A Complete Guide To Transform Your Life In 90 Days - Jordan Peterson Motivation

[Music] in the future authoring program which is the one we've done the most research on so it if people do this for 90 minutes badly before they go to college it'll decrease the probability they'll drop out in the first year by 50% that's amazing and it works particularly well for people who are most likely to drop out so a lot of psychological interventions help the good performers do even better and don't help the bad performers that much and why do you think it helps them more well I think the good performers already have a bit

of a vision and a plan whereas the bad performers they're really ambivalent about what they're doing because they don't have a plan and we'll talk more about why this is so important so if you don't have a reason to do something and then a reason not to do it comes up well then you'll just not do it cuz not doing things is real easy you can just sit there and not do things all day doing things takes effort and so any resistance is likely to it pushes back against you and so going to college it's

like well why is that difficult well you have to get up you have to go to your classes you have to do the assignments you have to do the reading you have to write the tests you have to believe that this path is somehow better than any other path you could be on and there's innumerable other paths and that it's better in some fundamental sense than just doing nothing or playing games or or or being purely hedonic so there's a lot of because it's difficult there's a lot of obstacles and if you don't have a

reason well why would you overcome the obstacles and so what happens when you do the future authoring program is two things is first of all you construe yourself as the sort of person who could have a reason right who could make a vision and impose it on the world and how do you do that well and well and then second actually develop a vision okay so the first thing the program asks you to do and it's it's got a Biblical element to it in some fundamental sense although that wasn't so explicit when we first developed

it but I came to realize that later there's a statement in the gospels Christ says to his followers um ask and you'll receive knock and the door will open will open seek and you'll find and you listen to that you think no no way man it it can't be that easy well it's not it's that easy cuz let's think about what wanting means you want something you want to you want to find so you'll seek how hard are you going to seek you know maybe you're after the Holy Grail right you're after the Gold in

the Dragon's Lair or the or the jewel in the Toad's head you're after something that's guarded by some monstrous figure you're going to seek how committed to that to that are you and there's a total commitment in that in a fundamental way is like you should be humble enough to be open to learning to radical transformation to the probability that you're really wrong if you're not finding what you're seeking and the willingness to sacrifice virtually everything of lesser value for that goal otherwise you do not want it you did not ask you are not seeking

you did not knock on the door well this is the development of a vision now you can construe Consciousness as the implementor of of the vision in in the broadest sense so what we really confront as human beings isn't a deterministic world that runs like clockwork that the past pushes forward in an algorithmic or deterministic manner that isn't how the world works the way the world works is that we confront a horizon of possibility that's not predictable it's somewhat predictable the way a musical piece is predictable so it's rule governed but it's not predictable in

a deterministic way and it's full of possibility and potential that's actually its nature its potential in its nature and to maximize our the quality of our interaction with that potential we have to impose a vision on it and then pursue the vision and so when you do the future authoring program well that's what you're trying to do is develop a vision so here's the first exercise it's like okay here's the deal all right you get to have what you need and what you want maybe even better you get to have what you need and want

if you were treating yourself properly so imagine first of all that you were treating yourself properly cuz you actually cared for yourself say say you don't yeah well you don't how do you help somebody well you at least ask them to open the door to the possibility that maybe they could so just imagine that you did did not that you are that you could but that that you tried think okay I'm a valuable person maybe and if I was treating myself like I had intrinsic value like if you were treating yourself like you were someone

you loved so you could imagine doing this for someone you actually cared about cuz most people care about someone that isn't them so do you identify someone you care about well you can yes you can and say cuz it it does tell you it's like well if you if you're not so good at caring for yourself imagine someone you love and then pretend that you're bringing that attitude to bear on you with all your faults and inadequacies I'm not being casual about this it's hard for people to do this right CU we know our own

flaws so deeply it's hard for us to take care of ourselves but imagine that you should take care of yourself and that you could and that you did just imagine that so that's opening up at least the door right yeah and then you say well 5 years down the road you get to have what you want to need what is it and so this is a deep question so cuz the question is this your life is going to be difficult and it's going to be marked by suffering and tragedy in all sorts of different ways

disappointment and and obstacle and betrayal and the whole panoply of human catastrophe that's absolutely 100% definitely coming your way okay so given that and given that you want to live a life free of resentment and bitterness and premature aging and excess suffering and that you don't want to be a burden to everyone around you what would you have to have to make carrying that weight worthwhile and that's a hard question you know it's like what justifies your suffering that isn't how am I going to be happy it's what justifies your suffering well ask yourself you

get to have what you want if you were taking care of yourself what would it be okay and so you write for 15 minutes about what your life might be like 5 years down the road if you got to have what you needed and wanted and then we concretize it you know I had lots of clients and students who said well I don't know what to do with my life what should I do with my life and the first answer to that question is that's not a very good question because it's like what do you

want a online answer to what you should do with your life like life is everything and you want a oneline answer to everything no bad question you can imagine a desirable future but but it helps to particularize it so one of the things you might ask is where do people find meaning and the answer is well in multiple places here's some places people typically find meaning so if clients came to me and they were depressed first of all I'd try to find out are you depressed or do you just have a terrible life or some

combination of those two and you might ask what's the difference that's a really good question if you're depressed you have a good life but you're suffering so and so what would it mean that you have a good life well it means somewhat different things to different people but you can kind of triangulate on it probably you have an intimate relationship or at least you have the prospects of one so at least you want one and you and you believe that maybe you could have one if you don't have one and probably if you have a

good life you have one you have some friends they're real friends right you have some family members children perhaps if not children parents and siblings or perhaps both grandchildren you're nested inside a family and your relationships with your family are desirable you have a job or a career and so if it's a job well then it's hard and maybe you wouldn't have picked it as a vocation but at least maybe you have good relationships with your co-workers and you're doing something difficult but that's actually socially productive and useful and generates an income so that's not

nothing you're educated to the level of your intellectual capability or you have plans to do so you're taking care of yourself mentally and physically and you have a strategy for dealing with the realm of of signal Temptation drug and alcohol abuse and sexual misbehavior and that sort of thing and then we've added one more recently at least conceptually that you're you've adopted a certain degree of civic responsibility right you're participating in the broader community in some Manner and if you're doing none of those my life is meaningless are you doing any of these no well

that's why it's meaningless those are the domains of meaning and so if you're miserable and you have none of those things the first thing to do if you're a cognitive behavioral therapist with someone is to say well how about we work on like one of these things to begin with you know you need some friends you need to get out in the dating Market you need a job or a better job you need an educational PL like you don't have a life so you're of course you're misery miserable because without sustaining life without sustaining meaning

life is just tragedy and so the lot your lot is misery and so anyways we ask people to go through these eight different domains and say okay you can have what you want but you have to aim at it sin means to miss the mark by the way it means to miss the target that's what takes you away from God is to miss the target what Target yeah right what Target right you got to at least know there's a Target then you got to try to hit it you know and maybe you don't even know

where the target is but your aim isn't good but at least you've set up a Target now and you can practice and so well if you had an intimate relationship what would it look like if you had some friends how would you like those friendships to be conducted if you had a job or a career what could it be if you had what you wanted so now you're moving towards the promised land let's say so that's inspiring and that produces positive emotion because you experience positive emotion when you see yourself moving towards a valued goal

no valued goal no positive emotion that's how your systems are set up psychophysiologically on the negative front well maybe anger and bitterness and fear stop you okay so what do you do with them take good stock of your sinful nature let's say you know what Temptations you're prone to and what knock you off the Beaten Track and maybe you feel guilty about it you know where your weaknesses are and you probably have some idea of just what kind of hell you could inhabit if you let those weaknesses get the upper hand so AR you just

write about that for 15 minutes so let's say this isn't what you could have in 5 years it's the pit you could dig for yourself if you decided to you know just sit there or dig everyone has a sense of that you know for some people my Temptation probably would have been alcohol it calmed me in social situations it made me feel a closer kinship to people and it was pretty good stimulant and so it was a really good drug for me and I enjoyed it quite a lot too much um but I learned that

I had better things to do I wouldn't have stopped without better things to do and that's what did you mean by better things to do well I was writing my book maps of meaning um when I was still carousing as a graduate student I'd started to put my life together by that point quite a bit but I was still a party animal and very social and uh but I found that I couldn't think hung over and not only that I couldn't handle the emotional tension of what I was dealing with intellectually it was too cuz

you know if you're hung over your emotions are more sensitive especially your anxiety and the work I was doing was way too demanding emotionally because I was dealing with historical atrocity and the motivations for that was just too damn dark you know to be dealing with hung over plus once I had written a fair bit and was editing once you've edited your work to a substantial degree you have to use finer and finer gradations of judgment to continue to improve it and if you're fuzzy minded at all if you've impaired your judgment when you edit

you can make it worse not better and then I also realized that the only times I really regretted my actions was when I was drinking cuz it disinhibits you and that's fun that can be really fun but I'd wake up the next day and think yeah I was a little too provocative I was a little too aggressive I was a little too mean-spirited in my wit a little too egotistical or maybe more than little on all of those fronts little careless in my choice of partner um a little uncontrolled in my social behavior in places

I shouldn't have been CU you know I was starting to well I was a graduate student and a teacher by that point and I was interacting with professors saying the sociality grew yeah well wasn't time to be drunk that just wasn't good that worked in Northern Alberta to some degree in some subcultures but in those situations it just made me look like a fool well it made me into a fool not just look like one and then when you and I got married um I didn't and we were going to have kids I thought well

I'm not drinking when I have kids yeah I wanted I wanted children yeah and and you know you want to grow up at that point besides I was ready to dispense with all of that by then in any case so you can imagine the hell you could inhabit and then the advantage to that is see people are often afraid of moving forward and no wonder but you should be way more more afraid of not moving forward and so if you get that hell behind you it's like well do I want to go there well I

don't have the effort to the energy I'm not even sure that it's the right thing it's like well do I want to go back there it's like no definitely not that and if you don't feel that if you don't feel that hell then you're not nearly as motivated as you could be because if you have any sense of just exact L how Bloody dismal and dark things could get then and that's right there for you and that was one thing that I thought it was helpful I thought it was helpful when I did the future

authoring to uh think about where I would go if I went to the wrong place why well it's just good to know how you will fall apart yeah well well and you can also ask yourself and and studying historical atrocity also helped me with that was like well do you want to be a uh what would you call a sadist you're better and resentful you want to hurt other people is that where you want to end up you want to lie and deceive cuz that's where you end up if you lie and deceive you want

to be resentful and bitter CU that's where you end up if you're resentful and bitter yeah but but sometimes you know people they just don't know what to do about it so your program helps them to make a plan yeah well and the plan is really look we're Visionaries man human beings are Visionaries really well I found when I did the self authoring the 15 minutes of writing that I did the dreaming I did when I when I wrote about my future and just dreamed of what it could be like if it was just what

I wanted yeah and then outlined the goals cuz you outlin goals after that in the future Au those things that I had identified appeared in my life those yeah well and that was quite shocking me well the thing is you you look at your you look at the world through a goal directed framework and so when you switch your goals what appears to you when the world switches it's not it's mystical in a sense but in another sense it's just understandable it's like well if I look that way I see the TV and the couch

and if I look this way I see you in the chair well that's not that mysterious but what I've done is I've changed the reality that manifests itself to me just by changing the direction of my orientation well we do that metaphysically as well and so for example if you decide that you're going to be courageously trusting towards people when they offer you an opportunity even though you're skeptical and timid but you decide no I'm going to have some faith in people so I'm going to be courageous and trusting then when they open a door

to you that's an opportunity you'll think oh that's a door I could walk through instead of thinking I'm moving into a trap and that's it's the same reality in some sense but the degree the way that you're interacting with it changes well it can change it can invert it can change so radically that it barely looks like you're living in the same world there are a lot of potential interpretations that you can validly lay on the world and some of them are extremely positive and they still work and wouldn't that be lovely if you could

lay a incredibly positive Vision on the world World in a calculating and strategic manner not an instrumental manner right cuz you're aiming at something genuinely good and that would work and that is how the world works one of the things I loved about my clinical practice I loved this it was so good and I miss it we were always working always working the best parts of me and my client were working together to make everything about their lives better and it worked you know like I had lots of female clients who tripled their income in

four years they didn't even think that was possible it's like well I don't make enough money I'm barely making ends meet single mothers I have no idea what to do I don't like my job it's like well let's make a plan here you know what do you want well I'd like to make this much money why don't we double that and just because you're going to aim at something some people do make more money than that so maybe it could be you well is that even even that's not even possible it's like well let's just

assume that maybe it's possible and see what you'd have to do well you got to get your CV together well it's full of holes okay well let's fix the holes okay now you got to get a plan well I'm not very good at interviews okay let's practice interviewing till you're not just good at it you're man you're looking forward to [Music] it you know I had clients who were in such dire situations that all I could do was really help buffer them against that but they were a minority I wouldn't say more than 5% of

my practice fell into that category everyone else it was like just rapid Improvement on all fronts you know and that's such fun and it's there isn't anything more practical this is the thing too there is nothing more practical than developing a a vision it's not some pie in the sky exercise it's without a vision you're chaotic and fragmented and hopeless and disappointed and someone can stop you just by putting up a single obstacle You're A house divided amongst itself you have no forward movement you're you're not enthusiastic and that's to be filled with the spirit

of God by the way and your life is a sequence of disappointments and frustrations and tragedies and you're a leaf blowing in the wind and that is not what you're called to be that's not what you're called to be you're called to be a Visionary constructure of [Music] the paradisal vision MH really really that's who you are terrible as that is to apprehend and so well what do we have to lose we already we'll lose everything we have to lose yeah right we're all in in this game man so there's whether you want it to

be this way or not you are betting everything on your life [Music] I don't know if you can be less afraid of death exactly but I think that here's a hypothesis and this is a Socratic hypothesis I write about this in my book too by the way um maybe if you live your life thoroughly thoroughly right you take use of the advantages make use of the advantages that are put in front of you make use of your talents say yes to things tell the truth like stand up and get at it um assuming that you

can do that you know cuz some people are very ill and and hurt and but assuming you can do that I think the only way to combat fear of death is to live fully and I think that that might actually work I I kind of Wonder I've talked about this with my father too who's getting pretty old you know I've asked him if for example if he could be transformed back into an 18-year-old knowing what he knows now would he do it and he was ambivalent about that you know he didn't say no but he

didn't say yes and we talked about this idea that if you lived your life fully you know maybe that would be good enough cuz you know I loved having kids but I don't feel that I would have kids again you know because in some sense I've already done that and so maybe there's a set number of Adventures that you have to go on in your life let's say you have to be married you have to have kids you have to have a career you have to have friends um you have to have something useful to

do with your time outside of work all those are all things that are covered in the future authoring program by the way maybe if you do all those it's like that's good enough you've had your life and and that's enough I mean I don't know 10 years ago I thought you know if I could extend my life radically then I would and I'm not so sure about that now that I'm I'm 55 you know I'm getting older I kind of have a suspicion that you might come to an end you know that's what it looks

like I mean I don't want that to be soon but maybe you exhaust yourself in your life you know maybe you can so that there's nothing left of you really do you worry that your Fame traps you into the person that you weree before yeah well Elvis became an Elvis impersonator by the time he died yeah do you fear that you have become a Jordan Pon impersonator that do you fear of in some part becoming the famous suit wearing brilliant Jordan Peter this the certainty in The Pursuit Of Truth always right I think I worry

about it more than anything else I hope I hope I do I better has Fame to some degree when you look at yourself in the mirror in the quiet of your mind has it corrupted you no doubt in some regard I mean it's very difficult thing to avoid you know because things change around you people are much more likely to do what you ask for example right and so that's a danger because one of the things that keeps you dying properly is that people push back against you optimally this is why so many celebrities spiral

out of control especially the tyrannical types that say run countries everyone around them stops saying yeah you're you're you're deviating a little bit there they laugh at all their jokes they open all their doors they they always want something from them the red carpet's always R rolled out it's like well you think wouldn't that be lovely it's well not if the red carpet is rolled out to you while you're on your way to predition that's not a good deal you just get there more efficiently and so one of the things that I've tried to learn

to manage is to get have people around me all the time who are critics who are saying yeah I could have done that better and you're a little too harsh there and you're alienating people unnecessarily there and you should have done some more background work there and and I think the responsibility attendant upon that in increases as your influence increases and that's that's a as your influence increases then that becomes a lot of responsibility you know and then maybe have an off day and well one here's an example I've been writing some columns lately about

things that perturb me like the forthcoming famine for example and it's hard to take those um problems on it's difficult to take those problems on in a serious Manner and it's frightening and it would be easier just to go up to the cottage with my wife and go out on the lake and watch the sunset and so I'm tempted to draw on anger as a motivating energy to help me overcome the resistance to doing this but then that makes me more harsh and judgmental in my tone when I'm reading such things for example on YouTube

then might be optimal now I I've had debates about with people about that cuz I have friends who say no if you're calling out the environmental environmentalist globalists who are harassing the Dutch Farmers then a little anger is just the ticket and but then others say well you know you don't want to be too harsh because you alienate people who would otherwise listen to you it's like that's a hard balance to get right but also maybe anger hardens your mind to where you don't notice the the subtle quiet beauty of the world the quiet love

that's always there that permeates everything sometimes you can become deeply cynical about the world if it's the nche thing yeah battle not with monsters lest you become a monster and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes also into you but I would say bring it on right because by also saying knowing that he's absolutely right but if you gaze into the abyss long enough you see the light not the darkness are you sure about that I'm betting my life on it yeah that's a heck of a bet well that's because it might distort

your mind to where all you see is Abyss is is is Abyss is is the evil in this world well then I would say you haven't looked long enough you know that's back to the the swords the flaming swords it's like so I said the whole story of Christ was prefigured in that image it's like the story of Christ psychologically is radical acceptance of the worst possible tragedy that's what it means that's what the crucifix means psychologically it's like gaze upon that which you are most afraid of but that story doesn't end there because in

in the in the story Christ goes through death into hell so death isn't enough the abyss the abyss of innocent death is not sufficient to produce Redemption it has to be a voluntary journey to hell and maybe that's true for everyone there is no more terrifying idea than that by definition and so then well do you gaze upon that well who knows who knows how often do you gaze upon death your own how often do you remember remind yourself that this right ends P personally personally all the time cuz you as a as a deep

thinker and a philosopher it's easy to start philosophizing and and forgetting that you're you might die today the angel of death sits on every word how's that I how often do you actually consciously all the time uh notice the angel all the [Music] time I think it's one of the things that made me peculiar when I was in graduate school you know I I thought about I was I had the thought of death in my mind all the time and I noticed that many of the people that I was with these were people I admired

fine they they that wasn't part of their character but it was definitely part of mine I'd wake up every morning this happened for years think time's short get at it time short get at it there's things to do and so that was always it's still there and still there with I would say and unbearable in some sense are you afraid of it like what relationship yeah you know I was ready to die a year ago and not casually I had people I loved you know so no I'm not very worried about me but I am

very worried about making a mistake yeah I heard Elon Musk talk about that a couple of months ago it was really a striking moment someone asked him about death and he said just offand and then went on with the conversation he said that' be a relief and then he went on with the conversation and I thought well you know he's got a lot of weight on his shoulders I'm sure that part of him thinks I'd be easier just if this wasn't here at all now he said it off hand but it was a telling moment

in my estimation so for him that's a Why Live question MH the exhaustion of life life if you call it life is suffering but the hardship I'm more afraid of Hell than death you're you're afraid of the thing that follows I don't know if it follows or if it's always here and I think we're going to find out what's the connection between death and hell I don't know I don't know I don't know is there something that needs to be done before before you arrive you're more likely to die terribly if you live in a

manner that brings you to [Music] hell you know if you don't know what you should do with your life you don't know who you should be sometimes you think about that as what career you should pursue but here's another way of thinking about it it's kind of a seals ethos that Congressman krenshaw detailed out here's some things you could be those are my words these are his you will be someone who's never late you will be someone who takes care of his men gets to know them and puts their needs before yours you'll be someone

who does not quit in the face of adversity you will be someone who takes charge and leads when no one else will you will be detail oriented which you discuss a lot in later sections of the book always Vigilant attentive you will be aggressive in your actions but never lose your cool you will have a sense of humor because sometimes that is all that can get you through the Darkest Hours you will work hard and perform even when no one is watching you'll be creative and think outside the box even if it gets you in

trouble you're a rebel but not a mutineer you are a jack of all trades and master of none and then you follow that a little later with this paragraph these paragraphs be aggressive enough to kill the enemy but immediately calm enough not to scare little old lady you'll be that man who's mentally tough enough to operate in horrific chaos then immediately transition to Tranquility all without mentally breaking you will effectively transition from hyper masculine aggressor to Gentle caretaker you'll be both a warrior and a Gentleman the qualities that made seal leaders great were rarely physical

in nature they listened they empowered their team to be successful carefully entrusting individuals with additional responsibility it's a real conservative ethos there they highlighted good performance publicly and criticized bad performance privately and so well you know those are lists of Virtues and maybe they're not the only list of possible virtues probably not but if you're lost and you don't know where to start practicing you know you also talk about this idea that uh this is an Aristotelian idea you know that we we are our habits we become what I what we practice and if imagine

if you're lost in your listing you think well you find some things admirable well you could practice those things and you can practice them locally and minimally in your own relationships and you can start to get good at them and as you get good at them well you get better at them right and then you can you can broaden out the scope of Your Action into a wider purview so you said here too let let's go for another quote here throughout your life this is very practical advice too and I think it's very wise from

a therapeutic perspective throughout your life you have people you look up to okay so let's think about that you look up what does that mean why up well up is something that beckons from a distance it's like a light on a hill and we automatically assume that those who we admire are people we look up to so that specifies a a distance and a direction and it's uphill it's up toward the higher Vista let's say so there are automatically people who who elicit that spirit in you you have noticed the way might also imply might

also imply that there's some sense of struggle required to get to that point because it's easier to go downhill than it is uphill yes definitely that's right it's an uphill it's an uphill Trek and it's also implies judgment because if someone's above you then they also serve as a judge or you serve as a judge in relationship to them because you compare yourself unfavorably with them and that can also inspire you to tear them down that's really the story of Cain and Abel and that's that's a major story you have noticed the way a teacher

parent coworker Mentor or friend interacts with others and you come away thinking hm that behavior simply works better they are respected admired and successful and you find yourself wondering why that is you do if you're a little bit humble in instead of being envious right cuz otherwise you think well that damn crook he just stole his position and that's why he's got it but if you're a bit humble you might think well no that guy looks successful maybe he knows something I don't you are noticing attributes and character traits that are good and worth aspiring

to you are noticing attributes that make certain people more successful than others you are noticing what a hero looks like and in the process you are discovering a path made up of desirable personality traits that helps you ascend in social hierarchies that's Jacob's Ladder by the way that that ladder that is the hierarchy to the good that's the vision Jacob has of the pathway to God is that it's a hierarchical structure with the thing that's ultimately good at the Pinnacle by definition right the best of all possible goods and then there are intermediary structures all

the way up and beings inhabiting those structures and this isn't metaphysical it's like if you find someone you admire the reason you admire them is because they're higher up in that Heavenly hierarchy so to speak than you are and your whole nervous system tells you that you're compelled to listen you're compelled to pay attention by your own by the action of your own unconscious mind you know what's interesting about this point of identifying these heroes or at least Role Models you can call them either one I just thought Heroes was a more compelling word to

use for for the sake of writing it but what's interesting about it too is how pop culture actually plays a pretty important part of this because like there's plenty of people who simply don't have these good role models in their lives and you have to acknowledge that and so where where are they supposed to turn and it's maybe one of the reasons that it's so important to fight these cultural Wars that that you and I engage in on a on a fairly regular basis that they become a serious part of our politics which at the

at the same time is necessary but also deeply deeply unfortunate um I do think I do think the the attack on pop culture from this this Progressive victimhood left has reached a reached a ceiling I think there's a there's a serious um backlash uh I you know you look at movies like Top Gun the recent one Top Gun maybe like the highest grossing of all time absolutely phenomenal movie really fun to watch why because it just had all of these classical virtues in and Infused within it about relationships and about how you treat people and

what the consequences are for treating people as such that these things speak to people in a deeper way they can't necessarily articulate them but they they understand it when they see it and there's there these sort of radical minorities that are very loud that want that changed you know they they want something else uh to be on that hill but people react against it because it's not it's not true there's no truth to that yeah well yeah and something cries out from inside of them then and that's and that can be appealed to by a

Storyteller I saw the same thing in the Marvel Avengers series is that there is a return to any any wide range of classical virtu certainly Brotherhood uh a kind of a military ethos sacrifice a striving upward certainly masculine virtues the combination of the Hulk and Iron Man for example that's a that's a that's a that's a there's a monstrous element to the Hulk but he's a hero in a strange sense and he's also the revitalizing force for Iron Man when he just about dies and and that's all the reason those movies were so necessary and

so attractive is because they are in fact addressing a radical conceptual void in the culture and it's a void that well that you're addressing in your book especially with your appeal well trifold appeal let's say to duty responsibility and humor at the same time right which is a kind of stoicism in the face of [Music] catastrophe you know so because this is a big problem in life imagine you're aiming for something and then something happens to make it impossible or you find out that it's the wrong thing cuz you aiming in the wrong direction well

so then what do you have to rely on to set you right it's not your aim obviously but it might be your capacity to take new aim and that's bloody well dependent on your character that's for sure and so I don't think there is a more fundamental aim than what you should be and there's no fundament no better way of characterizing what you should be than that you should fortify your [Music] character that's that willingness to gaze into the abyss which is obviously what you were doing when you went to Ukraine it's like it's gazing

into the abyss that makes you better the thing is and and this is maybe where n's idea is not as differentiated as it became sometimes your gaze can be forcefully directed towards the abyss and then you're traumatized if it's involuntary and accidental it can kill you the more it's voluntary the more transformative it is and that's part of that idea about facing death in hell it's like can can you tolerate death and hell and the answer is this terrible answer is yes to the degree that you're willing to do it voluntarily and then you might

ask well why should I have to subject myself to death and hell I'm innocent and then the answer to that is even the innocent must be voluntarily sacrificed to the highest good that's such an interesting distinction voluntary suffering voluntary yeah yeah well that's why the Central Christian doctrine is pick up your cross and follow me and I'm speaking not in religious terms saying that I'm just speaking as a psychologist it's like one of the things we've learned in the last 100 years is voluntary exposure to that that which freezes and terrifies you in measured proportions

is Curative the first thing I do as a clinician if someone comes to me and says they're depressed is ask myself a question well what is this person mean by that so I have to find out like because maybe they're not depressed maybe they're hyper anxious or maybe they're obsessional like there's various forms of powerful negative emotion so they need to be differentiated but then the next question you have to ask is well are you depressed or do you have a terrible life or is it some combination of the two so if you're depressed as

far as I can tell you don't have a terrible life you have friends you have family you have an intimate relationship you have a job or a career you're about as educated as you should be given your intelligence use your time outside of work wisely you're not beholden to alcohol or other Temptations um you're engaged in the community in some fundamental sense and all that's working now if you have all that and you're feeling really awful you're either ill or you're depressed and so then sometimes there's a biochemical route to that treatment of that my

experience has being as a clinician is if you're depressed but you have a life and you take an anti-depressant it will probably help you a lot now maybe you're not depressed exactly you just have a terrible life what does that look like you have no relationship your family's a mess you've got no friends you've got no plan you've got no job you use your time outside of work not only badly but destructively you have a drug or alcohol H habit or some other Vice pornography addiction um you are completely unengaged in the surrounding Community you

have no scaffolding whatsoever to support you in your current mode of being or you move forward and then as a therapist well you do two things well if it's depression per se well like I said there's sometimes a biochemical route a nutritional route there's ways that can be addressed it's probably physiological if you're at least in part if you're depressed but you have an okay life sometimes it's conceptual you can turn to dreams sometimes to help people because dreams contain the seeds of the potential future and if your person is a real good dreamer and

you can analyze dreams that can be really helpful but that seems to be only true for more creative people and for the people who just have a terrible life it's like okay you have a terrible life well let's pick a front how about you need how about you need a friend like one sort of friend do you know how to shake hands and introduce yourself I'll have the person show me so let's do it for a sec so it's like this hi I'm Jordan and people don't know how to do that and then they can't

even get the ball rolling for The Listener Jordan just gave me a firm handshake yeah as opposed to a dead fish you know and and there's these Elementary social skills that hypothetically if you were well cared for you learned when you were like three and sometimes people have I had lots of clients to whom no one ever paid any attention and they needed like 10,000 hours of attention and some of that was just listening cuz they had 10,000 hours of conversations they never had with anyone and they were all tangled up in their head and

they had to just one client in particular I worked with this person for 15 years and what she wanted from me was for me just to shut the hell up for 50 minutes which is very hard for me and to just tell me what had happened to her and then what happened at the end of the conversation then I could discuss a bit with her and then as we we progressed through the years the amount of time that we spent in discussion increased in proportion in the sessions until by the time we stopped seeing each

other when my clinical practice collapsed we were talking about 80% of the time but she literally she had never been attended to properly ever and so she was an uncarved Block in the dowest sense right she hadn't been subjected to those flaming swords that separated the wheat from the chaff and so you can do that in therapy if you're listening and you're depressed I would say if you can't find a therapist and that's getting harder and harder CU it's actually become illegal to be a therapist now because you have to agree with your clients which

is a terrible thing to do with them just like it's terrible just arbitrary oppose them you could do the self-authoring program online because it helps you write an autobiography and so if you have memories that are more than 18 months old that bother you when you think them up part of you is locked inside that an un developed part of you is still trapped in that that's a metaphorical way of thinking about that's why it still has emotional significance so you can write about your past experiences but I would say wait for at least 18

months if something bad has happened to you because otherwise you just hurt yourself again by encountering it you can bring yourself up to date with an autobiography there's an analysis of faults and virtues that's the present authoring and then there's a uh guided writing exercise that helps you make a future plan that's young men who do that could go to college young men who do that 90 minutes just the future authoring 90 minutes they're 50% less likely to drop out that's all it takes like I had clients who were so depressed they literally couldn't get

out of bed so what's their first step it's like can you sit up once today no can you prop yourself up on your elbows once today like you just you scale back the dragon till you find one that's conquerable that moves you forward there's a there's a rubric for Life scale back the dragons till you find one conquerable and it'll give you a little bit of goal commensurate with the struggle but the plus side of that cuz that's you think that God that's depressing you may not have to start by sitting up while you do

if you can't sit up but the the plus side of that is it's the Paro distribution issue is that Aggregates exponentially increase and failures do too by the way but Aggregates exponentially increase so once you start the ball rolling it can get zipped been along pretty good this person that I talked about um was incapable of sitting with me in a cafe when we first met just talking even though I was her therapist but by the end she was doing stand-up comedy so you know it took years but still most people won't do standup comedy

that's that's quite the bloody achievement she she would read her poetry on stage too so for someone who was petrified fight into paralysis by social anxiety and who had to start very small it was a hell of an accomplishment we should make a very clear uh distinction here that often when people are embittered and resentful and feel like their victims it's because really awful things have happened to them now not always but often and so then the question is well if you're in a situation and something really awful is happened to you or has happened

to you then well why shouldn't you feel like a victim and is there a better alternative and part of what you are trying to lay out in this part of the book is what those better alternatives are so part of looking for that hero is to find out from someone else's example in your case it was your mother but these other sources that you described of people who were in a sort of Hell in an undeniable sense but who chose in a very real way to make it as good as it could possibly be given

the circumstances and so they had to turn to sources of power let's say and strength and fortitude and resilience that weren't in some sense obviously associated with the catastrophe I mean it in your mother's case it's pretty tragic situation she's young mother she has young kids now she has breast cancer and she fights a losing battle over a period of 5 years that's pretty bad and then you have to ask yourself given that that's obviously pretty bad how is it even possible that someone could handle that with not only Grace and courage but the kind

of Grace and courage that leaves their children with an un what would you call an an immovable sense of the ability to Prevail in the face of the deepest adversity I mean that's really something you said here thousands have come before you and they did just fine so quit your complaining and it's not because you have nothing to complain about that's not the case it's that that's not the right approach the fact is and this is such an optimistic fact as well as a judgment in some sense the fact is that if someone else can

do it so can you and that's something right if you're reading about the great heroes in history people who are in these terrible situations and you see someone rise to the occasion and then you can say well that was a person who did that and I'm a person and so maybe I have that capacity too even though I don't know how to approach it and then some of the rest of your book much of the rest of your book I would say in some sense is a guide to help people figure out how they could

approach that one of the things you you point out first is well pick notice who you admire and then maybe try consciously practicing becoming like that it's known from multiple Dimensions simultaneously that the system that produces happiness let's say in the founder sense produces that emotion in relationship to the observation of movement towards valued goal and so so you can derive some conclusions from that the first is that without a goal there's no Happiness by definition because happiness marks movement towards a valued goal the next is well the higher the goal the more value there

is in the observation of movement towards it and so out of that you might ask well then what's the highest goal because why don't we go for that well then you could say well you should do your best for the best he might say well that's just to make me hedonically happy it's like well wait a second you know cocaine will work for that cuz idia actually even activates this system but what about tomorrow and next week and next month and so the problem with Hedonism as a goal is first of all it vanishes when

you're suffering but even failing that if you're serving yourself hedonically in the narrow sense it's just about me and my pleasure it's like okay which you today's you tomorrow's you next week's you next month's you what about next year 5 years from now 10 years from now you're going to lead a honic and dissolute life and what are you going to be a burnt out shell and a wreck a dismal wreck in 10 years cuz that's what'll happen and so if you don't construe yourself as a community stretched out across time then you're not even

serving yourself and if you do construe yourself as a community stretched across time then serving other people and serving yourself turn out to be exactly the same thing I just did a course on The Sermon on the Mount and Christ in one of the uh one of the sections of that sermon he says to people that you shouldn't lose your saltiness you shouldn't lose your Savor and and you're the salt of the earth and without that salt everything loses its flavor and salt is a preservative and it's a spice and that's often uh conceptualize that

phrase as referring to the salt of the earth you know the solid reliable types who Bear all burdens but that is not what it means I looked at a lot of different translations I talked to a lot of people about that verse and really what it means is well there should be some spiciness and unpredictability and humor about you and there's should be some play in the system right because that's what stops you from just being the narrow dead past letter of the law with no Spirit there should be some snake inside the tree right

there should be some fire inside the bush those are all ways of of construing that that are symbolically equivalent there should be some dynamism in you and a fair bit of that's associated with well enthusiasm that's fun but enthusiasm means to be imbued with the spirit of God that's why people like comedians so much too because that's what they do and so you have to leave the duty with humor and you your book does a lovely job of that too because your book which is very conservative book in in the best possible way and is

a call to duty and responsibility but you constantly return to themes of both stoicism and humor which are tied together in some sense you know I I was just in New Finland for the last week doing a documentary there and new finland's a rough Rock and it's beautiful harsh and the people there are tough and resilient man cuz they had to be and NES have a great sense of humor and they're always making fun and that that's a necessary Lev right that that that that ability to deal with serious matters in a light T in

a light with a light touch and it's something I'm trying to learn to do more and more even in the most serious of conversations you know to cuz if you're a master you've got both you you've got that light touch and that sense of humor you really see that in military people who've been through rough situations when you see someone in the depths of genuine suffering hopefully what you're trying to do is to throw a lifeline and one possible Lifeline is compassion and that's probably the right right Lifeline to throw an infant you know who's

suffering that sort of overwhelming compassion but for someone who is an adult or or making progress towards being an adult the lifeline that might be thrown is there's something within you that would let you be more than you are and much more and maybe enough more so that you could actually deal with this suffering so it didn't turn into hell and take everything along with it and that's there isn't anything more optimistic than that you say something here which I think is extremely I'm going to read something from your book here it is true that

character is to some EXT stent innate I would say what that does is that it provides each of us with a range of talents and a r range of Temptations and it's something like that so it's the hand we're dealt and there's certainly a genetic element to that our genetic makeup imbues in US certain proclivities but it is as true that character is mostly a consequence of choices strangely enough we all make them and we should make them deliberately with the knowledge that these choices are part of our responsibility toward a purpose other than our

own selfish aims that responsibility is to your family friends community and country that's something that conservatives put forward as uh a pathway to Virtue you know and what's so interesting about that as far as I'm concerned as an antidote to atomistic liberalism let's say that hyper privileges the individual is that it's definitely been my observation as a clinical psychologist that in the depths of Misery the capability that you have to be of service to other people your family your friends your community your country that's actually a Saving Grace under such circumstances you know and that

people really find a deep and abiding meaning in that service so it's not just finger wagging and the pointing towards Duty it's like no no you don't understand that if you're in Desperate Straits if your life has falling apart if you're nihilistic and miserable and maybe you have your bloody reasons because maybe you do that's still the case that if you step outside yourself and you try to make the lives of other people better that's the best possible thing that you can do for yourself [Music] [Music]