Truth as the Antidote to Suffering (with Lewis Howes)

If you don't have a goal, you suffer, and then you get cruel and bitter and resentful, and then you start to actively try to make the world a worse place. And so, because you can't suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and you can't become bitter without becoming cruel, you need an aim. The question is then, the question is, what should you name your dream? That's for sure. So then the question is, what should your aim be?

Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the legendary Jordan Peterson in the house. Good to see you, sir! Good to see you! Very excited about this. You've got a book out called "Twelve Rules for Life." Make sure you guys check this out. You've probably already got it, but if you don't, I'm telling you to go pick it up right now: an antidote to chaos.

You've had so much attention over this last couple of years, and I've been digging into the research and just been fascinated by everything you've been up to. I just love your stance on the vision you have for humanity in terms of how we can all live better lives. I think you simplify a lot of things in this book, which some people don't like to simplify; they like to complicate. And I think that's what's gotten you a lot of attention, is that you try to really simplify a lot of these.

“Well, I try to make everything concrete so that it's actually implementable,” right? I mean, there's a lot of high-level abstractions in the book because it ranges up into the theological and the philosophical, but it's always grounded in what you can actually do in your life practically. You want to bridge that gap from the highest abstraction down to the lowest level of behavior so that it becomes implementable. That's how philosophical concepts take on their meaning, right? Because they have to have some impact on the way you see the world and the way you act in the world, or they're not fully realized; they're not understood.

“Because partly what we mean— I would say when we say that we understand something, it's kind of a strange phrase to understand something, but it means to be able to embody it in a shift of view and a shift of action. And then you've got it; it's graspable; it's in your hand.”

They say, “There’s the same thing” because your perceptions are very tightly linked to your actions because, of course, when you're acting, you're aiming at something. You have to be devoted towards some aim, some target. We play that out in sports all the time.

“Yeah, that's why sports are so entertaining for people is because they dramatize the idea of aim." And then, not only of aim but of the pursuit of excellence in pursuit of that aim. That's the game. And the reason it's a spectacle and the reason that people participate in it is because it dramatizes something absolutely essential about life.

“And so you want to take philosophical abstraction and you want to use them to structure your aim, and then your perceptions organize around that aim, and then you act it out, and then you've got it; then it's become part of your life. It's just, it's not just a philosophical abstraction that floats free in space.”

“Why is there so much conflict in the world? Is it because there's so many different perceptions that people have? What they think should be right?”

“Well sure, part of it is... part of it of course, there's conflict because we have real problems, and so life is actually difficult independent of the psychological foolishness, let's say.” Independent of the obstacles that we put in our own path. “Life is the ultimate challenge. We will die.”

“Yes, yes there is, well a challenge.”

“Yes, well, do fear pain; although yes, everything that goes along with suffering is a challenge. It's the full challenge because it takes everything you have. And so part of the reason we disagree is because there are complex problems to solve. And then we also disagree because we're willfully blind and because we're more ignorant than we should be and we're not everything we should be, and we tilt towards malevolence from time to time. And we betray each other and ourselves. And so we take a bad law, too, in many ways and make it worse. No, not always obviously, and we don't have to, but that's sort of the baseline that we're working against.”

“I think people are most disappointed in life when they're disappointed in themselves. You know they see that they've made things worse than they had to be even though the baseline can be pretty brutal.”

“So yeah, so the book and all my lectures, I suppose, are put forward in an attempt to take the high-level philosophical abstractions and to make them into something that's actionable, and to take the next best action in your life to improve your life.”

"Hmm, so we don't have to suffer as much?"

"Mm-hmm, well, and hopefully also so that people around you don't have to either."

So one of the things I've been talking to my audiences about is the relationship between responsibility and meaning, which is, and what would you say? It's a constant refrain in the book; it's one of its underlying messages, let's say, or themes, is a better way of thinking about it. “You know if you start with the presumption that there's a baseline of suffering in life and that that can be exaggerated as a consequence of human failing, as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and self-betrayal and deceit and all those things that we do to each other and ourselves that we know that aren't good, that amplifies the suffering.”

“That’s sort of the baseline against which you have to work. And it's contemplation of that often that makes people hopeless and depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and all of that. They have their reasons, but you need something to put up against that, and what you put up against that is meaning. Meaning is actually the instinct that helps you guide yourself through that catastrophe."

“And most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility. So if you think for example about the people that you admire, well you think about when you have a clear conscience first because that's a good thing to aim at, which is something different than happiness, right? A clear conscience is different than happiness.”

“Yeah, that's better.”

“Yeah, that's better. You're not guilting yourself; you're not feeling bad about your sister. You feel that you’ve just claimed—you've justified your existence, right? And so you're not waking up at 3 in the morning in a cold sweat thinking about all the terrible things that you've involved yourself in, what you said to someone that you shouldn't have said, or you acted on what opportunity you lost.”

“Or the things that you've let go that you should have capitalized on—all of that. And so if you think about the times when you're at peace with yourself with regards to how you're conducting yourself in the world, it's almost always conditions under which you've adopted responsibility."

“Yeah, at least the most— the most guilt I think that you can experience perhaps is the sure knowledge that you're not even taking care of yourself, so that you're leaving that responsibility to other people because that's pretty pathetic.”

“I mean, unless you're psychopathic and, you know, and you're living a parasitical life, and that characterizes a very small minority of people, and an even smaller minority think that's justifiable. But most of the time you're in guilt and shame because you're not—you're not only are you not taking care of yourself, let's say, so someone else has to, but you're not living up to your full potential, and so there's an existential weight that goes along with that."

“So you suffer even more, hmm, when you don't take care of yourself or take the best actions or do the work that you know you can do. You rely on someone else to support you financially, emotionally, and physically, whatever it may be.”

“Yeah, well, because you're not only—you’re not only not being what you could be; you're interfering with someone else being what they could be. Right? So you're not only a void; you're a drain.”

“Jesus, that's a catastrophe. And, but we usually don't even know we're in that situation because we're in a depressed state or we don't want to see it. You know, you wake up at 3 in the morning, and you know, and so then you think of the people that you—so you admire yourself or perhaps you can at least live with yourself when you're taking responsibility at least for yourself. And so that settles your conscience."

“But then if you look at the people that you spontaneously admire—and so the act of spontaneously admiring someone is the manifestation of the instinct for meaning, right? And this is partly why people are so enamored of sports figures because the sports figures are playing out the drama of attaining the goal of attaining a certain kind of, let's say, psychological and physical perfection in pursuit of the goal.”

That's the drama. And to spontaneously admire that is to have that instinct for meaning latch onto something that can be used as a model, and then that model should be transcribed into something that's applicable in life. You know when you really like to see in an athletic performance you really like to see someone who's extremely disciplined and in shape do something physically remarkable. But, and to stretch themselves even beyond their previous exploits, because you really like to see a brilliant move in an athletic match.

But you also like to see that person ensconced in a broader moral framework so that not only are they trying to win and disciplining themselves in pursuit of that victory and then stretching themselves so they're continually getting better, but they're doing it in a way that helps develop their whole team. And that's good for the sport in general, and that reflects well on the broader culture—a great leader and their team; they're positive; they're good sportsmen who, against the competitors, aren’t negative towards the other people; they’re lifting them up too.

"Yeah, like the ultimate—that's right, so human."

"That's right."

"So that they can work for their own improvement in a way that simultaneously works for the improvement of their team and that— and for the sport. And while I meant, to the degree that that spills over into the broader culture, so much the better. So that's all being dramatized in an athletic event. And it's really—it's not philosophical; it's concrete, right? It's dramatized in the world. And that's what the games represent."

“And so, well, and it's partly because, well, in some sense, life is a game. It is in that you're always—the analogy is that in life, like in sports, you're setting forth an aim, and then arranging your perceptions and your actions in pursuit of that aim. And that you also—we generally do it while cooperating and competing with other people. That's also the game-like element as well. All of that's dramatized in athletics.”

“Yeah, that's like philosophy for people who aren't philosophical, and I'm not being smart about that. It really is philosophy for people who aren't being philosophical because it's played out, you know, and you can see it too. You can see the spontaneous appreciation for the human spirit manifest itself when you see people rise to their feet spontaneously in a sports arena when they see someone do something particularly remarkable. See an athlete who's extremely trained stretch themselves beyond what you'd think is a normative human limit, and everyone celebrates that spontaneously. So it's quite something to behold.”

“So took me back to a responsibility and meaning when we’re watching sports or someone and do this act, what does this do for us in terms of responsibility and meaning?”

“Well, it helps us figure out what we can imitate. It gives us a model.”

“Yes, it's a model.”

“There's a model of something that I respect. Well, even what philosophy is or even theology for that matter is an abstract model. Like it's laid out in words. Now the problem often is it becomes so abstract that people don't know how to bring it back down to the total embodiment.”

“Whereas something like the drama of a sports event is sort of midway between philosophy and action, right? And so it's not entirely abstracted because it's not only coded in words; it's acted out visually. You can see an example of what just happens, and you can try to reverse-engineer how they—yes, exactly.”

“Well, at least the fact that you admire the person means that you might start to try to act like them. Now it's not easy, and maybe that would mean that you start to discipline yourself with regards to a particular sport, but it might also be that you start to mimic or at least affect it in some way by their—by their sportsman-like behavior, right? Which is the ground of a certain kind of ethic, because if you can play well with others, which is sort of the hallmark of a good sport, then that actually means that you're a reasonably sophisticated and civilized person. It's really important to learn to play well with others.”

“There isn't—that's the ground of ethics. And you can do it there, and that's setting—that hopefully you could translate it into life.”

“Well, that's exactly right. That's what goal—well, that's what you hope for. Yeah, that's the goal of this.”

“So if the goal of the game is to put the ball through the net, then the goal of having games is to produce people who can take proper aim no matter where they are. Right, that's exactly what we're trying to do with athletics.”

“So I've been talking to my audiences a lot about that, about—and well, and there's more to it too, because if the background of life is there's an inner Attica Bellona of suffering and that's complicated by, let's say, malevolence and the proclivity of people to betray themselves, which complicates it and makes it worse, then, if you don't have a noble aim, and if that isn't in viewing your life with sustainable meaning, then you fall prey to all the catastrophe, the pain, and the anxiety and the anger that that suffering generates. And that makes you bitter.”

“Because what I'm here to say is that—and correct me if I'm wrong—we must have an aim in our life no matter what stage of life we're in. And if we don't have some type of aim, even if for a few months, an aim of going somewhere, direction—we're going to—the suffering is going to be even more pointless because we're already going to face the greatest challenges.”

“That's right.”

“You start already struggling.”

“Well, that's right; there's no way adversity is coming no matter just how big the goals are or small little goal or whatever it may be. But it's going to be less suffering if we have an aim.”

“Yeah, well, and not only that, it's worse than that even, because the suffering is zero meaning. Well, the suffering is pain, and the suffering is anxiety and uncertainty, and the suffering is hopelessness, but the consequence of all that is that you get bitter. And when you get bitter, you get mean, and you get cruel, and you start to hurt yourself and other people."

"So it's not only that if you don't have a goal you suffer, it's that if you don't have a goal, you suffer, and then you get cruel and bitter and resentful. And then you start to actively try to make the world a worse place.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And so, so, because you can't suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and you can't become bitter without becoming cruel. So you need a name. The question is then—the question, of course, is what you should name. Yeah, that’s for sure. So then the question is what should your aim be?"

"Now we have a program. It's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today. I have this website called selfauthoring.com, and that program helps people write about their life."

"And so there's a past authoring program. To establish your aim, you have to know where you are. It's like you're trying to orient yourself on a map; you can't orient yourself on a map unless you know where you are. You also have to know where you're going, right? So those are the two relevant things."

"The past authoring program helps people write about their life. So it's a guided order by our—we ask people to break their life up into six epochs, six sections, and then to write about the emotionally important events in those epochs and to detail out why the positive things happen and why more of that could conceivably happen in the future. And to detail out why the negative things happen, and to try to understand why with an aim to not replicating them in the future—for memory isn't to remember the past; the purpose of memory is so that you figure out what went wrong when something went wrong so you don't duplicate it in the future. That's the purpose of memory, and the past authoring program can help people catch up."

"And you know you have to catch up if you have memories that are older than about a year and a half that still cause you emotional pain when you think about them or if you dwell on them—they come spontaneously back to mind. It means you haven't—it means that there's part of your life that you haven't mapped out properly, and it still has emotional valence that's gripping you. You're still holding on to that story, or it's still holding on to you.”

“Right, you ever got to go?”

“Yeah, well you haven't been able to navigate your way through it. There's a pitfall there that you fell in, and you don't know how to avoid similar pitfalls in the future. And that's why your brain won't let it go, because it's saying, this happened to you; it wasn't good, this happened to you; it wasn't good, this happened to you; it wasn't good—fix, fix, fix, fix it—that will never go away unless you fix it."

“How do you fix it? Well, you have to figure out why it happened.”

Right, that's the first thing, it's like how did you —how was it that that situation arose to pull you down? And that's not simple. That's why we have the writing program, because it's complicated to think it through.

“But if you face it, and you meditate on it, let's say, and you do this voluntarily, there's a pretty high probability that you'll be able to decrease the probability that it will be repeated in the future.”

“Oh well, well we, that the second part of the program helps people do an analysis of their virtues and their faults.” The same sort of idea: what's good about you that you could capitalize on? What's weak about you that you need to fix so that it doesn't bring you down? Right?

“And that's the present authoring. But the future authoring program is probably most relevant to you and your listeners because you're—in helping people establish aims. And so we already talked about the fact that you need an aim in life or that's where you derive your meaning. And without that, things go to hell, and as literally as that can be taken.”

And so, but it's not easy to ask people to say, “Well, it's easy to ask them, what do you want your life to be?” It's a very hard question to answer, because it's too vague and grand. So we help in the future authoring program to break that down.

“It’s okay, so here's the situation: so put yourself in the right frame of mind. So what's the right frame of mind? It's like rule two in this book, treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping. Here's someone that you are responsible for helping. So what that means is you have to start from the presupposition that despite all your flaws and insufficiencies, that it's worth having you around, and that it would be okay if things were better for you. So you need to take care of yourself like you're taking care of someone you care for."

“So there's a bit of a detachment in that. And then the next thing is, okay, so now look three to five years down the road. Okay, you get to have what you need and want, assuming you're being reasonable and that you actually want it, which means you're willing to make the sacrifices that would make it possible."

“What do you mean by reasonable?”

“Well that's the next thing, well within your grasp, that would be something. What if you don’t? Thing is, out of your grasp, but you still push hard enough?"

“Well, then you need an incremental plan, right? You need to break that goal down into steps of raising the goal within a year.”

“That's like, yeah, I mean, we’ve done the work to master a skill yet, yeah, yeah."

“Well, that's it! And you can have a high-end goal, and more power to you if you do! You need a pathway to it. You know, if it's ten stories up above you, you need a staircase to get there, right? And so you have to build the staircase to it, and so in the future authoring program, you're asked first of all, okay, here's you get to have what you want, you need—that's the proposition! But you have to aim at it; you have to define it and name it."

“So here, so then the first thing is, okay, if you could put your family together the way you wanted it to be, what would that look like? And so that might be your siblings and your parents, but that also might be, you know, your wife or your husband and your kids, assuming that you're at that point in your life. You can have the family you wanted; what would that look like?”

“Right? Okay, career, same thing. You get to have the career or the job that is within your grasp, necessary, and suitable for you."

“If you were taking care of yourself, how are you gonna educate yourself? Because you're not as smart as you should be; there's a lot more things you need to know, so you've got to keep learning and moving forward, so you need to plan for that."

“How are you going to take care of yourself mentally and physically, right? So how are you going to avoid the catastrophic temptations, for example, of drugs and alcohol, because that pulls a lot of people down? You need a plan for that. You're going to be a social drinker; how much are you going to drink? How much is too much? What about your drug use? You gotta regulate that so it isn't a pitfall. How are you going to use your time meaningfully and productively outside of work? You need a plan for that, so that's… there’s one other—?"

“Yeah, I think there are seven initial questions, and I don't remember the last one. Oh, intimate relationship, of course. So you have to want a long-term stable intimate relationship, and if you do, then how would you like that to play itself out? You gotta have a vision for that, because if you don't have a vision, you're not going to aim at it, and if you don't aim at it, then you won't even see the opportunities when they arise.”

"That's the thing that's so cool!"

“I wrote about this in chapter ten, which is ‘Be Precise in Your Speech.’ It's a chapter about the fact that aims structure your perceptions. So, for example, once you aim at something, your brain literally—that perceptual structures in your brain—in your visual cortex reorient themselves to calculate a pathway to the aim. And then what they show you in the world is obstacles to that path and open pathways to the path. That's actually how the world reveals itself, just like when you're driving in a car and you have a map and you—or you aim at a particular place, then all the things that are related to that place show up in the world. It's exactly the same thing because you are traveling through time and space, right? And you need a map.”

“So, so after you answer these seven questions, and you're encouraged to do it badly because you don't have to get a reaction; it's just complete it right, because a bad plan is better than no plan. It gives you something to improve. So even if your aim is vague and even if it's off target, if you start aiming, you see you're off target, then you can shift, and you can make it more precise. Start to recognize what you don't want in that."

“Yes, exactly! So I thought I wanted this, but I don't; so let me read navigate and figure out what I do!"

"Exactly! And you might have to try a bunch of—you know, well, you will have to. You can be— that's why you shouldn't get perfection. The thing about it—you will absolutely be wrong, but you won't be as wrong as you would have been if you were aimless."

“Right, right."

"So there's a bit of 'No Man's Land.' No Man's Land is no worse than the old man's room; it’s a bit worse than a bad path."

"Yeah, that's exactly right! That’s a good one!"

“That’s good, that’s a good one. And it’s right; it’s right. You don’t want to be in No Man's Land."

“Why did you use that phrase?”

"Because that's right; that's exactly right! I think, for me, the idea of walking around aimlessly is like the worst idea in the world. It's like zero purpose, zero mission, zero certainty at all. It's like walking around in No Man's Land, right? Aimlessly.”

“But it's funny too because in No Man's Land, everybody's shooting at you."

“All right, because that's a military term. No Man's Land is the space in the middle when everyone's vicious.”

“You bet, so if you're aimless, you're also the place where everything is shooting at you! Yeah! So it's a very good metaphor that came to mind!”

“Yeah, well that's why I worked on it!”

“That’s very very cool! So then we say to people, okay, look now, okay, now you've thought about this for a while. It's nice to do this over a couple of days too because then you get to sleep on it, and that helps reorient yourself. So then, okay, now you write for 20 minutes; don’t worry about grammar or spelling. This isn’t a composition exercise, right? You get to have what you want three to five years down the road. What does your life look like, hypothetically? Write it up.”

“Okay, so then that’s the first part. The second part of the exercise is, so now you've got your thing, dang, think, well I'm motivated because I got my thing to aim at. It's like you're not as motivated as you could be because you don't yet have something to run away from because if you really want to be motivated, you want to be going somewhere and you want to be not going somewhere else, which typically is a pain. Pain or anxiety, yes, some domain of suffering and guilt—leg says, “don't want to feel this anymore!”

“Yes, exactly! Exactly! So the other thing we ask people is, okay, now take stock of your weaknesses and imagine that you let them multiply. You got hopeless and you auger it in, and things as bad for you as they could be in three to five years!

“What are some examples of weaknesses that people might have?"

“They lie; they procrastinate. Yeah, they avoid. They’re grandiose; they're narcissistic; they’re undisciplined; they're nihilistic; they're aimless—all of those things, right? Victim mentality; they take the quick way out; they pursue impulsive pleasures; they sacrifice meaning for expediency; they don’t take care of their basic responsibilities; they fight stupidly with their parents; they don’t negotiate properly with their spouse; they’re bitter at work because they haven't said what they have to say; they haven't thought through what they're doing tomorrow; they drink too much; they smoke too much; they take too many drugs; they don’t regulate their—yeah, just like everyone knows what it knows, and everyone's got a set of weaknesses that they know about."

“And so we say, all right, what are some of your weaknesses? It's like three weaknesses that you know right now you can still work on and then three things that you think are really well.”

“A lot of things. A lot of things are things that I've taken care of in my life. Like I used to smoke when I was a kid; I smoked a pack a day. I used to drink a lot. I didn’t work out. Like there, there, there, I wasn’t nearly as disciplined as I should have been. I wasn’t just careful with what I was saying.”

“And I suppose my most likely negative outcome probably would have been—I really like to drink, like alcohol was a really good drug for me, I see! And that partly was mostly because the opportunity came up for me to investigate drug and alcohol use, but I came from a little town in northern Alberta; it was a heavy drinking town, and that could have been a real trap for me!"

“Right? You know? And so anyway, so we have these people say, okay, now you know your weaknesses," and you know what particular hell you would descend to if you allowed yourself to descend into it because you've probably had a taste of it.

"Well, if you really let that go and you’re in a terrible place in three to five years because you haven't done what you should do—what does that look like? It's like, write it down. So you know because one of the things you want to have behind you, let's say, I have to do something difficult, like go confront your boss. It's like, well maybe hope isn't enough to encourage you to do that. You think, well no, if I don’t encourage—if I don't go confront my boss carefully, then I'm gonna hate my job and then I'm gonna drink more, then I'm going to end up in that little hell place that I designed for myself."

“It's like, oh, I'm not going there. Well, I don't want to talk to my boss, or I don't want to confront my wife or my husband, whatever it is or my father or my children for that matter. But if I don't, then I'll resent myself forever."

“Then at this time, you end up going down this terrible pathway. It's like because sometimes when you're moving forward, you have to do something difficult. You might think, well, why bother? And the answer is, "Well, so I don’t end up in hell. Yeah, about that."

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, there's that. Because it's so deep. If you don't experience the pain now or the difficulty now, you're going to have a deeper pain later."

“Yeah, yeah, that's life—much deeper pain."

“Yeah, yeah! And that's why I think that you mentioned at one point is like putting ourselves in structured pain, like structured sense of feeling pain throughout the day, whether it be the tough conversation. 'I don’t want to do that; it’s painful, but I’m going to because I know afterwards it's gonna probably feel better.' It’s a bit of a sacrifice, right? Sacrifice stability in the present for a gain in the future. That's the big discovery of human beings.”

“Were you a big athlete growing up?”

“No, no, I was a lot of small kids in my grade, although I skied, and I went cross-country skiing, and it's individual sports mostly with my dad.”

“You understand that in order to improve as an athlete or in any sport, you have to put yourself through daily pain?!”

“Yeah, right? If you want to achieve that model of excellence that you watch someone playing basketball as a child.”

“And you see someone living this model, it's going to be 15 years of deliberate pain.”

“Yeah, that's a discipline—”

“That's it! Yeah! Well, I worked out for a long time with weights. You know that, so—”

“You know you dealt it every day, yeah?”

“I didn't want to push through the pain, but yeah, you knew that would get you a greater result.”

“Well then, it’s easier not to do it than to do it.”

“But not in the long run.”

“Yeah, exactly! You know, I really seen the benefits, for example, of weightlifting because I've watched people—because I'm fifty-eight—fifty—how old am I? Fifty-six? The great—no, I’m soon—I’m getting older. And I really noticed the difference between people and when they aged between people who laid down a good physiological platform when they were young and those who didn't."

“Because by that—if you haven't worked out, particularly say you start to get pretty soft in your 30s, and your cardiovascular system starts to go awfully early.”

“The other thing too is the best thing you can do to maintain cognitive ability isn't to do exercises like Lumosity. It's not brain exercises that keep you sharp; it's exercise!”

“So, if you're 50, both cardiovascular and weight lifting—if you're 50, you can restore your cognitive function to the level of a 30-year-old through exercise.”

“Your mental function, hmm, through physically!”

“Yeah! Well, your brain is a very demanding organ, and if your cardiovascular system is compromised, then you get stupid.”

“And so, yeah it's really cool because as you move— and the bigger you get, the more stupid you become.”

“Yeah, well you compromise, you compromise its function because the brain is a—it’s it’s the organ that uses more—it’s very metabolically demanding. And so if you're not in good physical shape, then one of the things that suffers most greatly is your cognitive function, and so that's quite an interesting thing to see how tight that linkage is.”

“So in the next part of the program we have people now, it's okay, now you got your vision? Yeah, even if it’s a bad one.”

“Yeah, that's right, what's better than no vision at all, right?”

“Yes, plus, as you explore because of your map, you could start to fill in the details; you start to learn; you start to overcome stuff; you learn to master skills.”

“No journey, right?”

“Hmm, yeah! Well, that's the other thing too is like let's say you aim at something, and you develop some skills along the way, and then you get like a third of the way there. And you think, oh, that's not for me. It's like, well, yeah, fair enough, but now you've still got the skills you developed; you know exactly why it's not for you now instead of vague—you don’t.”

“The kid going after those—exactly!"

“Exactly! Well, and you have a rationale, and then you can bring that wisdom back even though it's not perfect; you can bring it back to your next plan and take responsibility, yes, the next step, yes, yes. And so as you plan, you get better at planning, which is the crucial thing.”

“So then we say to people take your positive vision and make it into eight sustainable goals, right? And then rank them in a hierarchy because you need to know what like a top goal, and incremental goals.”

“And well, that's the other thing is break the goals into incremental goals so that you have a reasonable probability of succeeding. So because what you want to do—this is also what you want to do with the kid—you don't tell your kid, here is an impossible thing; why don't you go out and fail?”

“You say, here's something worth going after; here's a step you could take that would push you beyond where you are, but that you also have a reasonably high probability of succeeding at, right?”

“They called that within a time frame—if, then some time frame; that's the other thing you have to parameterize it with regards to time frame.”

“That’s right. And that puts you in the zone of proximal development, and that says—that's a concept that was generated by a guy named Vygotsky. He was a Russian developmental psychologist, and the smart one. It’s where the idea of the zone comes from. To be in the zone, and when you're in the zone, you're expanding your skills in a manner that's intrinsically rewarding because you're succeeding."

“And so you want to set—if you're good to yourself, you think, okay, I need to set a goal, but I need to set a goal that someone as stupid and useless as me could probably attain if they put some effort into it. And then you've got it perfectly, because it's not so high that it's grandiose or impossible that you fail necessarily, and then justify your bitterness.”

“It’s like, well I couldn’t do it? Well, because that happens to people all the time.”

“Yeah! It’s like this all the time, you know. It's like, yes, exactly! Well, I set a goal and I didn't attain it, so I'm not gonna set any more goals.”

“Right! It's like, no! You set a goal that was inappropriate for the time frame, that's right, you didn't calibrate it properly, and you're playing a trick on yourself because you wanted to fail so that you could justify not having to try.”

“That's why being a victim, mmm, which isn't helpful; you're still gonna be a victim, right? There's no way out of that.”

“Because life is this—life is a challenge that in some sense can't be surmounted, so there's no way out of your problem, but there are certainly proper ways of dealing with it. And so you lay out those eight steps, yeah, lay them out.”

“And then the next thing is, okay, you need a rationale for them because you're going to have doubts and other good people are going to put up obstacles. A rationale, I mean...”

“Yeah, yeah! Justification! Yeah, it's like, okay, so here—what sort of justification is a good justification for your goals? It's easy— why would it be good for you? Okay, why would it be good for your family if you attain that goal? Why would it be good for the broader community? Because if it's a good goal, it should be good for you, and that's fine. But if it's a really good goal, it should be good for you in a way that's good for other people.”

“In a way, yes, exactly! And when you're gonna decide what your goals are, why not set up the ones that benefit the largest number of people simultaneously?”

“Yes! If you can do that, you should start with your own concerns because you have to take care of yourselves in these first."

“Yeah, put your own oxygen mask on, then put your child's oxygen mask on, right? And then you can—as you build up a basis of competence locally, you might develop enough skills so that you can expand that outward.”

“And it also gives your goal a certain amount of nobility, and so if someone challenges you and says, well, why are you doing that? That seems stupid. You could say, I'm doing that because it helps me take care of myself, but it benefits my family, and here's the reasons why, and this is the repercussions out into the broader community. And like, people aren't—people who are putting up objections and doubts aren’t armed to deal with that kind of response."

“And then when you have those doubts in your mind that plague you, which they—and go back to your reason; go back to your reasons.”

“Yeah, that’s right, say why am I doing this? Oh yeah, it’s because, well, I have to take care of myself because otherwise I'm pathetic and useless and bitter and cruel, and then I'm going somewhere terrible, so that's a bad idea. And here's how it would help my family, and here's how it would help the community, and that's a good enough set of reasons for it.”

“Unless I can think of better ones! Without better ones, that’s good enough, because I think the question comes back to after—you know, someone can go down the rabbit hole and say why—why am I doing this? And why is this meaningful for me? And I think a lot of people go back to what, why am I here in the first?”

“Yes, yes. Why am I here? Hmm, what is the meaning of my life? And this is real or is this just some dream world?”

“Well, in that, people do go back to that, and then they get stuck on that.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, none of this even matters because why am I even here?”

“Well, the thing is, is that that's a self-defeating set of propositions in some sense because the consequence of being stuck there is no reason you stuck there to begin, which is because you're not very happy about the fact that life is intrinsically tied up with suffering, because you wouldn't be asking that question to begin with!”

“Okay, so if you let that pull you in and take you down, all it does is make the suffering worse. It's not helpful. And then the cascade that we talked about happens—you suffer stupidly and pointless, and you get bitter, you become cruel, and you make everything worse. It's like, that's your answer, is it? You're gonna make everything worse? It's bad enough; you're gonna make it worse.”

“Mostly people won't do that consciously, yes.”

“So you think, well, what's the alternative? Well, here's one: if you have a sufficiently noble purpose, the suffering will justify itself. And I think—I think that's empirically testable, and I do believe it's the case, because I've watched people do very difficult things, like people who work in palliative care wards. So all they're ever dealing with is pain and death, right? And they can do it; they get up in the morning; they go to work, and they take care of those people. They lose people on a weekly basis, and yet they can do it. And what that shows is that if you turn around and you confront the suffering voluntarily, you find out that you are way tougher than you think."

“It’s not that life is better than you think; life is as harsh as you think it might even be worse, but you are way tougher than you think if you turn around and confront it. And so then what you discover is that there's a spirit within you that pursues something that can pursue something meaningful, that has the resilience and the strength to contend properly with the catastrophe of existence without becoming bitter. That's actually the central theme of—”

“—and then I would say that's one of the central themes of the twelve rules for life, is that make no mistake about it—like the first noble truth of Buddhism: life is suffering; this is true. And it’s worse than that because it's suffering contaminated by malevolence, that's the baseline. But—and so that's very pessimistic, but the optimistic part is that you are so damn tough, you can actually not only deal with that; you can improve it. It's like, oh well, that's a horrible situation, but it turns out that I'm armed for the task. Well, that's—that's a great thing for people to know, and I do believe—I think the fact that we're armed for the task is even more true than the fact that life is rough—it's contaminated by malevolence. We're stronger than things are terrible."

"So, and things are pretty terrible, so that means we're pretty damn strong.”

“Wow, yes, it's a very good thing to know and it's not naive optimism; it's a very different thing. It's like, no! Things are terrible! They're brutal! And you are so damn tough, you can't believe it!”

“So wow, what's been the biggest challenge in your life that you've had to overcome or the biggest suffering that took me the longest to get beyond to improve?”

“Oh, I think that was probably—I wrote about this in the last chapter in my book, which is called “Pedi-cab.” When you encounter one in the street. And it's about dealing with—you know, you think what's the worst thing that can happen to you? Well, I think the worst thing is that you do something really horrible, and you screw up your life and everyone's life around you!”

“That's— just live with it.”

“Yes, yes. So you have to live with knowing you did it. It's like, that's rough man! That's worse than dying. Yes, and then you don't remember there are worse things than dying, yeah.”

“But I think that the hardest existential situation that I've been in is the situation with my daughter because she was very very ill, and she had arthritis. She had arthritis, it wasn't rheumatoid type, and she had 40 affected joints that had started to bother her when she was 2 but really manifested itself fully when she was 6. And some of the medical treatment helped, but when she was 15, 14, 14 through 16, first her hip disintegrated. And then her—and so she had that replaced after walking around on it for like a good year. And then her ankle disintegrated on her other foot, and she had to have it replaced. And so there were two years of absolutely brutal pain for her like brutal daily excruciating pain. And we were really running around trying to figure out what to do about it because the hip wasn't too hard to replace, you know, because surgeons are actually pretty good at hip replacements. But ankles are still so many balls touching.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah, and so just watching that and—and while watching what it was doing to her because she was in enough pain at one point just about broke her, you know. And I mean you know you and I—you have a situation where you were in pain for a night and couldn't sleep. It's like, yeah, fine. So multiply that by five and extended over two years, Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, and she was on like huge doses of opiates, and so that was sedating her, and so that made her look drunk in public, and she could only stay awake for about six hours a day, and she had to take Ritalin to stay awake because otherwise, she was just sleeping all the time. And it was a very bad autoimmune condition. And so it wasn't only manifest in the joint deterioration and the pain because arthritis is also very painful, and forty joints happens to be quite a loss.”

“So one joint was brutal, yeah, right? No, it was absolutely brutal beyond belief as a father or a parent. How do you navigate that emotionally yourself?”

“Yeah, well, that's what that chapter's about. I mean, so were there—so what do you do when things are too much? Well, one of the answers is to narrow your timeframe, and the other answer is you look for occasions of grace and beauty where you can get them. So when she had a dog that really helped. You know, so that was something that was with her all the time, and we tried to put things in her life that she could care for. She had a whole raft of pets, although she was allergic to almost everything, so most of them were lizards."

“Oh, yeah, I know what people say; guinea pigs, like, oh I love this kitty Vegas! Okay! And then, you know, three hours later she'd have a big role, like Harry's dogs, right? So the dog—luckily, the dog she could tolerate, and so we had the dog for her. But one of the things you do when you're in the situation like that—it’s just a bloody ongoing nightmare is that you shrink your timeframe. It's like, well, what are we gonna do in a year? It's like, oh god you can't even think about that! It's about six months! A week! Tomorrow! Today! The next hour!”

“Yeah, so that's what you're really doing, great! You shrink your timeframe until you can tolerate it. So you're not planning out year. Yes! Because then you'll go crazy.”

“Yeah!”

“It's too much uncertainty! Yeah! You think okay how can I make the next hour the least amount of awful possible—that’s what you do at someone's deathbed.”

“No, you shrink your timeframe and that—and that's what you have to do.”

“How does that play into the self-authoring program if you have this vision for yourself and you're mapping out a year to three, five years ahead?”

“Yeah, well sometimes you know we navigate.”

“Yeah, that's right! You have to re-navigate! You have to say no better than that! Yeah, because even the best laid plans of mice and men go astray, you know?”

“I mean, that's part of being alive! And so you have your mouth, but you know, if you get a flat tire along the way, be prepared to have to stop and fix your car. Or maybe the bloody thing bursts into flames; you have to get in there, you know?”

“So, I mean, your ascent towards your goals can be punctuated by unexpected catastrophe. And then, well, then hopefully you've made yourself into a resilient person at that point and the catastrophe is no worse than it has to be, and you're not making it worse. I mean, one of the things we were fortunate about is that by the time she got really ill, my relationship with my wife was pretty well put together, and my relationship with my son, my who's younger than her, was also well put together. And so he was an absolute trooper, man. Because most of her—a lot of his teenage life in particular, there was a huge amount of focus on the suffering of his sister, and we were like right up to here with that. It was just, it was enough. And he conducted himself admirably—he didn't, if he caused trouble, we didn't know about it; he kept it to himself, you know? And I don’t mean he was hiding; I mean he dealt with it. And he spent a lot of time at home, and he didn’t do any unnecessary stupid things, and he put up with his sister and his parents, who were on an edge without adding a dish, you know, catastrophe and misery and grief to it. And when she was a little bit crazy and was leaning on him too hard or bothering him, he was there to support her, and it was massively helpful.

“And you know, I wasn't any more—my wife and I were any more crazy towards each other than we had to be, and so there wasn't like any additional stress during those periods of time.”

“Because, yeah! Any extra would have been like—”

“That’s right; that’s right! How are you able to compartmentalize or just focus on your career at that time, you know, lecturing or writing or whatever it may be?"

“Well, that's also part of the vision of hell. It's like, well what's the alternative? You let things go, and you make them worse. It's like no showing up, and—yeah, just know there's no excuse for that. It's like, how did you say—was it a compartmentalizing of like, okay, it's nine o'clock or eight o'clock in the morning, I'm going to work?!”

“Yeah, and then, yeah! Well, we made rules, and we talked about some of them, like some of the rules were we didn't talk about my daughter's illness after eight o'clock at night; that was the rule. It's like, no sanity?”

“Well, we—no, it's—it’s a war; you wear yourself out in a week; you're dead, and everyone suffers a lot. So you gotta keep going through however long this is going to be, and so what do you have to do?”

“Well you have to sleep.”

“You have to sleep; it's time to stop talking and go to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah! Well, and I had learned some of that because I've been a clinical psychologist for a long time and so I've been dealing with people's problems, and you learned how to—you know, you think, well how can you go home when you have all of those problems to contend with? It's like, well, they're not your problems; they're not going away, right?

“No, and they're not going away, and having them bring you down is not helping the person who has the problem. It's the same with my daughter. It's like had my wife and I deteriorated as a consequence of her condition, that would have been horrible for her because then she would have had to bear the weight of watching her illness destroy her family—right—which have that guilt.

“Oh Christ, yes! I mean that's one of the terrible things about having a very bad illness is that not only does it do you in, but you can see it taking its toll on the people around you. I think that might even be worse!”

“Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast! We've got the legendary Jordan Peterson in the house! Good to see you, sir! Good to see you! Very excited about this. You've got a book out called Twelve Rules for Life. Make sure you guys check this out. You've probably already got it, but if you don't, I'm telling you to go pick it up right now—an antidote to chaos.”

“What's been the biggest challenge in your life that you've had to overcome or the biggest suffering that took me the longest to get beyond to improve?”

“Oh, I think that was probably—I wrote about this in the last chapter in my book, which is called pedi-cab when you encounter one in the street—and it's about dealing with. You know you think what's the worst thing that can happen to you? Well, I think the worst thing is that you do something really horrible and you screw up your life and everyone's life around you.”

“That just live with it?”

“Yes, yes! So you have to live with knowing you did it! It’s like that's rough, man! That's worse than dying.”

“Yes!”

“And then you don't remember, there are worse things than dying.”

“Yeah!”

“But I think the hardest existential situation that I've been in is the situation with my daughter because she was very very ill. She had rheumatoid arthritis; she had arthritis; it wasn't rheumatoid type, and she had 40 affected joints that had started to bother her when she was two, but really manifested itself fully when she was six. And some of the medical treatment helped, but when she was 15—14, 14 through 16, first her hip disintegrated. And then her—and so she had that replaced after walking around on it for like a good year, and then her ankle disintegrated on her other foot, and she had to have it replaced. And so there were two years of absolutely brutal pain for her, like brutal daily excruciating pain. And we were really running around trying to figure out what to do about it because the hip wasn't too hard to replace. You know, because surgeons are actually pretty good at hip replacements. But ankles are, you know, it's still so many balls touching.”

“Oh yeah!”

“Yeah, and so just watching that and—and while watching what it was doing to her because she was in enough pain at one point just about broker—you know. And I mean you know you—I had a situation where you were in pain for a night and couldn't sleep. It's like, yeah, fine, so multiply that by five and extended over two years; Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah, and she was on like huge doses of opiates, and so that was sedating her, and so that made her look drunk in public, and she can only stay awake for about six hours a day and she had to take Ritalin to stay awake because otherwise, she was just sleeping all the time. And it was a very bad autoimmune condition, and so it wasn't only manifest in the joint deterioration and the pain because arthritis is also very painful and forty joints—happens to be quite a loss.”

“Right? So one joint was brutal; yeah right? No, it was absolutely brutal, beyond belief! As a father or a parent, how do you navigate that emotionally yourself?”

“Yeah, well that's what that chapter's about. I mean, so were there, so what do you do when things are too much? Well, one of the answers is you narrow your timeframe, and the other answer is you look for occasions of grace and beauty where you can get them. So when she had a dog that really helped. You know, so that was something that was with her all the time and we tried to put things in her life that she could care for. She had a whole raft of pets, although she was allergic to almost everything, so most of them were lizards.”

“Oh yeah, I know what people say! ”Guinea pigs" like, "Oh, I love this kitty!" Vegas! Okay, and then you know three hours later, she'd have a big role, like Harry's dogs, right? So the dog—luckily, the dog she could tolerate! And so we had the dog for her! But one of the things you do when you’re in the situation like that—it's just a bloody ongoing nightmare is that you shrink your timeframe. It's like, well, what are we gonna do in a year? It's like, oh god, you can't even think about that! It's about six months! A week! Tomorrow! Today! The next hour!”

“Yeah, so that's what you're really doing, great! You shrink your timeframe until you can tolerate it! So you're not planning out a year—yes because then you'll go crazy!”

“Yeah!”

“It's too much uncertainty! You think, okay, how can I make the next hour the least amount of awful possible? That's what you do at someone's deathbed!”

“No, you shrink your timeframe and that's, and that's what you have to do! How does that play into the self-authoring program if you have this vision for yourself and you're mapping out a year to three, five years ahead?”

“Yeah, well sometimes, you know, we navigate—”

“Yeah that's right! You have to re-navigate! You have to say, no better than that! Because even the best-laid plans of mice and men go astray, you know?”

“I mean, that's part of being alive! And so you have your mouth, but you know, if you get a flat tire along the way, you'll have to stop and fix your car. Or maybe the bloody thing bursts into flames—you have to get in there, you know?”

“So, I mean, your ascent towards your goals can be punctuated by unexpected catastrophe! And then, well, then hopefully you've made yourself into a resilient person at that point! And the catastrophe is no worse than it has to be, and you're not making it worse. I mean, one of the things we were fortunate about is that by the time she got really ill, my relationship with my wife was pretty well put together, and my relationship with my son, who's younger than her, was also well put together. And so he was an absolute trooper, man! Because most of her— a lot of his teenage life in particular, there was a huge amount of focus on the suffering of his sister, and we were like right up to here with that; it was just enough!”

“And he conducted himself admirably! He didn’t—if he caused trouble, we didn’t know about it; he kept it to himself, you know? And I don’t mean he was hiding; I mean he dealt with it and he spent a lot of time at home! And he didn’t do any unnecessary stupid things, and he put up with his sister and his parents, who were on a jag without adding a dish, you know? Catastrophe and misery and grief to it! And when she was a little bit crazy and was leaning on him too hard or bothering him, he was there to support her! And it was massively helpful!

“And you know, I wasn’t any—and my wife and I were any more crazy towards each other than we had to be! And so there wasn’t like any additional stress during those periods of time!”

“Because yeah! Any extra would have been like—”

“That's right! That's right! How are you able to compartmentalize or just focus on your career at that time, you know, lecturing or writing or whatever it may be?”

“Well, that's also part of the vision of hell! It's like, what’s the alternative? You let things go, and you make them worse! It's like no showing up …”

“Yeah! Just know there’s no excuse for that! It's like, how did you—how did you say it? Was it a compartmentalizing of like "Okay, it's 9 o'clock, or 8 o'clock in the morning; I'm going to work!?"

"Yeah! And then … yeah! Well, we made rules, and we talked about some of them! Like, some of the rules were we didn’t talk about my daughter’s illness after 8 o'clock at night! That was the rule! It’s like: no sanity!”

“Well, we ...”

“No! It’s a war—you wear yourself out in a week; you’re dead, and everyone suffers a lot! So you got to keep going through however long this is going to be, and so what do you have to do?”

“Well, you have to sleep!”

“You have to sleep, it's time to stop talking and go to sleep!"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"Well, and I have learned some of that because I've been a clinical psychologist for a long time, and so I've been dealing with people’s problems! And you learned how to—you know, you think, well how can you go home when you have all of those problems to contend with? It's like, well—they're not your problems! They're not going away, right?"

"No!"

"No, and they're not going away, and having them bring you down is not helping the person who has the problem! It's the same with my daughter! It’s like had my wife and I deteriorated as a consequence of her condition— that would have been horrible for her, because then she would have had to bear the weight of watching her illness destroy her family!"

"Right, which would have that guilt!"

"Oh Christ, yes! I mean that’s one of the terrible things about having a very bad illness is that not only does it do you in, but you can see it taking its toll on the people around you! I think that might even be worse!

Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the legendary Jordan Peterson in the house! Good to see you, sir! Good to see you! Very excited about this. You've got a book out called Twelve Rules for Life. Make sure you guys check this out. You've probably already got it, but if you don't, I'm telling you to go pick it up right now; an antidote to chaos.

What’s been the biggest challenge in your life that you’ve had to overcome or the biggest suffering that took me the longest to get beyond to improve?

Oh, I think that was probably—I wrote about this in the last chapter in my book, which is called ‘Pediatric.’ When you encounter one in the street and it’s about— It’s about dealing with, you know, you think what’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Well, I think the worst thing is that you do something really horrible and you screw up your life and everyone’s life around you.

That just live with it?

Yes, yes!

So you have to live with knowing you did it! It’s like that’s rough, man! That’s worse than dying!

Yes!

And then you don’t remember: there are worse things than dying! So, I think the hardest existential situation that I’ve been in is the situation with my daughter.

Because she was very ill and she had arthritis.

She had arthritis? It wasn't rheumatoid type, and she had 40 affected joints that had started to bother her when she was 2, but really manifested itself fully when she was 6. And some of the medical treatment helped, but when she was 15; 14, 14 through 16, first her hip disintegrated. And then her—and so she had that replaced after walking around on it for like a good year, and then her ankle disintegrated on her other foot and she had to have it replaced.

And so there were two years of absolutely brutal pain for her, like brutal daily excruciating pain. And we were really running around trying to figure out what to do about it because the hip wasn’t too hard to replace, you know—because surgeons are actually pretty good at hip replacements. But ankles are still, you know, it’s still so many balls touching.

Oh yeah! And so just watching that and—and while watching what it was doing to her because she was in enough pain at one point just about broke her, you know? And I mean, you know, you and I, you have a situation where you were in pain for a night and couldn’t sleep; it’s like, yeah fine, so multiply that by five and extended over two years, Jesus Christ!

Yeah, and she was on like huge doses of opiates, and so that was sedating her, and so that made her look drunk in public, and she could only stay awake for about six hours a day and she had to take Ritalin to stay awake because otherwise she was just sleeping all the time, and it was a very bad autoimmune condition, and so it wasn’t only manifest in the joint deterioration and the pain because arthritis is also very painful, and forty joints happen to be quite a loss.

Right? So one joint was brutal.

Yeah! Right? No, it was absolutely brutal—beyond belief! As a father or a parent, how do you navigate that emotionally yourself?

Yeah, well that’s what that chapter is about! I mean—so were there—for what do you do when things are too much? Well, one of the answers is you narrow your timeframe, and the other answer is you look for occasions of grace and beauty where you can get them. So when she had a dog that really helped, you know? So that was something that was with her all the time, and we tried to put things in her life that she could care for as she had a whole raft of pets—although she was allergic to almost everything, so most of them were lizards.

Oh, yeah, I know what people say: guinea pigs—like oh, I love this kitty Vegas! Okay! And then, you know, three hours later, she’d have a big role—like Harry’s dogs, right? So the dog—that’s right! The dog she could tolerate! And so we had the dog for her, but one of the things you do when you’re in the situation like that —it’s just a bloody ongoing nightmare is that you shrink your timeframe.

It’s like, well, what are we gonna do in a year? It’s like, oh god, you can’t even think about that! It’s about six months! A week! Tomorrow! Today! The next hour!

Yeah, so that’s what you were really doing great; you shrink your timeframe until you can tolerate it, so you're not planning out a year.

Yes, because then you’ll go crazy—yeah! It's too much uncertainty, you think, okay, how can I make the next hour the least amount of awful possible? That’s what you do at someone’s deathbed.

No, you shrink your timeframe, and that’s what you have to do. How does that play into the self-authoring program? If you have this vision for yourself and you're mapping out a year to three, five years ahead—a few things you’ll have to wobble through because it’s a recurring cycle.

Yeah, well sometimes we navigate, yeah, that’s right! You have to re-navigate! You have to say no better than that because even the best laid plans of mice and men go astray, you know?

I mean, that’s part of being alive! And so you have your mouth but—you know, if you get a flat tire along the way, you’re going to have to stop and fix your car or maybe the bloody thing bursts into flames—you have to get in there—you know?

So what I mean your ascent towards your goals can be punctuated by unexpected catastrophe. And then hopefully, you've made yourself into a resilient person at that point, and the catastrophe is no worse than it has to be, and you’re not making it worse.

I mean, one of the things we were fortunate about is by the time she got really ill, my relationship with my wife was pretty well put together, and my relationship with my son, who’s younger than her, was also well put together. And so he was an absolute trooper, man, because most of her— a lot of his teenage life in particular, there was a huge amount of focus on the suffering of his sister, and we were like right up to here with that— it was just that it was enough.

And he conducted himself admirably! He didn’t— If he caused trouble, we didn’t know about it—we kept it to ourselves, you know? And I don’t mean he was hiding, I mean he dealt with it!

And he spent a lot of time at home! And he didn’t do any unnecessary stupid things, and he put up with his sister and his parents, who were on edge without adding a dish— you know, catastrophe and misery and grief to it! And when she was a little bit crazy and was leaning on him too hard or bothering him, he was there to support her, and it was massively helpful!

And you know, I wasn’t any—and my wife and I were any more crazy towards each other than we had to be,

And so there wasn’t like any additional stress during those periods of time based on what they were going through.

So, yeah, it's already been one of those years you're writing down because to conduct a household, you can’t just make matters worse! You can’t seek help if you don’t make time.

So, it's a very interesting line with understanding how the future might embrace you if you're not stuck in past failures.

At the same time, it deals with individual responsibility—the responsibility in the household puts those who don't take it upon themselves in a state of reflection when they do get the chance to do something.

Well, if you're seeking support that leaves you empty of those standards, it becomes more about resilience than self-pity as you work through it.

Exactly! No matter how dire the situation, you learn to appreciate the finer details of life, don’t you? Because suffering is a ladder to a wisdom that also surrounds you as you march forth with your own joy in thriving existence!

Yes, that's correct! If only everyone understood the worth in a family that stands behind you as chains.

To go through such troubles isn't easy, but there's always beauty in the struggle, isn't there? In seeing moments of joy beyond the veil of pain created, issues of living can become less of a shadow looming over you.

It’s more than understanding; it’s the recognition that pushing past obstacles tomorrow centers our motivation today!

Yes! We all have the ability to lead a life as full of meaning based on intention that everyone can aim toward flourishing connections where no obstacle can pull them down.

And you know, that makes it even twice as noble; as you find meaning through ethics cascading each splash in that leap.

Say, now with all the hope in reaching beyond what helped bring you down, learning is delighting a path for everyone walking alongside each other's journeys!

Your daughter's journey alone was brave, and alongside the family, there can be so much growth because in following through the brave whirl paths, you discover treasure that the heart shape out its direction but must hope fiercely as it becomes clearer.

You just do what you cannot think about; I meant— as you've come so far away, what's the biggest fear now moving forward in your own life?

Oh, making a mistake at the moment because I got— I’ve been the subject of so much public attention in the last two years, and like I’ve been in this situation where, well even things I didn’t say have also almost been fatal because people take them out of context, right?

You know, but I’m my biggest fear has been that I do something careless and that there are like serious cascading consequences to—like you’ve done something careless or— well everyone’s done something careless, right? You know?

*But I’ve been pretty careful. I mean I was fortunate. So when this political scandal blew up around me and in Canada when I opposed some legislation that I thought was reprehensibly constructed, you know, the radicals on the left in particular came after me hard. But I was fortunate because, you know, they called me every name under the book and went after my character, and, you know, I suppose there was some degree of that was understandable to some degree because if you stand up against something, if you stand up against the radical right, well maybe you're a communist—might no probably not because you don’t have to be a communist to not like the radical right. But if you stand up against the radical left or maybe you’re a Nazi, well probably not, but you might be! And so it’s certainly in the interest of the people who are proponents of the philosophy of the radical left to assume that you’re a Nazi, because then they don’t have to deal with you. And so that's what happens—you throw yourself into the fray, people try to localize you and they do that by saying, well maybe you’re this, maybe you’re this, maybe you’re this, maybe you’re or this; it’s like well yeah maybe not too! And I already had 250 hours of lectures up on YouTube at that point, so people could actually go and see what I had said because virtually every word I’d ever said to students in a professional capacity—not, not every word because I didn’t tape every lecture, sure, but I taped multiple years of lectures. And so people went over those with a fine-tooth comb trying to find out if there’s anything I’d ever said that was and they couldn't find anything. And that was because I’d be very careful with what I say ever since I was about 25. I started paying attention to what I was saying and trying very hard not to say things that I would—I was trying not to—try very hard not to say things that something in me objected to."

So—and well that seems to have provided me with a buffer. And so people came to my website because they were interested in—well, before the political stuff blew up, I had a million views on YouTube, which isn’t nothing! A million of anything is a lot! But then when the political scandal started to break, yeah then people came for them but stayed for the content.

And so, and that’s really useful! Yeah, well it's well, and it's not that surprising! Well, you know, because of what you do, it's like people—there's a great hunger for information that is practical and useful and that helps people find meaning in their lives and orient themselves; there’s a great hunger for that. And most of my lectures were derived from solid psychology, some of it, experimental, some of the biological, some of it from the domains of neuroscience, a lot of it from great clinicians. It's not surprising that people find it helpful, because well, great clinicians were great because they were really helpful, and so to distill that and to offer it to people in a digestible form to have that, have a good effect on them—well that's, that's what you'd expect! That's what the whole discipline is about! And so that's been great! These public lectures that I've been doing, so I think I've done 50 of them in about 45 different cities now in about three months, and the average theater size is between 2500 and 3000 people, and they’re unbelievably positive events because people come there and we talk mostly about the political spectrum and why there’s room for voices on the left and why there's room for voices on the right and where the parameters of that should be because both of those can descend into extremism, and that’s not good. And the role of individual responsibility and individual sovereignty and the necessity for people to develop a vision, the sorts of things that we already talked about. And virtually every one that's coming there, they’re not coming for political reasons, even though that's the story you hear from the more ideologically possessed journalist types because they see the world that way, they can't imagine anything else could possibly be happening but the people who are coming to these lectures are coming because they are doing everything they possibly can to make their lives better, so and so, it’s lovely to talk to people like that because—

*Amazing! It is! It’s great! It’s literally great! School greatness, baby! Exactly! I’ve got six minutes to be mindful of your time in your schedule, and I won’t ask you three for long, okay? So if that’s okay? Yeah, you bet! So as much as I would love for you to go on for another few hours on these answers, so I can get to the last question I’ll do my dance—my brief, I wish I could go on longer, so what to have you come back next time here in LA! The first one is: What is your purpose now moving forward? And through everything you've had in your life, what’s your purpose moving forward? Well, I have—I’m specific, I’m, I’m—what's my purpose? What am I aiming at? Well, I’m going to—I did a series of biblical