it's that you, if you don't have a goal, you suffer, and then you get cruel and bitter and resentful. And then you start to actively try to make the world a worse place.

Lewis Howes 49:59 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 49:59 And so, so, it, because you can't suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and you can't become bitter without becoming cruel. So you need an aim. The question is, then the question, of course-

Lewis Howes 50:10 A better aim

Jordan Peterson 50:10 ... is what you should aim. Yeah. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 50:11 [laughs] A better aim.

Jordan Peterson 50:12 Yeah, a better aim.

Lewis Howes 50:13 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 50:13 That's for sure. So then the question is, what should your aim be? Now, we have a program.

Lewis Howes 50:18 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 50:18 It's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today.

Lewis Howes 50:20 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 50:20 I, I have this website called selfauthoring.com, and that program helps people write about their life. And so there's a Past Authoring Program. To, to, to establish your aim, you have to know where you are. It's like you're trying to orient yourself on a map. You can't orient yourself on a map unless you know where you are.

Lewis Howes 50:38 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 50:38 You also have to know where you're going, right? So those are the two relevant things. The Past Authoring Program helps people write about their lives, so it's a guided autobiography. We ask people to break their life up into six epochs, six sections, and then to write about the emotionally important events in those s- in those epochs, and to detail out why, why the positive things happened and why more of that could conceivably happen in the future, and to detail out why the negative things happened, and to try to understand why, with an aim to not replicating them in the future. Because the purpose of memory isn't to remember the past. The purpose of memory is so that you, you figure out what went wrong when something went wrong so you don't duplicate it in the future.

Lewis Howes 51:21 Mm. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 51:21 So that's the purpose of memory, and the Past Authoring Program can help people catch up. And you know you have to catch up if you have memories that are older than about a year and a half that still cause you emotional pain when you think about them.

Lewis Howes 51:34 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 51:34 Or if you dwell on them, they come spontaneously back to mind. Means you haven't, it means that there's part of your life that you haven't mapped out properly, and it still has emotional valence that's gripping you, and you-

Lewis Howes 51:44 You're still holding onto that story

Jordan Peterson 51:45 ... or it's still holding-

Lewis Howes 51:46 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 51:46 ... onto you.

Lewis Howes 51:47 Oh, interesting.

Jordan Peterson 51:47 Right, right.

Lewis Howes 51:47 You haven't let it go.

Jordan Peterson 51:48 Yeah, yeah. Well, you haven't been able to navigate your way through it. You, there's a pitfall there that you fell in, and you don't know how to avoid similar pitfalls in the future, and that's why your brain-

Lewis Howes 51:58 So you repeat it

Jordan Peterson 51:58 ... won't let it go.

Lewis Howes 51:59 Oh.

Jordan Peterson 51:59 'Cause it's saying, that's what the anxiety systems do. It's like, "This happened to you. It wasn't good. This happened to you. It wasn't good. This happened to you. It wasn't good. Fix it, fix it, fix it, fix it." That will never go away unless you fix it.

Lewis Howes 52:09 How do you fix it?

Jordan Peterson 52:10 Well, you have to figure out why it happened, right? That's the first thing, is like, how did you, how was it that that situation arose to pull you down?

Lewis Howes 52:18 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 52:18 And that's not simple. That's why, well, that's why we have the writing program.

Lewis Howes 52:21 Right.

Jordan Peterson 52:22 'Cause it's complicated to think it through.

Lewis Howes 52:23 [clears throat]

Jordan Peterson 52:24 But you, but if you face it, and you, and you meditate on it, let's say, and, so and you do this voluntarily, there's a h- pretty high probability that you'll be able to decrease the probability that it will be repeated in the future. So this-

Lewis Howes 52:37 And then- [clears throat] Go ahead. I don't wanna cut you off.

Jordan Peterson 52:39 Oh, well, well, we, the, the second part of the program helps people do an analysis of their virtues and their faults.

Lewis Howes 52:46 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 52:46 Same sort of idea. What's good about you that you could capitalize on? What's weak about you that you need to fix so that it doesn't bring you down, right? And that's the Present Authoring. But the Future Authoring Program is probably most relevant to-

Lewis Howes 52:58 Mm

Jordan Peterson 52:58 ... you and your listeners, because you're interested in helping people establish aims. And so we already talked about the fact that you need an aim in life, or, or that's where you derive your meaning, and without that, things go to hell, and, and as literally as that can be taken. And so, but it's not easy t- to ask people to say... Well, it's easy to ask them, "What do you want in your life?" But it's a very hard question to answer, 'cause it's too vague-

Lewis Howes 53:23 Right, right, right, right

Jordan Peterson 53:23 ... and, and grand. Eh? So we help, in the Future Authoring Program, we help people break that down. It's okay, so here, here's the situation. So you put yourself in the right frame of mind. So what's the right frame of mind? It's like rule two in this book. Treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. You're someone that you are responsible for helping. So what that means is you have to start from the presupposition that despite all your flaws and insufficiencies, that it's worth having you around, and that it would be okay if things were better for you. So you need to take care of yourself, like you're taking care of someone you care for. So there's a bit of a detachment in that. And then the next thing is, okay, so now look three to five years down the road. Okay, you get to have what you need and want, assuming you're being reasonable-

Lewis Howes 54:06 Mm

Jordan Peterson 54:06 ... and that you actually want it, which means you're willing to make the sacrifices that would, that would make it possible.

Lewis Howes 54:12 What do you mean by reasonable?

Jordan Peterson 54:13 Well, that, that's, that's the next thing. Well, within your grasp, that would be something. You know-

Lewis Howes 54:18 What if something is out of your grasp but you still push hard enough to potentially get it?

Jordan Peterson 54:23 Well, then you need, then you need an incremental plan.

Lewis Howes 54:26 Got it. Yeah, yeah. Of course.

Jordan Peterson 54:26 Right? You need to break that goal down into steps that you-

Lewis Howes 54:28 Not some crazy goal within a year that's like-

Jordan Peterson 54:31 Yeah

Lewis Howes 54:31 ... you haven't even done the work to master a skill yet. Yeah, I got it.

Jordan Peterson 54:33 Yeah. Well, that's it. And you can have a high-end goal-

Lewis Howes 54:35 Right

Jordan Peterson 54:35 ... and more power to you if you do, but you need it.

Lewis Howes 54:37 With a timeframe, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 54:37 Well, you need a pathway to it.

Lewis Howes 54:39 Yeah, absolutely.

Jordan Peterson 54:39 You know, if you're, if it's 10 stories up above you, you need a staircase to get there.

Lewis Howes 54:43 Right.

Jordan Peterson 54:43 Right? And so you have to build the staircase, too.

Lewis Howes 54:45 Right, right.

Jordan Peterson 54:46 And so in the Future Authoring Program, so you're asked, first of all, okay, here's, you get to have what you want and need. That's the proposition. But you have to aim at it. You have to define it and aim at it. So here, so then the first thing is, okay, uh, if you could put your family together the way you wanted it to be-

Lewis Howes 55:02 Mm

Jordan Peterson 55:02 ... what would that look like? And so that might be your siblings and your parents, but that also might be, you know, your wife or your husband and your kids, assuming that you're at that point in your life. If you could have the family you wanted, what would that look like, right? Okay. Career, same thing. You get to have the career or the job that, that is within your grasp, necessary, and, and suitable for, for you-

Lewis Howes 55:25 Mm

Jordan Peterson 55:25 ... if you were taking care of yourself. How are you gonna educate yourself? 'Cause you're not as smart as you should be. There's a lot more things you need to know, so you gotta keep learning and moving forward.

Lewis Howes 55:33 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 55:33 So you need to plan for that. How are you gonna take care of yourself mentally and physically, right? So, um- How are you going to avoid the, the, the catastrophic temptations, for example, of drugs and alcohol? Because that pulls a lot of people down. You need a plan for that. You gonna be a social drinker? How much are you gonna drink? How much is too much? What about your drug use?

Lewis Howes 55:51 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 55:51 You gotta regulate that so it isn't a pitfall. How are you gonna use your time meaningful and productively outside of work? 'Cause you need a plan for that. So that's, um... and there's one other that, that I'm, that's stuck in my mind at the moment.

Lewis Howes 56:03 There's six that we said, right?

Jordan Peterson 56:03 Yeah, I think there's seven initial questions, and I don't, I don't remember the last one. Um, oh, intimate relationship, of course.

Lewis Howes 56:09 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 56:09 So you have, you, do you want a, do you want a long-term stable, intimate relationship? And if you do, then how would you like that to lay itself out? You gotta have a vision for that because if you don't have a vision, you're not gonna aim at it.

Lewis Howes 56:21 Absolutely.

Jordan Peterson 56:21 And if you don't aim at it, then you won't even see the opportunities when they arise. That's the thing that's so cool. I wrote about this in chapter 10, which is Be Precise In Your Speech. It's a chapter about the fact that aims structure your perceptions. So for example, once you aim at something, your brain, literally, the perceptual structures in your brain, in your visual cortex, reorient themselves to calculate a pathway to the aim. And then what they show you in the world is obstacles to that path and-

Lewis Howes 56:49 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 56:49 ... and open pathways to the path. That's actually how the world reveals itself, just like, just like when you're driving in a car and you have a map and you, or you aim at a particular place, then all the things that are-

Lewis Howes 57:01 Right

Jordan Peterson 57:01 ... related to that place show up in the world. It's exactly the same thing.

Lewis Howes 57:04 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 57:04 'Cause you are traveling through time and space, right? And you need a map. And so, so after you answer these seven questions, and you're encouraged to do it badly-

Lewis Howes 57:14 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 57:14 ... because you don't have to get-

Lewis Howes 57:15 Just complete it

Jordan Peterson 57:15 ... perfectionistic.

Lewis Howes 57:16 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 57:16 Just complete it, right.

Lewis Howes 57:17 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 57:17 Because a bad plan is better than no plan. Gives you something to improve.

Lewis Howes 57:21 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 57:21 So even if your a- aim is vague, and even if it's off target, if you start aiming and you see you're off target, then you can shift and you can make it more precise.

Lewis Howes 57:30 You start to recognize what you don't want in that.

Jordan Peterson 57:32 Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Lewis Howes 57:33 Say, "Oh, I thought I wanted this, but I don't."

Jordan Peterson 57:34 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 57:35 "So let me renavigate-

Jordan Peterson 57:36 Right

Lewis Howes 57:36 ... and figure out what I do want."

Jordan Peterson 57:37 Exactly.

Lewis Howes 57:37 And you might have to try a bunch of things.

Jordan Peterson 57:39 You... Well, well, you will have to.

Lewis Howes 57:40 Right.

Jordan Peterson 57:40 You can be... That's why you shouldn't get perfectionistic about it.

Lewis Howes 57:42 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 57:43 You will absolutely be wrong, but you won't be as wrong as you would've been if you were aimless.

Lewis Howes 57:48 Right.

Jordan Peterson 57:48 Right? So it's a, so it, there's a bit of humility.

Lewis Howes 57:50 No man's land-

Jordan Peterson 57:51 No man's land is not good

Lewis Howes 57:51 ... is worse than going somewhere.

Jordan Peterson 57:53 No man's room is a b- w- worse than a bad path.

Lewis Howes 57:56 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 57:56 That's exactly right.

Lewis Howes 57:57 Ooh, I like that one.

Jordan Peterson 57:58 That's a, that's a good one.

Lewis Howes 57:59 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 57:59 That's a good one, and it's right. It's right. You don't wanna be in no man's land. Why did you use that phrase? 'Cause that's right. That's exactly right.

Lewis Howes 58:05 I don't know. I think, um, for me, the idea of walking around aimlessly is, like, the worst idea in the world.

Jordan Peterson 58:13 It's like-

Lewis Howes 58:14 Like, zero purpose, zero mission, zero certainty at all.

Jordan Peterson 58:17 Well, it-

Lewis Howes 58:17 It's like walking around in no man's land-

Jordan Peterson 58:19 Right

Lewis Howes 58:19 ... aimlessly.

Jordan Peterson 58:20 But it's funny too, because in no man's land, everybody's shooting at you, right? 'Cause that's a military term.

Lewis Howes 58:25 Right.

Jordan Peterson 58:25 In no man's land is the space between two enemy positions.

Lewis Howes 58:27 In the middle where everyone's coming at you. Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 58:28 You bet. So if you're aimless, you're also at a place where everything is shooting at you.

Lewis Howes 58:32 Dang.

Jordan Peterson 58:33 Yeah, so it's a very good metaphor-

Lewis Howes 58:34 That's deep

Jordan Peterson 58:34 ... that came to mind.

Lewis Howes 58:35 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 58:35 Yeah, well, that's why, that why we worked on it.

Lewis Howes 58:37 You pulled it out me. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 58:37 That's very, very cool. So then we say to people, "Okay, look, now, okay, now you've thought about this for a while." It's nice to do this over a couple of days too-

Lewis Howes 58:44 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 58:44 ... because then you get to sleep on it, and that helps reorient yourself.

Lewis Howes 58:47 Yes.

Jordan Peterson 58:47 So then, okay, now you write for 20 minutes. Don't worry about grammar or spelling. This isn't a, this isn't a, a composition exercise, right? You get to have what you want three to five years down the road. What does your life look like, hypothetically?

Lewis Howes 59:00 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 59:00 Write it out.

Lewis Howes 59:01 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 59:01 Write it out. Okay, so then that's the first part. The second part of the exercise, so now you've got your thing to aim at. You think, "Well, I'm motivated, 'cause I got my thing to, thing to aim at."

Lewis Howes 59:09 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 59:09 It's like you're not as motivated as you could be, 'cause you don't yet have your thing to run away from. 'Cause if you really wanna be motivated, you wanna be going somewhere, and you wanna be not going somewhere else.

Lewis Howes 59:21 Which typically is a pain, right?

Jordan Peterson 59:22 Mm-hmm. Yes, a pain or anxiety.

Lewis Howes 59:24 Or a suffering or

Jordan Peterson 59:24 Yeah. Some, some domain of suffering and guilt, let's say.

Lewis Howes 59:27 Yeah. I don't wanna feel this anymore.

Jordan Peterson 59:28 Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Lewis Howes 59:30 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 59:30 So, so the other thing we ask people is, okay, now take stock of your weaknesses and imagine that you let them multiply, you got hopeless-

Lewis Howes 59:38 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 59:38 ... and you augered in and things were as bad for you as they could be in three to five years.

Lewis Howes 59:43 What are some examples of weaknesses that people might have?

Jordan Peterson 59:46 They lie.

Lewis Howes 59:47 Uh-huh.

Jordan Peterson 59:47 They procrastinate.

Lewis Howes 59:48 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 59:49 They avoid. They're grandiose. They're narcissistic. They're undisciplined. Uh, they're nihilistic. They're aimless. All of those things.

Lewis Howes 59:57 Got it. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 59:57 Right? Um, they-

Lewis Howes 59:58 Victim mentality. Yeah

Jordan Peterson 59:59 ... victim mentality. They take the sh- they take the, the, the quick way out.

Lewis Howes 1:00:02 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:00:02 They pursue impulsive pleasures. They sacrifice meaning for expediency. They don't take care of their basic responsibilities. They fight stupidly with their parents. They don't, they don't negotiate properly with their spouse. They're bitter at work because they haven't said what they have to say.

Lewis Howes 1:00:17 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:00:17 They haven't thought through what they're doing tomorrow. They drink too much. They smoke too much. They take too many drugs. They don't regulate their, their-

Lewis Howes 1:00:23 Don't work out. Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:00:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:00:24 [clears throat]

Jordan Peterson 1:00:25 So there's like-

Lewis Howes 1:00:25 Got it. So those are some weaknesses

Jordan Peterson 1:00:25 ... and everyone knows, man.

Lewis Howes 1:00:26 Yeah. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:00:27 Everybody knows, and everyone's got a set of weaknesses-

Lewis Howes 1:00:29 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:00:29 ... that they know about. And so we say, "All right-"

Lewis Howes 1:00:32 What are some of your weaknesses? Like, three weaknesses that you know right now you could still work on, and then three things that you think are really kind of-

Jordan Peterson 1:00:38 Well, a lot of things, a lot of things are things that I've taken care of in my life.

Lewis Howes 1:00:41 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:00:41 Like, I used to smoke when I was a kid. I smoked a pack a day. I used to drink a lot. I didn't work out. Like, there, there, there, I wasn't nearly as disciplined as I should've been.

Lewis Howes 1:00:50 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:00:50 Um, I wasn't as careful with what I was saying. Like, I, there... And I, I suppose-

Lewis Howes 1:00:55 Your words were loose. Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:00:55 ... my most likely negative outcome probably would've been I really liked to drink. Like, alcohol was a really good drug for me. I enjoyed it a lot.

Lewis Howes 1:01:01 Is that why you did your thesis on that?

Jordan Peterson 1:01:03 Um, well, partly. It, it was mostly because the opportunity came up for me, uh, to, to investigate drug and alcohol use.

Lewis Howes 1:01:11 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:01:11 But I came from a little town in Northern Alberta. It was a heavy drinking town.

Lewis Howes 1:01:14 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:01:15 And, uh, that, that could've been a real trap for me.

Lewis Howes 1:01:18 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:01:18 You know? And, and, and, and so anyway, so we have these people. You say, "Okay, now you know your weaknesses." And you know what particular hell you would descend to if you allowed yourself to descend into it because you've probably had a taste of it. It's like you really let that go, and you're in a terrible place in three to five years because you haven't done what you should do. What does that look like? It's like everybody writes that down.

Lewis Howes 1:01:39 Write it down, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:01:39 Write it down so you know. Because one of the things you wanna have behind you, let's say you have to do something difficult like go confront your boss. It's like, well, maybe hope isn't enough to encourage you to do that. You think, "Well, no, if I don't encourage, if I don't go confront my boss carefully-

Lewis Howes 1:01:53 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:01:53 ... and intelligently-

Lewis Howes 1:01:54 Right

Jordan Peterson 1:01:54 ... then I'm gonna hate my job, and then I'm gonna drink more. Then I'm gonna end up in that little hell place that I designed for myself."

Lewis Howes 1:02:01 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:01 It's like, "Oh, I'm not going there. Well, I don't wanna talk to my boss, or I don't wanna confront my wife or my husband," whatever it is, or my father, or my children for that matter, "but if I don't..."

Lewis Howes 1:02:11 Then I'll resent myself, or I'll resent the situation.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:13 Then I'm gonna end up going down this-

Lewis Howes 1:02:15 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:02:15 ... terrible pathway. It's like-

Lewis Howes 1:02:16 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:02:16 ... because sometimes when you're moving forward, you have to do something difficult, and you might think, "Well, why bother?" And the answer is, "Well, so I don't end up in hell."

Lewis Howes 1:02:25 Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:25 How about that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, there's that.

Lewis Howes 1:02:27 'Cause it's, it's-

Jordan Peterson 1:02:28 So-

Lewis Howes 1:02:29 ... deep, if you don't, uh, experience the pain now or the difficulty now, you're gonna have a deeper pain later.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:36 Yeah, yeah, that's life, man.

Lewis Howes 1:02:36 Much deeper pain later.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:38 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:02:38 And that's why I think that you mentioned at one point is, like, putting ourselves in, um, structured pain, like structured sense of feeling pain throughout the day-

Jordan Peterson 1:02:48 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 1:02:48 ... whether it be the tough conversation.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:50 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:02:50 I don't wanna do that. It's painful, but I'm going to because I know afterwards-

Jordan Peterson 1:02:54 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:02:54 ... it's gonna probably feel better.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:56 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:02:56 There'll be some clarity.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:57 It's a bit of a sacrifice-

Lewis Howes 1:02:57 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:02:57 ... right?

Lewis Howes 1:02:58 As opposed, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:02:58 So you sacrifice stability in the present for a gain in the future. That's the big discovery of human beings-

Lewis Howes 1:03:03 And, and were you a big-

Jordan Peterson 1:03:04 ... that sacrifice works.

Lewis Howes 1:03:04 Exactly. And were you a big athlete growing up?

Jordan Peterson 1:03:06 No.

Lewis Howes 1:03:07 No? But as a-

Jordan Peterson 1:03:07 No, well, I was a lo- a small kid, and I-

Lewis Howes 1:03:09 Right, right

Jordan Peterson 1:03:09 ... skipped a grade.

Lewis Howes 1:03:10 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:10 Although I skied, and I went cross-country skiing and that.

Lewis Howes 1:03:12 That's good.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:12 But it's individual sports-

Lewis Howes 1:03:14 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:03:14 ... things mostly with my dad.

Lewis Howes 1:03:15 You understand, then, in order to improve as an athlete or in any sport-

Jordan Peterson 1:03:18 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:03:19 ... you have to put yourself through daily pain.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:20 Yeah, right.

Lewis Howes 1:03:21 If you wanna achieve that model of excellence that you watch someone playing basketball-

Jordan Peterson 1:03:26 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 1:03:26 ... as a child, and you see someone living this model, it's gonna be 15 years of deliberate pain.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:32 Yeah, that's the discipline, man.

Lewis Howes 1:03:33 That's it.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:34 Yeah. Well, I worked out for a long time with weights, you know, and-

Lewis Howes 1:03:36 So you know.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:37 Yeah, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:03:37 You felt it every day.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:03:38 You didn't wanna push through the pain, but-

Jordan Peterson 1:03:40 Yeah

Lewis Howes 1:03:40 ... you knew that would get you a greater result.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:41 Yeah, well, and it's easier not to do it than to do it, but not in the long run.

Lewis Howes 1:03:44 It is. Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:45 You know, I've really seen the benefits, for example, for weightlifting because I've watched people-

Lewis Howes 1:03:49 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:03:49 ... because I'm 58, 50, how old am I, 56.

Lewis Howes 1:03:51 You look great.

Jordan Peterson 1:03:52 You know, I'm soon, so I'm getting older, and I've really noticed the difference between people and when they age, um, between people who laid down a good physiological platform when they were young and those who didn't because by the, if you haven't worked out, weights particularly-

Lewis Howes 1:04:07 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:04:07 ... I would say, you start to get pretty soft in your 30s, and your cardiovascular system starts to go, and really early. The al- other thing, too, is the best thing you can do to maintain cognitive, uh, ability isn't to do exercises like Lumosity. It's not brain exercises-

Lewis Howes 1:04:22 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:04:22 ... that keep you sharp. It's exercise.

Lewis Howes 1:04:24 Physical.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:24 So if you're 50, both cardiovascular and weightlifting, if you're 50, you can restore your cognitive function to the level of a 30-year-old through exercise.

Lewis Howes 1:04:32 Your m- your mental function-

Jordan Peterson 1:04:34 Mm-hmm

Lewis Howes 1:04:34 ... through physical activity.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:35 Yeah, well, your brain is a very demanding organ, and if your cardiovascular system is compromised, then you get stupid.

Lewis Howes 1:04:41 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:41 And so, yeah, it's really, 'cause I-

Lewis Howes 1:04:43 So the less you move-

Jordan Peterson 1:04:43 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:04:43 ... and the bigger you get, the more stupid you become.

Jordan Peterson 1:04:45 Mm, mm, mm, yeah. Well, because you-

Lewis Howes 1:04:47 The smaller your brain gets

Jordan Peterson 1:04:47 ... well, you compromise, you compromise its function 'cause the brain is a, it, it, it's, it's, it's the organ that uses more, it's, it's very metabolically demanding. And so if you're not in phys- good physical shape, then the, one of the things that suffers most greatly is your cognitive function.

Lewis Howes 1:05:03 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:04 And so that's quite an interesting thing to see how tight that linkage is. So in the next part-

Lewis Howes 1:05:08 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:05:08 ... of the program, we have people, now it's okay, now you've got your vision.

Lewis Howes 1:05:11 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:12 Okay?

Lewis Howes 1:05:12 Even if it's a bad one, it's still okay.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:13 Yeah. That's right. Well, it's better than no vision at all, right?

Lewis Howes 1:05:15 Better than no mainframe.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:15 It's something that you can improve.

Lewis Howes 1:05:17 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:17 Well, think. You're trying to get through a territory you don't understand, and here's your option: no map, a map that's not so good but has some things about it-

Lewis Howes 1:05:26 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:05:26 ... or a great map.

Lewis Howes 1:05:27 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:27 Well, obviously, the great map is the thing you want.

Lewis Howes 1:05:29 Ideal, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:05:30 But the, the map that's something is way better than the map that's nothing. Plus, as you explore, because of your map, you can start to fill in the details.

Lewis Howes 1:05:38 And you start to learn, and you start-

Jordan Peterson 1:05:39 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:05:39 ... to overcome stuff-

Jordan Peterson 1:05:40 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:05:40 ... and you start to master skills-

Jordan Peterson 1:05:42 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:05:42 ... on your journey, right?

Jordan Peterson 1:05:43 Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, that's the other thing, too, is, like, let's say you, you aim at something, and you, and you develop some skills along the way, and then you get, like, a third of the way there, and you think, "Oh, that's not for me." It's like, well, yeah, fair enough, but now you've still got the skills you developed. You know exactly why it's not for you now instead of vaguely-

Lewis Howes 1:06:01 So you don't have to keep going after that way.

Jordan Peterson 1:06:02 Exactly. Exactly.

Lewis Howes 1:06:03 And you can apply that-

Jordan Peterson 1:06:03 Well, and you have a rationale.

Lewis Howes 1:06:05 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:06:05 And then you can bring that wisdom back. Even though it's not perfect, you can bring it back to your next plan. And so-

Lewis Howes 1:06:11 And take responsibility-

Jordan Peterson 1:06:13 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:06:13 ... for the next steps. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:06:14 Yes, yes. And so as you plan, you get better at planning, which is the crucial thing. So, so then we say to people, "Take your positive vision and make it into eight stateable goals," right? So and then rate them in a hierarchy because you need to know what-

Lewis Howes 1:06:28 Like a top goal and then-

Jordan Peterson 1:06:30 Yeah, yeah

Lewis Howes 1:06:30 ... incremental goals.

Jordan Peterson 1:06:31 Yeah, and, and, and that, well, that's the other thing, is break the goals into incremental goals so that you have a reasonable probability of succeeding, so 'cause what you wanna do, this is also what you wanna do with a kid. You don't tell your kid, "Here's an impossible thing. Why don't you go out and fail?" You say, "Here's something worth going after. Here's a step you could take that would push you beyond where you are, but that you also have a reasonably high probability of succeeding at."

Lewis Howes 1:06:57 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:06:58 Right? They call that-

Lewis Howes 1:06:58 Within a timeframe, yeah, yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:06:59 ... mm, within some timeframe. That's the other thing. You have to parameterize it with regards to timeframe. That's right. And that puts you in the zone of proximal development, and that's a, that's a concept that was generated by a guy named Vygotsky. He was a Russian developmental psychologist, and a smart one. It's where the idea of the zone comes from-

Lewis Howes 1:07:15 Mm, yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:07:15 ... to be in the zone. And when you're in the zone, you're expanding your skills- At, in a manner that's intrinsically rewarding because you're succeeding. And so you wanna set, if, if you're good to yourself, you think, "Okay, I need to set a goal, but I need to set a goal that someone as stupid and useless as me could probably attain if they put some effort into it."

Lewis Howes 1:07:36 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:07:37 And then you got, then you've got it perfectly, because it's not so high that it's grandiose or impossible or that you fail necessarily and then justify your bitterness. It's like, "Well, I couldn't do..."

Lewis Howes 1:07:46 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:07:46 Well, that, 'cause that happens to people.

Lewis Howes 1:07:48 Happens all the time.

Jordan Peterson 1:07:49 Yeah, it's like-

Lewis Howes 1:07:49 See this all the time

Jordan Peterson 1:07:50 ... you know, it's like, it's, yes, exactly. "Well, I set a goal and I didn't attain it, so I'm not gonna set any more goals."

Lewis Howes 1:07:55 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:07:55 It's like, no, you set a goal that was inappropriate.

Lewis Howes 1:07:58 For the timeframe.

Jordan Peterson 1:07:59 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:07:59 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:07:59 That's right. You didn't calibrate it properly.

Lewis Howes 1:08:01 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:01 And, and you're playing a trick on yourself because you wanted to fail so that you could justify not having to try.

Lewis Howes 1:08:06 And being a victim.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:07 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:08:08 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:08 Which isn't in- helpful. You're still gonna be a victim.

Lewis Howes 1:08:11 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:11 [laughs] It's like there's no way out of that, man.

Lewis Howes 1:08:13 Yeah. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:08:13 So, you know, because life is this, life is a challenge that in some sense can't be surmounted, so there's no way out of your problem. But there are certainly proper ways of dealing with it.

Lewis Howes 1:08:22 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:23 And so you lay out-

Lewis Howes 1:08:24 You have those eight, those eight steps.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:25 Yep.

Lewis Howes 1:08:25 Right?

Jordan Peterson 1:08:25 Yep. Lay them out and then the next thing is, okay, you need a rationale for them because you're gonna have doubts and other gonna, people are gonna put up obstacles, so you need to-

Lewis Howes 1:08:33 Is that a meaning you mean?

Jordan Peterson 1:08:34 Hmm?

Lewis Howes 1:08:34 Is that a meaning? A rationale means a meaning or-

Jordan Peterson 1:08:35 Yeah, yeah, a justification.

Lewis Howes 1:08:37 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:37 It's like, okay, so here, what sort of justification is a good justification for your goals? It's easy. Why would it be good for you? Okay. Why would it be good for your family if you attain that goal? Why would it be good for the broader community? Because if it's a good goal, it should be good for you. That's fine. But if it's a really good goal, it should be good for you in a way that's good for other people.

Lewis Howes 1:08:57 Win, win, win.

Jordan Peterson 1:08:58 Yes, exactly. And you, and if you're gonna decide what your goals are, why not set up the ones that benefit the largest number of people-

Lewis Howes 1:09:06 The maximum

Jordan Peterson 1:09:06 ... simultaneously?

Lewis Howes 1:09:07 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:08 Yes. And if you can do that, you should start with your own concerns, 'cause you have-

Lewis Howes 1:09:11 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:09:11 ... to take care of yourself.

Lewis Howes 1:09:12 Basic needs first.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:13 Yes. Put your own-

Lewis Howes 1:09:13 Family

Jordan Peterson 1:09:14 ... oxygen mask on, then put your child's oxygen mask on.

Lewis Howes 1:09:17 Community.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:17 Yeah. Right. And then you can, as you, as you build up a, the basis of competence locally, you might develop enough skill so that you can expand that outward.

Lewis Howes 1:09:26 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:26 And it also gives your goal a certain amount of nobility. And so and if someone challenges you-

Lewis Howes 1:09:31 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:09:31 ... and says, "Well, why are you doing that? That seems stupid," you can say, "I'm doing that because it helps me take care of myself, but it benefits my family, and here's the reasons why, and this is the repercussions out into the broader community." And like, people aren't, people who are putting up objections and doubts aren't, aren't armed to deal with that kind of response.

Lewis Howes 1:09:48 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:49 And then when you have those doubts in your mind that plague you, which they, and-

Lewis Howes 1:09:53 You go back to your reasons

Jordan Peterson 1:09:54 ... you go back to your reasons. You say-

Lewis Howes 1:09:55 And your why.

Jordan Peterson 1:09:55 That's right. Say, "Why, why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, it's because, well, I have to take care of myself because otherwise I'm pathetic and useless and bitter-

Lewis Howes 1:10:01 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:10:02 ... and cruel. And then, then I'm going somewhere terrible, so that's a bad idea. And here's how it would help my family, and here's how it would help the community. And that's a good enough set of reasons for, unless I can think of better ones."

Lewis Howes 1:10:12 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:10:13 Right? If, without better ones, that's good enough.

Lewis Howes 1:10:15 Because I think the question comes back to after, you know, someone could go down the rabbit hole and say, "Why? Why am I doing this?"

Jordan Peterson 1:10:22 Yep.

Lewis Howes 1:10:22 "And why is this, you know, meaningful for me?" And I think a lot of people go back to, "Well, why am I here in the first place?"

Jordan Peterson 1:10:28 Yes. Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:10:29 "Why am I here?"

Jordan Peterson 1:10:31 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:10:31 "What is the meaning of my life?"

Jordan Peterson 1:10:32 Mm. Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:10:33 "And is this real?"

Jordan Peterson 1:10:35 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:10:35 "Or is this just some dream world?"

Jordan Peterson 1:10:37 Well, and then, and that, and people do go back to that.

Lewis Howes 1:10:40 And then they get stuck on that.

Jordan Peterson 1:10:41 Yeah. What, but-

Lewis Howes 1:10:42 None of this even matters because why am I even here?

Jordan Peterson 1:10:45 Well, the, the thing is, is that that's a self-defeating set of propositions-

Lewis Howes 1:10:49 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:10:49 ... in some sense.

Lewis Howes 1:10:50 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:10:50 Because the consequence of being stuck there-

Lewis Howes 1:10:53 There's no way out [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:10:53 ... the reason you're stuck there to begin with is because you're not very happy about the fact that life is intrinsically tied up with suffering.

Lewis Howes 1:10:59 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:10:59 'Cause you wouldn't be asking that question to begin with. Okay, so if you let that pull you in and take you down, all it does is make the suffering worse.

Lewis Howes 1:11:06 Absolutely.

Jordan Peterson 1:11:06 It's not helpful. And then, and then the cascade that we talked about happens. You suffer stupidly and pointlessly.

Lewis Howes 1:11:11 Hurt people.

Jordan Peterson 1:11:12 You get bitter. You get cruel.

Lewis Howes 1:11:13 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:11:14 You make everything worse. It's like, that's your answer, is it? You're gonna make everything worse. It's bad enough. You're gonna make it worse.

Lewis Howes 1:11:19 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:11:20 Mostly people won't do that consciously. [instrumental music] You wanna bridge that gap from the highest abstraction down to the lowest level of behavior so that it becomes implementable. And that's how philosophical concepts take on their meaning, right? 'Cause they have to, they have to have some impact on the way you see the world and the way you act in the world, or they're not fully realized, they're not understood. 'Cause partly what we mean, I would say, when we say that we understand something, it's kind of a state- strange phrase, to understand something, but it means to be able to embody it in a shift of view and a shift of action. And then you've got it. It's graspable. It's in your hand.

Lewis Howes 1:12:00 Embody something in a shift of view?

Jordan Peterson 1:12:02 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:12:02 And a shift of action.

Jordan Peterson 1:12:02 Well, they're the same, well, they're the same thing, eh, because your perceptions are very tightly linked to your actions. Because of course, when you're acting, you're aiming at something, you have to be devoted towards some, some, some aim, some target.

Lewis Howes 1:12:16 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:12:16 We, we, we play that out in sports all the time.

Lewis Howes 1:12:18 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:12:18 That's why sports are so entertaining for people is because they dramatize the idea of aim. Right? And then, and not only of aim, but of the pursuit of excellence in pursuit of that aim. That's the game. And the reason it's a spectacle and the reason that people participate in it is because it dramatizes something absolutely essential about life. And so you wanna take philosophical abstractions, and you wanna use them to, to structure your aim. And then your perceptions organize around that aim.

Lewis Howes 1:12:45 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:12:45 And then you act it out, and then you've got it. That's, then, then it's, it's become part of your life.

Lewis Howes 1:12:50 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:12:50 It's not just an, it's just, it's not just a philosophical abstraction that floats free in space.

Lewis Howes 1:12:55 Why is there so much conflict in, in the world? Is it because there's so many different perceptions that people have-

Jordan Peterson 1:13:01 Well-

Lewis Howes 1:13:02 ... on what they think should be right or what they-

Jordan Peterson 1:13:03 Sure

Lewis Howes 1:13:03 ... think should be people-

Jordan Peterson 1:13:04 Well, part of it is, part of it, of course, there's conflict because we have real problems, and so life is actually difficult independent of the- Of psychological foolishness, let's say, independent of the obstacles that we put in our own path. Life is d-

Lewis Howes 1:13:18 It's already challenging

Jordan Peterson 1:13:18 ... it's already, it's already fatally challenging, right? Life is the ultimate challenge.

Lewis Howes 1:13:23 We will die.

Jordan Peterson 1:13:23 Yes, yes. And you know as well-

Lewis Howes 1:13:25 So there is a challenge, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:13:26 Yes. Well, no, no, no-

Lewis Howes 1:13:27 Uncertainty, fear, pain, all those kinds of things

Jordan Peterson 1:13:29 ... yes, all the thing, all, everything that goes along with suffering is a challenge, and it's, it's, it's the full challenge because it takes everything you have. And so part of the reason we disagree is because there are complex problems to solve, and then we also disagree because we're willfully blind and because we're more ignorant than we should be, and we're not everything we should be. And we tilt towards malevolence from time to time, and we betray each other and ourselves. And so we take a bad lot in many ways and make it worse. Now, not always, obviously, and we don't have to-

Lewis Howes 1:13:58 Right

Jordan Peterson 1:13:58 ... but that's sort of the baseline that we're working against. And I think people are most disappointed in life when they're disappointed in themselves. You know?

Lewis Howes 1:14:07 Absolutely.

Jordan Peterson 1:14:07 They see that they've made things worse than they had to be, even though the baseline can be pr- pretty brutal.

Lewis Howes 1:14:12 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:14:13 So, yeah. And so the book, and all my lectures I suppose, are, are, are put forward in an attempt to take the high level philosophical abstractions and to make them into something that's actionable. So-

Lewis Howes 1:14:25 And to take the next best action in your life-

Jordan Peterson 1:14:27 Mm. Mm

Lewis Howes 1:14:27 ... to improve your life.

Jordan Peterson 1:14:28 Mm. Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:14:29 So we don't have to suffer as much.

Jordan Peterson 1:14:30 Mm-hmm. Well, and hopefully also so that people around you don't have to either. So one of the things-

Lewis Howes 1:14:35 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:14:35 ... I've been talking to my audiences about is the relationship between responsibility and meaning-

Lewis Howes 1:14:40 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:14:40 ... which is the, a, and, uh, what would you say? It's a, it's a constant refrain in the book.

Lewis Howes 1:14:44 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:14:44 It's one of its underlying, um, um, messages, let's say, or themes is a better way of thinking about it. Um, you know, i- if you start with the presumption that there's a baseline of suffering in life and that that can be, uh, exaggerated by, as a consequence of human failing, as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and self-betrayal and deceit, and all those things that we do to each other and ourselves that we know that aren't good, that amplifies the suffering. That's sort of the baseline against which you have to work. And, and, and it's contemplation of that often that makes people hopeless and depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and all of that.

Lewis Howes 1:15:22 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:15:23 And, and, and they have the reasons. But you need something to put up against that, and what you put up against that is meaning. Meaning is actually the instinct that helps you guide yourself through that catastrophe, and most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility. So if you think, for example, if you think about the people that you admire, well, you think about when you have a clear conscience first.

Lewis Howes 1:15:47 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:15:47 'Cause that's a good thing to aim at, which is something different than happiness, right? Um-

Lewis Howes 1:15:52 A clear conscience is different than happiness.

Jordan Peterson 1:15:54 Yeah, it's better.

Lewis Howes 1:15:55 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:15:55 That's better.

Lewis Howes 1:15:56 'Cause you're not, like, guilting yourself, you're not feeling bad about yourself.

Jordan Peterson 1:15:58 That's right.

Lewis Howes 1:15:59 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:15:59 You feel that you've justified-

Lewis Howes 1:16:00 You're clean

Jordan Peterson 1:16:00 ... you've justified your existence, right?

Lewis Howes 1:16:02 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:16:02 And so you're not waking up at 3:00 in the morning in a cold sweat thinking about all the terrible things that you've involved yourself in.

Lewis Howes 1:16:08 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:16:08 You know?

Lewis Howes 1:16:08 What you said to someone that you shouldn't have said-

Jordan Peterson 1:16:10 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:16:10 ... or how you acted or lied or deceit.

Jordan Peterson 1:16:11 Mm, what opportunity you lost or, or, or, or, yeah, or, or the things that you've, that you've let go that you should have capitalized on-

Lewis Howes 1:16:19 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:16:19 ... and all of that. And so if you think about the times when you're at peace with yourself with regards to how you're conducting yourself in the world, it's almost always conditions under which you've adopted responsibility.

Lewis Howes 1:16:31 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:16:32 Right? At least, the most, the most guilt I think that you can experience perhaps is the sure knowledge that you're not even taking care of yourself, so that you're leaving that responsibility to other people, 'cause that's pretty pathetic. And I, unless you're psychopathic and, you know, and, and you're living a parasitical life.

Lewis Howes 1:16:49 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:16:49 And, and that, that characterizes a very small minority of people, and an even smaller minority think that's justifiable. But most of the time you're in guilt and shame because you're not, you're, you're not, not only are you not taking care of yourself, let's say, so someone else has to, but you're not living up to your full potential. And so there's a existential weight that goes along with that. So-

Lewis Howes 1:17:12 So you suffer even more.

Jordan Peterson 1:17:13 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:17:13 When you don't take care of yourself or take the best actions or do the work that you know you can do-

Jordan Peterson 1:17:19 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:17:19 ... and you rely on someone else to support you financially, emotionally-

Jordan Peterson 1:17:23 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:17:23 ... physically, whatever, you know, home, whatever it may be.

Jordan Peterson 1:17:25 Yeah, well, 'cause you're not only, you're not only not being what you could be, you're interfering with someone else being what they could be, right? So you're, you're n- you're not only a void, you're a drain.

Lewis Howes 1:17:36 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:17:36 Jesus, that's a catastrophe. And-

Lewis Howes 1:17:38 But we usually don't even know it when we're in th- when we're in that situation-

Jordan Peterson 1:17:40 Mm

Lewis Howes 1:17:40 ... 'cause we're in a depressed state or we're-

Jordan Peterson 1:17:42 Or we don't wanna see it.

Lewis Howes 1:17:43 Mm. That's right.

Jordan Peterson 1:17:44 You know, you wake up at 3:00 in the morning and you know. And so, and then you think of the people that you, so you admire yourself, or perhaps you can at least live with yourself when you're taking responsibility at least for yourself, and so that settles your conscience. But then if you look at the people that you spontaneously admire, and so the act of spontaneously admiring someone is the manifestation of the instinct for meaning, right? So, and this is partly why people are so enamored of sports-

Lewis Howes 1:18:12 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:18:12 ... figures.

Lewis Howes 1:18:13 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:18:13 Because the sports figures are playing out the drama of attaining the goal, of attaining a certain kind of, let's say, psychological and physical perfection in pursuit of the goal. That's the drama. And to spontaneously admire that is to have that instinct for meaning latch onto something that can be used as a model, and then that model should be transcribed into something that's applicable in life. You know, and you really like to see, in an athletic performance, you really like to see someone who's extremely disciplined and, and sh- and, and in shape

Lewis Howes 1:18:41 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:18:41 ... do something physically remarkable. But, and, and to stretch themselves even beyond their previous exploits, because you really like to see a brilliant move-

Lewis Howes 1:18:49 Yes

Jordan Peterson 1:18:50 ... in, in an athletic match. But you also s- like to see that person ensconced in a broader moral framework, so that not only are they trying to win- And disciplining themselves in pursuit of that victory, and then stretching themselves so they're continually getting better, but they're doing it in a way that helps develop their whole team-

Lewis Howes 1:19:08 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:19:08 ... and that's good for the sport in general, and that reflects well on-

Lewis Howes 1:19:11 Right

Jordan Peterson 1:19:11 ... the broader culture.

Lewis Howes 1:19:12 They're a great leader on their team, they're positive, they're good, uh, sportsmen against their competitors.

Jordan Peterson 1:19:17 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:19:17 They're not negative towards the other people. They're lifting them up, too.

Jordan Peterson 1:19:20 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:19:21 Like, the ultimate-

Jordan Peterson 1:19:22 That's right

Lewis Howes 1:19:22 ... human.

Jordan Peterson 1:19:23 That's right, so that they can, they can work for their own improvement in a way that simultaneously works for the improvement of their team, and that, and, and for the sport, and-

Lewis Howes 1:19:30 Wow

Jordan Peterson 1:19:30 ... well, and then to the degree that that spills over into the broader culture, so much the better.

Lewis Howes 1:19:34 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:19:35 So that's all being dramatized in a, in an, in ath- athletic event, and it's really, it's not philosophical. It's concrete, right? It's dramatized in the world, and that's what the games represent. And so w- well, and it's partly because, well, in some sense, life is a game.

Lewis Howes 1:19:51 It is.

Jordan Peterson 1:19:51 It is, in that you're always... The, the analogy is that in, in life, like in sports, you're, you're, you're setting forth an aim, and then arranging your perceptions and your actions in pursuit of that aim. And that you also generally do it while cooperating and competing with other people.

Lewis Howes 1:20:10 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:20:10 So that's also the game-like element as well. And all of that's dramatized in athletics.

Lewis Howes 1:20:14 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:20:15 That's like philosophy for people who aren't philosophical. And I'm not being smart about that.

Lewis Howes 1:20:19 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:20:19 You know? It's like it really is philosophy for people who aren't being philosophical, 'cause it's played out, you know? And you can see it, too. You can see the spontaneous appreciation for the human spirit manifest itself when you see people rise to their feet spontaneously-

Lewis Howes 1:20:34 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:20:34 ... in a sports arena when they see someone do something particularly remarkable. See an athlete who's extremely trained stretch themselves beyond what you'd think is a normative human limit.

Lewis Howes 1:20:44 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:20:44 And everyone celebrates that, like, spontaneously. So it's quite something to-

Lewis Howes 1:20:48 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:20:48 ... to behold.

Lewis Howes 1:20:50 And so taking it back to responsibility and meaning-

Jordan Peterson 1:20:52 Yeah. [clears throat]

Lewis Howes 1:20:52 ... when we're watching sports or someone do this act, what does this do for us with, in terms of responsibility and meaning?

Jordan Peterson 1:20:59 Well, it, it, it, it helps us figure out what we can imitate.

Lewis Howes 1:21:03 Gives us a model.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:04 Right. Yes, it's a model. Right.

Lewis Howes 1:21:05 Here's a model of something that I respect.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:07 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, even what philosophy is, or even theology, for that matter, is an abstract model. Like, it's laid out in words. Now, the problem often is, is it becomes so abstract that people don't know how to bring it back down to-

Lewis Howes 1:21:19 To embodiment

Jordan Peterson 1:21:20 ... to embodiment.

Lewis Howes 1:21:20 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:20 Yes. Whereas something like, like the drama of a sports event is sort of midway between philosophy and action, right?

Lewis Howes 1:21:27 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:27 And so it's, it's not entirely abstracted, because it's not only coded in words. It's acted out.

Lewis Howes 1:21:32 It's visual.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:33 Mm.

Lewis Howes 1:21:33 You can see an example of what just happens.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:35 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:21:35 And you can try to reverse engineer how they did that.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:38 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, yes, exactly. Well, at le- at least you, the fact that you admire the person means that you might start to try to act like them.

Lewis Howes 1:21:45 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:45 Now, it's not easy. And maybe that would mean, maybe that would mean that you start to discipline yourself with regards to a particular sport, but it might also be that you start to mimic or, or are at least affected in some way by their, their sportsman, sportsmanlike behavior, right?

Lewis Howes 1:21:59 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:21:59 Which is the ground of a certain kind of ethic, because if you can play well with others, which is sort of the hallmark of a good sport, then that actually means that you're a reasonably sophisticated and civilized person. It's really important to learn to play well with others. There isn't-

Lewis Howes 1:22:14 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:22:15 That's the ground of ethics.

Lewis Howes 1:22:16 And if you can do it there in that setting, then hopefully you can translate it into life settings.

Jordan Peterson 1:22:20 Well, well, right, that's exactly right. That's what you-

Lewis Howes 1:22:22 That's the goal

Jordan Peterson 1:22:22 ... well, that's what you hope for.

Lewis Howes 1:22:23 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:22:23 Yeah, that's the goal of the s- so if the, if the goal of the game is to put the ball through the, ball into the net, then the goal of having games is to produce people who can take proper aim no matter where they are, right? That's exactly what we're trying to do-

Lewis Howes 1:22:38 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:22:38 ... with, with, with, with athletics. So, um, uh, so I've been talking to my audiences a lot about that, about the... And, well, and there's more to it, too, because y- if the background of life is, is, there's a, there's an ineradicable component of suffering, and that's complicated by, let's say, malevolence and the proclivity of people to betray themselves and others, which, which complicates it and makes it worse. Then the, if you don't have a noble aim, and, and, and if that isn't imbuing your life

Jordan Peterson 1:23:09 with sustainable meaning, then you fall prey to all the catastrophe, the, the pain and the anxiety and the anger that that suffering generates, and that makes you bitter. [gentle music] The cost of an error, an ethical error, is unbelievably high. The cost of the appearance of an ethical error is extremely high, much less the cost of an actual ethical error. And so we're very careful-

Lewis Howes 1:23:38 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:23:38 ... to tr- to act ethically in every manner possible, appearance and reality.

Lewis Howes 1:23:47 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:23:48 You know, I mean-

Lewis Howes 1:23:48 'Cause everything's being watched, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:23:50 Well, and I, I, I mean, I can, I, I have no idea how any of this looks from the outside, but my reputation has been on the line publicly many, many times.

Lewis Howes 1:24:07 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:24:08 And partly sometimes outright accusations, sometimes as a consequence of things I hypothetically said, um, sometimes as a consequence of newspaper articles that, you know, have taken a particular twist, and God only knows how many times a consequence of my own inadequacies and errors. But every time that rises up as an issue, there's a two-week period where no one in my family knows if this is the time that it's just going to go to hell.

Lewis Howes 1:24:42 Really? Where it's all crumbles.

Jordan Peterson 1:24:44 Oh, absolutely. Sure.

Lewis Howes 1:24:45 How do, how do-

Jordan Peterson 1:24:46 Well, look at how many people it happens to. It ha-

Lewis Howes 1:24:48 I know

Jordan Peterson 1:24:48 ... and look how people respond, Ben. You know, it doesn't take a very big Twitter mob to chase anyone back into their hole.

Lewis Howes 1:24:57 How do we-

Jordan Peterson 1:24:57 Chase a company, for that matter-

Lewis Howes 1:24:59 I know

Jordan Peterson 1:24:59 ... back into its, on its heels. I mean, it- Uh, isn't that, doesn't, uh, does that, is that how it looks to you? I mean, what, what do you think about this?

Lewis Howes 1:25:08 Absolutely. Yeah. I'm just curious, you know, as people, individuals, whether it be me, you, or anyone, wants to build something, wants to have a goal, an aim, as you talk about, and go after this thing that they care about, and share their opinions, share their voice, have good intentions. Maybe someone doesn't like those intentions, but have good intentions. Is, how do we, as human beings, think about reputation? And does reputation even matter anymore if anyone can try to tear your reputation down? Should we be focused on having a good reputation-

Jordan Peterson 1:25:43 Yes

Lewis Howes 1:25:44 ... or, okay. [laughs] And how do we protect the reputation-

Jordan Peterson 1:25:46 Yes, but you should, you should-

Lewis Howes 1:25:47 Like, should we-

Jordan Peterson 1:25:48 You should be more focused on deserving a good reputation.

Lewis Howes 1:25:51 Hmm. What does that mean?

Jordan Peterson 1:25:53 Don't, don't do things you know to be wrong.

Lewis Howes 1:25:56 And even if you do-

Jordan Peterson 1:25:57 Don't lie

Lewis Howes 1:25:57 ... yep.

Jordan Peterson 1:25:59 Don't lie. Don't be careless.

Lewis Howes 1:26:02 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:26:03 You, I mean, es- especially if you're... See, I'm fortunate, I, I suppose. I put all my lectures online, so virtually everything I've ever said to a student is, I mean, obviously not, but-

Lewis Howes 1:26:23 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:26:23 ... [laughs] a non-biased sample of everything that I've ever said to students is available. Well, it hasn't come back to bite me.

Lewis Howes 1:26:32 Right. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:26:33 And that's hundreds of hours. Why? Well, because I've been fortunate enough not to have said anything, um, fatal.

Lewis Howes 1:26:43 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:26:46 And, you know, maybe that's because I'm careful with my words.

Lewis Howes 1:26:52 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:26:53 I don't want to attribute too much virtue to myself in, in, in relationship to that. I know that good fortune plays an immense role in how things turn out for people and that you can get unlucky. But, you know, one rule I didn't write down is, um, act so that you can speak of what you do.

Lewis Howes 1:27:23 A-

Jordan Peterson 1:27:23 So there's two domains of lying, right? So one lie is a statement, the other lie is an action. You know it's wrong.

Lewis Howes 1:27:32 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:27:33 You do it anyway.

Lewis Howes 1:27:34 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:27:35 It looks to me like that's becoming riskier and riskier.

Lewis Howes 1:27:38 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:27:39 And, and-

Lewis Howes 1:27:39 People aren't doing that anymore 'cause they're getting caught. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:27:42 Yes, and the consequences are dire. Well, and, but then you think about this, y- you tell me what you think about this. One of the things that Carl Jung taught me, again, was that, you know, as we become more technologically powerful, the quality of our individual morality becomes an increasingly pressing social concern.

Lewis Howes 1:28:04 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:28:05 Because each of us are far more powerful than we w- once were, for good and for evil. And so with this technological prowess comes an associated ethical demand.

Lewis Howes 1:28:16 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:28:17 And, and I don't see a flaw in that argument. I, I don't see how that can be anything other than true. If technology multiplies your power, then it multiplies the cataclysmic consequences of your own immorality.

Lewis Howes 1:28:30 Right. And if you did one thing 10 years ago and someone finds it, it could haunt you, it seems like, is what's happening for a lot of people.

Jordan Peterson 1:28:38 There's no doubt about that. Not only could it, it will.

Lewis Howes 1:28:41 It will.

Jordan Peterson 1:28:42 In all likelihood. You know, and that's a problem, too, because of course people do make mistakes, you know. And, and I'm, I'm perfectly pleased that my teenage years aren't stored on YouTube, for example.

Lewis Howes 1:28:55 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:28:56 It must be terrifying to be-

Lewis Howes 1:28:57 You'd be, you'd be gone a long time ago. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:28:58 Well, it must be terrifying to be a teenager now-

Lewis Howes 1:29:01 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:29:01 ... knowing that your drunken foolishness at a party could become the next viral YouTube video.

Lewis Howes 1:29:07 I mean, yeah. I was lucky enough never to, I've never been drunk, uh, in my life, and that was a conscious decision because my, my brother actually went to prison for drugs when I was a kid. And, uh, I was in a prison, a visiting room, many weekends for many years, uh, and witnessing the consequences of doing certain things. So for me, I was like, "I don't wanna touch any of this stuff. I don't even care [laughs] if it's like, I'm not gonna sell it, but I'm not gonna take anything." And, um, I, but it doesn't mean that I didn't do bad things. Like, you know, I cheated, I lied, I stole, I, you know, I did all these things that I'm not proud of when I was 10 to 13, until I got caught, and I was like, "Oh, my con- my actions actually affect a lot of people." And, um, I remember the, the shame-

Jordan Peterson 1:29:57 Well, it's normative behavior.

Lewis Howes 1:29:59 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:29:59 I mean, if you look at adolescents, imagine there are adolescents who break rules all the time-

Lewis Howes 1:30:05 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:30:05 ... including criminal r- including legal rules. Okay, well, they tend to become criminal.

Lewis Howes 1:30:10 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:30:10 It's too much. But then at the opposite end of the distribution are adolescents who don't break any rules, and they te- tend to develop, um, in- in- internalizing disorders. Depression, anxiety disorders-

Lewis Howes 1:30:23 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:30:23 ... that sort of thing. So there are two constraints. So there is a-

Lewis Howes 1:30:26 Well

Jordan Peterson 1:30:26 ... a certain amount of exploration of rule-breaking that's-

Lewis Howes 1:30:29 Interesting

Jordan Peterson 1:30:30 ... a normative part of healthy development. And, but, but now, you know, you could take a chunk of that, a video of it, a s- a, a record of it, and it's permanent.

Lewis Howes 1:30:39 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:30:39 Can you imagine not being able to forget your past?

Lewis Howes 1:30:45 Painful.

Jordan Peterson 1:30:48 So-

Lewis Howes 1:30:49 Painful. And not even you forgetting it, but the world knowing your past, seeing it, or witnessing it.

Jordan Peterson 1:30:55 Mm-hmm. Yes, and, and sort of un s- un, what, unexpectedly and at any moment.

Lewis Howes 1:31:02 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:31:03 Right

Lewis Howes 1:31:04 What's your, what's your greatest fear with the fame and the acknowledgement that you have at the level that you have it? What's the, the greatest fear you have moving forward? Or in-

Jordan Peterson 1:31:14 Oh, that I'll, that I'll do something to, um, you know, that I'll betray the people that, that, that I've been speaking to-

Lewis Howes 1:31:25 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:31:25 ... with. You know, that I'll be insufficient to the challenge in some manner.

Lewis Howes 1:31:33 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:31:34 Ethically particularly, but more than that even just physiologically let's say. So that's, that's definitely it.

Lewis Howes 1:31:45 Did you ever have a, a, a goal to impact this many people? Was that part of your life's mission that I wanna reach more people than outside of the classroom and, you know, sell five million copies of my books and be so well-known that you are? Was that ever a mission, or was it always just I wanna learn and teach, and if 10 people watch great, if 10 million people watch, great?

Jordan Peterson 1:32:11 I probably knew. I, I knew when I was working on my Maps of Meaning book that I was... Look, I, I tried to, I tried to write about the most serious problem I could find in the most serious way I could man- manage. And I thought, "Well, if this is a serious problem and I'm addressing it seriously-

Lewis Howes 1:32:34 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:32:34 ... it's probably a serious endeavor and will have the consequences of that, that, whatever those might be. And when I started to lecture about what I had been thinking about and learning about, the impact was obvious and-

Lewis Howes 1:32:55 Okay

Jordan Peterson 1:32:55 ... and, and unique in some sense. I mean, there are... My lectures, the most typical response I got from students in my classes was, especially in the class on my first book, Maps of Meaning, was, "This course changed how I looked at everything." And I would say-

Lewis Howes 1:33:16 My life, the world, the universe, God, everything

Jordan Peterson 1:33:18 ... yeah, or they'd say, "Well, I've learned all these things and I don't know how to talk about them with anyone else."

Lewis Howes 1:33:23 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:33:24 Which was the same sort of thing. And, and the, a lot of the public commentary on my work is s- it's similar to that. But, you know, in some sense that wasn't a surprise because what I learned changed the way I looked at things completely too, absolute, completely, 100... Like, completely in a revolutionary way. And so, and, and I, I, I had a sense of that from I don't know how old, very young. People wonder why I engage in conflict. I hate conflict.

Lewis Howes 1:34:03 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:34:04 It's... And I find it very stressful, but conflict delayed is conflict multiplied.

Lewis Howes 1:34:12 Ooh, that's so true. It's worse to have lingering conflict for months, years, decades than the pain of direct conflict that can hopefully resolve and move on.

Jordan Peterson 1:34:25 Yes. Absolutely. Well, and it, as the conflict is delayed it's, the reasons multiply.

Lewis Howes 1:34:33 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:34:33 And the persons who are involved, because they're avoiding, demean themselves and get weaker and less confident, and so it's a vicious circle. It's better to notice. You... There's this, there's a line in the New Testament. C- Christ talks about prayer, and so you imagine that as communion with God. So you could imagine that as an attempt to, to confer with the ideal-

Lewis Howes 1:35:03 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:35:03 ... or maybe to even occupy that space for a while. Well, he says, Christ says, "If you have a problem with your brother, you fix that first. Go pray later."

Lewis Howes 1:35:17 [laughs] Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:35:18 Yeah. Well, that's it. That m- that's, that's, that's wise. And, and that's a good thing. You know, if you're, if you're angry with your, the people who are close to you, if you're resentful, I write a lot about that in chapter 11. Resentment is so useful. It's so useful. It's so horrible. It's so toxic. It's so destructive, but it's so informative.

Lewis Howes 1:35:39 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:35:39 If you're resentful, you're either being oppressed and not standing up for yourself, or you're whiny and should grow up. And both of those things are really useful to realize, and all you have to do is notice that you're resentful and want to do something about it. "Okay, I'm resentful. Okay. Am I immature?" You know? "Are people picking on me, or I am imma- immature? Are, if people are picking on me do I have something to say or something to do? I should do it."

Lewis Howes 1:36:10 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:36:10 It's a, it's a gateway to improvement, resentment, or you can let it f-

Lewis Howes 1:36:16 Faster [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:36:16 ... you can foster it and let it devour you and take you places that no one with a clear mind would ever want to go. Hell. That's resentment. Man, that's the pathway to hell.

Lewis Howes 1:36:29 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:36:30 And if you don't believe in hell, you don't have any imagination. That's my sense of things.

Lewis Howes 1:36:38 And w- w- you mentioned, uh, paradise being a, a safe space where we can play and have fun and feel protected. Uh, but a lotta times, at least in the last year, I'm seeing more and more in the world that the anxiety, stress, depression, challenges of the mind or the heart and the body have seemed to come to the, the surface for a lot of people even more. And- It, it sounds to me and it looks to me like when I'm connecting with people that a lot of things from the past, past memories, past pains, hurts, traumas are being brought to the forefront for a lot of people with the chaos of the now. How do we start to heal the, the memories of the past, the traumas of the past, uh, so that they don't keep hurting us in the present?

Jordan Peterson 1:37:31 Well, the first thing I would say is, you know, sometimes there's a crisis and well-meaning mental health professionals rush in to discuss the trauma while it's still happening.

Lewis Howes 1:37:50 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:37:51 That's a really bad idea.

Lewis Howes 1:37:53 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:37:56 People are generally traumatized because something actually horrible happened, and dwelling on it in the moment just makes it worse. It's not like anybody has a solution. Here's how you should understand this. You know, someone's just shot up your kid's school. Here's how you should understand this. That'll make it all better. It's like, no it won't.

Lewis Howes 1:38:15 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:38:17 If you have old baggage, that often comes up if you're having an argument with someone, doesn't it? You know how it, you know how it is. This is partly why people don't like to have a dispute within a relationship because it's a thread and you pull on that thread and just, God.

Lewis Howes 1:38:36 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:38:37 Oh, that we had another rule. Do not agree with something you don't agree with.

Lewis Howes 1:38:42 Ooh.

Jordan Peterson 1:38:43 Like, if we're gonna, if we decide, you and me, that we're doing this, we don't go back and say, "Well, I didn't really mean it."

Lewis Howes 1:38:52 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:38:52 We don't get to play revisionist with our history. So if you, if you don't agree, don't agree. Fight, object, or hold your peace.

Lewis Howes 1:39:04 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:39:05 Because you see what happens with couples is there's a little fight and then one says to the other, "Yeah, but you did this." And then that person says, "Yeah, I know I did that, but then that was because you did this."

Lewis Howes 1:39:19 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:39:19 And each this gets bigger until what's on the table is why the hell should we stay together at all?

Lewis Howes 1:39:25 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:39:26 And so every fight becomes why the hell should we stay together at all? So that's another thing you wanna do is you wanna have the fight about this thing.

Lewis Howes 1:39:34 Not about everything.

Jordan Peterson 1:39:34 Not about the past. Not everything. It's like, okay, you were flirting. I think you were flirting more than you should have been. Okay, so I go away and I think, well, okay, maybe I was. Okay, um, well then we have to have a discussion about why, and maybe we can solve that. But mostly what we have to do is figure out how to not have that happen again. Okay, so we're gonna go see the same couple again. What is it that you want me to do? So I'm the flirtatious one, let's say. What do you want me to do? Well, you have to figure that out. It's like, no, I'm stupid. Like you.

Lewis Howes 1:40:12 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:40:13 We're equally stupid.

Lewis Howes 1:40:14 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:40:14 I need to know what would satisfy you, and you need to figure out what would satisfy you so I know. And that, like, that's also extremely useful is let your con- establish your conditions of satisfaction. Make them explicit. Let the other person know.

Lewis Howes 1:40:29 Yeah, you can't read someone's mind. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:40:31 We're very bad at that. [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:40:33 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:40:35 We're bad at reading our own minds, for that matter.

Lewis Howes 1:40:38 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:40:39 So if we, if I have a fight with, with Tammy, let's say, sometimes I remember to say, "Okay, what, what do you want me to do right now? What can I do? What, what should I say and mean?" You know, and you think, well, you shouldn't let the other person put words in your mouth. Well, fair enough. You know, I'm not a- I'm not asking for something false. I'm saying, "I'd like to not have this happen. Can you see a way out? Is there something I could do to increase the probability that that's the route we could take?" And, you know, sometimes that works. [gentle music] But the other person has to let you know what they would find satisfying.

Lewis Howes 1:41:23 What's your biggest fear now moving forward in your, in your own life?

Jordan Peterson 1:41:28 Oh, making a mistake at the moment, 'cause like I've been, I've been the subject of so much public attention-

Lewis Howes 1:41:33 A lot

Jordan Peterson 1:41:33 ... in the last two years and, like, I've been in a situation where, well, even things I didn't say have also almost been fatal because people take them out of context.

Lewis Howes 1:41:42 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:41:43 You know? And, um, but I'm, my biggest fear has been that I do something careless and-

Lewis Howes 1:41:51 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:41:51 ... and that there are, like-

Lewis Howes 1:41:54 Big consequences

Jordan Peterson 1:41:55 ... serious cascading consequences to, yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:41:57 Do you feel like you've done something careless, or do you feel-

Jordan Peterson 1:42:00 Well, everyone's done something careless.

Lewis Howes 1:42:01 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:42:02 You know, but I've been pretty careful.

Lewis Howes 1:42:04 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:42:04 I mean, I was fortunate, so when this political scandal blew up around me in, in Canada when I opposed some legislation that I thought was reprehensibly constructed, um, you know, the, the, the radicals on the left in particular came after me hard. And, but I was fortunate because, you know, they called me every name under the book, um, and went after my character. And, you know, I suppose there was some degree of, of... That was understandable to some degree because if you stand up against something, if you stand up against the radical right, well, maybe you're a communist.

Lewis Howes 1:42:38 Hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:42:38 Might not, probably not, 'cause you don't have to be a communist to not like the radical right. But if you stand up against the radical left, well, maybe you're a Nazi. Well, probably not, but you might be. And so it's certainly in the interest of the people who are proponents of the philosophy of the radical left to assume that you're a Nazi, because then they don't have to deal with you. And so that's what happens. You throw yourself into the fray. People try to localize you, and they do that by saying, "Well, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, maybe you're this, maybe you're this." It's like, well, yeah, maybe not too.

Lewis Howes 1:43:06 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:43:07 And, and, but I already had 250 hours of lectures up on YouTube at that point, so people could actually go and see what I had said, because virtually every word I'd ever said to students in a professional capacity. Not, not every word because-

Lewis Howes 1:43:19 Right, right

Jordan Peterson 1:43:19 ... I didn't tape every lecture.

Lewis Howes 1:43:21 Sure.

Jordan Peterson 1:43:21 But I taped Multiple years of lectures. And so people went over those with a fine-tooth comb trying to find out if there's anything- Anything ... I'd ever said that was- Wow ... and they couldn't find anything. And that was because I've been very careful with what I say. Um- Wow ... ever since I was about 25, I started paying attention to what I was saying, and not, and trying very hard not to say things that I would... Trying not, trying very hard not to say things that something in me objected to. Mm. So, and well, that seems to have been, provided me with a buffer. And so people came to- [clears throat] ... my website because they were interested in... Well, before the political stuff blew up, I had a million views on YouTube, which is nothing. A million of anything is a lot. But then when the political scandal started to break- Yeah ... yeah, then people came for them, but stayed for the content. And so, and that's been very useful. And got a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been- It's all love ... well, and it's not that surprising. Well, you know, because of what you do. Yeah. It's like pe- there's a great hunger for information that is practical and useful, and that helps people find meaning in their lives and orient themselves. There's a great hunger for that, and most of my lectures were derived from solid psychology, some of it experimental, some of it biological, some of it from, from, from the domains of neuroscience, a lot of it from great clinicians. It's not surprising that people find it helpful because- Yeah ... well, great clinicians were great because they were really helpful. And so to distill that and to offer it to people in a digestible form, to have that have a good effect on them, well, that's, that's what you'd expect. That's what the whole discipline is about. And so that's been, that's been great. Mm. These, these public lectures that I've been doing, so I think I've done 50 of them- Yeah ... in about 45 different cities now in about three months, and the average theater size is between 2,500 and 3,000 people. Man. And they're unbelievably positive events- Mm ... because people come there, and we talk mostly about the political spectrum and why there's room for voices on the left, and why there's room for voices- Yeah ... on the right, and where the parameters of that should be. 'Cause both of those can descend into extremism, and that's not good. And the role of individual responsibility and individual sovereignty, and the necessity for people to develop a vision, the sorts of things that we already- Yeah ... talked about. And virtually everyone that's coming there, they're not coming for political reasons, even though that's the story you hear- Sure ... from the more ideologically possessed journalist types, because they see the world that way. They can't imagine anything else could possibly be happening. But the people who are coming to these lectures are coming because they are doing everything they possibly can to make their lives better. That's it. And so- That's it ... and it's lovely to talk to people like that because- It's amazing ... it is. [upbeat music] One of the things I thought about when I was writing this was, you know, when you love someone, especially, well, when you love someone, you love them not only despite their fragility, but also because of it. And so then that's the price you pay for it. It's like, well, you wouldn't, they wouldn't be who they were if they weren't, they wouldn't be who they were if they weren't fragile and limited in their particular way. And the fact you like to have them around, you think, "Oh, well, that, I mean, I guess you think that that fragility and vulnerability is justifiable." Mm. It's like, well, then you can't allow that, its re- its, its existence to make you bitter, 'cause you can't have it both ways. You can't have them being vulnerable, and cute, and, and interesting, and, and small, and, and, and needing care but striving to, to, to develop and grow. You can't have that without them also being prone to pain, and destruction, and vulnerability. Yeah. And so- Yeah ... take your choice. Yeah. And then what do you do? You teach them to be strong. That's what you do. You don't get rid of the vulnerability. You teach them to be strong. Yeah. So, and that's, that, that's also a theme that runs through the book in, in many, many ways, is that's, you don't protect your children. In fact, you do, you do the opposite. You expose them to the world as much as you possibly can, and you make them strong. That's the best antidote to their vulnerability, not to protect them. There's no protecting people. We already established that. Life's a fatal game. There's no protecting people. But you can definitely make them strong, and maybe you can make them strong enough to transcend that. Yeah. That's the goal, man. So- Is there anything that you f- wish you would've done differently with your daughter or your son that you didn't do? Not, not of any great, not of any great significance. I mean, I, I have, I have wishes, I suppose, from time to time that things could've been different. I- Mm-hmm ... I spent less time on the positive aspects of my son and my daughter because we were contending with catastrophe so frequently. And so, you know, my, both my kids have a variety of interesting talents, and it would've been better perhaps to have had the time to develop those more thoroughly. But, you know, and my son, well, he... I wouldn't say he didn't get as much attention as he needed. He didn't get as much attention as I would've liked to have paid him. Mm-hmm. But by the same token, it isn't obvious that it's been bad for him, because it required him from a very early age to grow the hell up. And we relied on him right from the time he was a young kid to make intelligent decisions. We assumed he would make intelligent decisions. Mm. He was consulted with regards to decisions. And so, and it also made him into someone who is, who is very self-sufficient and capable of taking care of himself. So i- it might've been nicer for me, I suppose, to have spent more time with him. Right. Um, but, but he lives down the street from me now- Yeah ... and I spend time with him, and we have a great relationship. That's great. And so it's just, it's, you know- Yeah ... and his, he has a very good relationship with his sister, and, uh- So it turned out as well as it could have.

Lewis Howes 1:49:30 Right.

Jordan Peterson 1:49:31 So, but that didn't mean that those years in there-

Lewis Howes 1:49:35 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:49:35 ... they were brutal.

Lewis Howes 1:49:36 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:49:36 There were some brutal times, man. This one night in particular, like she was in absolutely ag- absolute agony, and I couldn't get it under control. And I could see, well, 'cause I am a clinician, I could see. I thought, "Goddammit, I'm gonna end her- end up taking her to CAMH," that's the psychiatric hospital, "'cause it looks like it's gonna break her."

Lewis Howes 1:49:53 Wow. Really?

Jordan Peterson 1:49:53 I thought, "Goddammit." I couldn't see a way to, to resolve it. But it pushed her right to the brink, but, but not over. So, and there was another episode after, after she had her hip removed, have hip, hip replaced. She was put in a rehab home hospital for a while, and she was the youngest person in it by like 60 years.

Lewis Howes 1:50:12 Oh my gosh.

Jordan Peterson 1:50:13 And they treated her terribly. It was a terrible place. Mean, mean, blind nurses, and very, very badly run, and they traumatized her. The hospital was a worse experience than the damn surgery.

Lewis Howes 1:50:27 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:50:27 And so that, that was, that took her quite a while to recover from, but she did recover from it.

Lewis Howes 1:50:31 Do you ever-

Jordan Peterson 1:50:31 So

Lewis Howes 1:50:32 ... think now, um, you know, since you're a clinical, clinical, clinical psychologist, and you've done all this research, and work, and studies, do you believe that your daughter was meant to experience this for you to kind of test your ability to be with her? And do you think she would've been able to grow in the way she is now as someone who didn't have the practice that you had?

Jordan Peterson 1:50:55 Well, I think it was fortunate for all of us that... Well, my wife too, like my wife had worked in palliative care as a volunteer, and she was a massage therapist for a long time.

Lewis Howes 1:51:04 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:51:05 And she's very good at... And my wife has a real, she's a really tough person, and if you don't need help and you want it, she'll cut you into ribbons, but if you need help-

Lewis Howes 1:51:16 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:51:16 ... she will really help you.

Lewis Howes 1:51:17 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:51:17 So she's really good at differentiating-

Lewis Howes 1:51:19 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:51:19 ... between people who actually need help, in which case she is right there-

Lewis Howes 1:51:23 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 1:51:23 ... and people who could stand up on their own. And if you can't stand up on your own, and you could, if you could stand up on your own and you aren't, you don't wanna be around her, 'cause she will, she will put you in your place.

Lewis Howes 1:51:34 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:51:35 And it was so funny because our k- our, our kids used to bring their friends over all the time when they were teenagers, which we actually quite liked, and but we had a rule for the teenagers which was, "We're really happy you're here, but if you do something stupid and you never get to come back, that's actually okay with us."

Lewis Howes 1:51:50 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:51:51 Right. And so they knew that-

Lewis Howes 1:51:52 Wow

Jordan Peterson 1:51:52 ... and it was no joke, because we were happy they were there, and they were welcome, but we were perfectly happy to dispense with them if they misbehaved.

Lewis Howes 1:51:59 Forever. Yeah. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:52:00 And so, but what was really funny was that the kids would come over, the teenagers would come over, and they were pretty afraid of me to begin with. But after being around for a couple of weeks, they were way more afraid of my wife.

Lewis Howes 1:52:10 Really? [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:52:11 So yes, so that was very funny. [instrumental music plays]

Lewis Howes 1:52:16 When do you feel the most loved, Jordan? When what's, when what's happening around you, or when you're creating something, or when you're with people, whe- when do you feel personally the most loved?

Jordan Peterson 1:52:28 Oh, it's pr- when I'm with my family, when I'm with my kids. With when I'm with my family. Friends too, and, and that's even been more the case over the last couple of years, because my family and friends have been so unbelievably loyal and helpful to me and my family as we've-

Lewis Howes 1:52:45 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:52:45 ... had our troubles.

Lewis Howes 1:52:47 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:52:47 Terrible, terrible troubles over the last couple of years.

Lewis Howes 1:52:50 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:52:50 They've been so unbelievably reliable and-

Lewis Howes 1:52:54 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:52:54 ... helpful. Amazing. Certainly people have gone out of my way for me in a way that I, I don't believe I would've done for them.

Lewis Howes 1:53:04 Really?

Jordan Peterson 1:53:05 Well, look, I saw my father-in-law when, when, when... And I ta- write about this in, in Beyond Order. No, I write about it in 12 Rules more, I think, but it doesn't matter. He's a, like he's a really extroverted guy, disagreeable guy too, masculine guy, extroverted, assertive. Everybody in the little town I grew up in knew who he was. He was a performer, you know-

Lewis Howes 1:53:27 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:53:27 ... the life of the party. Um, and a good businessman, but a real character. And, uh, he, he did his own thing, but then his wife got, uh, prefrontal dementia when she was quite young, 55, and man, he took care of her for 15 years.

Lewis Howes 1:53:45 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:53:46 It was unbelievable.

Lewis Howes 1:53:47 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:53:48 And it was so interesting too, because if we offered to help him, he would accept it right away, and anything that we could do that would... Like I suggested one time, for example, that he buy a digital readout sign, so that if he went out, he could type in where he was going on the sign and it would just repeat over and over.

Lewis Howes 1:54:06 Oh, that's cool.

Jordan Peterson 1:54:06 And some recordings in the bathroom to help his wife remember what to do, and he would just implement those, accept and implement them right away. But he, this guy who was, who lived his own life, who, who was a, a, a, a very extroverted social person, not someone who you would've regarded as soft and caring. And, and I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just that that wasn't him. He wasn't Mother Teresa, you know?

Lewis Howes 1:54:34 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:54:35 Um, he just, he cared for her in a way that was absolutely astonishing. And I saw that also in my friends and my family in the care that they've offered to Tammy and I over the last two years. Mind-boggling. Uh, mind-boggling.

Lewis Howes 1:54:54 Wow.

Jordan Peterson 1:54:54 But I would say the, like, the, the place I like to be the b- most is in a family situation when everyone's, when there's no elephants under the rug.

Lewis Howes 1:55:15 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:55:18 And everyone's playing If you ever have that-

Lewis Howes 1:55:32 Mm

Jordan Peterson 1:55:32 ... you should consider yourself fortunate-

Lewis Howes 1:55:36 Wow

Jordan Peterson 1:55:37 ... beyond belief because it's unlikely, and you can lose it at any moment.

Lewis Howes 1:55:48 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:55:50 I've been in, I was in the hospital more or less for a year, and then another year with Tammy, and I thought I'd lost all of that.

Lewis Howes 1:55:58 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:55:58 Never get it back. It was very dreadful. And so now when it happens, I mean, I've always been grateful for it when it happens. Strive for that. You know, the animal experimentalists have demonstrated that, the ones who study play, this is Jaak Panksepp in particular, but there's a variety of them who study play, brilliant, brilliant scientists. Play is a circuit. It's a mammalian circuit. It's a specialized circuit, and it's very important developmentally for, for that circuit to be given free rein to play. It's how children play out roles in the world that they're eventually going to adopt. They play mother, they play father, they play, they play all these different roles, and that's how they learn to, to be those things. The role of the father is to put up security-

Lewis Howes 1:56:54 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:56:54 ... so that play can occur.

Lewis Howes 1:56:57 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:56:57 So the security's there. That's the walls. They fortify the walls. Man the walls. Guard the walls. But within the walls, then that's where play can, uh, can take place, and play is very easily disrupted. Hunger, thirst, any emotional state, any motivational state can supersede it even though it's very, very important. So you have to have the walled garden in place before-

Lewis Howes 1:57:23 Remove the, remove the fear

Jordan Peterson 1:57:23 ... play can occur.

Lewis Howes 1:57:25 Remove the fears, yeah.

Jordan Peterson 1:57:26 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. To make it safe so that experimentation can take place within. That's paradise, right? That's-

Lewis Howes 1:57:32 Right

Jordan Peterson 1:57:33 ... it's a walled garden, and that's what paradise means is a walled garden where structure and nature, the walls and the garden, are harmoniously, um, interacting and where eternal play can occur. That's paradise.

Lewis Howes 1:57:48 Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. What do you think are the skills that people should start to develop in their 20s in general to make them better human beings, more potentially, uh, open to success financially, relationship, health-wise? What are two or three things that everyone should focus on in their 20s?

Jordan Peterson 1:58:21 Well, it certainly doesn't hurt to be in physical, good physical condition-

Lewis Howes 1:58:24 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 1:58:25 ... so we can walk through it. Stop drinking too much. How do you know if you're drinking too much? Um, you regret what you do when you're drinking.

Lewis Howes 1:58:35 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:58:36 It's, it's interfering with other important goals.

Lewis Howes 1:58:39 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 1:58:40 It's, it's causing you financial distress. It's getting you in trouble with your friends or your family. It's getting you in trouble with the police, okay? So stop abusing substances if you can, right? If you see that they're, um, hurting you. Um, and alcohol is particularly pernicious in that regard. So physical health. D- Are you in decent shape? Are you strong and coordinated? And if you're not, well, you'd be better if you were.

Lewis Howes 1:59:15 Right. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 1:59:15 You'd feel better. You'd be more effective. You'd live longer. You'd be less sick, and you really see that mount up. Like, if someone's been in shape once in their life, they age way better.

Lewis Howes 1:59:26 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:59:27 And it's also a really good way of maintaining your cognitive ability. Like, you know, you, you hear about those exercises that you can do online to make you smarter and keep your cognitive ability intact.

Lewis Howes 1:59:36 Yep.

Jordan Peterson 1:59:36 Those don't work. There's no evidence that they work. People keep saying that they make you smarter, they maintain your cognitive function. Psychologists have studied that for 50 years hoping that one of those things will work.

Lewis Howes 1:59:50 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 1:59:51 Trying all sorts of creative tacks. They don't work. Exercise works. Cardiovascular and weightlifting. You start to decline in your fluid intelligence at about the age of 25, and it's a linear trend downhill, and it can accelerate as you get older.

Lewis Howes 2:00:07 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:07 It's just like this, quite ugly.

Lewis Howes 2:00:09 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:10 If you exercise, you stave that off.

Lewis Howes 2:00:13 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:13 So that's really useful. Um, maintain your relationships and, and foster them. They're un... So when I look at successful people, they're really good at something. They're reliable, right? You can count on their word. They're generous.

Lewis Howes 2:00:30 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:32 And they have a wide, wide connection network, which becomes more and more valuable as you get older.

Lewis Howes 2:00:38 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:38 So it's one advantage that older people really have over younger people. They have a connection network, and a connection network is-

Lewis Howes 2:00:44 Huge

Jordan Peterson 2:00:45 ... well, you could be connected to 1,000 well-connected people. Okay, that means you are connected to the entire world.

Lewis Howes 2:00:55 [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 2:00:56 Right?

Lewis Howes 2:00:56 Right.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:56 It's unbelievably valuable.

Lewis Howes 2:00:58 Mm-hmm.

Jordan Peterson 2:00:59 And that's one of the things that's so absolutely remarkable about the situation that I'm in right now as far as one of the great benefits is I can c-

Lewis Howes 2:01:07 Access, yeah

Jordan Peterson 2:01:08 ... I can contact pretty much anybody, and they'll talk to me.

Lewis Howes 2:01:10 Yeah.

Jordan Peterson 2:01:11 It's like, really?

Lewis Howes 2:01:12 Right. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 2:01:12 That's so cool. I, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in infrastructure for reasons I won't get into, but I'm interested in infrastructure development. I think it's a good method of wealth transfer.

Lewis Howes 2:01:24 Mm.

Jordan Peterson 2:01:24 It's a good solution to the problem of inequality and, and employment. Um, I reached out to a leading expert, a leading expert on infrastructure last week to see if he'd talk to me. I thought, I don't know anything about infrastructure except that it's worn to a frazzle and we should do something about it. You know, he agreed to talk and y- y- having a connection network is of un- inestimable, inestimable value

Lewis Howes 2:01:51 It's huge

Jordan Peterson 2:01:52 Um, reliability, generosity, you can work on both of those. Philosophical sophistication-

Lewis Howes 2:02:00 Mm

Jordan Peterson 2:02:00 ... it's very useful, um, because it orients you properly. Y- you have a, a sophisticated sense of, of the world. You find, for example, that, um, doing things for other people is actually more rewarding than virtually anything else you can do

Lewis Howes 2:02:21 Right

Jordan Peterson 2:02:22 You know, when y- you hear you should be of service to other people. Well, if you actually watch yourself, you pay attention to yourself, and you do something that helps someone else, and it genuinely helps them, I defy you to find another experience that is that satisfying

Lewis Howes 2:02:41 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 2:02:42 It's actually quite stunning how satisfying that is, and so that's a very useful thing to realize and, and all-

Lewis Howes 2:02:50 Why is, why is helping another person the most satisfying thing for probably most people when they're, if they're, you know, out of their ego of like, "I wanna buy more things to make me happy in this moment," why is that such a satisfying thing for human beings?

Jordan Peterson 2:03:05 Uh, there's no better strategy for... There's no better s- life strategy. I mean, imagine... I could give you a q- a quick sort of technical example. So imagine I take two people and I say, "Okay, um, I'm gonna give you $100, and you have to give some of it to the person right beside you, and they can either agree or disagree with the split, but if they disagree, you don't get anything." Okay, so a classical economist would say that the person should take the 100, offer the person next to them a dollar, and the person should accept it because why not? They get a dollar instead of nothing, and that's the solution. But what happens is that if you don't offer that other person something close to 50/50, they're likely to tell you-

Lewis Howes 2:03:56 They screw you

Jordan Peterson 2:03:57 ... to go to hell. Yes.

Lewis Howes 2:03:58 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 2:03:58 Very, and you think, "Well-

Lewis Howes 2:03:58 And then, and then you get nothing

Jordan Peterson 2:03:59 ... you get nothing too, and you think, "Well, why would people do that?" Because they just reject $50, and who cares? And the answer is, well, we don't just play one game with other people. We play a repeating game. And so, so imagine we did this. Imagine it's a crowd, and they're all watching you, and I offer you $100, and you have to share it with the person next to you, and you say, "Would you like to take $70?" And the person says, "Well, I'm not sure that's fair to you, but if it's okay, yes." But then everyone else sees that, and now they all have an opportunity to pick who they're gonna play with next. Well, you're not gonna get p- picked last, are you? Remember what you told me. You didn't wanna get picked last, right?

Lewis Howes 2:04:44 I did not

Jordan Peterson 2:04:45 Okay, so what you did was you turned yourself into an athlete

Lewis Howes 2:04:48 A machine-

Jordan Peterson 2:04:49 Okay

Lewis Howes 2:04:50 ... that would always get picked first. [laughs]

Jordan Peterson 2:04:51 Okay, great. So, but imagine we expand that game.

Lewis Howes 2:04:54 Yes

Jordan Peterson 2:04:55 And we say, "You wanna be the person that everyone wants to play with."

Lewis Howes 2:04:59 Yep

Jordan Peterson 2:05:00 Well, then all you have in your whole life is invitations to play. Well, how, how, and how are you going to be that person? Be productive, straightforward-

Lewis Howes 2:05:10 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 2:05:10 ... generous

Lewis Howes 2:05:12 Make everyone else better around you, and they're gonna wanna play with you

Jordan Peterson 2:05:15 Ab- absolutely. So there you go, and then you get to play

Lewis Howes 2:05:18 Yeah, [laughs] exactly.

Jordan Peterson 2:05:19 Well, how is that not the best possible deal?

Lewis Howes 2:05:22 Yeah

Jordan Peterson 2:05:22 It's clearly... See, th- so, so the reason... [laughs] If, if the ethical argument is put properly, it is by far the most compelling argument. It's like if you wanna have everything you could possibly want and more, then be a good person

Lewis Howes 2:05:42 Mm-hmm

Jordan Peterson 2:05:42 The better a person you are, the more likely that is to happen. That doesn't mean you, that you're completely protected against getting cut off at the knees, but there's no better strategy

Lewis Howes 2:05:54 When you start to build yourself up and start to have the one thing that we don't have, is confidence-

2:05:59 Yep

2:05:59 ... everything else goes away. You, you no longer look to other people for your self-esteem.

2:06:04 For validation-

2:06:04 That's right

2:06:05 ... or, yeah

2:06:06 You now know. I walk in the room now, and I know the hours and years and decades I put into David Goggins