The Art of Suffering - Jordan Peterson Motivation

Life isn't fair, is it? Doesn't appear to be very fair.

Because you mean this is how your story ended it in that regard, but it could

>> Is it I don't know if an adventure is fair.

I don't even know if that's what we want. What are we built for? We're built for maximal challenge.

And that isn't the way we view ourselves in the modern world. We we view

ourselves as built for pleasure. We we view ourselves as built for consumption

or for safety or for for maybe for egotistical self-aggrandizement and fame. Those are

Look, many all of those things are better than their absence, let's say.

What are we built for? I think we're built for maximal

challenge. Well, humility is starting where you are. That's what humility is. And it's annoying because you know, like if

your life is a mess, then you have to see that you're the person in that mess.

Then you have to understand that your first attempt to redress the mess might not be something you're particularly proud

of, you know? I mean, I saw this lots in my clinical practice where

people would the first steps they had to take put things in order were pretty

embarrassing. It's like, really? That's all I can do? Hey, man. Uphill is better than downhill. And

Okay, so it it lays out a view of the world.

>> >> Progress, regression. So, even if you have to start small,

you incruse you accrue success exponentially. You accrue defeat exponentially, too. That's the abyss that is hell. You start going downhill,

you go downhill faster and faster. Start going uphill, you go uphill faster

and faster. >> >> So, even if you have to start small or even painfully small, which is highly

probable, especially if you're trying to tackle something that's really

plagued you, doesn't really matter. What is self-belief in this context? Cuz

people are so many people are in search of two words.

I think that's three words, but self-belief and confidence. Yeah? And in

this context of that small task, how is that building my

self-belief or confidence? >> Yeah? If I >> Well, cuz you watch yourself do it. And that does what to me?

>> Well, well, look, if you see someone, a friend, who is continually

incrementally improving, you're going to Oh, that's admirable. Well, you you see the same thing in

yourself. You have to develop an opinion of yourself the same way you would develop an opinion of someone else. So,

now I and I'm not hypothesizing about this, by the way. We know this

clinically. If I want to truly help you build your

confidence, rather than merely readjusting the words you say about yourself, which would be something

like self-esteem, which is something that doesn't even exist, by the way.

It's just a pathological concept altogether. You want confidence, okay? More to the point, you want the

confidence that's based in competence. Otherwise, it's narcissistic. Okay, so how do you develop that? Well,

you watch yourself exceed your limits. And then you think, oh, look at that.

There's something in me that can exceed my limits. That's your true self. That's a good way of thinking about it.

>> And in doing so, you actually realize that limits exist and that you imposed

one on yourself in the first place. >> Well, that you That's one of the things

you can realize, certainly, that that also you don't exactly know where

the limits are. It's like, oh, I exceeded that. It's like, okay, well,

now what? What's the upward arc of exceeding limits? That's

Jacob's ladder. I would say this is the promise of the kingdom of God. That's one way of thinking

about it. There's no upward limit. 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 because

it's the uphill climb that it's 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 the the the emotion that fills us with enthusiasm, and that's to

be filled with the spirit of God, by the way, because that's what

enthusiasm means. That's experienced in relationship to a goal. You want a goal that you can never attain. 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. It was in your case. But then you think,

well, I've 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 the 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,

well, you see the problem with that as a as a

as a conceptualization. It's no, you want to be like an active warrior moving uphill with your sword in hand. And that's

that's dynamic. That's exciting. And that's why so many young men disappear

into video games. It's That's all acted out in the video game.

So, you have to act that out in their own life. Not that I despise video

games, cuz I don't, but they're not a substitute for life.

We kind of experience life as if we're tossed into it, thrown into it, you

know? You're you're male and not female. You're you're Hindu and not Christian. You're tall and not short. You have an

arbitrary range of talents and arbitrary range of limitations, none of which, in

some sense, you chose. It's the cards you're dealt. Now, some

of those are cards of privilege. You know, maybe you're born intelligent.

Maybe you're born symmetrical. Maybe you're born healthy. Um maybe you're

born into a culture where >> >> it's much easier not to be absolutely deprived. Maybe your parents are rich.

And so, all of that, in some sense, is unearned.

>> >> The way you pay for your privilege is

with your virtue. I mean that most particularly. You have

these opportunities and this existential guilt. And the way you

expiate that and atone is by doing your best to live the best

possible life you can manage, to speak the truth, to treat people with

respect, to abide by the principles of the dignity of the individual, and to

put your house in order. And that's how you pay for your unearned

privilege, all of us. >> >> And we all have our privileges and our and our curses, you know? All of us have

them. That's why it's not useful to be envious of people.

You know, you see some You're a young man, you see someone drive by in a

Ferrari with a blonde, and you think, my God, he's got everything. And

you know, the woman in the car is a prostitute who's got a cocaine

addiction, and her her life is just one catastrophe after another. And he's had

to lie and cheat his way into this position, and he's afraid that

everything's going to come crashing down on him. And that's what

you're jealous of. And it's just not that profound. You don't want someone else's fate. Man,

your fate's enough. And your adventure is enough. It's plenty. It's

more than you can ever fully realize. And so, that's also part of the reason

that we all believe that the individual has some intrinsic dignity. It's Don't

be so sure that your position in your room is so damn trivial. Might be your

attitude towards it that's trivial. And if you're in dire straits

and dire circumstances, just look at how much opportunity you have to

make things better. So, not that it's easy. I You don't even

want it to be easy. Well, you need to contemplate your own malevolence because that helps you

understand who you are and who you could be. And you could be something

absolutely brutal and terrible. So, you need to contemplate your own malevolence

so that you understand who you are. And that means you have to contemplate

malevolence as such because >> >> you're not only who you are, you're who you could be, for better or worse. And I

actually think it's I think it's a lot easier to start to understand who you

could be if you were better if you deeply understand who you could be if

you were worse. And who you might be to the degree that you're blind

to that worse presently. So, you think, oh my God, I could be

that malevolent, a force for ill. That's horrible, but highly compelling

and plausible given my understanding of my own character. I'm way deeper on the negative end than I thought, much more closely aligned

with the forces of hell than I presumed. That's easy to swallow

factually, right? You think, yeah, there's evidence for that. It's not so

easy to swallow emotionally. It's it's a bitter pill, to say the least.

And so, I don't think that you can contemplate the good without

contemplating the evil first. I don't think it has the depth. You know, they

say that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. It's it's something like that

necessary fear. It's like, well, I don't want to be a

monster. Okay, well, how much of a monster are you? I'm as monstrous as I have been, so that's on me, conscience-wise, but like

I'm also the same being that's been as monstrous as any being throughout

history. Nothing human is foreign to me. Lots of my clients, my clinical clients, are too agreeable. And um they're

generally women because women are more agreeable than men, but not always, cuz

I've had agreeable men as clients as well. And what happens is

they're resentful and and they don't know how to stand up for themselves, and

it's because they're very compassionate by nature. And so, if you're entering

into a negotiation with them, they'll let you win. Well, that's not so good

cuz you know, you need to win, too. Especially if you're in an organization

of adults where there's >> >> there's a struggle, right? With when you have kids, you can let them win.

Especially infants. You like you have to let them win, and that's partly why

compassion is so necessary. But as a as a basis for negotiation between

adults, it's like sorry, it's it's insufficient. You have to You have to be a bit of a monster so that you can say no. Well, let's toughen

you up, you know, let's put you in a position where you can bargain,

let's teach you how to assert yourself and stand up for yourself. And that's

assertiveness training, and it's a huge chunk of psychotherapy. And you need to

You need to learn it. It's like because part of how you regulate your

interactions with other people is to negotiate. And you cannot negotiate unless you can say no. You can't do it. And it's causes

conflict to say no, and if you don't like conflict, which is basically

the definition of being agreeable, then you can't tolerate the conflict, and so

then you can't negotiate on your own behalf, and so then you keep losing, and

you're bullied, and you know, it's it's not good. Then you get resentful and and

it's really not good. So, you have to develop your inner monster a little bit.

And and then that makes you a better person, not a worse person. It's weird. It's weird, but

but that's just how it is. If you've been victimized, you're naive, and you've been victimized. The way out

of that is to no longer be naive and to no longer be victimized. And that means

that you >> >> You see this reflected in the Harry Potter idea, for example, that the

reason that Harry Potter can withstand Voldemort is because he's got

a piece of him. All right, he's been touched by it. And

the way that you >> >> The way that you keep the psychopaths at bay is to develop the inner psychopath

so that you know one when you see one, right? And then but that's a voluntary

thing. It's it's it's so it's like a It's like a a set of tools that you have

at your disposal, which is full knowledge of evil. And there's this old idea that if you look into the darkness enough, you'll

find something that compensates for it, right? And that emerges out of the

darkness that's greater and more powerful than the darkness. And that

part part of the looking into the dark side of you yourself is you find the

power that enables you to deal with mortality. If they've been coddled and their ambition has been squelched and

everything about them that's aggressive has been shamed out of existence, that's

part of that attraction of that dark fantasy, right? And then they see that

aggression manifesting itself in any creative form. It's not surprising that

they're going to try to imitate that. It's part of that desire to bring that

shadow out of the shadows and into the light. There's two pathways to the development of the shadow, and they're tightly

allied with one another. Um the fundamental pathway is truth, and

that's to face the bitter truth about yourself. But to break that down more

particularly, you might think about that as the capacity to observe your own

resentment. You're going to be resentful and bitter in many situations because

you don't get what you want. And if you watch that resentment bitterness, you'll

see that it produces fantasies that can be unbelievably dark.

And that can be very frightening, and you might not want to admit to yourself

that you're actually capable of having fantasies like that or impulses like

that or aggressive feelings like that. >> >> But the thing is is that if those aggressive feelings and impulses and

fantasies are integrated into your character, it's like you're opening up a

dialogue with a part of yourself that can be very forceful and strong and

dangerous. And it's really useful to be dangerous because if you can if you can be dangerous, you often don't have to be.

You know, where you're oppressing yourself, then you got to notice that

you're feeling oppressed. Then you have to notice that you're feeling resentful

resentful and and and angry and bitter. And then you have to decide what it is

that you need to do in order to remove from yourself that bitterness. And

that's usually means that there's something that you have to say. And then

you have to say it because your soul depends on it. And not only does your

soul depend on it, I would say the fate of the world depends on it because

you know, you might be wrong, and then you should be straightened out. Maybe

you're just being whiny, and you have to talk to somebody about that. But it may

be that you're actually detecting something wrong, some tyranny that's

directed towards you and other people, and it's like your moral obligation to

speak up about it. And so many workplaces become toxic, to use a

terrible cliché, because the people in them won't speak up for what they

actually want, or they speak up too late, and then they're all twisted up

about it, and and you know, they're torturing other people because they're

so unhappy, and so forth, and so on. So, practical approach for developing your

shadow fundamentally is radical honesty.