Jordan Peterson - 12 Rules for Life in 20 Minutes

so I was mmm thinking the other day about numbers you know there are mathematicians who think that there isn't anything more real than numbers and that's an interesting proposition I mean it's obviously the case that once you invent or discover numbers that that confers on you a tremendous power and who knows the limits of that power and the claim that numbers are more real than anything else is predicated in part on the fact that when you discover them or invent them and start to utilize them that your ability to operate in the world expands immensely and and so that's one of the ways of judging whether or not something is real is whether or not when you use it that facilitates your means of operating in the world interestingly numbers are abstractions and so that raises another question which is well what's more real the thing that's being abstracted from or the abstractions and again that's not obvious and maybe the question of more real isn't germane maybe it's a question of equal reality but it's not obvious that abstractions aren't real and you can make a damn strong case that they're more real than anything else and so then you might ask yourself well then what are the most real abstractions and so that's what I'm going to start to talk about tonight I'm going to talk about it in relationship to as many rules as I can lay out simultaneously I'll go through the rules first so rule one is stand up straight with your shoulders back and rule two is treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping on number three which is very tightly associated with number two they're sort of variations on a theme is make friends with those people who want the best for you and by the way these last two rules aren't injunctions designed to make your life easier they're actually injunctions designed to make your life more difficult Kierkegaard said at one point that his role in life given that everything was proceeding to become easier and easier in all possible ways that there would come a time when people would cry out for difficulty and so that's partly how he envisioned his role in the world interestingly enough as a universal benefactor of mankind who would strive to do nothing other than to make life more difficult for everyone right and so rule two and three are like that because treat yourself as if you're someone responsible for helping isn't the same as be nice to yourself it's not that and to associate with people who want the best for you means that they get to demand the best from you and that's also not an easy thing rule 4 is compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today and that's an injunction about envy right it's easy you need people who you need things that are above you because you need to do something worthwhile with your life you need something to aim at but one of the consequences of that is that you can become envious of people that you believe have attained more in a deserve adore undeserved manner and that can make you bitter and so it's much better to compare yourself to yourself and to use yourself as the target for improvement and comparison rule 5 is don't let your children do anything that makes you dislike them and the rule of thumb there is if you dislike them then other people will and it's a bad idea to allow your children to act in a way that makes other children dislike them or adults dislike them given that they're going to have to deal with children and they're going to have to deal with adults so your primary responsibility as a parent is to help your child learn how to behave so that the social world opens up its arms to them and welcomes them at every level and you've done your job if you can manage that and it's not a simple thing to do rule 6 is put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world and that's not take no action for others until you have your act together that isn't what the rule means it means that bind your ambition with humility and work on what's right in front of you that you will suffer for if you get wrong before you engage in the large-scale transformation of other people rule 7 is do what is meaningful and not what is expedient and I would say in some sense in some sense that's the core ethos of the book not exactly because rule 8 which is tell the truth or at least don't lie is a necessary conjunction to that or a necessary additional element because I don't think that you can pursue what is meaningful without telling the truth and the reason for that is if you don't tell the truth or let's say if you lie which is an easier way to think about it you corrupt the mechanisms the instinctual mechanisms that that that manifest themselves as meaning and then you can't trust them and that's a very bad idea so the fundamental reason to not lie is because you corrupt your own perceptions if you lie and when you corrupt your own perceptions then you can't rely on yourself and if you can't rely on yourself then well good luck to you because what are you going to rely on in the absence of your own judgement here you've got nothing if you if you lose that rule rule 8 is as I said tell the truth or don't or at least don't lie rule 9 assume that the person that you're listening to knows something you don't and that's not so much a mark of respect for the person although it is that it's a mark of recognition of your own unbearable ignorance you know one of the things you have to do in life you have to decide what's more important what you know or what you don't know first of all there's a lot of what you don't know and so if you make friends with that if you decide that's important then well that's a good thing because you're gonna be surrounded by what you don't know your entire life and so if you're appreciative of that then that's going to make things go better for you but but the other element of that is well why should you be appreciative of what you don't know and answer to that is well you shouldn't if your life is absolutely perfect in every way you have exactly what you need and want you've put in an order around you then what you know is sufficient but if you believe that things could still be put right around you in your own personal life and with regard to the effect that you have on other people then obviously what you don't yet know is more important than what you do know and you should be paying attention to find out what you don't know at every possible moment and if you're fortunate when you have a conversation with someone and you're actually interested in what they say then even if they're not very good at communicating even if they're awkward or even if they display a certain amount of enmity towards you there's always the possibility that they might tell you something you don't know in which case you can walk away from the conversation less ignorant and corrupt than you were when you started the conversation and if your life isn't everything that you would like it to be then being slightly less ignorant and corrupt is probably a good thing and so the rule 10 is be precise in your speech and that's that's an observation I would say that that's a variant of a New Testament injunction which is or maybe a description of the nature of the world which is knock and the door will open and ask and you will receive which is a very strange theory let's say but which I would say is far more in accordance with what we know about the psychology of perception let's say then you might imagine because it is the case that you don't get what you don't aim at you might get what you do aim at and your aim might get better as you aim as well which is something to consider if you specify the nature of the actually if you specify the nature of the being that you want to bring into being then you radically increase the probability that that's what will occur and of course you all know that because you regard yourself at least to some degree as active creative agents right your fundamental attitude towards yourself at least in the manner that you act towards yourself is that you wake up in the morning and you have a landscape of possibilities that lay themselves open to you and you make choices between those possibilities and determine in consequence how the world is going to manifest itself so you confront a field of potential that's a good way of thinking about it and through your choices you determine which elements of that potential are going to concretize them selves into the real world and you are very unhappy with yourself if you don't do that properly and you're very unhappy with other people if they don't do that properly and you're very unhappy with other people if they don't treat you like that's what you're like because part of what you demand from people let's say in terms of sheer civility is that they are towards you is if you're the locus of voluntary choice in a world of potential and you upbraid each other for that as well if you have children and parents your parents will say to you if you're fortunate you're not living up to your potential which is actually a compliment in a sense even though it's also a judgment and the compliment is I know perfectly well that you could be more than you are and you'll hang your head if you have any sense and you'll think like you think in relationship to your own conscience that yes I have a lot of potential that I'm not fully realizing and that actually constitutes a transgression against the good and I don't I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't believe that if you if you have a animal conversation with them it just seems self-evident I mean maybe now and then you meet someone who's narcissistically self-satisfied but then they're narcissistic and that's not good that as a medium to long term strategy that's a catastrophe that ends in disaster you know it's a short term it protects people but long term it's it's not good in the least and of course other people don't appreciate it as well rule 11 is don't bother children when they're skateboarding and that's actually a discussion of courage of encouragement more more specifically because I've I've been trying to understand for example what role parents play in the lives of their children and I would say this is a role that that that is a fundamental importance as well as attempting to guide your children so that they act in a socially desirable manner so that the world opens itself up to them you also want to encourage them which is not the same as sheltering them it's not the same at all and to encourage someone is to say something like or to act out something like look kid as you the world's already difficult because the world isn't easy for children anymore than it's easy for adults that the difficulties are they're not the same they're child size difficulties but they're still difficulties the world is a very hard place and it's a bitter place in many ways and it's not only a hard and bitter place it's also touched with betrayal and malevolence and that's the fundamental bottom line but there's something in you that is capable of taking that full-on and transcending it and that's encouragement you say well as difficult as things are you're up to the challenge and to interfere with children when they're skateboarding for example when they're doing let's say in advisably dangerous things which kids of course do if they're skateboarding to interfere with that is to interfere with the child's willingness to voluntarily expose themselves to the risks that they need to expose themselves - in order to develop the sort of competence that allows them to thrive in a world they cannot be sheltered from and so to interfere with children when they're taking necessary risks is not love or empathy but cowardice on the part of parents and it's deeply damaging to children and I can tell you as a clinical psychologist I've never had a client come to my office in all the hundreds in Madrid's of encounters I've had with people in my office I've never had a client say my parents made me too independent right that hasn't happened once right now my parents made me too dependent or I conspired with my parents to perpetuate my dependence that happened all the time so there's a rule of thumb which I think is a good one which I believe is often applied in nursing homes by people who work in nursing homes which is of course a very difficult job and the rule is do not do anything for anyone they can do for themselves and the reason for that is that it's a form of theft right you don't first of all if you if you do something for someone and it facilitates their movement forward then they moved forward because you helped them which is something I was very careful about as a therapist I don't want to give my clients advice first it might fail in which case they are going to pay for my advice and second if it succeeds then I get to be the successful one and I don't want to steal the success from my clients that's a bad idea I want to help them figure out what it is that they should aim at and then help plot out a strategy for attaining that and but I want to ensure that it's their destiny not something I'm imposing and of course the imposition of that sort of thing is the hallmark of a bad I would say therapeutic relationship but also a bad relationship period right so one of the things you want to do with your partner's your spouse you say your husband or wife and also with your children is to listen to them so that you can figure out what their problems are and figure out with them because they're gonna figure that out by communicating and then perhaps aid them in the development of a strategy but you have to ensure very carefully that you're not imposing your own structure in a manner that's going to steal from them what's rightfully theirs so well so rule 11 is an injunction to courage as the fundamental because you could say well what's the antidote to the catastrophe of life and one answer might be safety it's like well you know look everyone's sensible enough to know that a certain amount of provision for safety is worthwhile you should probably wear your seat belts when you're driving around in your car because why take foolhardy risks but given that there is no security in life in the final analysis then encouragement is a much better medication than sheltering and so and that's what that's that's I think in keeping with the idea that what life is essentially is not a place to attain happiness or even to aim for happiness even though you should be grateful if some comes along now and then but a call to something like adventure and I think that's the proper way of conceptualizing it certainly if you go watch a story a movie you read a book something like that if you encounter a narrative that's gripping whether it's a romance or a classic adventure story then the element of it that's gripping is the adventure and so to portray life as an adventure in romance and and in the world is the proper way to portray it and the way that you facilitate the adventure is through encouragement I had a client once I really liked him he was a good guy his smart guy good-looking young guy had everything going for him you know he's a good musician he was a talented athlete but he hadn't been encouraged I wouldn't say he told me about his relationship with his girlfriend he said his girlfriend wanted to go bike around southern Ontario she was about 19 or 20 and he thought he might join her and when she went and talked to her parents they made every provision possible to help her prepare for the journey to make sure her bike was in good shape to make sure she had the right equipment to help her plot out a route and when he went and talked to his parents all they did was worried that he was going to get hurt and like he might get hurt because people get hurt but they didn't understand that they were choosing between the hurt that he might encounter by going out in the world and having an adventure let's say with his girlfriend or the hurt that he would encounter by staying at home cowering in his basement under the protection of his over loving parents while his girlfriend ventured bravely into the world you think well which of those two things is most likely to be damaging and the answer to that is well his parents wouldn't worry as much as if if he was in the basement and that's the wrong worry even because they should worry more not less so in rule 12 is pet a cat when you encounter one on the street and it's a oddly enough a meditation on fragility it's a discussion of what you do when you don't know what to do and that's really when things have gone badly for you when you face a terrible tragedy in your own personal life or in your familial life or perhaps even in life of your community when things come crowding in and you too quickly in in the case of a death in the family or a terrible illness or the collapse of a dream or any of the things that can flip your world upside down is how do you cope with that and that chapter contains discussion of the necessity of narrowing your timeframe you know because sometimes the right way to look at the world is across years and sometimes it's across months and when things are more out of control perhaps it's across days and when things are really when you're really up against the wall it's acro across hours or even minutes and during those minutes then you concentrate on doing as well as you can with what's right in front of you for the longest unit of time that you can tolerate conceptualize it maybe that's what you do at someone's deathbed and while you're doing that and suffering away madly then you also take the time to appreciate everything you can that manifests itself that allows itself to be appreciated and so that's the metaphor of the cat I suppose and so that's the twelve rules and I'll return to rule one which is stand up straight with your shoulders back and I'm going to use it as a platform for laying out the abstractions that I talk to at the beginning of the lecture you

Channel: tmcleanful

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Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, summary of 12 rules for life, new Jordan Peterson lecture, motivation, chaos, order, discipline, drive, ethics, self-improvement, child rearing, raising children, self-confidence, self-reflection, humility, personal growth, personal success

Id: x9QHlEbO4OM

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018