Doctor Jordan Peterson - Life Lessons on BECOMING THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF
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Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills...

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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 asked 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. Now, 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 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 place you'd like to visit and take all your family and friends.

because that's what happened in the 20th century. Our eyes are always pointing at things we are interested in approaching or investigating or looking for or having. We must see, but to see we must aim. So we are always aiming. Our minds are built on the hunting and gathering platforms of our bodies.

To hunt is to specify a target, track it and throw at it. To gather is to specify and to grasp. We fling stones and spears and boomerangs. We toss balls through hoops and hit pucks into nets and curl carved granite rocks down the ice onto horizontal bull's eyes.

We launch projectiles at targets with bows, guns, rifles, and rockets. We hurl insults, launch plans, and pitch ideas. We succeed when we score a goal or hit a target. We fail or sin when we do not means to miss the mark. We cannot navigate without something to aim at. And while we are in this world, we must always navigate.

We are always and simultaneously at point A, which is less desirable than it could be, moving towards point B, which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values.

We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right and improved even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better.

If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn't even be able to see, because to see, we must focus. And to focus, we must pick one thing above all else on which to focus. But we can see. We can even see things that aren't there.

We can envision new ways that things could be better. We can construct new hypothetical worlds where problems we weren't even aware of can now show themselves and be addressed. The advantages of this are obvious. We can change the world so that the intolerable state of the present can be rectified in the future.

The disadvantage to all this foresight and creativity is chronic unease and discomfort because we always contrast what is with what could be. We have to aim at what could be, but we can aim too high.

or too low, or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment even when we appear to others to be living well. How can we benefit from our imaginativeness, our ability to improve the future without continually denigrating our current insufficiently successful and worthless lives? The first step perhaps is to take stock. Who are you when you buy a house and prepare to live in it?

You hire an inspector to list all its faults. As it is in reality, now not as you wish it could be. You'll even pay him for the bad news. You need to know. You need to discover the home's hidden flaws. You need to know whether they are cosmetic imperfections or structural inadequacies. You need to know because you can't fix something if you don't know it's broken. And you're broken.

You need an inspector, the internal critic. It could play that role if you could get it on track. If you, and it could cooperate. It could help you take stock, but you must walk through your psychological house with it and listen judiciously to what it says. Maybe you're a handyman's dream, a real fixer-upper. How can you start your renovations without being demoralized?

Even crushed by your internal critics' lengthy and painful report of your inadequacies? Here's a hint: the future is like the past. But there's a crucial difference: the past is fixed, but the future? It could be better. It could be better. Some precise amount. The amount that can be achieved, perhaps in a day, with some minimal engagement. The present is eternally flawed.

But where you start might not be as important as the direction you are heading. Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived. Called upon properly, the internal critic will suggest something to set in order, which you could set in order.

which you would set in order, voluntarily, without resentment, even with pleasure. Ask yourself, is there one thing that exists in disarray in your life or your situation that you could and would set straight? Could you and would you fix that one thing that announces itself humbly in need of repair? Could you do it now?

Imagine that you are someone with whom you must negotiate. Imagine further that you are lazy, touchy, resentful, and hard to get along with. With that attitude, it's not going to be easy to get you moving. You might have to use a little charm and playfulness. Excuse me, you might say to yourself, without irony or sarcasm, I'm trying to reduce some of the unnecessary suffering around here. I could use some help.

Keep the derision at bay. I'm wondering if there is anything that you would be willing to do. I'd be very grateful for your service. Ask honestly and with humility. That's no simple matter. You might have to negotiate further, depending on your state of mind. Maybe you don't trust yourself. You think that you'll ask yourself for one thing and having delivered, immediately demand more. And you'll be punitive and hurtful about it.

and you'll denigrate what was already offered. Who wants to work for a tyrant like that? Not you. That's why you don't do what you want yourself to do. You're a bad employee, but a worse boss. Maybe you need to say to yourself, "Okay, I know we haven't gotten along very well in the past. I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to improve. I'll probably make some more mistakes along the way, but I'll try to listen if you object. I'll try to learn."

I noticed just now today that you weren't really jumping at the opportunity to help when I asked, is there something I could offer in return for your cooperation? Maybe if you did the dishes, we could go for coffee. You like espresso. How about an espresso? Maybe a double shot. Or is there something else you want? Then you could listen. Maybe you'll hear a voice inside. Maybe it's even the voice of a long lost child.

Maybe it will reply, "Really? You really want to do something nice for me? You'll really do it. It's not a trick. This is where you must be careful." That little voice, that's the voice of someone once burnt and twice shot. So you could say very carefully, "Yes, I might not do it very well, and I might not be great company, but I will do something nice for you. I promise."

A little careful kindness goes a long way, and judicious reward is a powerful motivator. Then you could take that small bit of yourself by the hand and do the damn dishes. And then you better not go clean the bathroom and forget about the coffee or the movie or the beer, or it will be even harder to call those forgotten parts of yourself forth from the nooks and crannies of the underworld.

You might ask yourself, what could I say to someone else? My friend, my brother, my boss, my assistant, that would set things a bit more right between us tomorrow. What bit of chaos might I eradicate at home, on my desk, in my kitchen tonight, so that the stage could be set for a better play? 500 small decisions, 500 tiny actions compose your day today and every day. Could you aim one or two of these at a better result?

better in your own private opinion by your own individual standards. Could you compare your specific personal tomorrow with your specific personal yesterday? Could you use your own judgment and ask yourself what that better tomorrow might be? Aim small. You don't want to shoulder too much to begin with, given your limited talents, tendency to deceive.

Burden of resentment and ability to shirk responsibility. Thus, you set the following goal. By the end of the day, I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, what could I do that I would do that would accomplish that? And what small thing would I like as a reward? Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee in triumph.

Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher. And that's magic. That's compound interest. Do that for three years and your life will be entirely different. Now you're aiming for something higher. Now you're wishing on a star.

Now the beam is disappearing from your eye and you're learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That's worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see. If you configure your life so that what you are genuinely doing is aiming at the highest possible good, then the things that you need to survive and to thrive on a day-to-day basis will deliver themselves to you.

That's a hypothesis. And it's not some simple hypothesis, right? Because what it basically says is, if you dare to do the most difficult thing that you can conceptualize, your life will work out better than it will if you do anything else. Well, how are you going to find out if that's true? Well, it's a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. There's no way you're going to find out whether or not that's true unless you do it. So no one can tell you either, because...

just because it works for someone else. I mean, that's interesting and all that, but it's no proof that it'll work for you. You have to be all in in this game. There is no more effective way of operating in the world than to conceptualize the highest good that you can and then strive to attain it. There's no more practical pathway to the kind of success that you could have if you actually knew what success was. The world shifts itself

Around your aim because you're a creature that has a name you have to have a name in order to do something You're an aiming creature you look at a point and you move towards it It's built right into you and so you have a name well Let's say your aim is the highest possible aim well then so that sets up the world around you it Organizes all of your perceptions it organizes what you see and you don't see it organizes your emotions and your motivations and

So you organize yourself around that aim. And then what happens is the day manifests itself as a set of challenges and problems. And if you solve them properly, then you stay on the pathway towards that aim. And you can concentrate on the day. And so that way you get to have your cake and eat it too. Because you can point into the distance, the far distance. And you can live in the day. And it seems to me that that's...

That makes every moment of the day supercharged with meaning. Because if everything that you're doing every day is related to the highest possible aim that you can conceptualize, well, that's the very definition of the meaning that would sustain you in your life.