The Fool is Your Personal Hero | Jordan Peterson

when I had talked to people about doing the future authoring program they often put it off and it's not surprising because it's hard and and but it's more than that they think well I don't know how to write I'm gonna do a bad job I don't really like assignments I'm going to have to do it perfectly I need to wait till I have enough time and like one of those is enough to stop you cold and all five of them you're just done and so I tell people do it haphazardly a tiny bit at a time and badly because you can do that I tell my students when they're doing their thesis master's thesis write a really bad first draft and then we have a little conversation about that because they don't think I mean that because it sounds like a cliche in some sense it's not a cliche it's not a cliche at all it means you're a terrible writer but but if someone put a gun to your head and said you have to have your hundred page thesis done by next Monday or I'll shoot you but I don't care how terrible it is you would sit down and write it and the thing is then you have it right then then you have something and then you can fix it you can iterate and fix it that bad first draft that's the most valuable thing and so that's what you need you need a bad first draft of yourself and there's there's an idea that young developed about the trickster and the Jester the comedian right that the trickster is the precursor to the savior that's one of the things I learned from young it was just it's so unlikely you'd never think that it's so amazing that that might be the case but the the the the the satirical in the ironic and the troublemaker that the comedian the fool the fool is the precursor to the savior why because you're a fool when you start something new and so if you're not willing to be a fool then you'll never start anything new and if you never start anything new that you won't develop and so the willingness to be a fool is the precursor to transformation and that's the same as humility and so if you're gonna write your destiny you can do a bad first job you're gonna get smarter as you move forward that's the thing is that so something beckons to you that's what happens here may be the star that Geppetto wished on was the wrong damn star but at least it was a star right at least it was in the sky at lease that moved him forward and so you say in your life well something grips you and and and fills you with interest and you think well should I do that and the answer is if not that then something what if it's a mistake it's a mistake rest assured what do you know you're gonna stumble around right and what's gonna happen is this you're gonna move too you're gonna not stay in stasis you're not gonna wander around in circles and I see people like that they said well I never knew what to do and now I'm 40 it's like that's not so good that's not so good and you might say well and there is a literature too that suggests that people are a lot more unhappy when they look back on their lives about the things they didn't do than they are about the mistakes they made while they were doing things and so that's really worth thinking about too because there's redemptive mistakes and a redemptive mistake would be a mistake that you make when you go out and try to do something you know he actually you think okay I'm gonna try to do this when you're not good at it you make a bunch of mistakes it's like what what's the consequence if you pay attention is you're not quite so stupid anymore that's the thing is you've been informed by your by the results of your errors and so what happens is you're you you follow the beacon you follow the light and you're blind so you don't know where the light is it's it's dimly apprehended only and you're afraid to follow it but you decide to take some stumbling steps towards it and as you take stumbling steps towards it you become illuminated and enlightened and informed because of the nature of your experience because you're pushing yourself beyond where you are and you're going into the country that you have not yet been in and you learn something and so what happens then is the star moves you move ten feet towards it you think no that's not right I didn't get it right it isn't there it's actually there and so then you you see it somewhere else and you shift yourself slightly and you move forward and that's what happens is that you continue as you change the thing that guides you forward moves right it's like God in the in the in the desert in Egypt the pillar of light that you're following it's moving it's not a permanent thing you move towards it it moves away it guides you forward and so you say well is what I'm aiming at paradise itself and the answer to that is no because what do you know you could you couldn't see paradise if it was right in front of you but you might get a glimmer of it and so you move towards it and you grow and then the next time you open your eyes you see a little bit more clearly and that's what happens is that just happens over and over right it keeps moving and so you move like this but the thing that's so cool is that although zigs and zags you say in each of those zags is it and Ziggs is a catastrophe I hit a wall my god and then I had to die a little bit and I barely got back up it's a Phoenix transformation at each at each turn and is painful but the thing is is that even though you've you've traveled twenty miles let's say on that road and you've only moved 3 miles forward you've moved three miles forward instead of falling backwards because that's the thing too is that if you stand still you fall backwards you cannot stand still because the world moves away from you if you stand still and there's no stasis there's only backwards and so if you're not moving fact we're back forwards then you're moving backwards and that's more more of the underlying truth of the Matthieu principle to those who have everything more will be given from those who have nothing everything will be taken it's a warning do not stay in one place well as you Zig and zag maybe then maybe the cataclysm of each transformation starts to lessen there's not so much of you that has to die with every mistake and maybe you end up oriented at least reasonably properly and if you were sensible that would have been your trip but it wasn't right it's that and perhaps it's a lot worse than that perhaps there's no shortage of backtracking but it doesn't matter because as you stumble forward you you illuminate and inform yourself and perhaps that's partly because the world is made of information and the if you encounter it and tangle with it then it informs you and then you become informed and then you're in formation and then you're ready [Music]

Channel: ManOfAllCreation

Views: 68,912

Keywords: the fool is your personal hero jordan peterson, jordan peterson the fool, jordan peterson personal hero, jordan peterson hero, jordan peterson fool, the fool jordan peterson, hero jordan peterson, jordan petersonthe fool is your personal hero, jordan peterson

Id: 2z1vRF4L-sE

Length: 7min 7sec (427 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2017