The Greatest Advice You Will Ever Receive Jordan Peterson Motivation
so i figured something out that i
thought i’d tell you about this took me
like 30 years to figure out and i
figured it out on this tour so there’s
this old idea you know that you have to
rescue your father from the belly of the
whale right from some monster that’s
deep in the abyss you see that pinocchio
for example but it’s a very common idea
and i figured out why that is i think
so
imagine that we already know from a
clinical perspective that you know if
you set out a path towards a goal which
you want to do because you need a goal
and you need a path because that
provides you with positive emotion right
so you set up something as valuable so
that implies a hierarchy you set up
something as valuable you decide that
you’re going to do that instead of other
things so that’s kind of a sacrifice
because you’re sacrificing everything
else to pursue that and then you
experience a fair bit of positive
emotion and meaning as you watch
yourself move towards the goal and so
the implication of that is the the
better the goal the the more full and
rich your experience is going to be when
you pursue it so that’s one of the
reasons of of that’s one of the reasons
for developing a vision and for fleshing
yourself out philosophically because you
want to aim at the highest goal that you
can manage
okay so you do that
and then what you’ll find is that as you
move towards the goal there are certain
things that that that you have to
accomplish that frighten you you know
maybe you have to learn to be a better
speaker a better writer a better thinker
you have to be better to people around
you or you have to learn some new skills
and you’re afraid of that whatever
because it’s going to stretch you if you
if you pursue a goal and it’s and so
that’ll put you up against challenges
okay so all the clinical
data indicates well the opposite of safe
spaces as jonathan height has been
pointing out that what you want to do
when
you identify something that someone is
avoiding that they need to do because
they’re afraid you have them voluntary
voluntarily confront it and so you break
it down what you try to do if you’re a
behavior therapist is you break down the
thing they’re avoiding into smaller and
smaller pieces until you find a piece
that’s small enough so they’ll do it and
it doesn’t really matter as long as they
start it you know then they can put the
next piece on in the next piece and what
happens is
they don’t get less afraid exactly they
get braver
they get they get it’s like there’s more
of them you can and here’s why so
imagine
you do something new
and that’s informative right there’s
information in the action and then you
can incorporate that information and
turn it into a skill and turn it into a
transformation of your perceptions so
there’s more to you because you’ve tried
something new so that’s one thing the
second thing is
and there’s good biological evidence for
this now that
if you put yourself in a new situation
then new genes code for new proteins and
build new neural structures and new
nervous system structures same thing
happens to some degree when you work out
right because your your muscles are
responding to the load but your nervous
system does that too so you imagine that
there’s a lot of potential you locked in
your genetic code
and then if you put yourself in a new
situation then then the stress that’s
the situational stress that’s produced
by that particular situation unlocks
those genes and then builds new parts of
you
so that’s very cool because who knows
how much there is locked inside of you
okay so now here’s the idea
so
let’s assume that that scales as you
take on heavier and heavier loads
that more and more of you you get more
and more informed because you’re doing
more and more difficult things but more
and more of you gets unlocked
and so then
what that would imply is that
if you got to the point where you could
look at the darkest things so that would
be the abyss right that would be the
deepest abyss if you could look at the
harshest things like the most brutal
parts of the suffering of the world and
the malevolence of people and society if
you could look that
look at that
straight and and directly that that
would turn you on maximally
and so that’s the idea of rescuing your
father because imagine that you’re like
the potential composite of of all your
all the ancestral wisdom that’s locked
inside of you biologically but that’s
not going to come out at all unless you
stress yourself unless you unless you
challenge yourself and the bigger the
challenge you take on the more that’s
going to turn on and so that as you take
on a broader and broader range of
challenges and you push yourself harder
then more and more of what you could be
turns on and that’s equivalent to
transforming yourself into the ancestral
father
into all because you’re you’re like the
what would you call it you’re the
consequence of all these
living beings that have come before you
and that’s all part of your biological
potentiality and then if you can push
yourself then all that clicks on and
that turns you into who you could be
that’s and that’s the re-representation
of that
positive ancestral father
the point is your best strategic
position
is
how am i insufficient and how can i
rectify that
that’s what you’ve got and the thing is
you are insufficient
and you could rectify it both of those
are within your grasp if you aim low
enough one of the things why do you see
that that’s another thing you keep
saying aim low enough have a low enough
bar why do you why do you mean that well
let’s say you’ve got a kid and you want
the kid to improve you don’t set them a
bar that’s so high that it’s impossible
for them to attain it you take a look at
the kid and you think okay this kid’s
got this range of skill here’s a
challenge we can throw at him or her
that exceeds their current level of
skill but gives them a reasonable
probability of success
and so like i’m saying it
tongue-in-cheek to some degree you know
it’s like but if you’re but i’m doing it
as an aid to humility it’s like well i
don’t know how to start improving my
life someone might say that and i would
say well you’re not aiming low enough
there’s something you could do that you
are regarding as trivial
that that that you could do that you
would do that would result in an actual
improvement but it’s not a big enough
improvement for you so you won’t lower
yourself enough to take the opportunity
incremental steps yes and so this is
also what is achieved through exercise
it’s one of the most important well what
do you do when you go and lift weights
yeah you don’t go in like if you haven’t
bench pressed before you don’t put 400
pounds on the damn bar and drop the and
drop the bar through your skull right
you know you think look when i started
working out when i was a kid i was i was
weighed about 130 pounds and i was six
foot one it’s a thin kid and i smoked a
lot i wasn’t in good shape i wasn’t in
good physical shape and i went to the
gym and it was bloody embarrassing you
know people would come over and help me
with the goddamn weights here’s how
you’re supposed to use this you know
it’s humiliating and maybe i was
pressing 65 pounds or something at that
point you know but what am i going to do
i’m going to lift up 150 pounds and
injure myself right off the bat no i had
to go in there and strip down and put my
skinny goddamn self in front of the
mirror and think son of a there’s
all these monsters in the gym who’ve
been lifting weights for 10 years and
i’m struggling to get 50 pounds off the
bar tough luck for me but i could lift
50 pounds and it wasn’t fair very long
until i could lift 75 and well you know
how it goes but and i never injured
myself when i was lit weightlifting and
the reason for that was i never pushed
myself past where i knew i could go and
i pushed myself a lot you know i gained
35 pounds of muscle in about three years
in university i kind of had to quit
because i was eating so goddamn much i
couldn’t stand it it’s eating like six
meals a day it was just taking up too
much time
but there’s a humility in determining
what it is that the wretched creature
that you are can actually manage aim low
and i don’t mean don’t aim and i don’t
mean don’t aim up
but you have to accept the fact that
you can set yourself a goal that you can
attain and there’s not going to be much
glory in it to begin with
because if you’re not in very good shape
the goal that you could could attain
tomorrow isn’t very glorious
but it it’s a hell of a lot better than
nothing and it beats the hell out of
bitterness and it’s way better than
blaming someone else it’s way less
dangerous and you could do it and what’s
cool about it
there’s a statement in the new testament
it’s called the matthew principle and
economists use it to describe how the
economy and the world works to those who
have everything more will be given from
those who have nothing everything will
be taken it’s like what’s very
pessimistic in some sense because it
means that as you start to fail you fail
more and more rapidly but it also means
that as you start to succeed you succeed
more and more rapidly and so you take an
incremental step and well now you can
lift 55 pounds instead of 52.5 pounds
you think well what the hell’s that it’s
like it’s one step on a very long
journey
and so it’s it and it starts to compound
on you so a small step today means puts
you in a position to take a slightly
bigger step the next day and then that
puts you in a position to take a
slightly bigger step the next day you do
that for two or three years man you’re
starting to stride
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