How To Make the Right Decision

I I love chaos and I love I I enjoy that and I enjoy when there's a real crisis is when I'm at my best and when we don't know what's going to happen next I you know I love chaos I remember my my partner I was going to I was getting a flight and I was on the way to the airport he said where are you going I said I'm not sure I'm either going to Singapore or New York I've got tickets to both he said but you're in the car on the way to the airport so I know they both go at the same time so when are you going to decide so I'll decide when I get there and most people don't like that degree of indecision and Chaos in life then I had a rucksack and I could go to either but that's where I thrive well that okay so that's interesting too that you are able to it seems to me that the fact that you're able to do that is associated with this default presupposition that your parents helped uh instill and and and support in you which is that well you can do it you know because one way of limiting anxiety anxiety is to limit choice zero Choice generally speaking zero anxiety because there's no conflict but another way of dealing with anxiety is to presume that if the situation shifts on you you can manage it that's why people like to watch jugglers for example or acrobats because you know they're in a situation that's dynamically unstable and yet they can continue their complex operations and everyone loves that and it's because it's a reflection of that Spirit that's able to juggle and so now how did it come about that you had tickets to Singapore and New York sometimes I had meetings in both places but I wasn't sure what was going to be the most important tool I made a final phone call I had to just assess which was the best place to be at that particular time right and so you were leaving it till to the last minute which were you where you'd have the most information yeah I'll come back to that I can deal with that now actually in a way of bad decision making it's not quite in the relevant place in my career but often people spend a lot of time focusing on what's the right decision to make yeah but they neglect a very important question and this is in my life as a litigator really or even in life generally they neglect important question of when is the right time to make the decision and so they just think should I do this or that but they don't think when do I have to decide because or when shall I do it and that's often neglected in a simplistic approach to decision making in my experience well people also assume you know I I watched my colleagues for example in graduate school try to figure out which city they should live in if they had competing job offers from different universities then they might be on completely on different sides of the continent or in different countries and so you might say well this is a really crucial decision and the truth of the matter is it's actually not that crucial a decision because if you're in a good University in a large city you have way more opportunity than you'll ever be able to make use of in both places so the first thing you have to realize is both of those decisions in principle could be good and the right City isn't even an appropriate category because it's not like a city is one thing a city is 50 billion things and so the real question in a situation like that is could I land in my feet and start to operate properly regardless of which of these places that I'm in and the answer to that should be yes and if it's yes then you think oh well either choice is good and then you can start thinking well now I can maybe I'll go to City one and talk to the people there and see how I get along and I'll go to City too and you know start to find my way but people often are under the misapprehension that they come to these important inflection points in their life like which city and that's going to determine the entire course of their life and it does insofar as geographical Locale is one thing rather than another but if it's a choice between immensely productive options then there's no sacrifice in the choice there's just a choice between different Banquets exactly but even if there is a sacrifice you'd have to ask yourself when do I have to make this decision is it now because people feel the pressure of yeah they say well I don't have to decide until the 31st of March between now and then yeah I'll just think about it yeah and then I'll decide that's one that's what I'm saying but people very often Force themselves to make decision before they have to people who work with me or for me get frustrated because they say are we doing this or that and I say when do I have to decide and often like because I leave things up in the air like the juggler yeah yeah yeah yeah um it gets very frustrating as people like to have an ordered they'd like to know what they're going to do but I like to leave things you don't mind the uncertainty well you know I used to answer I used to tell that many undergraduates who for example they didn't know whether they wanted to go to medicine or to Clinical Psychology and so I'd say well apply to both make 20 applications to both and maybe you don't even have a choice because you get accepted to psychology and not medicine end of problem or if the problem will become more acute when you actually realize that you didn't get into medicine and that's what you wanted but that'll snap into Focus but you can pursue it but then let's say well now you have three offers from a clinical program and three offers from the medical program it's like okay now you have six decisions to make and now you can go to each of these places and investigate them and you're going to gather way more information and then by the time you need to make the decision which could be as late as possible you're going to be much more informed and so that's another problem with making a premature decision is that my advice to my students and my clients was always uh don't close the door before it's necessary to close the door because you're you're not maximally informed at that point and and also you don't have to accept that temptation to premature prematurely foreclose right to deal with that anxiety it's not a good way of dealing with it it is the options on the table it is a Temptation for people to make decisions before they need to because they want to have order but they they close doors yeah they don't need to and it's hard psychological I don't know why it's hard well it's a lack it is it I do believe it's associated with a lack of faith of the sort that we've been describing is that people aren't they don't have enough faith in their own ability to dance and to juggle and so they want to specify the narrower pathway as soon as possible to get things you know unnecessary chaos isn't helpful that and and uh and and I don't think you want to you know distribute Mayhem and catastrophe wherever you go but and if it is sometimes I might leave it to the last minute and it's not the last minute I've met you pushed it too far and you should have made it yeah well that's another that's another mistake you can make but the thing is there are mistakes everywhere okay so now you're you're in in this in the Jesuit schools and are your academic interests starting to make themselves known and what are they the two things I was very interested in science I missed one thing out that was important in my formative years which I've just realized and talking to now is when I was about 13 I went to visit my family in Montreal and my uncle Joseph is uh is a teacher there professor of philosophy and philosophy means lots of things to different people obviously he did what's called in England European philosophy because the English philosophy or anglo-american philosophy tends to be quite dry and logical and to do with you know Wittgenstein and Bertram Russell which I also like so he did Sarah and other people and at the age of 13 he spoke to me a lot and really influenced me and persuaded me to read Descartes meditations and discourse um which is a really important thing for me as you you probably know they're about um skepticism and what you can know for certain and he challenges all the assumptions you have and that really started a thousand important things for me why

Channel: Jordan B Peterson Clips

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Keywords: psychology, philosophy, Jordan B. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, JB Peterson, jordanbpeterson, jordanpeterson, personality, understandmyself, selfauthoring, neuropsychology, jordan peterson clips, jp peterson clips, jp clips, jordan peterson podcast clips, jordan peterson live, jordan peterson livestream, jordan peterson shorts, jordan peterson tiktoks, jordan peterson motivational clips

Id: Fo9ZGh0lzfA

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023