STOP Wasting Time And Opportunities Jordan Peterson Life Advice

you know if you take people

and i’ve told you this and you expose

them voluntarily to things that they are

avoiding and are afraid of you know that

they know they need to overcome in order

to meet their goals their self-defined

goals

if you can teach people to stand up in

the face of the things they’re afraid of

they get stronger and you don’t know

what the upper limits to that are

because you might ask yourself like

if for 10 years if you didn’t avoid

doing what you knew you needed to do

by the depth by your own definitions

right within the value structure that

you’ve created

to the degree that you’ve done that what

would you be like

well you know there are remarkable

people who come into the world from time

to time and there are people who do

find out over decades-long periods what

they could be like if they were who they

were

if they said if they spoke their being

forward and they get stronger and

stronger and stronger and we don’t know

the limits to that we do not know the

limits to that

and so you could say well in part

perhaps the reason that you’re suffering

unbearably

can be left at your feet because you’re

not everything you could be and you know

it

and of course that’s a terrible thing to

admit and it’s a terrible thing to

consider

but there’s real promise in it right

because it means that

perhaps there’s another way that you

could look at the world and the number

another way that you could

act in the world so what it would

reflect back to you would be much better

than what it reflects back to you now

and then the second part of that is well

imagine that many people did that

because

we’ve done a lot as human beings we’ve

done a lot of remarkable things and i’ve

told you already

i think before that today for example

about 250 000 people will be lifted out

of abject poverty

and about 300 000 people attached to the

electrical power grid

we’re making people we’re lifting people

out of poverty collectively at a faster

rate that’s ever occurred in the history

of

humankind by a huge margin and that’s

been going on unbelievably quickly since

the year 2000

the u.n had planned to have poverty

between 2000 and 2015

and it was accomplished by 2013. so

there’s

inequality developing in many places and

you hear lots of political agitation

about that

but overall the the tide is lifting

everyone up and that’s a great thing and

we have no idea how fast we could

multiply that

if people got their act together and

really aimed at it

because you know my my experience is

with people that we’re probably running

at about 51 percent of our capacity

something i mean you can think about

this yourselves i often ask

undergraduates how many hours a day you

waste or how many hours a week you waste

and

the classic answer is something like

four to six hours a day

you know inefficient studying uh

watching things on youtube that not only

do you not want to watch that you don’t

even care about that make you feel

horrible about watching after you’re

done

that’s probably four hours right there

you know you think well that’s

20 25 hours a week it’s 100 hours a

month that’s two and a half full work

weeks

it’s half a year of work weeks per year

and if your time is worth

20 an hour which is a radical

underestimate it’s probably more like 50

if you think about it in terms of

deferred wages if you’re wasting

20 hours a week you’re wasting 50 000

a year and you are doing that right now

and it’s because you’re young wasting

thousand dollars a year is a way bigger

catastrophe than it would be for me to

waste it because i’m not going to last

nearly as long

and so if your life isn’t everything it

could be you could ask yourself well

what would happen if you just stopped

wasting the opportunities that are in

front of you

you be who knows how much more efficient

10 times more efficient

20 times more efficient that’s the

pareto distribution

you have no idea how efficient efficient

people get

it’s completely it’s off the charts

well and if we all got our act together

collectively and stop making things

worse

because that’s another thing people do

all the time not only do they not do

what they should to make things better

they actively attempt to make things

worse because they’re spiteful or

resentful

or arrogant or deceitful or or homicidal

or genocidal or all of those things all

bundled together in an absolutely

pathological package

if people stopped really really trying

just to make things worse

we have no idea how much better they

would get just because of that

so there’s this weird dynamic that’s

part of the existential

system of ideas between human

vulnerability

social judgment both of which are are

are are major causes of suffering and

the failure of individuals to adopt the

responsibility

that they know they should adopt and

that’s the thing that’s interesting too

is that

and like one of the another thing i’ve

always often asked my undergraduate

classes is

you know there’s this idea that that

people have that people have a

conscience

and you know what the conscience is it’s

it’s this

feeling or voice you have in your head

just before you do something

that you know is stupid telling you that

probably you shouldn’t do that stupid

thing

you don’t have to listen to it strangely

enough

but you go ahead and do it anyways and

then of course exactly what the

conscience told you was going to happen

inevitably happened so that you feel

even stupider about it than you would if

it happened by accident

because you you know i knew this was

going to happen i got a warning it was

going to happen

and i went and did it anyways and the

funny thing too is that that conscience

operates within

people and we really don’t understand

what the hell that is

so you might say well what would happen

if you abided by your conscience for

five years or for ten years

what sort of position might you be in

what sort of family might you have

what sort of relationship might you be

able to forge and you can be bloody sure

that a relationship that’s forged

on the basis of who you actually are is

going to be a lot stronger and more

welcome than one that’s forged on the

basis of who you aren’t

now of course that means that the person

you’re with has to deal with

the full force of you in all your

ability and your catastrophe and that’s

a very very difficult thing to negotiate

but if you do negotiate it well at least

you you have something

you have somewhere solid to stand and

you have somewhere to live you have a

real life

and it’s a great basis upon which to

bring children into the world for

example because you can have an actual

relationship with them instead of

torturing them half to death which is

what happens in

a tremendous a tremendously large

minority of cases

well it’s more than that too because and

this is what i’ll close with and this is

why i wanted to introduce social

nissan’s writings to you you see

because it isn’t merely that your fate

depends on whether or not

you get your act together and to what

degree you decide that you’re going to

live

out your own genuine being it isn’t only

your fate

it’s the fate of everyone that you’re

networked with and so you know you think

well

there’s 9 billion 7 billion people in

the world we’re going to peak at about 9

billion by the way

and then it’ll decline rapidly but 7

billion people in the world and who are

you you’re just one little dust mote

among that seven billion and so it

really doesn’t matter what you do or

don’t do but that’s simply not the case

it’s the wrong model because you’re at

the center of a network

you’re a node in a network of course

that’s even more true now that we have

social media

you’ll you’ll know a thousand people at

least over the course of your life

and they’ll know a thousand people each

and that puts you one person away from a

million

and two persons away from a billion and

so that’s how you’re connected and the

things you do

they’re like dropping a stone in a pond

the ripples move outward

and they affect things in ways that you

can’t fully comprehend and it means that

the things that you do and that you

don’t do are far more important than you

think and so if you act that way of

course the terror of realizing that is

that it actually

starts to matter what you do and you

might say well that’s better

than living a meaningless existence it’s

better for it to matter

but i mean if you really ask yourself

would you be so sure if you had the

choice

i can live with no responsibility

whatsoever the price i pay is that

nothing matters

or i can reverse it and everything

matters but i have to take the

responsibility that’s associated with

that

it’s not so obvious to me that people

would take the meaningful path

you know when you say well nihilists

suffer dreadfully because there’s no

meaning in their life and they still

suffer yeah but the advantage is they

have no responsibility

so that’s the payoff and i actually

think that’s the motivation say well

i can’t help being nihilistic all my

belief systems have collapsed it’s like

yeah maybe maybe you’ve just allowed

them to collapse because it’s a hell of

a lot easier than acting them out

and the price you pay is some

meaningless suffering but you can always

whine about that and people will feel

sorry for you

and you have the option of taking the

pathway of the martyr so that’s a pretty

good deal all things considered

especially when the when the alternative

is to

bear your burden properly and to live

forthrightly in the world well

what solzhenitsyn figured out and so

many people in the 20th century it’s not

just him even though he’s the best

example

is that if you live a pathological life

you pathologize your society and if

enough people do that then

it’s hell really

really and you can read the gulag

archipelago if you

have the fortitude to do that and you’ll

see exactly what hell is like

and then you can decide if that’s a

place you’d like to visit

or even more importantly if it’s a light

if it’s a place you’d like to visit

and take all your family and friends

because that’s what happened in the 20th

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century

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you