SELF CONTROL - Jordan Peterson (Motivational Speech)

you only have to ask a stupid question once you ask a stupid question and if you're in a crowd and you ask a stupid question 80% of the people in the crowd have the same question they're just too cowardly to ask but you ask and then someone actually tells you you never have to ask that question again you're no longer stupid what stupid thing am I doing that I could quit doing that I would quit doing because those aren't the same thing right cuz you know there stupid things that you're doing that you're just not going to quit doing cuz you like them but there might be something on the edge there where you could stop that if you want to know something about yourself sit on your bed one night and say to yourself you got to mean this like you got to be desperate this is no game this my life is not everything I want it to be and perhaps it's not everything that I need it to be and by need I mean my life is so unbearable that the suffering that's attended upon that is make me nihilistic cynical bitter resentful driving them City to see evil everywhere except within my own Heart Like These are problems man and you ask yourself you sit on the bed and say okay man I'm ready to learn something what's one thing I'm doing wrong that I know I'm doing wrong that I could fix that I would fix it's like you meditate on that you'll get an answer and it won't be one you want but it'll be the necessary one you know and it it's often something that will point you to small things like that works you start making those micro improvements like real micro improvements real on the ground actual micro improvements to things you know that are wrong you'll improve unbelievably rapidly the the great people I know are brutally truthful to themselves and other people and they have insanely adventurous lives get rid of everything you say that you only say to impress other people and just see if you can say what you believe to be true that's an adventure that's the thing about the truth you know well you got to ask yourself if you're not speaking the truth who is it that's talking if you're saying something that you do not believe to be true it's not you talking it's something else it might be the part of you that wants to manipulate the other person into delivering what you think you want from them well what is that Spirit of manipulation that you've allowed to possess you it's not you let's say you decide to live your whole life in that instrumental manner you're going to craft your words like the student who says well I'm going to write what the professor wants to hear so I get the grade it's like well you just turn yourself into that well who is it that's doing that manipulating it's not you cuz those aren't your words so even if you get the grade it's not you that got the great it's the false you it's the manipulative you so you do that your whole life you don't have your life and then you think well God that was a miserable life I manipulated everybody they were so damn stupid they were sucked in by it they're all contemptible everyone does it you know which they don't by the way and so that's a pathway to bitterness partly because if you're a manipulator and you use your language falsely you don't live your own life you live the life of whatever possesses you when you think it's you manipulating and so you live the life of the spirit of manipulation to become that person that can rattle you up man especially if the person is thinking all sorts of things that you've never thought I mean I loveed reading for that reason I could pick my peers too which I really loved it's like well you know I have these people around me but then there's these people who who've lived before me and in different places and I can set them up on my shelf I can enter into their world and I can benefit from everything they've thought and saturate myself with that person it's and it's very disruptive especially if the person that you're reading has a mind that's more powerful and more well-developed than your own it was very disruptive but unbelievably useful unbelievably useful to try on other people like that and you get the benefit of their entire life distilled into their into their book you know it it's 30 years of work I I read this one book called the neuros psychology of anxiety which is a it's a great scientific work it's very hard book I think it has 1,800 references something like that and this guy Jeffrey gray he actually read all those references and he understood them and so so it took me 6 months to read the book but I got an entire education out of it I got to experience in 6 months what it took him 30 years to learn like what a gift that is it's it's it's unbelievable what were you reading when you were in University was it was it fiction novels was it non-fiction what what were you what were you focusing on as trit as this may sound it was actually the the most impact was from Shakespeare the most impact on on multiple levels I'll tell you the primary level and when I've covered Shakespeare on my podcast I explain this to people people think well you know I didn't really understand I read it and understand it if you think you're going to just pick up Shakespeare open it up and read it and understand it you're not going to because it's barely written in English it's barely written in English it's almost another language so what you have to do is you have to start to interpret it and so what I realized with with Shakespeare is number one the weight of the words that these words were so pregnant with meaning that you had to pull those words and parse those words and pull those words apart to see all the depth that each individual word had and then the way that they're put together and what was great about this was by the time I was back because then I went right back into the SEAL Teams and somebody would hand me a Rules of Engagement document that was written by some lawyer in Washington DC and I'd pull it out and say wait a second this word I don't know what this word means let's pull this word out let's see what this let's see what this actual definition of this particular word is and how that changes my viewpoint of these rules of engagement and how can I translate that for my troops so that they actually know what to do so that part uh for me was from a reading perspective starting to read Shakespeare and and saying oh okay you're not going to understand this and if you don't understand something that's okay you pull out the Oxford English Dictionary and you look it up and then you not just find out what the meaning of the word is but what's the root word and where does it come from and what kind of depth and what kind of yeah and that's really that's that's unbelievably useful too virtually every word is like that because a word is an ancient artifact it's like it's it's it's like an it's like an animal in some sense it has an evolutionary history and it transforms across time and each word kind of it carries The Echoes of its past with it too because each word um attracts other words in a particular unique way so it kind of lives in a word e EOS system as well and the ecosystem contain information about the history of that word and you think well why is that important it's like well hey guess what you think in words you talk in words you have all these archaic entities these words these living entities that you use it's like the more you know about them the more you know about you the more you know about other people and the better you are at formulating and communicating your ideas there's nothing there's nothing lost in that kind of Investigation nothing there's nothing but gain there your ambition if you have any sense is actually to become competent do you want to be competent and dangerous or do you want to be vague and useless it is definitely the case that there is no more exceptional form of the capacity to be dangerous than to be articulate and so it's a moral Endeavor in some real sense to become articulate is to become the master of your own tongue every Advantage comes with a disadvantage so if you're extroverted you're social and you're positive but you're impulsive and you can tilt towards Hedonism and you can't stand being alone no matter where you land in the temperamental landscape you're going to have your Associated faults and temptations you got a goal and you'll see that as you progress towards the goal there'll be obstacles that emerge and some of them you don't want to confront it's why it's useful to order your room chaotic room makes you anxious why too many Pathways man people don't really repress the things they don't want to face they just fail to unpack them you want a horizon of ever expanding possibility we're built to walk uphill and when you reach the Pinnacle of the Hill you want to stop and appreciate the vision but the next thing you want is a higher Hill in the distance beware of unintended consequences it's like oh no this thing will just do what I want it to do and nothing else it's like you no it turns out that not only is what we want from each other the real thing but that's also the adventure of your life and so if you aren't truthful and that means unfortunately especially at the beginning when you start to be truthful it means deeply coming to terms with your inadequacies in humility so it's very painful without that you don't have the adventure of your life you have the role that you've acques to and that'll take all the meaning out of your life it's good for you to go take your place in the world have some ambition have a vision have a goal have a strategy try to be a good person not because it's your duty precisely because that's the proper way to live you sit on the bed and say okay man I'm ready to learn something what's one thing I'm doing wrong that I know I'm doing wrong that I could fix you meditate on that you'll get an answer you grow in proportion to the weight you take on voluntarily and it's also true that we have no idea what the upper limit to that is it's from the uphill climb that we derive our value and I mean this technically so almost all the positive emotion we feel especially the emotion that fills us with enthusiasm and that's experienced in relationship to a goal and so in some sense you want a goal that you can never attain so you can always move closer to the goal that recedes as you move towards it you think well that's frustrating it's like sisifus pushing the rock uphill but it's not because as you pursue that goal you put yourself together and your life does get better and richer and more abundant that's why the highest levels of virtue and goal are in some sense Transcendent you want them to be above everything you're doing so you can continually move towards something that's more Sublime and better that's what you are you're you're here to live not to not to sleep and the problem with the vision of my Ties on the beach is that well first of all that's a vision of of drug induced unconsciousness second it's only going to work for about a week third you're going to be a laughing stalk in a month and depressed and aimless and and goalless it's no that's not it's it's you want a horizon of ever expanding possibility and so it does happen to people as they cuz they've staked their soul on the attainment of an instrumental goal and it it can be a pretty high order goal but then you think now I'm there now what well the answer can't be well I'm going to live in the lap of luxury and never have to leave a f what do you want to be a giant infant with a gold with a gold bottle you never have to do anything but lay in your back and suck it's like you see the problem with that as a conceptualization it's no you want to be like an active Warrior moving upill with your sword in hand and that's that's Dynamic that's exciting

Channel: Jordan Peterson Rules for Life

Views: 10,227

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, self control, motivational speech, discipline, self-improvement, personal development, willpower, life advice, mastering emotions, empowerment, self-help, life coaching, personal growth, mental strength, self-discipline strategies, success mindset, emotional intelligence, impulse control, personal responsibility, resilience, inspirational speech, mindfulness, behavior management, decision making, goal setting, mental resilience, Jordan Peterson advice.

Id: SqNLVhE0MY0

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024