Jordan Peterson: STOP LYING TO YOURSELF! How To Turn Your Life Around In 2024!

Sometimes it can seem like men and women in a relationship want completely different things, as if they are struggling to communicate and connect on the same level over the same set of priorities. Jordan will now explain exactly why, but outside of the context of a relationship. We all struggle in our lives for a variety of different reasons and what Jordan is particularly good at is telling anyone who's listening to this right now that you're struggling in some way or you're in a situation where you're struggling to get out and go out. of that situation step by step how to do it how to

turn

that situation into the biggest success of

your

life

and that's why I loved this conversation and why I think you're going to love it too and before this episode starts, I have A Please take 10 seconds to ask

your

self that you are listening to this right now.

About 62% of people listening to this podcast haven't hit the subscribe button yet. If you could do me any favor, it would be to just hit that subscribe button. The button helps this channel enormously and if you do it for me, I promise with my team to do everything possible to make this program better and better for you. We have a deal, enjoy the episode. Jordan. We had a conversation before and he arrived. tens of millions of people and as I was going through the feedback and comments from that conversation I found one that really caught my attention someone said I only had a few days of will left in my body I felt like a failure I hadn't reached the potential I knew I had I had it in me despite the effort I couldn't become the person I was so desperate to become and then I found Jordan and his unfiltered words pulled me out of my darkest moment just in time now my

life

is in my hands once again and I have built a career and a life that I am proud of so thank you Jordan, we may never meet but you saved my life and my children still have their father because of you.

It's a huge impact you've had on that one person's life, how do you get such amazing feedback from a stranger you've never met? When you were reading that, you know. I'm serious, it's obviously a very positive thing to hear, but my mind immediately went to why that is. In this case, I have been in the fortunate position of being able to synthesize and then communicate centuries of clinical research and experience collected by many, many extremely intelligent and careful people, and what I have managed to put together. reasonably educated in the broader scope of the humanities and sciences let's say and the effect that this individual is attributing to me as a consequence of that right I have been successful because I have been a conduit of good ideas and I have the ability to Synthesize a lot of information and communicate it to people in a way that is understandable.

The person who made that comment you know was struggling for one reason or another and one of the things you do with people who are struggling is do the simple thing. even simpler because then they can hold on to the toe, you know, if they really could barely move. I had a client, you know it was H, he had a difficult life, he was like 85 years old, he had fallen off a ladder and his neck was broken and permanently fused together, so basically he was like this, he could barely move, he was so depressed that he literally couldn't get out of bed you know it was horrible and he was in chronic pain due to his broken neck etc.

You know, the first thing I did with him was get him to sit for about 30 seconds, that was it, that's where he had to start. You know, and after working with him, when I was in the hospital, after two weeks, I was walking down the street. hall and able to sit and read for five or six minutes and he left the hospital, he went home and he had to start with the simplest steps possible and hey man, start, this is the definition of humility in some ways. is that you start to progress, where can you start.

I think about this a lot because there are a lot of people who are objectively or subjectively depressed in their lives, that's how they feel, and it's often too intimidating to introduce them to the idea of ​​climbing Mt. Today's Everest is a proverbial M Everest like just getting up and going to the gym and working out and being healthy and yeah, no, that's not going to happen, it's like putting them at the foot of Mount Everest, but the little commitments that we keep with ourselves are often really undervalued because they seem so trivial like if you say well, that's casual contempt, that's another aspect of it, well, one of the really hard things to learn when you're depressed is how low you are because it's humiliating, you know?

I was sick recently and when I started to recover I really couldn't I couldn't button my shirt I had to learn to do it again I did it I had forgotten how to put my hands on the keyboard I didn't know where to put my hands I had to learn to type again now I don't I had lost all consciousness and I regained it pretty quickly but and the reason I say this is because one of the impediments for people who have really taken a hit in their life is that things around them have fallen apart so much that Where do they have to start is humiliating to even consider the rule.

It's a pretty simple rule when you want to get back on your feet and the rule is that you have to make the task small enough. so you do it no matter how small it is, you know and that can and I've worked with people. I mean, one of the things that I'm known for is my advice to start by cleaning your room, but I had a lot of clients that couldn't, couldn't go home and clean their room, they hadn't cleaned their room for like 20 years for all kinds of reasons, maybe because every time they tried to do something positive in their family, they failed.

No matter what it was, they were immediately punished and undermined, so if they even re

turn

ed home and dared to start cleaning the room, they would face resistance within the family, which was just a manifestation of the 50,000 times they had met. discouraged in the past. but also a move that would alter the madness that characterized the pattern of family interaction actions, and in reality, when they even made a move to clean their room, what they were simultaneously doing was confronting the family dragon that had made each person. . in that crazy household for like five generations, so it seems simple, it's not fucking simple, and in a situation like that you cut it so that maybe the first thing they do is clean, like they look in a drawer and see the mess. that's there and just look at it for a minute and think about how they could reorganize it if they did when people are very depressed and decide to move forward somehow, facing the whole panoply of problems. that confront them under the guise of that one problem, right, everything is lurking behind it, right, it's like you know they see the tip of a reptile's tail outside a gigantic closet, let's say, and they look and think, well , that's just the tip of a tail.

What harm can it do to me? But it's connected to the whole damn Beast and the advantage of that is that if you take that first step forward you're actually moving forward in the face of all that opposition, the disadvantage is that the first task seems so small that you literally have to agree. knees to be humble enough to bend down and take that first step. You know, God, that's all I can do. I'm so useless that you might even be more useless than that because I might fail. He had many clients who would return. You know, we would make a deal that they would do something simple.

I remember a client is such a comical story in a terribly dark way. You know he was an overgrown baby and He was 30 years old, still living at home in his messy high school room, under the control of his mother, conveniently for him CU, so he never had to do anything and he managed to attract a girl to sleep with him and now she got pregnant. he is going to have a child and he had enough common sense to come to me and say: you know, I am kind of a wasil and I have ruined my life, but maybe I would like not to destroy this child, so is there something I can do ?

I could do to compose myself so you know that we talk and we negotiate, which is what you do with a client, if you're sensible, you know, first you raise the problem, okay, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you think you have to listen? and listen and listen well, the person reveals everything that could be wrong, puts all his cards on the table and then you review them and think well, some of it even he himself will discover, some of it is not really the point. problem and then you imagine that they put all the cards on the table and then you get rid of 90% of them it is a symptom it is a symptom yes yes it doesn't really bother me now that I've talked about it, that doesn't seem key.

I think I'm done with that which is not interesting to me, but they're still going to have to lay it all out and then you focus on the problem and then the next thing you think is. ask them if it's something cool. The general problem solving strategy is fine, if this could be better as far as you are concerned, how would it look better and then they have to lay their cards on the table about it so that you do the same and now you have the diagnosis that It is the statement of the problem and now you have a hypothetical cure, let's say, and now you need a correct strategy and those would be the steps between the problem and the final destination, then you divide the steps until you find a solution.

The step that the person will take will have to be done experimentally, so the first step for him was to vacuum the carpet in his room and this is literally what he did. He brought the vacuum cleaner, it was a stand up vacuum cleaner. He brought it to his room but he only got as far as the threshold and then he came out at 45° late out the door leaning over and walked on it for a whole week and then he had to come back and tell me you know and he was embarrassed, he said You know, I left the vacuum cleaner. right at the door and left her there, instead of taking her to my room.

You just know that I put an obstacle in my way and I went through it for a whole week, it's very humiliating. CU, he knew his life was at stake and he knew his son's life was at stake and he knew he was a useless bastard for not being able to get that vacuum cleaner into the room, you know, but the proper interpretation of that is partly good. , you took the damn thing out of the closet, didn't you know? So what we did was we renegotiated this is technically called this is called collaborative empiricism it's a behavioral approach for doctors and collaboration is good like I said what is the diagnosis of the problem what is the possible solution the person has to agree With all this, I mean, they have to be the people who decide that this is the problem, you can't impose that, they have to discover it for themselves and the same with the solution and the same with the strategies, it's like I don't know what is right for you.

Listen, we can jointly explore what the right vision might be for you and then we can break it down into a strategy, but you have to be on board. with the strategy you have to feel like this is right for you, it's absolutely 100% crucial that it's voluntary and then we'll say okay, maybe this is a solution, why don't you come back next week after you've tried this? let's see how it went, you know, and sometimes people come back and say, well, you know, that was great and it started me off and I did three other things and you know it looks like we're on the right track and sometimes they come back and say no. that didn't work at all like with the vacuum cleaner, so you have to think that what you do in that situation is make the task smaller if you make it small enough.

I've never seen anyone who couldn't progress if they made the task small enough, but you know that can be quite humiliating. The good thing is that once you've taken the first step, you'll look the beast in the face and start progressing not linearly but exponentially in speed, so the good thing is that it doesn't really matter how small the first step is because it will start to double. and anything that is duplicated will grow incredibly fast, so it's also very useful to know and that's true when you learn something new, it's like you do it. You will feel like an imposter, you will feel like a fool because you are and you will think that I will never get there and the destination may seem very far away, but if you take a small enough first step and you get the ball.

By rolling, you can move forward at a pretty good pace, usually faster than you think. What is happening in one's psychology. Is it generating evidence of your own capabilities? Definitely what seems to happen when you expose people to small but challenging tasks. It does two things, it makes them more skilled because now they are actually dealing with the problem and therefore they are acquiring new insights and new behaviors which are Mastery, so they are actually expanding their mastery of conceptual structures and actions, that It is both. conception and ability, but at the same time they see themselves as actors who can change the direction of their lives, for example, when you do exposure therapy with people who have phobias, overwhelm is probably the best example, so the Overwhelm is a condition in which people generally feel so terrified bylife that they often literally cannot leave their house.

If they leave their house, their anxiety levels rise to the point where they have a panic attack, which is like the complete disinhibition of the ORF flight system. Very overwhelming experience. People will go out and have a panic attack and then they will avoid the place where they had the panic attack but then the probability of the panic attack starts to spread so that wherever they go they will have a panic attack and then they end up stuck at home and it's a pretty common condition now people who develop it usually They are women and that is because women are more sensitive to anxiety than men, they are generally women who had an overly dependent relationship with their parents Maybe particularly their father, they are generally women who went from their father to a boyfriend who was authoritarian and overprotective or was lured to become that by the person's dependence on the victim and then imagine that you are dependent.

Young woman, you haven't learned to stand on your two feet every time you had a problem, you were taught to seek Authority, you took refuge behind the protective walls someone else had set up for you, you married someone like that, now he's dead or you. You're getting divorced or something that wall is starting to come down, so all that existential panic starts to build up, you start to panic when you go out and you end up at home unable to move and thinking you're the only person in the world. who is suffering in that way and then what you do is you find out, do a problem analysis and find out their main fears and what agrh bics are often afraid of elevators and that is quite convenient because you know that there are elevators everywhere so that You can start to get them to face their fear of elevators, so how do you do it right if they're really terrified? in the elevator, okay, now imagine being 20 feet away from it, how do you feel?

They'll tell you they're nervous, you know, they're afraid of getting stuck in the elevator, they're afraid of having a heart. They are afraid of being there with other people who see them panic and have a heart attack and be humiliated, so the two big categories of fears for people are like a painful death and then public humiliation and if you have a very A good anxiety fantasy is that you're going to die a painful death in a very humiliating way and that's what you imagine happens in the elevator, so it's not exactly that you're afraid of the elevator, right? fear of death and humiliation and the elevator a portal to the realm of death and humiliation it's like being afraid of an elevator okay, how afraid can you be?

You could look at an elevator from 100 meters down the hall, well, as if it were. At 100 yards instead of 125 yards, you will find a threshold that the person can tolerate. Well, now you are at the threshold where the magnitude of your confidence exactly matches the size of the apparent Dragon, that's how it feels. which is like there's a place where your fear they'll say it's close enough it's like okay now you're on the edge you're on the edge so now we'll dance on the edge we'll move your foot forward okay? so let's move a foot forward, okay, anything NE negative will happen, well, I'm feeling a little nervous, okay, let's stay here for a while, keep your eyes on the elevator, don't hide, because you can avoid it just by not looking and we do this all the time we look away and the bigger the dragon the more likely we are to look away you know people don't like to look and you can understand why people look away at atrocities , TRUE? and they will certainly take their eyes off the idea that they could take part in an atrocity and you could think of that as Heart of Darkness, it's not because you could look at the fact that you could take Glee in the commission of an atrocity. and nobody wants to look at that, well, you start and you have to look at that, you have to look at that in the final analysis, but step by step, you know, and you can do it with any problem, literally, with any problem. break it down break it down break it down public speaking anything go to the gym anything a little dose you know a little dose and it's a lot of fun doing this with people it's the same thing you do when you're when you're When you're cheering up your little one and that's a source The main source of gratification for human beings is to push someone to the limit and encourage them, and you do that as a doctor, so I loved being a doctor because you know people say well, how can you?

You know how you tolerate listening to people's problems well first of all they are not your problems you have to understand that because if they are your problems you are stealing that person's problems you know why you could reach me, especially people who, as you know , they are very unsophisticated, they can come and talk to someone like an experienced doctor, someone whose knowledge exceeds theirs by a substantial margin and that person can just give them advice, but then they put it into practice and then That's not them, they have to do it themselves. This brings me to the point of trying to help the people in your life because we all have people in our lives who are struggling in some way and our instinctive response is to go in there and fix this is a problem that men often have when dealing with women, yes they jump to the problem solving phase and they also do it in some way to avoid it and this is what bothers women because what women want and I don't even know but this is what women want .

Women are more sensitive to threats than men. Okay, so they're looking for predators. Predation detection is now an intuition. Anxiety is an intuition. Something's wrong. Well, then you guess right. So imagine that the threat system has something in its sights, but it's a feeling that something is not right, but it's not fully developed because the snakes are well camouflaged, so the threat is well hidden. What the woman wants is to expose everything. the things that could be wrong, okay, well, the guy doesn't want that because, first of all, you know that maybe your wife is upset about something in the relationship with your kids and she doesn't know what it is, so now she has to go through everything.

She thinks that might be wrong, well, even for you to hear that is going to be difficult because some of those things are going to be about you, so you have to shut up and let her put her cards on the table, understanding now. . she has to do it in good faith, right, she can't take that opportunity to poke you, so these things are difficult to handle, but you want to listen to her, put all the cards on the table, now the advantage is you. Now you know where all the snakes are hidden. If you do that, what you will discover, and she will too, is that most of the things that worry her, she don't actually worry about, she won't know until she lays them out on the floor. table and you can see them and then you can both triangulate with the real problem and then you can negotiate a solution and offer help, but if you jump right in to help, the reason you can't do that is because you probably have the problem. wrong, so let's go back to your question about helping, one of the most effective things you can do to help people is listen and there are technologies for listening, so the first is to not assume that neither you nor the person who is speaking understands you. they know. what is the problem, it is very difficult once you have the specified problem, IED, you have solved like 95% of the problem, that is, the diagnosis move is really difficult, are we sure that we are addressing the most crucial problem?

You have to have your sites focused. Right at the center point of the Cross, just like a gun site, it's like we're aiming at the right target and then you can start negotiating the solution to the problem, but you can develop the patience to do that once you understand that. That initial active listening is in itself the most useful thing you can do, just listen and then how do you listen? Well, if I listen to you, there will be times when what you say doesn't make sense, and so on. I'll just say, well, you're saying this now, but you said it five minutes ago and if you listen a lot, you can learn to follow conversations over a very long period of time and it's really funny, you said this but then you said this. and they don't like it they seem contradictory to me you are not accusing the person you say I see an inconsistency in the way you are formulating the problem and they get a little scared and then they try to rectify that they will check you to see if you are insulting them or trying to play a trick moral superiority game first, but if it's just an honest question, then you're actually helping them present a description of the situation that isn't internally contradictory.

Okay, and great podcasters do this. You see this with Rogan. You know, all Rogan does is ask stupid questions, M, and the way he does it is by consulting his own ignorance with humility. Rogan is listening, he's thinking I'm a stupid LK boss. and I don't understand this what you mean and what is that is brave because he is exposing his own ignorance but he is honest because he doesn't understand but it also unites him with his audience because especially with someone like Rogan the probability in this time that if Rogan doesn't get the gist of the conversation that 95% of your audience doesn't understand it's like 100% can't overstate the importance of listening, listen, ask questions until you understand and in doing so, also help the other person clarify the situation, it's very difficult to do and I think we have to pause on that step because, as you said, that is 95% of the challenge, it is very difficult to achieve in labor relations.

I literally sat at this table with a colleague of mine about a year ago and she was telling me that she worked at one of my companies, she was telling me that she was unhappy with her position and I remember sitting here and she gave me a bunch of reasons and I kept asking and asking questions and after just 30 minutes of asking the questions she had decided that, in fact, everything I had just said was not the problem and then she related to a much more fundamental question of meaning right there. It works well, look, look, okay, that's very important, that's very important.

Yung called that a bypass, okay, so now he imagines the threat system is working fine, he's saying something's wrong, something's wrong, but it's just that it's a primal predator. Predator detection. Instinct, that's what it's being. activated is not high resolution is not capable of high resolution conceptual formulation not to start with something is wrong something is wrong something is wrong is right what maybe this maybe this maybe this maybe this maybe this maybe this is well now what happens is the Mayes Circle and it spirals to the right and as you expose them you spiral into the essence of the matter, but you have to see because you can imagine that while this woman is explaining her problems to you, she is talking about things about the company and her relationship with the company that might be disturbing to you, so you're sitting there thinking, well, she's stating her problems, maybe you're getting defensive, well, that's not true. , the company is better than that, that is an unfair accusation, so you sit on the spot and also want to intervene. with your you know with your solution because you want to show that you are bigger than the problem she is showing or maybe you are secretly attracted to her and want to be a white knight.

I mean, there may be 50 things you are. Sitting there thinking about what you're going to say next because you want to play dominance or maybe you think that's what you should do because you're a boss and it's like there are a lot of things that will interfere with listening. But, then you learn, you say, just shut up, ask stupid questions until the person you are listening to has specified the problem now, if you are very lucky, you will both become that and it will be clear, think, oh, you and you pointed this out, This is what it's really about now the person may also be discovering that they resisted that conclusion, they know it because the fundamental threat is more key to their self-esteem than to their conception of themselves and then they allowed it.

To get comfortable before they get to the real point, which is where they will be most vulnerable, they will throw out a bunch of concerns on screen just to see if they can be trusted with something that reveals their vulnerability and they are even doing that to themselves, it's Like I dare tell the truth about this situation because I've betrayed myself before so maybe not, you're so right, they test you on the path to the truth to see if you're okay. They will answer yes and they are also testing themselves and you know it and you can facilitate it.

If you facilitate this by listening calmly, then you will be modeling the fact that whatever hell they have a problem with is not as scary as you are. to avoid it and run away, yeah right, it's very interesting what was actually revealed because this person who works on one of my marketing teams at a different company where there is a CEO told me that it's the job they were doing that was causing them were the iies and that's the reason they wanted to leave etc. and I asked them the question afterabout 30 minutes, when was it? The time you were happiest in the business, they revealed to me that the time they were happiest was when they were with me abroad at the beginning and what that really revealed at its core was that There had been a change in the business. proximity to me and the real meaning of the work and now they felt like they were doing trivial things.

Their happiest time was when they were by my side doing the most important things, so the hardest problems were solving the hardest problems when they were the most challenged and they were, so really the solution wasn't what they thought was the solution. and now they actually text me. Last night I sent the message to one of my team members saying I just don't want to. to maintain his identity, so let's say they were with me in Canada. They texted me when they were happiest. They texted me last night saying, "I feel like Canada, Jenny again." bigger challenges, so they wanted to be closer to the front line, as it turned out when Freud first developed psychotherapy, he developed this free association technique, okay, all free association is and this is why people put, put, Freud put people on the Couch and sit behind them, see if I'm face to face with you and I'm designing the problem space.

Just what you are indicating to me with your face could prevent me from fully revealing the truth because you might pose me. an eyebrow or there will be a micro um expression of disgust or contempt or you will look away or because I'm going to be evaluating you to see how you are reacting morally to my Revelations so Freud just hid himself and and and I don't think it's strictly necessary, but it's a very wise intuition and you can imagine how useful that would be so now I think the trade off is that you can signal to someone you are talking to that they want to openly receive the message they are receiving is just that and kids love this.

One of the things kids do all the time is test you to see if you are paying attention and they will modify their behavior in any way imaginable to get attention. no, it's because there is no difference between attention and love, by the way, there is no difference and so I don't think you have to hide from your client, but that's why Freud did it now, what Freud noticed and the psychoanalysts noticed is that if letting people freely associate the topics they chose would be linked to each other that reminds me of this that reminds me of this now obviously because people don't just make random noises there is a reason why the things that are revealing are linked there is some implicit similarity what they are striving for now often what will happen if you listen to your wife, for example, she is exposing a lot of problems and it will spiral, it will remind her of something this strange that happened with Freud, if you came to the Essentially, it would remind people of something that happened to them much earlier in their lives and often of something that was traumatic.

A trauma is a problem that you encounter in your life that is quite deep, so it worries you that you don't solve it, so it's like you imagine that in your bedroom there were holes through which you could fall, you know, into trouble, and That's why you want to make a map of where all the holes are so you can walk through them. landscape without falling into the well now it would be better if you just fixed the holes but at least you have the landscape well laid out a trauma is a a trauma is a hole that has not been filled and then maybe you if you had done it a trauma when you were four years, you hit a wall and you couldn't resolve the trauma, that's no different than not growing up in relation to that problem, so what you have at hand are the only tools you develop when you are four now, then you might find

yourself

in a situation where that reminds you of that, for example, someone might say: I had a problem with my boss.

I have a recurring problem with my boss and then you hear him say that reminds me exactly what my father did. When you know, in this situation as a child, the reason the person reacts to his boss in a negative way is because he is using the same conceptual structure that he used to interpret his father when he was four years old. . You'll see this in marriages all the time, like if you have a recurring problem with your partner, that's what you can't really understand now, it could be your fixation on some stage of development, that's the problem, like she's interacting with you. in a way that provokes your 13 year old self constantly, but she may also be reacting to you in a way that provokes her 13 year old self and so on, but if you listen to her, she will get to that and then she will tell you the story. and then sometimes she'll be able to figure out what to do about it on her own or sometimes you'll have to discuss it, but it almost always results in tears and I think the reason for that is thinking about what's going on.

It is when people burst into tears, then children cry very often and they cry when they encounter an impediment that they cannot overcome and I believe that what tears do is dissolve you in the state of neurological plasticity that characterizes Early Childhood so that you can learn Now people don't like that, right, that reversal is humiliating, but you know you have to break up, that's crying, crying is an indication that the current conceptual structure is insufficient, it has to die, then the tears come out well and then now you. We are neurologically prepared to learn something new and that will be what emerges from the discussion and that will replace that old conceptual structure that is obsolete and immature with a new somewhat fragile concept.

Cal structure, and then the person will try it on a couple. In many cases, like maybe you, this is something that you have, it's like something that just came up. You have to be very careful when negotiating with your partner because you know that they may decide to try a new tactic that you both agreed to, but the first 30 times they implemented that new tactic. Firstly, they won't do it very well because it's new, and secondly, if you punish it, it will kill it immediately. Yes, so you are describing my relationship. very precisely because I'm someone who's in the middle, so what's my type of attachment style?

I grew up in a home where my parents fought a lot with each other, fought and argued, so I learned very early that relationships are like a prison. right, so I wanted Compromise. I ran away from commitment my whole life. I knew someone who had an opposite attachment style where whenever things get a little difficult, she wants to hold on in the sense that she really wants to make sure that I have it. my attention, yes, for example, I could come home and say a word that shows that I am focused on my work and then suddenly she seeks my attention, which makes me want to run and she wants to chase me, and so on.

She'll know that she'll get triggered and then she'll pull back and quote, as the word sulk is often used, um, so we came up with a system where I told her that when you feel triggered by me, don't. giving you the attention you want and we end up in a spiral, can you try to tell me as soon as possible? Yes, instead of 7 hours of silence, yes. That was the mechanism that we came up with and then the first time she did that. Like you said, I was very conscious of making sure that I didn't react badly or that I was provoked correctly, so you're describing the process that I've gone through completely, yeah, well, this happens, this happens to everyone and those. those suks, let's say it's a nonverbal threat response, right, and you want to replace that with a more differentiated and more immediate practical strategy, you know, so you know one of the things I've seen, for example, with my wife. is that, um, the periods of time that you get angry shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink because you can go from the problem to the verbalizable statement of the problem and the solution much faster, but that requires just continuous practice. , continuous attention, it's like oh I'm upset, okay, well why am I upset, here are a bunch of things I could be upset about, which of them are focal like this?

It's something you can learn, you know, but you have to admit that you're upset and you also have to understand that you don't know why because one of the things that will happen in a marriage with any close relationship is like you and I talk and we get to a well, I would prefer it that way. your fault is true because then you have to take the conceptual structure and you have to let yourself die and you have to cry and you have something to learn and it is you and it is an indication that you are insufficient, it is much more convenient for me if it is Also, I feel morally superior and I have myself under control and, you know, I have dominated the universe and also women, in a way, also want that from men because they want men to be competent and that's why men will pretend to be competent. being more competent than them is like you want to find out what the problem is because then you can solve it and one of the things you have to consider is that you are the problem, maybe you are not, but maybe you are now you could say well why you should suffer the cataclysmic Revelation that you are the problem and the answer is because you could

stop

being the problem as if that were the reward because you could say well why why take care of your wife why fight and the The answer is so that You don't have to fight again.

I know, so I'm a very nice person. I don't like conflicts. I would do almost anything to not cover it up, even though that's what needs to be fixed. But the reason I will engage in conflict is because I know it is not a theory. I know that delayed conflict is multiplied conflict and therefore if I have a problem with someone, I want to write it down, put it on the table. Get to the bottom of it, fix it and move on, and there's a, you know, there's a lot of emotional stress involved and complex reconceptualization and retooling, and people prefer to avoid it because you know you get home from work and your mind is on something. whatever it is and then this kind of snake shows up and you're like, do we really have to deal with this now?

Well, maybe and if not, now, when, and that's something you can negotiate too. You know, I can give you an example of. So there was a time, for a long time, when my daughter was incredibly sick and she was suffering brutally and deteriorating at the same time and that is overwhelming by definition because a problem that you can't solve is overwhelming and then the question arises: how do you you can deal with a problem that is overwhelming and that you can't solve without making it worse, so one of the things that Tammy and I did was set rules, it's like we don't talk about Michaela after 8:00 at night, she was right off the table because we knew well are you going to sleep?

You're going to need some sleep tonight if we're going to fight this for decades we better not wear ourselves out well, how not to wear it out well, let's make some rules they're like negotiation rules and you can do this. This is good advice to the extent that you can give people advice about a relationship. Here's something you need to understand about your marriage. Okay, you'll have to listen to your wife 90 minutes a day. week, okay and you might as well understand that in your thick skull now. Because if you listen to it enough you can make peace and you can play?

So there is a huge benefit if you don't listen to her, that will add up and listen to her in divorce court like you will eventually listen to her and at some point you will pay for the privilege of doing it right because there will be other people involved and then the backlog will be so high that you may never be able to escape it. Because? Men don't like to listen well often because inadequacies are pointed out to them, you know and and sometimes especially if the woman say and this can go both ways, let's be sure of this, but we could also revoke revert. to stereotypes and I think it's fair because women are more sensitive to threats, so they are more likely to bring up problems.

That is the disadvantage is that they mention problems that do not exist because it is a false positive, but the advantage is that they mention problems before you are sensitive enough to see them, so this is very important if you think about the role of women , the woman is closer to the baby than you are, okay, so you know you're doing whatever you're doing. concentrating on your career, you know not, especially when the baby is less than a year old, now you are one step away and well, you may be dealing with the outside world, but she is concentrating on the little children and one of the things you want to do. hearing from her is what the hell happens to kids before you're wise enough to see it now, the price you pay for that is that she might be failing at things that don't exist, so you know, and this is especially true if your wife has a high level of neuroticism and it could be true if the husband has it too, but like I said, that's the most stereotypical situation, so why listen to get to the sign now?

Will you receive the signal? Yes, although she may not be very good at it and it may take a lot of listening, but if you listen enough, sheIt will get better and better until it becomes really good and then the time between the emergence of the problem and the solution will simply collapse to the point where it is virtually immediate, now that can require a very high level of mastery which can take a long time, but then you know you also want to present to your wife and yourself the proposition that you are better than you are, which is okay, I can, okay, I understand the problem, I can solve it it's like no, you probably don't understand the problem and Even if you understood it, it's not necessarily the case that you could figure it out and so you have to put up with the fact that you're going to have to be dragged through the mud, uh, because she'll point out to you, you know, that maybe her kids are angry because you're a tyrant and You're probably a tyrant to some extent, you know, you walk around overconfident and all that, so she's going to give you a good smack, maybe that's how you're stupid and maybe that's how You're stupid and maybe that's just how you are.

There is a long list of potential and actual ways you could be stupid, so you have to listen to that, now your wife has to act in good faith. You know one of the things Tammy and I did when we first got married because I thought a lot. about this before we got married I said look, do you know if we are going to do this you have to tell me the truth I don't care what you are I will tell you the truth but you have to tell me the truth, I don't care what the truth is, but it has to be true, and Without that you don't get anywhere and you can't trust your partner either, so your partner has to be totally involved, that's why you have a marriage.

I vow because the marriage vow is basically this, this is the vow, no matter what you tell me, I won't run away and that's a vow, man, because when someone reveals their whole heart, they reveal themselves to hell, don't they. nice is horrible and that's why they need to know that you won't run away and that's a vote because what do you know? Look, the person will always be always thinking, if you really knew who I was, you wouldn't love me, you wouldn't. stay with me and you know, hey, it's fair because people are full of snakes and if all those snakes were revealed maybe the logical thing would be to run and then maybe you couldn't say well, why not run, it's like well. you want to run away from everyone for the rest of your life you want to give up the benefits of a permanent relationship and you are also full of snakes so you are both making a bad bet and therefore you make the bad bet based on the idea that If you are faithful and sincere, you can solve problems and you can do it, it is a good business to solve problems.

A lot of what you've talked about goes back to childhood trauma and things that happen in our formative years. I often wonder. Those holes in the bedroom floor, you describe the first traumas. By the way, they are often on the bedroom floor. Yeah, you bet, can we ever fill them or can we just put wooden boards on top? Oh, no, no, no, no, you can't. put wooden planks on them, you have to fill them in and what you do, oh, and you can do this, you know, let's say you were bullied repeatedly as a child, okay, they're probably still bul

lying

you because if you didn't. a victim of bul

lying

is a stable trait, which is why Dan Olis's big analysis of bullies in Sweden did this.

He was a great psychologist, he analyzed bullying behavior and the behavior of the bullying victim, so we defined bullying very carefully. You're a bully if you use it. power disproportionately, so if I'm 12 and I'm picking on someone my size, I'm not a bully, right? Because the risk for me is proportional to the risk for them, that is just aggression, it is just competition and even if it is violent it is not harassment, a stalker is when I am 12 years old and you are eight or when there are two of us and you are one or when I put you In a position where you are completely vulnerable and unable to defend yourself using disproportionate force, the bully's right victim is someone the bullies will watch.

Imagine that a bully walks into a room full of children, he will hit all the children and one of the children will display a disproportionate emotional response. Well, then it's like you just focus on that and those are often kids who have a higher level of neuroticism or who are fragile for other reasons and then that can become permanent and both the bullies and the victims of the bully have a history of long-term negative development, aggressors tend to become criminal and alienated in that sense. front, especially as they enter high school and victims of bullying tend to become depressed, anxious and dependent if you have a partner who has been bullied, for example, who will be incorporated into your marriage and then one of the things that What will happen is every time you try to have a dispute that involves thinking and solving a problem, they will guide you through the bully model, they will treat you like you are a bully, they will accuse you of being a bully.

A bully, they're going to mention all the times you acted like a bully and then you're going to have to defend yourself and part of the reason people can't listen is because they don't know how to listen either. to fight back it's like, especially if you're here, there's 15 proofs that you're a bully, it's like, can you counter them? Maybe, what if you're not very articulate? You know, it might take you two weeks to think about how to argue. Get out of it and you will also have doubts about it, you know, they are very complicated things to solve, but you can listen, if you listen, the person will dispense with some of his accusations by himself, the accusations that cannot be already dispensed with. them, although now those are questions that you know, maybe your son is upset when he interacts with you and your wife says, well, you're too hard on them, it's like, well, are you okay, it's time for you to go for a week.

And meditate on that, right, and that's an examination of conscience, right, you're going to get to the bottom of your heart, it's like, well, are you a bully? Are you a bully like your father is a bully? Know? Are you a bully like a friend who? he was a reprobate that you admired and tried to copy he was a bully you know you have to see because maybe you are maybe you should

stop

but then you also have to figure out what you would be like if you weren't a bully and then your wife can help you, you know, and This is another good rule for relationship conflicts, like let's say I'm not happy with you, so I come and tell you that you can ask me, okay, what do you want if I could give you what you wanted? will be okay, I don't know, it's like no, I'm sorry, I can't reach a goal that you won't specify, let's talk about it at least we have to have a goal here, so if you're an employee, you should know this.

If you are an employee, you present a problem to your boss, why don't you propose a solution? And if you're the type of employee who presents your boss with a solution, you're going to be angry. Move up the hierarchy, if you're in a half-decent business, you'll move up the hierarchy so fast you won't believe it because you'll get the reputation of being the person who can solve the problem, so you know it and you can actually do it. play with this and in your marriage because one of the things you can do, for example, is well, let's say you say something that irritated your wife, okay, and then you can say, okay, she'll say, well, that's really It bothered me, okay, okay. an open question why maybe she's too sensitive and maybe you're too much of a bitch it's like who knows well but you can ask her, she's fine, if she had said what you wanted her to say, in that situation what would have did she say? now that's a hard question that you have to think about, it's like, well what would have worked and then she'll say, you know well, maybe you could have said this and then you can say, okay, let me say it now, so she has. fact and but it's something like let me say it it will be something false it will be a first approximation you are putting words in my mouth but let's suppose I'm trying to do something better stupid and bad to start with you know, with a view to mastering it in more than 50 repetitions, like this that I'll start by just saying it so she can tell you what to say and you can say it now if you're not 100% willing to say it because you think it violates your conscience, that's a completely different topic, that means there's a deeper discussion to be had, but maybe you could try it, you know, you could try it on for size and maybe she could see if that satisfied her and now you have a rubric for what that interaction could be like in the future, let's make it concrete, you come home at the end of a work day, it's Well, there should be a right way to do it, you have to negotiate with your wife, you know, maybe she will rush to do it. the door and finds you with all the problems of the day, okay, it's probably not a great strategy, you know, because you're up to here, you're tired, so it's probably because of whatever she was doing, maybe Maybe she was also at work?

You can't meet when you're both tired every day for the rest of your life with nothing but a ball of trouble, partly because if you do that 50 times you'll see the person as just a bunch of snakes. that's not good even if the issues that are pointed out are real you know you might think okay so you come home after work what would be the best way for that to play out and you have to negotiate that and I would do. Let's say, you know, let's parametric that a little bit, you're probably hungry, well, you don't want to talk to someone, this is another big rule, don't talk to your partner about something complicated when they're hungry, it's not going to work, so maybe you reach go home you have something to eat you take off your shoes maybe you take 10 minutes for yourself and then you can talk but you want to do it right or maybe you come home and meet at the door she gives you a hug you have something to eat you relax a minute maybe you take a shower but then you've already negotiated when you're going to have a conversation and you're going to be prepared for it now people do this in their businesses you don't randomly discuss a bunch of problems in your business if it's working reasonably well you have a meeting it's parameterized you have some kind of agenda you have to do that at home you have your house it's also a small business and it has to be run like that and you have to spend 90 minutes, at least 90 minutes a week, with your wife just running the damn business and I can tell you that if you don't do that you will never make it to the play because maybe you know that you will be romantically interested in each other and you want to spend some time together, but there are a lot of problems brewing and your wife definitely will.

This will absolutely happen if you try to get interested in each other. Others these things will come to her mind and distract her and she'll bring them up and then you'll get angry because it's like, well, we're supposed to have fun, we're supposed to take care of each other, why? You're bringing that up and the response is, well, we're together and these are problems we haven't set aside time to solve? The reason you should listen to your wife is because if you listen to her enough, she will tell you. You know what is wrong and what she wants and then you can fix what is wrong and you can give her what she wants by practicing it.

Has she ever found those holes in the bedroom, those childhood traumas that she became aware of at some point when she stared into the patient's eyes? they could never solve yes, yes, a bottomless abyss, yes, it's horrible, yes, I was in situations where you know I would get to the bottom, I thought, and then it was like Dante's Inferno, so for everyone who is reading , listening to you. You should read that book Dante's Inferno is a topography of hell, so underneath every problem there are layers of problems all the way down, for Dante the worst problem was betrayal, right? and the reason why he betrays himself, the worst problem is if you and I want to have a relationship.

We trust each other and betrayal is the violation of the trust upon which relationships are based, so it destroys everything. It is the lowest level of hell for Dante. The bottom of hell was full of traitors and that's right, it's child sexual abuse as if it were the ultimate betrayal, right, it's a child sexual predator it's someone who takes the role of guardian to be the wolf, right, it's the worst form of betrayal and therefore it just devastates children and because they actually face the problem of malevolence at a very young age and they say it's like you're four years old and now you see the bottom of hell, well, that It's a trauma and by the way the only way to deal with that is to guide people through a topography of hell, that's what you do and You can do it right, let's say you were abused as a child, okay?

So what's your problem? Well, your problem is that you've seen Into the Heart of Darkness, that's your problem, and you just blew yourself up. Could people really be like this? What my father is right is that my uncle, how could he do it so well? You are looking into the face of malevolence itself. You have to develop a philosophy of Good and Evil. It is a religious philosophy essentially because a philosophy of Good and Evil is a religious philosophy. Philosophy, that's the same thing. You have to develop a philosophy of evil and then you have to understand how to combat that and that is very complicated.

How do you fight evil with the truth with love andbeauty?starts to embody that you know or maybe it's even worse that you're traumatized because you did something brutal, very brutal and maybe you enjoyed it, that's a very common path to PTSD in people and that PTSD It happens when you have a really big hole that you know opens up big enough to swallow pretty much everything that hasn't been patched or papered over. You do it by finding your way out of hell and that's what also happens in Hell. Dante is guided through hell by Virgil, who is the spirit that guides you through hell, that's a good way to think about it, so every problem, even problems that your wife brings you, especially if they repeat, there are levels underneath that and deep down there's a betrayal, something like that, there's something There's a little bit of hell somewhere and sometimes you know that if you go to the bottom and solve that bottom problem, you'll solve a lot of peripheral problems, so there's a movie Apocalypse Now that's about a trip to the Heart of Darkness and that's what the book is about with Joseph Conrad's book and there's a documentary called Heart of Darkness that describes the making of Apocalypse Now and the people who made Apocalypse Now, which was a movie about a trip to the Heart of Darkness that he had. an effect on them while they were making the movie and all the people who were acting in the movie, directing, producing and financing, they all went on a journey to the Heart of Darkness within themselves and it pretty much killed them.

One of them had a heart attack. one of them completely broke down as if they had just suffered a catastrophe when they were making this film they fell into its archetypal clutches Heart of Darkness is the name of the documentary it is fascinating have you been on that journey yourself? yeah yeah, kind of like I would say kind of permanently when I was 20 and something like 20 I started studying atrocities so I've always been interested in the Holocaust osz in particular, but it's a very particular interest like the evil guard of Owitz prison in Nazi Germany. prison guard who enjoyed his job because my question was how can you be an Owitz prison guard who enjoyed his job now one answer is well you are like a demon from another planet who is so different from me that I don't even have "You have to worry about that and that's a very convenient answer, but it's not true.

Many, many, many people, not all, many of the people who were involved in the Nazi atrocities were perfectly ordinary people, they were just like you and you think not. I would. Not doing that is like that's not what the evidence suggests, the evidence suggests that the vast majority of people in Nazi Germany agreed with that now, not all of them were dragged into the abyss itself, but many. yeah, and if you think you wouldn't have been one of them, that just means there's a good chance you did because you have no idea what you're capable of.

There's a great book about that, it's a scary book called Men. ordinary and it's about the start of a police battalion from Germany who went to Poland after the Germans entered Poland now these were ordinary men they were middle aged police officers who had grown up before Nazi propaganda started well so that they were not indoctrinated Nazis since they were four years old, they are simply ordinary middle class guys and their commander told them in Poland, when they began to do military work, even though they were civilian police, that they could go home, that they did not have to do this job and that there would be no repercussions and, in fact, Upon leaving the battalion, several men at first said, "I'm not going to do this" and went home.

Mo, the vast majority left, "why okay, now these police officers are in Poland and they have been told a story that is as follows." You know that Germany is at war and the reason is that the evil Jews have conspired and united the Western world against us and are a fifth column within the country and your patriotic duty is to eradicate them. Now we are in Poland and you are saving the Homeland and there will be dirty work associated with that and do you really want to leave all that to your compatriots? You know your peers and your guys because like you and I are together and someone we work for presents us with a dirty job and I'm like, well, I'm not doing it right, so I'll leave it to you, so there's kind of a betrayal built into it, now the guys that left thought I don't care, I'm not doing this, but most people didn't do it and part of the reason they didn't do it is because they were loyal to their teammates.

At the end of this, which took months, these guys were taking n. naked pregnant women in the middle of the fields and they shoot them in the back of the head as if they became violently ill from doing it and they were torn internally as if they were heart disease, but to do it and that is a terrible thing. look and I started looking at that like it was 40 years ago, you know, it was shocking and then what did I discover? Well, I discovered many things. I discovered that the road to totalitarian hell and atrocity is paved with lies like lies.

The Road to Hell I really like practically and metaphysically, so one of the things I decided in 1985 was that I wasn't going to stop lying, what does that mean? Lies practically ruin your life, so you won't accept a white lie. Won't it look good? A white lie is worse than better than a black lie, but look, if you are really telling the truth, you are serving the Truth at all levels of analysis simultaneously, that's right, so if my words land correctly, They will be the words that They will work now and tomorrow and a week from now and a month from now and they will work for me and they will work for you, so a true statement has levels of application and a The white lie is a statement that is true on one level and false on one level. other.

Now you may not be able to do it, you may not have the means at that moment to find the statement that satisfies all the truth conditions at all levels, so default is the best you can manage, you know, your wife says : Do I look fat in this dress? You know? or maybe she says how I look in this dress and you think you don't like that dress and you know how easy it is What I can do is say "I love it honey", whatever you want or you know, of course not, but that It's a white lie, but that's not the optimal response.

A better answer is: "don't ask me questions like that and then you can." have a discussion about it look what I've done I bought a lot of clothes for my wife I like to buy clothes for my wife and I tell her how I think she looks and the advantage of that is that if I tell her that she looks good, she knows that I'm serious, I'm not muddying the water and if I have to say something, I mean, it's not like the number of times I told him I'm not happy with the way. she presents it as such, that practically never happens, she actually has very good taste, so it's just an example, but if you are forced into a situation where you have to tell a white lie, there are snakes somewhere with the ones you haven't dealt with. and maybe the best thing you can do and that's Leonard Cohen, the poet said there's no decent place to be in a massacre.

You may have already compromised to the point where in that situation the best thing you can do is lie, but that means you shouldn't do it. We don't have a damn well-being to begin with and the antidote in many ways is honesty. You did something Upstream, man, now one of the things you do in therapy is find out what people did Upstream, you know and you will find this in your discussions with your wife, there will be a problem and as you circle towards it, I'll see, oh , this is where I made a mistake, right, this is what happens to me and then you can even find out, if you look, you can, you can go back to your past and you can think, oh yeah, that's when I did that. decision I knew when I made it that it was a bad decision, you know, and your life is full of the consequences of decisions that you made in the past that put you on the wrong path and you said we were talking about repairing things, what you do is go away Back to where you made the mistake, you find out what the mistake was.

You know there's a cartoon trope that says there's an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. Well, you come to a crossroads which is also where you meet the devil. Go this way or That way, if you go in the wrong direction, your life will be, the consequences of that bad choice and that will entangle you and then you will suffer for it, then you will have to find out, okay, what is the suffering? ?, what is the problem?, when did I do it? Make the bad decision of what path you should have taken, that's how you fix a trauma, you replace the path you took with the path you should have taken and now you have a path to follow and once you have a path to follow, the trauma is gone. does not exist.

It's no longer traumatic because you have a path, your brain remembers the past because you haven't specified the right path forward, you go back to the path you took, which was the wrong path, you find out what the right path was, now you've done it. atoned you have confessed that you have repented and you have specified the correct path to follow and that is what you do when you negotiate a solution to a problem with your wife also this is what we do here is the problem this is what we did wrong this is what What we will try to do in the future and if that new map of the future works, that past trauma will become irrelevant, as you know, because they have sent me thousands of messages, these conversation cards, Salah, exceptionally fast, so this is the deal that I'm going to do. do with you if you join the waitlist found in the description below you will be sent access to purchase these conversation cards 1 hour before everyone else they have limited supplies so if you really want to get your hands on them , do it. add your name to the waitlist in the description below and you can find that waitlist at conversation cards.com, but I'll also include it in the description below wherever you're listening to this episode, how much do you really know about? your health for me that answer was simple the answer was very little until whoop appeared, since you know that you sponsor this podcast, but even before that, whoop was fundamental for me to know what was happening inside my body, the Most of my friends, my family and my team are now using it, but I still have a few friends who are on the fence about joining and what I'm hearing from some of those friends is that they are a little worried about what they might see in the data and might feel uncomfortable. about knowing what's going on inside your body, if I've learned anything it's that knowledge is power and once I finally started looking at the data and understanding how sleeping less was affecting my body and how my old lifestyle was actually damaging my long life term Health has all changed for the better, so if this is something you'd like to try, head over to join.

CEO of whoop.com and you can try whoop for 30 days risk-free and without commitment. Try it and tell me how it goes. I was watching our previous conversation and thought it would be interesting to see who the audience is. were that their demographic and age group were 20-4 years old, actually 18-40 years old. My question for you is in your lives. In that demographic, what do you think is the biggest challenge because your two children, Julian and Michaela? fit into that category too, what's the biggest challenge facing that demographic? The biggest challenges we had with our children was seeing.

I think the biggest challenge I had in my generation was negotiating the years between 13 and 15, something like that. but my sense is that the biggest challenge for young people now is to negotiate the transition to adult identity and I think that's part of the reason we have this terrible war in our culture about what constitutes identity and I think the reason why identity has become such a big problem. is that our concepts of identity are incredibly unsophisticated, narrow, hedonistic and selfish, so the identity groups that have emerged are everything you could say whim-based identity groups, they are sexual identity, say, or something arbitrary like SE, gender, race, or ethnicity. somewhat arbitrary, but sexual identity groups are particularly interesting because the idea that that is your identity is based on the notion that there is nothing more vital to you than the immediacy of your sexual behavior, well, you are not a sexual machine .

You're not a short term sex machine, that's not what a human being is, so if you go back to that all you're going to do is produce anxiety, hopelessness and misery, it's not a good solution, so you might as well say , what is the solution? and the solution is something called subsidiary solution, is it like this, what is your identity? Well, you have to get your act together and take care of yourself, so you have to integrate, you have to integrate through anxiety, hate, pain, jealousy, fear, hunger and lust and all that plethora of things. spirits that wage war within you is a lot, it is a lot, you have to bring that into a Unity, okay, and one of the things that the famous German philosopher said was that each Impulse tries to philosophize in its spirit. then all those subsidi sub subordinate spirits that fightwithin you they will try to dominate I am only my anger I am or rage that is the type of protester you know I am only my sexuality I am only my my appetite that is the consumption model but all that has to be integrated and then you could say well integrated into what is well integrated into a structure that serves all those Spirits simultaneously and harmoniously over a long time, that's maturity, okay, but that doesn't happen in isolation, so then there are stages above that , okay, so the next thing is that maybe you have acted enough that someone can tolerate being around you so that there is enough of you left so that you can play with another person to establish a marital relationship, let's say you invite another person to join forces with you, produces a United Kingdom.

Vision, okay, now there is you and there is you as a husband and it is the joint interaction of those that is now your identity, okay, now you have a role and you have obligations, responsibilities and opportunities, you know, you say, well, I am limited by my marriage. You know there are all sorts of things I can't do, which really means that I can no longer, in the most primitive way, means that I can no longer immediately satisfy my short-term whims, although it could also be more complex because I don't . get to pursue the things that I need to pursue, which means that you have not negotiated very well with your wife, like if your marriage is a prison, or you are very immature in what you want or you have not negotiated properly if you have done well, you have your individual Oneness established and then there is a Oneness within the marriage that is better and why it would be better.

You could learn to love someone and that would be better because getting out of yourself decreases your anxiety, so we know. As psychologists, one of the things I learned 20 years ago is that there is no difference between thinking about yourself and what you want and being miserable. Those are shyness and negative emotions that are so closely linked that they are statistically indistinguishable. It raises the question about the decline of religion absolutely fine, that's the next level, okay, so there you are, you're a husband now, right, so your identity is those two things in unison, but that's not enough now. , maybe you are a father now.

Now you have children, you have another level of responsibility and opportunity to develop, support and love yourself from time to time, so you have your family together, that is not enough, you have the community to serve, so you want to serve the community and then at the community level, you know maybe you're good at your local business and you have a local business organization and you're good at that and then there's the town level, the city level, and the state level. and the country level and then you know that America is one nation under God, that is the highest level of this hierarchy of identity and that is what is to be served most fundamentally, that is a definition, okay, God is What is to be served more fundamentally is a definition, so when you are thinking that b is better than a what you are saying, even if you don't know it, it is that b is one step away from a on the path to God. , that's what you're saying, the medieval definition, a medieval definition of God.

It was something like the sum of all that is good or the essence of the good and then if you believe that there is a good, then lurking behind that is the spirit of all that is good, that is God by definition. Now you can debate forever about what that is, but it is something that you live with in a relationship that you like, that is an escape, that is absolutely inescapable and you could say well, I don't believe in God and then I would say well, do you believe? in the good and you? I'll say no, I say, "Well, then you can't act because you're acting towards a good or you're not motivated.

I called Simon Gunning, who is the chief executive of the Living Miserably campaign, it's a great man's charity Heth here and I said: give me". The updated statistics told me that people ages 19 to 35, which is the demographic predominantly hearing this, are twice as likely to report being in crisis as any other group, right? And there is a reason why it is very simple. Literally this, the more you focus on yourself, the more miserable you are, it's as simple as that, but that's society today, I know it well and we encourage it well, and there are terrible forces that push us in that direction, you know, like me.

You could chalk this up to the idiocies of a degenerate Protestant liberalism fueled by postmodernism, but you could just as easily point to consumer capitalism. everything about what your basic appetites want no matter the cost right now well that's the same as being two years old there's nothing about that and why do you think you're you anyway it's like since when are you became the most idiotic part? Of you who don't care about anything else and anyone else you want right now, why is that? How about this? So this is where I'm trying to make a distinction.

Responsibility is a good thing, but with responsibility sometimes comes the idea that it's about me my results are about me it's all about me my success and my failure are a consequence of me me me yes well that's right absolutely absolutely right it is that's why classical Christian philosophy has always been that you can't infer someone's moral worth by level of achievement so the aristocrats would have said the Romans AR The aristocrats would have said well look at me like it's pretty obvious to talk to a slave, say it's pretty obvious that I'm better than you, first of all, I can slap you and there's not a damn thing you can do about it and you have to do what I tell you to do and I have all the money and all the things and I can take all decisions and I have all the power clearly, that is evidence that I am morally Superior to you, but didn't they believe that a God had granted them that superiority to a certain extent?

Didn't they often believe in Fortune as insurance, of course they did, that made it even better? It's as if the fact that I have the power is a reflection of the fact that the cosmic order is clearly on my side and we believe that less so now due to the decline of religion, so we now think that our outcomes are more determined by our own actions, yes, but lurking. Beneath that there is a hidden God lurking beneath it all that's also just that God has become subjectivity it's kind of like when God talks to Moses from the depths of the burning bush she says I am what I am and that's what everything degenerate The Protestant liberal says now I am what I am and they also say and if you don't accept it, the consequences for you will be quite depressing use my pronouns adopt my identity play the game that the worst part of me insists on or else and it is a consequence.

I said Protestant liberalism for a reason because as we move away from God we have moved toward radical subjectivity. Now the problem with that is that radical subjectivity, especially one of impulse, is incredibly immature and counterproductive it simply doesn't work any more than a room full of two year olds Does it work What is the best idea this subsidiary structure is the adoption of voluntary responsibility It can be a much more complex identity it's like you know how to take the load pick up carry someone your life make a permanent relationship work make some kids serve your society on all these different levels strive to move up what's up? well here's the definition above a better solution brings together more situations and people over longer periods of time that's why this brings me to you're doing Peterson's Academy, which is kind of an online interactive learning platform that you've designed and looks like it is adopting this typical university structure.

I was there. I see people can sign up right now, but why? you're doing Peterson's Academy, well, curious, I'm curious about pretty much everything. I started putting my lectures on YouTube because I was curious what will happen if I use this, you know, curious, but the more deliberate answer is that I am in a very fortunate position because I can meet almost anyone I want to meet and the people I I want to meet are almost always interesting thinkers, say, or people who have done interesting things repeatedly in their lives, so I can find those people and some of them.

They are very charismatic and they have a lot to say and I am giving them a platform to say those things and we can do it with extremely high quality and very low cost and we can distribute it to everyone and I am an educator. I'm a teacher or at least I was. I am still a professor and it is time for what we have been doing in universities for all these centuries to be available on a large scale because it can be done very well. and it can be done and it's entertaining and there's no reason not to do it, so all of that is the positive side and it also has a sense of humor aspect because it became impossible for me to work at a university and so I thought okay, I'll go to build my own university because I thought maybe there was something arrogant about this when the university came after me there was a part of me that thought you think I need you it's like I don't believe it I think you need me and if you don't want me around anymore We'll see who needs who now, like I said, you know I was irritated and angry and maybe there's something arrogant about it, but let's reconfigure it, so this is one of the experiences I've had. bring these professors to Miami, this is especially true with the Cambridge and Oxford professors, like some of these people, man, they're mortal, you're lucky to have a conversation with them, they've been thinking for a long time, they're super smart.

They are wise, they know their field, they are great communicators, they are stellar people and their universities treat them terribly, with no respect, they let their students walk all over them, they pay them abysmally, they treat them as if they were pawns of the administration, it is disgusting. So I invite them to my Miami and we make them a good financial offer and we treat them like people that we are very happy to have there and that we hope they come back and have a great time. we deliver and we say look, they say well, what function do you want this course to serve, you know because maybe they're worried that there's a political agenda or something like that and our rule is that we choose you for a reason, you know what you're doing, tell us how to get out of your way so we can allow you to teach the course you've always dreamed of teaching.

We will provide you with the audience that you have always wanted, which will be people because We have a live audience and the live audience members that we select are selected because they want to come and listen, which is what you want for students, so we want to have the dream experience for the teacher. Come talk about what you love with people who love you. Listen, plus, we'll give you maybe enough financial security that you won't have to worry about your damn college anymore, which is also something I'm really happy about right now. I don't know if we can meet that, but even the initial one we give them an advance as if it were a book contract and even the additional advance usually is a considerable sum, it depends to some extent on their right to follow because we do an economic calibration, but I would love to be in a position where I could take the best thousand lectures in the world, bring them to Peterson Academy, give them financial independence because that would be really fun, and then take what they have to say to everyone, at almost no cost, first you've taken A first main approach to trying to build a new University, that is, bring together the best professors, give them the freedom, make sure they are not sensors in any way, give them the audience, remuneration and appreciation they deserve, when does it emerge this Peterson University?

Academy launching in early

2024

, we already have 30 courses, uh, recorded, something like that. I'll put the link to the university in the description below this episode, but you can also search for Peterson University online and it comes up with the first thing we usually have. a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest in the diary, but I wanted to ask you my own question because it was pretty pivotal for us, it was very informative and the honesty that you brought with it in our The Last Conversation It really changed my life in several ways, how will I tell you after asking you the question, okay, okay, the question is how are you okay?

Know? I'm still in a lot of pain, so that's annoying, but not by a long shot. as much as when I was very sick, so I almost always feel like I have a relatively bad flu pain, it's some neurological problem and I have no idea what it is and neither does anyone else, but I'm not anxious about everything and my head is very clear and I have such a ridiculously interesting life that the problems that remain are basically irrelevant, you know, I wish they would go away, but whatever it is, it's not that big of a problem, so I mean, I just have a miraculous realm of opportunities in front of me.

It's crazy every day I have it's so interesting it's almost unbearable and I would tell people who are Listening, you know you might want that for yourself, let's say you might want to have that and I can tell youthat you can One way to increase the likelihood that things will turn out correctly for you is to not lie, just stop lying, period, stop telling. things that you believe are not true stop doing things that you know are wrong just start with that you will get closer and closer to the truth and the truth is the truth is the adventure of life that is the advantage of the truth in which you have the world on your side but obviously because if you are lying about things you are opposing reality who you are who you are to oppose reality good luck unbearable it is almost unbearable your life is so exciting and so full of opportunities that it is almost unbearable yes, yeah it's like an action adventure movie all the time it's crazy it's crazy you know everywhere I go I can talk to whoever I want essentially you know I go from country to country people stop me on the streets they're happy to see me it's like I have friends everywhere I go, it's really crazy and the people you meet feel like they know me because they've been watching me for hours and they know me, you know, I don't know them, but they certainly approach me on good terms, you know? and I went, I was in nine different countries and I have a team of people who organized meetings for me like dinners and so on in these countries and they are always people, people well placed in the political field in the cultural field, they are very interesting people and you know , I meet 30 people like that every other day on EV in different countries around the world, and then I have these podcasts and I can basically call whoever I want.

I like to talk and they talk to me, so you know, three times a week I sit down with someone who's like a fucking genius and for 90 minutes they tell me a bunch of things I don't know. So that's magnificently interesting and you know, my books are selling like crazy and I'm writing another one that I'm really interested in and yeah, it's great, it's ridiculously interesting and I really think people have it. you have it at hand, that is there for you Jordan, thank you, it is a pleasure for me, it is always good to talk to you, it is always good to talk to you too and you have given me a gift, like you did last time, of many ways, so thank you.

So much for making the decision because I know you could be anywhere, so if you come here, that honor and that decision is not lost on me, it means a lot to me, thank you so much for the work that you do, yeah, good. I'll tell you just so you know there's a reason I'm here. You know I have a team because I have a lot of requests and when you have more requests than you can fulfill, there is a certain pain in that because the requests are almost always of a certain quality, you know, so we make a selection and we look for people whose podcasts They have reach and they have been successful and they conduct a direct and honest interview and you know they are aiming upwards. and that's not a game and there's a reason I'm here and the reason I'm here is because of the job that you've done so well, it's no favors, I'm glad I'm here, but I'm.

I'm here because this is the right place to be right now so congratulations on that thank you very much a quick word about hu as you know they are a sponsor of this podcast and I am an investor in the company. Finally three are here. H's years of work to try to make a bar, a nutritionally complete bar, as of the recording of this episode they finally launch these bars with high protein content, 27 vitamins and minerals and only 2 grams of sugar. The impossible is done. and he tastes really good, often these snack bars, like high protein snack bars, they taste like you're eating playdough or cardboard or something like that.

It's so hard to make one that's nutritionally complete and tastes good, and ladies and gentlemen, here we go. I'll put the link in the description to get your bar below. Try it, tag me and let me know exactly how it goes because it's so nice to finally have a bar that's nutritionally complete and that really doesn't. It doesn't taste like cardboard and that tastes delicious. The impossible has been achieved.