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sometimes it can feel like men and women in relationships want entirely different things like they're struggling to
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communicate and connect on the same level about the same set of priorities
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Jordan will now explain exactly why that is but outside of the context of a
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relationship all of us struggle in our lives for a variety of different reasons and what Jordan's particularly good at
00:00:24
is telling anybody who's right now listening to this that is struggling in some way or finds themselves in a
00:00:30
situation where they're struggling to get out and climb out of that situation step by step how to do that
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how to turn that situation into the greatest success of your life and that's
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why I loved this conversation and why I think you're going to love it too and before this episode starts I've got a
00:00:48
10-second favor to ask you that are listening to this right now 62% roughly
00:00:54
of people that listen to this podcast haven't yet hit the Subscribe button if you could do me any favor at all it
00:00:59
would be just to hit that subscribe button helps this channel immensely and if you do that for me I promise with my
00:01:05
team to do everything we can to make this show better and better and better for you do we have a deal enjoy the
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[Music]
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episode Jordan we had a conversation before and
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it reached tens of millions of people and as I went through the feedback and the comments of that conversation I
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found one that really stood out to me someone said I had just days of will
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left in my body I felt like a failure I hadn't reached the potential I
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knew I had in me despite effort I couldn't become the person I was so desperate to
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become and then I found Jordan and his unfiltered words pulled
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me from my darkest moment just in time now my life is in my hands once again
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and I've built a career and a life I'm proud of so thank you Jordan we may
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never meet but you've saved my life and my children still have their father
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because of you it is one hell of an impact that you've had on just that
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single person's life how do you receive such incredible feedback from a stranger you've never
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met well when when you were reading that you know I mean it it's obviously a very
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positive thing to hear but my mind immediately went to why that's the case
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see I've been in the fortunate position of being able to synthesize and then communicate a
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centuries worth of clinical research and experience gathered by very many
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extremely intelligent and careful people and then on top of that whatever I've managed to gather being reasonably
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educated in the broader sphere of the humanities and Sciences let's say and
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the effect that this individual is attributing to me as a consequence of
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that right I've been successful because I've been a conduit of good ideas and I
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have the ability to synthesize a lot of information and to communicate that to
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people in a way that's understandable the the person who made that comment you know they were struggling for one reason
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or another and one of the things you do with people who are struggling is you make the simple even simpler because
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then they can get a toe hold you know like if if they're really barely able to
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move I had one client you know he was H he had a hard life man he was like 85
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he'd fallen off a ladder and broken his neck and they had permanently Fus it so he was basically like this he could
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hardly move he was so depressed he literally couldn't get out of bed you know it was awful and he was in chronic
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pain because of his broken neck and so you know the first thing I did with him was get him to sit up for like 30
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seconds that was it that's where he had to start you know and after I I worked with him when he was in the hospital
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after two weeks he was walking down the hall and able to sit up and read for you know five or six minutes and he got out
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of the hospital he went home and but he had to start with the simplest possible steps
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and hey man you start this is the definition of humility in some ways is
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that you start progressing where you can start I think about this a lot because
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there's a lot of people that are objectively or subjectively down and out in their lives that's how they feel and
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it's often too intimidating to present them with the idea of climbing Mount Everest today a proverbial M Everest
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like just pick yourself up can go to the gym and work out be healthy right and that yeah no that's not going to happen
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it's like putting them at the foot of Mount Everest but the small commitments we keep to ourself are often really
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undervalued because they seem so trivial like you saying well that's the Casual contempt that's another aspect of that
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well one of the really difficult things to learn when you're down and out is how
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far you're down because it's humiliating you know I was Ill recently and when I
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started to recover I couldn't really I couldn't really button my shirts I had to learn to do that again I did I had
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forgotten how to put my hands on keyboard I didn't know where to put my hands I had to learn to type again now I
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hadn't lost all the knowledge and it came back quite quickly but and the reason I'm saying that is because one of
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the impediments to people who've really taken a blow in their life is that things have fallen apart around them so
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badly that where they have to start is humiliating even to consider the rule
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it's a pretty straightforward rule when you want to get back on your feet and the rule is you have to make the task
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small enough so that you'll do it no matter how small that is you know and that can
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I I've worked with people I mean one of the things I've become well known for is my advice to start by cleaning up your
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room but I had plenty of clients who couldn't they couldn't go home and clean up their room they hadn't cleaned up
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their room for like 20 years for all sorts of reasons maybe because every time they did try to do anything
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positive in their family no matter what it was they were immediately punished and
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undermined and so if they even went home and dared to start cleaning up the room
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they'd face resistance within the family that was just a manifestation of the 50,000 times they'd been discouraged in
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the past but also a move that would upset the insanity that characterized
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the pattern of familial interaction and so actually when if they even made a move to clean up their room what they
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were doing simultaneously was confronting the dragon in the family that had made every single person in
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that household insane for like five generations right so it looks simple
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it's not bloody simple and so in a situation like that you cut it down so that maybe the first thing they do is
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clean up like maybe they look inside one drawer and see the mess that's there and
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just look at it for a minute and think about how they might reorganize it if they were going to when people are very
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down and out and they decide to make a move forward in some ways they're facing
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the whole panoply of problems that confront them in in the guise of that
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single problem right it's all lurking behind it right it's like you know they
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see the tip of a reptile's tail outside a gigantic closet let's say and they
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look and they think well that's just the tip of a tail how what harm can it do me but it's connected to the whole damn
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Beast and the advantage to that is that if you make that first step forward you're actually advancing in the form of
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in the face of all that opposition the disadvantage is that the first task
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seems so small that you literally have to be on your knees to be humble enough to lower yourself to take that first
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step you know God is that all I can do I'm so useless you might even be more useless
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than that because you might fail out it I had lots of clients who would come back you know we'd make a deal that they would do something simple I remember one
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client is such a comical story in a terrible dark way you know he was an
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overgrown infant and he was 30 he was still living at home in his messy you
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know High School room under the thumb of his mother conveniently for him CU then he never had to do anything and he had
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managed to entice some girl into sleeping with him and she got pregnant now he's going to have a son and had
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enough sense to come to me and say you know I'm kind of a wasil and I've mucked up my life but maybe I'd like not to
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destroy this kid so is there something I could do to put myself together so you know we talked that through we
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negotiated which is what you do with a client if you're sensible you know you lay out the problem first okay what the
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hell's wrong with you do you think you have to listen and listen and listen while the person unfolds everything that
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might be wrong they put all their cards on the table and then you sort through and you think well some of that even
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they'll figure this out themselves some of that's not really the central issue and so you imagine they lay all the
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cards on the table and then you kind of get rid of 90% of them it's a symptom it's a symptom yeah yeah it's it's it's
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it's it doesn't really bother me now that I've talked about it that doesn't seem key I think I'm really done with
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that that isn't interesting to me but they'll still have to lay it all out and then you focus on the problem and then
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the next thing you think is ask them is something this is great General problem solving strategy is okay
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if this could be better as far as you're concerned what would better look like and then they have to lay their cards on
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the table about that so you do the same thing and now you have the diagnosis that's the problem statement and now you
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have a hypothetical uh cure let's say and now you need a strategy right and that would
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be the steps in between the problem and the final destination then you break
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down the steps until you find a step that they that the person will take you have to do that experimentally so the
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first step for him was to vacuum the carpet in his in his room and so this is
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literally what he did he brought the vacuum it was a standup vacuum he brought that into his room but he only
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got it to the threshold and then he left it 45° across the door L leaning and he
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walked over it for a whole week and so then he had to come back and tell me you
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know and he was embarrassed he said you know I got the vacuum cleaner
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just to the doorway and I left it there and then instead of bringing it into my bedroom I just you know I put an
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obstacle in my own path and stepped over it for a whole week it's a very humiliating thing CU he knew that his
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life was on the line and he knew that his son's life was on the line and he knew that he was one useless bastard for
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not being able to bring that vacuum cleaner into the room you know but the proper interpretation of that in part is
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well you got the bloody thing out of the closet didn't you you know so what we did was
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renegotiate this is called technically this is called collaborative empiricism it's a behavioral approach for
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clinicians and the the collaboration is well as I said what's the problem
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diagnosis what's the potential solution the person has to be on board with all this right I mean they have to be the
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people who decide that's the problem you can't enforce that on them they have to
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discover it for themselves and the same with the solution and the same with the strategies it's like I don't know what's
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right for you I'll listen we can jointly explore what might be the right vision
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for you and then we can break that down into a strategy but you you have to be on board with the strategy you have to
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feel that this is right for you it's absolutely 100% crucial that it's voluntary and then we'll say okay well
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maybe this is a solution why don't you go implement come back next week after
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having attempted this let's see how it went you know and sometimes people come back and say well you know that went
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great and it started me and I did three other things and you know what we seem to be on the right track and sometimes
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they come back and say nope that didn't work at all like with the vacuum cleaner
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and so then you have to think what you do in that situation is make the task smaller if you make the task small
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enough I've never seen anyone not be able to progress if they
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made the task small enough but you know that can be pretty humiliating now the
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upside is that once you've take that first step you've look the beast in the
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face and you'll start progressing not linearly but exponentially in speed so
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what's cool is that doesn't really matter how small that first step is because it'll start doubling and
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anything that d bues grows unbelievably quickly and so that's a very useful thing to know too and that that's true
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when you're learning anything new it's like you you'll feel like an impostor you'll feel like a fool cuz you are and
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you'll think I'll never get there and and it might the destination might look very distant but if you take a
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sufficiently small first step and get the ball rolling you can be cruising along at a pretty good rate generally
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faster than you'll think what's going on in one's psychology there is it build evidence of your own capabilities and
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capacity definitely what seems to happen when you expose people to small but
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challenging tasks it does two things it makes them more skilled because now they're actually dealing with the
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problem and so they're acquiring the new perceptions and the new behaviors that
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are Mastery so they're actually expanding their domain of conceptual
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structures and actions that's that's both conception and skill but at the same time they're seeing themselves as
00:14:31
the actors that can change the direction of their life for example when you do
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exposure therapy with people who have phobias agrop phobia is probably the best example so agobia is a condition
00:14:45
where people will become so terrified generally of life that they they often
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literally can't go outside their house if they go outside their house their anxiety levels climb to the point where they have a panic attack which is like
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the complete disinhibition of the fight ORF flight system very overwhelming experience people will go out and
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they'll have a panic attack and then they'll avoid where they had the panic attack but then the probability of the
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panic attack starts to spread so that wherever they go they have a panic attack and then they end up stuck at home and it's quite a common condition
00:15:17
now the people who develop that are generally women and that's because women are more sensitive to anxiety than men
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they're generally women who had an over-dependent relationship with their parents Maybe particularly their father
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they're generally women who went from their father to an to a boyfriend who was either overbearing and
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overprotective or who was enticed into becoming that by the dependency of the person of the sufferer and then so
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imagine you're dependent young woman you haven't learned to stand on your two feet every time you had a problem you
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were taught to seek Authority you sheltered behind the protective walls that someone else had established for
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you you married someone like that now he's he died or you're getting a divorce
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or or so that wall is starting to come down okay so all that existential Panic
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starts to rise you start panicking when you go out and you end up at home unable to move also thinking you're the only
00:16:14
person in the world who's suffering that way and so what you do is you find out you you you do a problem analysis and
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you find out their core fears and what agrh bics are often afraid of elevators
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and that's quite convenient because you know there are elevators everywhere so you can start having them confront
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Their Fear of elevators so how do you do that well if they're really terrified you say well let's look why
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don't you come sit by me and and uh let's look at some pictures of some elevators and you say look at the
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elevator okay now imagine being 20 ft from it how are you feeling they'll tell
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you they're nervous you know they're afraid they're going to get trapped in the elevator they're afraid they'll have a heart attack they'll they're afraid
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that they'll be in there with other people who are watching them panic and have a heart attack and being humiliated
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so the the two big categories of fears for people are like painful death and
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then public humiliation and if you have a really good anxiety fantasy it's that
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you're going to undergo a painful death in a very humiliating way and so that's what they imagine happening in the
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elevator so it's not exactly that they're afraid of the elevator right they're afraid of death and humiliation
00:17:27
and the elevator is a moral to the realm of death and humiliation it's like I'm
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afraid of an elevator okay how afraid can you could you look at an elevator
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from a 100 yards down the hall well like if it isn't 100 yards then 125 yards
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like you'll find some threshold that the person can tolerate okay so now you're
00:17:51
at the threshold where their the magnitude of their confidence is
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precisely matched with the size of the apparent Dragon right so and you they
00:18:01
feel that it's like there's a place where their fear will they'll say that's
00:18:06
close enough it's like okay now you're on the edge you're on the edge so now we'll dance on the edge we'll move your
00:18:13
foot forward okay so let's move a foot forward okay anything NE negative
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happening well I'm feeling a little nervous okay well let's just stand here for a bit keep your eye on the elevator
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don't don't hide because you can avoid by just not looking and we do this all
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the time we look away and the bigger the dragon the more we're likely to look
00:18:35
away you know people don't people don't like to look at and you can understand why people
00:18:42
will avert their eyes from atrocity right and they'll certainly avert their eyes from the thought that
00:18:47
they could participate in atrocity and you could think of that as the Heart of Darkness it's it isn't because you could
00:18:54
look at the fact that you could take Glee in the commission of atrocity and and no one wants to look at that while
00:19:01
you start and you have to look at that you have to look at that in the final
00:19:06
analysis but one step at a time you know and and you can do that with any problem
00:19:12
literally any problem break it down break it down break it down public speaking anything going to the gym
00:19:17
anything anything a small dose you know a small dose and it's it's it's so fun
00:19:24
to do this with people it's the same thing you do when you're when you're
00:19:29
when you're encouraging your your young child and that's a primary source of
00:19:35
gratification for human beings is putting someone on the edge and encouraging them and so you do that as a
00:19:40
clinician so I loved being a clinician because you know people say well how can
00:19:46
you you know how how do you tolerate listening to people's problems well first of all they're not your problems
00:19:54
you have to understand that because if they're your problems you're still in that person's problems from them you
00:20:00
know because you could come to me especially people who are you know very unsophisticated they can come and talk
00:20:06
to somebody like a a well experienced clinician someone whose breadth of
00:20:12
knowledge exceeds theirs by a substantial margin and that person can just give them advice but then they go
00:20:18
act out that advice and then that's not them they have to come to it themselves
00:20:23
this brings me to a point about trying to help people in your life because we
00:20:29
all have people in our lives that are struggling in some way and our kneejerk response is to get in there and fix
00:20:34
solve the well this is a problem that men often have when they're dealing with women yeah yeah they they leap to the
00:20:40
problem solution phase and they also do that in some ways to avoid and this is
00:20:45
what annoys women because what the women want and they don't even know this but this is what the women want women are
00:20:51
more sensitive to threat than men okay so they're looking for Predators now predation detection is a
00:20:59
it's an intuition anxiety is an intuition something's wrong okay what
00:21:06
well then you guess right so imagine the threat system has sort of got something
00:21:11
in its sights but it it's a a sense that something's not right but it's not fully
00:21:17
fleshed out the picture because serpents are camouflaged right so the threat is
00:21:23
hidden well what the woman wants is to lay out all the things that might be
00:21:28
wrong okay well the guy doesn't want that cuz first of all you know maybe your wife is upset about something in
00:21:34
relationship to your children and she doesn't know what it is so now she has to go through everything she thinks that
00:21:40
might be wrong well even for you to listen that's going to be rough because some of those things are going to be
00:21:46
about you and so you just have to shut up and you have to let her put her cards on the table understanding now she has
00:21:52
to do it in good faith right she can't be using that opportunity to skewer you
00:21:58
and so these things are tricky to manage but you want to listen to her lay all the cards on the table now the advantage
00:22:05
to that is now you know where all the hidden snakes are now if you do that what you'll find out and so will she is
00:22:11
that most of the things that she's worried about she's not actually worried about she won't know that until she lays
00:22:18
them out on the table and can see them and then both of you can triangulate to the actual problem and then you can
00:22:25
negotiate a solution and off offer help but if you jump right to help the reason
00:22:31
you can't do that is cuz you you probably have the problem wrong so so then back to your question about helping
00:22:38
one of the most effective things you can do to help people is to listen and there are Technologies of listening and so the
00:22:46
first one is don't assume that either you or the person who's talking knows
00:22:52
what the problem is it's so hard once you have the problem specified you've
00:22:58
solved like 95% of the problem it's re that diagnostic move is really hard are
00:23:05
we sure we're addressing the most crucial issue you have to have your sites focused right on the center point
00:23:12
of the Cross right like in a in a Gun Site it's like are we aiming at the right Target and then you can start
00:23:19
negotiating problem solution and so so it's but you can develop the patients to
00:23:25
do that once you understand that that initial active listening is in itself the most helpful thing you can do just
00:23:33
listen and then how do you listen Okay so if I'm listening to you there'll be
00:23:38
times when what you're saying doesn't make sense and so then I'll just say well you're saying this now but you said
00:23:46
this five minutes ago and if you listen a lot you can learn to track conversations across a very long span of
00:23:52
time and that's quite fun you said this but then you said this and they don't like they seem contradictory to to me
00:23:58
you're not accusing the person you're saying I see an inconsistency in the way you're formulating the problem and
00:24:04
they'll sort of startle a little bit and then try to rectify that they'll check you out to see if you're insulting them
00:24:10
or trying to play a game of moral superiority first but if it's just an honest question then you're actually
00:24:15
helping them lay out a description of the situation that's not internally
00:24:20
contradictory okay so and the great podcasters do this you see this with Rogan you know all Rogan does is ask
00:24:26
stupid questions m and the way he does that is by Consulting with his own ignorance in humility Rogan is listening
00:24:33
he's thinking I'm a stupid lunkad and I don't understand this what do you mean
00:24:39
and the what's that's brave because he's exposing his own ignorance but it's it's
00:24:44
honest because he doesn't understand but it also unites him with his audience because especially with someone like
00:24:50
Rogan the probability at this time that if Rogan doesn't understand the gist of
00:24:55
the conversation that 95% of his audience doesn't understand is it's like
00:25:00
100% the importance of listening can't possibly be overstated listen ask
00:25:06
questions until you understand and by doing that you also help the other person clarify the situation it is so
00:25:12
hard to do and I I think we have to just pause it that step because it is as you said you said like that's 95% of the
00:25:19
challenge it is so hard to do in relationships in work I've sat literally at this table with a colleague of mine
00:25:25
about a year ago and she was telling me she works in one of my compan she was telling me that she's unhappy in her
00:25:31
role and I remember sitting here and she gave me a bunch of reasons why and I kept asking and asking questions and
00:25:37
after just 30 minutes of asking the questions she had decided that in fact everything she had just said was not the
00:25:42
issue and then it related back to a much more fundamental issue of just meaning in her work well see see okay well
00:25:48
that's very important that's very important Yung called that a circumambulation okay so now imagine the
00:25:55
threat system is going off right saying something's wrong something's wrong wrong but it it's just it's an it's a
00:26:01
primordial predator predator detection Instinct that's what's being triggered it isn't High resol it isn't capable of
00:26:10
high resolution conceptual formulation not to begin with something's wrong
00:26:15
something's wrong something's wrong okay what maybe this maybe this maybe this maybe this maybe this maybe okay now
00:26:21
what happens is the the maybe Circle and spiral right and as you lay them out you
00:26:29
spiral inward to the gist of the matter but you have to see because you could imagine while this woman is explaining
00:26:35
her problems to you she's talking about things about the company and her relationship with the company that might
00:26:41
be unsettling to you so you're sitting there thinking well she's laying out her problems maybe you're getting defensive
00:26:47
well that's not true the company's better than that that's an unfair accusation so you're feeling on the spot plus you want to jump in with your you
00:26:54
know with your solution because you want to show that you're bigger than the problem that she showing her maybe
00:26:59
you're secretly attracted to her and you want to be a white knight I mean there can be 50 things you're sitting there
00:27:04
thinking about what you're going to say next cuz you want to play dominance or maybe you think that's what you should do because you're a boss and it's like
00:27:10
there's a lot of things that'll interfere with listening But but so you learn you say just shut up ask stupid
00:27:18
questions until really until the person that you're listening to has specified
00:27:23
the problem now if you're very fortunate both of you will converge on that it'll just become clear think oh you and you
00:27:31
pointed this out this is what that's really all about now the person may be discovering too that they were resistant
00:27:38
to that conclusion they you know because the fundamental threat is more key to
00:27:43
their self-esteem that they to their conception of themsel then allowed them
00:27:48
to be comfortable before they get to the actual point which is where they're going to be most vulnerable they're
00:27:54
going to throw out a bunch of screen concerns just to see if you can be trusted with something that will reveal
00:28:01
their vulnerability and they're even doing that to themselves it's like dare I tell the truth about this situation
00:28:07
because I betrayed myself before so maybe not you're so right they they test you to the on the way to the truth to
00:28:13
see if how you'll respond yes and they're testing themselves too and you know and you can facilitate that see if
00:28:20
you facilitate that by calm listening then you're modeling the fact that whatever the hell they have as a problem
00:28:27
isn't so terrifying that you have to avoid it and run away yeah right right
00:28:32
it's so interesting what what was actually revealed because this person that works one of my marketing teams in a different company where there's a CEO
00:28:39
said to me um it's the work she they were doing that was causing them the the iies and that's the reason they wanted
00:28:45
to leave Etc and I asked them the question after about 30 minutes when was the time you were most happy in in the
00:28:51
business they revealed to me that the time they were most happy was when they were with me overseas at the very
00:28:58
beginning and what that really revealed at at its Essence was there had been a
00:29:03
change in the proximity to me and the real meaning of the work and they now felt like they were doing trivial things
00:29:09
their happiest time was when they were right next to me doing the most important stuff right the so the most
00:29:14
difficult problems they were solving the most difficult problems when they were most challenged and they were they were so really the fix wasn't what they
00:29:22
thought it was the fix and they're now they actually text me I sent the message to one of my team members last night saying I just don't want keep keep their
00:29:29
identities so let's say they were with me in Canada they text me when they were most happy they text me last night
00:29:34
saying I feel like Canada Jenny again right and all the adjustment that had to
00:29:40
be made was getting them back close to bigger challenges so they wanted to be closer to the front line as it turned
00:29:45
out when Freud first developed Psychotherapy he developed this
00:29:50
technique of free association okay so all free association is and this is what Freud this is why
00:29:56
people put Freud put people on the couch and sat be behind them see if I'm face
00:30:03
to face with you and I'm laying out the problem space just what you're signaling to me
00:30:10
by your face might stop me from fully revealing the truth because maybe you'll raise an eyebrow or you there'll be a
00:30:16
micro um expression of disgust or contempt or you'll look away or because I'm going to be evaluating you to see
00:30:24
how you're reacting morally to my Revelations so Freud just hit himself he and and I I don't think that's strictly
00:30:31
necessary but but but it's a very wise intuition
00:30:36
and you can imagine how it would be helpful so now I think the counter to
00:30:42
that is you can signal to someone who you're talking to like open reception of
00:30:50
the message they're receiving right it's just that and kids love this right one of the things kids are doing all the
00:30:56
time is testing you to see if you're paying attention and they will modify their behavior in any way imaginable to
00:31:02
get attention there's no it's because there's no difference between attention and love by the way like there's no
00:31:08
difference and so I don't think you have to hide yourself from your client but that's why Freud did it now what Freud
00:31:14
noticed and the psychoanalysts noticed is that if you let people free
00:31:20
associate the the topics that they picked would be linked to one another that reminds me of this that reminds me
00:31:27
of this that reminds me of this now obviously because people aren't just emitting random noises there's a reason
00:31:34
the things they're revealing are linked there's some implicit similarity that they're striving toward now often
00:31:41
what'll happen if you listen to your wife for example she's laying out a bunch of problems and it'll spiral it'll
00:31:47
remind her of something this off this happened with Freud if you got to the gist of it it would remind people of
00:31:53
something that happened to them much earlier in their life and often something that was traumatic
00:31:58
that so A trauma is a problem you encounter in your life that's quite deep
00:32:04
so that it unsettles you that you do not resolve so it's like it imagine that in
00:32:10
your bedroom there were holes that you could fall through into you know into trouble and so you want to make a map of
00:32:18
where all the holes are so that you can walk through the landscape without falling into the pit now it' be better
00:32:24
if you just fixed the holes but but at least you have the landscape mapped out well a trauma is a a trauma is a hole
00:32:32
that hasn't been filled in and so maybe you if you had a trauma when you were four you hit a wall and be you couldn't
00:32:39
resolve the trauma that's no different than not maturing in relationship to that problem so what you have at hand
00:32:47
there are the only the tools that you develop by the time you were four now then you might encounter a situation
00:32:53
where that's reminiscent of that so for example someone might say I had a problem with
00:33:00
my boss I have a recurring problem with my boss and so you listen to he says that that reminds me exactly of what my
00:33:05
father did when I you know in this situation when I was a kid and so the reason the person is reacting to their
00:33:11
boss in a negative way is because they're using the same conceptual structure that they used to construe
00:33:17
their father when they were four you'll see this in marriages all the time like if you have a recurring problem with
00:33:23
your partner that's that that that you really can't understand now it might be
00:33:29
your fixation at some developmental stage that's the problem like she's
00:33:35
interacting with you in a way that elicits your 13-year-old self
00:33:40
consistently but she also might be reacting to you in a way that elicits her 13-year-old self and so then but if
00:33:48
you listen to her she'll get to that and then she'll tell you the story and
00:33:55
then sometimes she'll be able to f figure out what to do about that herself or sometimes you'll have to discuss it
00:34:01
but it almost always results in tears almost always and I think the reason for
00:34:07
that is think that what happens is when people break down in tears so children cry quite often and they cry when they
00:34:13
encounter an impediment that they can't surmount and I think what tears do is
00:34:18
dissolve you to the state of neurological plasticity that characterizes Early Childhood so that
00:34:25
you can learn now people don't like that right that reversion it's humiliating but you know you have to break that's
00:34:33
the crying the the crying is an indication that the current conceptual s
00:34:38
structure is insufficient it has to die then the tears come right and then now
00:34:44
you're prepared neurologically to learn something new and that'll be whatever comes out of the discussion and that'll
00:34:49
replace that old conceptual structure that's outdated and immature with a new
00:34:55
somewhat fragile conceptual structure right and then the person will try that out a couple of times like maybe you
00:35:02
this is something where you have it's like something that's just come out of a cocoon you have to be very careful when you negotiate with your partner because
00:35:08
you know maybe they'll decide that they'll try a new tactic that you you have both agreed on but the first 30
00:35:15
times they Implement that new tactic first of all they won't do it very well because it's new and second if you
00:35:21
punish it it'll kill it right away yeah so you're describing my relationship very accurately because I am someone who
00:35:30
in the mid so what's my my sort of attachment style I grew up in a household where my
00:35:38
parents were very were at each other a lot it was fighting arguing so I learned very early on that relationships are
00:35:43
like prison right so I wanted to Commitment I I ran from commitment my whole life I met someone who had an
00:35:50
opposite attachment style where whenever things get a little bit Rocky she wants to like latch on in a sense like she
00:35:56
really wants to make sure that I she's got my attention yeah for example I could come home and say one word that
00:36:02
shows that I'm focused on my work and then suddenly she's like fighing for my attention that makes me want to run and
00:36:08
that makes her want to chase right right and so then she'll you know she'll get triggered and then she'll kind of retreat and be it's quote unquote like
00:36:15
the word sulking is often used um so we came up with a system where I said to her when you feel triggered by me not
00:36:23
giving you the attention you want and we you end up spiraling can you just try and tell me as soon as possible yeah
00:36:29
instead of like the 7our silence yeah um so that was the mechanism we came up with and then the first time she did
00:36:36
that I was as you said very conscious of making sure I didn't react badly to it
00:36:41
or get triggered by it right so you're you're describing the process I've been through entirely yeah well this happens
00:36:47
this happens to everyone and those those suks let's say that's that's a non-verbal threat response right right
00:36:54
and and you want to replace that with a more differential practical and more immediate strategy
00:37:01
you know and so you know one of the things that I've seen for example with my wife is that um the periods of time
00:37:09
where she gets upset shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink because she can get from the problem to the verbalizable
00:37:16
statement of the problem and the solution way way faster but that that takes just from continual practice
00:37:23
continual attention it's like oh I'm upset okay well what am I upset about here's a bunch of things that I might be
00:37:28
upset about okay which of those are focal like this is something you can learn you know but you have to you have
00:37:34
to admit you're upset and you also have to understand that you don't know why
00:37:40
because one of the things that'll happen in a marriage with any close relationship with any relationship is like well if you and I talk and we hit a
00:37:48
pit it's I would rather that it's your fault right because then you have to
00:37:54
take the conceptual structure and you have to allow it to die and you have to cry and you have something to learn and
00:37:59
it's you and it's an indication that you're insufficient it's way more convenient for me if it's you plus I get
00:38:06
to feel moral Superior and like I have myself under control and that I've you know mastered the universe and also
00:38:12
women also in some ways want that from men because they want the men to be competent and so men will pretend to be
00:38:20
more competent than they are it's like you want to find out what the problem is because then you can solve it and one of
00:38:27
the things you have to consider is that you're you're the problem maybe you're not but maybe you are now you might say
00:38:35
well why should you undergo the cataclysmic Revelation that you're the problem and the answer is cuz you could
00:38:40
stop being the problem like that's the payoff because you might say well why why attend to your wife why fight and
00:38:47
the answer is so you don't have to fight again see I know this so I'm a very agreeable person I don't like conflict
00:38:54
like I'll do almost anything to not to paper it over though that's the
00:39:00
thing to to fix it but the reason that I'll engage in conflict is because I
00:39:05
know it isn't a theory I know that conflict delayed is conflict multiplied
00:39:12
and so if I do have a problem with someone I want to note it get it on the
00:39:18
table fight it through to the bloody bottom fix it and move on and there's a
00:39:24
you know that's that's a lot of emotional stress and complex reconceptualization
00:39:32
and retooling and people would rather avoid that you know because you know you come home from work and your mind is on
00:39:38
something whatever the hell it is and then this like snake pops up and you think do we really have to deal with
00:39:46
this now it's like well maybe and if not now win and that's
00:39:52
something you can also negotiate you know like I can give you an example of that so there was a time a very long
00:39:59
time where my daughter was insanely ill and suffering brutally and deteriorating
00:40:04
at the same time and that's overwhelming by definition because a problem you can't solve is overwhelming and then so
00:40:11
the question arises well how do you deal with the problem that's overwhelming that you can't solve without making it worse so one of
00:40:18
the things that Tammy and I did was we made rules it's like we didn't talk about Michaela after 8:00 at night it
00:40:23
was just off the table because we knew well are are you going to are you going
00:40:29
to go to sleep are you going to need some sleep tonight like if we're going to battle this for like decades we
00:40:35
better not wear ourselves out okay how not to well let's make some rules
00:40:40
they're like negotiating rules and you you can do this this is good advice to
00:40:46
the degree you can give people advice about a relationship here's something to understand about your marriage okay you
00:40:51
are going to have to listen to your wife 90 minutes a week okay and you might as well just get that through your thick
00:40:58
skull now why if you listen to her enough you can make peace and you can play so there's a huge benefit if you
00:41:06
don't listen to her that will accumulate and you'll listen to her in
00:41:11
divorce court like you will eventually listen and at some point you'll pay for the privilege of doing so right because
00:41:18
there'll be other people involved and then the backlog will be so high that you might never escape from it why don't
00:41:24
men like to listen well well often because the insufficiencies are pointed at
00:41:31
them you know and and and sometimes especially if the woman let's say and this can go both ways let's be sure
00:41:37
about this but we'll we might as well re revoke revert to the stereotypes and I think it's fair because women are more
00:41:43
threat sensitive so they're more likely to bring up problems now that's the disadvantage is they bring up problems
00:41:50
that don't exist because that's a false positive but the advantage is they bring up problems before you're sensitive
00:41:56
enough to see them and so this is very important if you think about the role of women is the woman is closer to the
00:42:02
infant than you okay so you're you know doing whatever the hell you're doing you're
00:42:08
concentrating on your career you know you're not especially when the infant's under a year old you're a step removed
00:42:14
now and good you can be dealing with the external world but she's concentrating on the little kids and one of the things
00:42:20
you want to hear from her is what the hell's wrong with the kids before you're wise enough to see it now the price you
00:42:25
pay for that is she might be short out about things that don't exist so you know and this is especially true if your
00:42:31
wife is high in neuroticism and it could be true if the husband is too but as I said that's the more stereotypical
00:42:36
situation so why listen to get to the signal now will she get to the signal
00:42:42
yes although she might not be very good at that and it might take a lot of listening but if you listen long enough
00:42:47
she'll get better and better at it until she'll get like really good at it and then the time between the emergence of
00:42:54
the problem and the solution will just it'll collapse to the point where it's virtually immediate now that can take
00:43:00
that's a very high level of Mastery that can take a very long time but then you know you also want to put forward to
00:43:06
your wife and yourself the proposition that you're better than you are which is well I can okay I get the problem I can
00:43:12
solve it it's like no you probably don't get the problem and even if you did it isn't necessarily the case that you
00:43:18
could solve it and so you have to put up with the fact that you're going to have to be dragged through the mud uh because
00:43:23
she's going to point to you know maybe her kid's upset because you're a Tyrant and you probably are a tyrant to some
00:43:30
degree you know clomping around overconfident and all that and so she's going to poke you well maybe you're this
00:43:36
is how you're stupid and maybe this is how you're stupid and maybe this is how you're long list of potential ways and
00:43:43
actual ways you could be stupid so you have to listen to that
00:43:48
now your wife has to act in good faith you know one of the things that Tammy and I did when we first got married
00:43:54
because I i' thought a lot of this through before we got married I said look you know if we're going to do this
00:44:00
you you have to tell me the truth I don't care what it is you I'll tell you the truth but you have to tell me the
00:44:06
truth I don't care what the truth is but it has to be true right and so that's
00:44:13
without that you get nowhere and you can't trust your partner either and so
00:44:18
your partner has to be all in that's why you have a marriage vow because the marriage vow is basically this this is
00:44:24
The Vow no matter what you tell tell me I won't run away and that's a of a vow man
00:44:32
because when when someone unveils their whole heart they unveil themselves all the way down to hell it's not pleasant
00:44:40
it's awful and so they need to know that you will not run away and that's a vow
00:44:45
because what do you know look the person's always going to be thinking
00:44:51
always if you really knew who I was you wouldn't love me you wouldn't be with me and you know
00:44:57
hey fair enough cuz people are full of snakes and if all those snakes were
00:45:02
revealed perhaps the logical thing to do would run would be to run and so then
00:45:07
you might not you might say well why not run it's like well you want to run from everyone for the rest of your life you want to forgo the advantages of a
00:45:13
permanent relationship and you're full of snakes too so you're both making a Bad
00:45:19
Bet and so you make the Bad Bet based based on the idea that if you are
00:45:25
faithful and you are truthful that you can resolve the issues and you can it's a good deal resolving
00:45:32
issues much of what you've talked about stems back to Childhood trauma and things that happen in our our formative
00:45:38
years I often wonder those holes in the bedroom floor you describe the early traumas can we they're often in the
00:45:45
bedroom floor by the way yeah you bet can we ever fill those or can we just put planks of wood over oh no no no you
00:45:52
you can't put planks of wood over them you have to fill them and what you do oh and and you can do this you know let's
00:45:58
say you were bullied repeatedly when you were a kid okay you're probably still being bullied because if you
00:46:04
didn't being a bully victim is a stable trait so the great analysis of bullies
00:46:12
that have been done Dan olis in Sweden did this he was a great psychologist he
00:46:17
analyzed bullying behavior and Bully victim Behavior so he defined bullying very carefully you're a bully if you use
00:46:24
power disproportionately so like if I'm 12 and I'm picking on someone my own size I'm
00:46:31
not a bully right because there's a the risk to me is commensurate to the risk to them that's just aggression that's
00:46:38
just competition and even if it's violent it's not bullying a bully is when I'm 12 and you're eight or when
00:46:44
there's two of us and one of you or when I get you in a position where you're completely vulnerable and can't defend
00:46:50
yourself disproportionate use of force right bully victim is someone the bullies will check out imagine a bully
00:46:57
comes into a room full of kids he'll poke at all the kids and one of the kids will manifest a disproportionate
00:47:02
emotional response well then it's like he just zeros in on that and those are often kids who are higher in neuroticism
00:47:09
or who are fragile for other reasons and then that can become permanent and both the bullies and the bully victims have a
00:47:16
negative long-term developmental trajectory the bullies tend to become criminal and alienated on that front
00:47:24
especially as they move into high school and the bully victims tend to become depressed anxious and dependent if you
00:47:30
have a partner who's been a bully victim for example that's going to be brought into your marriage and then one of the
00:47:35
things that's going to happen is every time you try to have a dispute which is to actually think and solve a problem
00:47:41
they're going to see you through the bully template they're going to treat you like you're a bully they're going to accuse you of being a bully they're
00:47:47
going to bring up all the times before when you acted like a bully and then you're going to have to defend yourself
00:47:53
and part of the reason that people can't listen is because they also don't know how to defend themselves it's like especially if you're here's 15 pieces of
00:48:00
evidence that you're a bully it's like can you counter those maybe what if
00:48:05
you're not very articulate you know it might take you two weeks to think up how to argue yourself out of that plus
00:48:12
you're going to be doubtful about it you know so those are very complicated things to work through but you can
00:48:18
listen if you listen the person will dispense with some of their accusations by themselves the accusations that can't
00:48:26
be dispensed with though now those are questions you know maybe your kid's upset when they he or she's interacting
00:48:32
with you and your wife says well you're too hard on him it's like well are you
00:48:38
well it's time for you to go away for like a week and meditate on that right
00:48:44
and that's that's soul searching right you're going to go down to the bottom of your hearts like well are you a bully
00:48:52
are you a bully like your father was a bully you know are you a bully like a friend was a reprobate that you admired
00:48:58
and tried to copy was a bully you know you have to see because maybe you are
00:49:04
maybe you should stop but then you also have to figure out how you would be if you weren't being a bully then your wife
00:49:09
can help you you know and this is another good rule for couple conflict like let's say I'm unhappy with you say
00:49:15
so I come and tell you that you can ask me okay what do you want if I could give you what you
00:49:23
wanted what would it be well I don't know it's like no sorry I cannot hit a
00:49:29
Target you won't specify let's discuss it at least we got to have a Target here
00:49:34
and so this is also if you're an employee you got to know this if you're an employee you're going to your boss with a problem why do you go with a
00:49:41
solution too you know and if you're the sort of employee who goes to your boss with a solution you'll racket yourself
00:49:49
up the hierarchy if you're in a halfways decent business you will ratchet yourself up the hierarchy so fast you
00:49:55
can't believe it cuz you'll get a reputation as the person who can solve the problem so and you know and you can
00:50:02
actually play with this in in in your marriage because one of the things that you can do for example is well let's say
00:50:08
you say something that irritated your wife okay and then you can say okay she'll say well that really bothered me
00:50:14
it's like okay it's an open question why maybe she's too goddamn sensitive and maybe you're too much of a son of a
00:50:20
it's like who knows right but you can ask her okay if I had said what you
00:50:25
wanted me to say in that situation what would have I said now that's a hard
00:50:31
question she has to think about that it's like well what would what would have worked and then she'll say you know
00:50:36
well maybe you could have said this and then you can say okay let me say it now then she asked and but it's sort of like
00:50:43
let me say it it'll be sort of fake it'll be a first pass
00:50:48
approximation you're putting words in my mouth but let's assume that I'm trying to do something better stupidly and
00:50:55
badly to begin with you know with an eye to mastering it over 50 repetitions so
00:51:00
but I'll start by just saying it so she'll tell you what to say and you can say it now if you're absolutely 100%
00:51:08
unwilling to say it because you think it violates your conscience that's a whole different issue that means there's a
00:51:13
deeper discussion to be had but maybe you could try it you know you could try it out for size and maybe she could see
00:51:19
if that sort of satisfied her and now you've got a rubric for for how that
00:51:25
interaction might go in the future let's make it concrete you come home at the end of a
00:51:31
workday okay there should be there's a right way of doing that that you have to
00:51:36
negotiate with your wife you know maybe she rushes to the door and meets you with all the problems of the day okay
00:51:42
that's probably not a great strategy you know cuz you're already up to here you're tired so is she likely from
00:51:49
whatever she was doing maybe maybe she was at work too you can't meet each other when you're both tired every
00:51:55
single day for the rest of your life with nothing but a ball of problems partly because if you do that 50 times
00:52:03
you're going to view the person as just a a bunch of snakes that are coming at you that's not good even if the problems
00:52:10
that are being pointed to are real you know you might think okay so you come home after
00:52:15
work what would be the best way for that to unfold and you have to negotiate that and I would say we you know let's
00:52:21
parameterize that a bit you're probably hungry well you don't want to talk to someone this is another great rule don't
00:52:28
talk to your partner about something complicated when they're hungry it's not going to work so maybe you come home you
00:52:34
have something to eat you kick off your shoes maybe you take 10 minutes for yourself and then you can talk but you
00:52:40
you want to get that right or maybe you come home you meet each other at the door she gives you a hug you have
00:52:47
something to eat you relax for a minute maybe you have a shower but then you've already negotiated about when you're going to have a conversation and you're
00:52:53
going to be prepared for it now people do this in their business you don't just randomly discuss a bunch
00:52:58
of problems at your business if it's running reasonably well you have a meeting it's parameterized you kind of
00:53:04
have an agenda you have to do that at home you have your your home is also a
00:53:10
small business and it has to be run like that and you have to spend 90 minutes at
00:53:16
least 90 minutes a week with your wife just running the damn business and I can
00:53:21
tell you if you don't do that you'll never get to the play ever cuz maybe you'll you know you'll be Roman Al
00:53:26
interested in each other and you you want to spend some time together but there's a bunch of problems brewing and your wife will definitely do this will
00:53:33
absolutely happen is that when you're trying to be interested in each other these things will come into her mind and
00:53:38
distract her and she'll bring them up and then you'll get pissed off because it's like well we're supposed to be having fun at we're supposed to be
00:53:44
attending to each other why are you bringing that up and the answer is well we're together and these are
00:53:51
problems we haven't set aside time to deal with them the reason you should listen to your wife is because if you
00:53:57
listen to her enough she'll tell you what's wrong and what she wants and then you can fix what's wrong and you can give her what she
00:54:04
wants in your practice have you ever encountered those holes in the bedroom those childhood traumas that you
00:54:09
realized at some point when you stared into the patient's eyes they could never solve
00:54:15
yes yes yeah a bottomless Abyss yeah it's
00:54:23
awful yeah I was in situations where you know I I get to the bottom of it I thought and
00:54:29
then it was like Dante's so Dante's Inferno for everyone who is reading
00:54:35
listening you you should read that book Dante's Inferno is a Topography of
00:54:40
hell so underneath every problem is layers of problems right right to the bottom for Dante the worst problem was
00:54:49
betrayal right and the reason betrayals the worst problem is like if you and I want to have a relationship we have to
00:54:55
trust each other and betrayal is the violation of the trust upon which
00:55:00
relationships are predicated so it blows apart everything so the lowest level of hell for Dante the bottom of hell was
00:55:07
filled with betrayers and that's right that's childhood sexual abuse like it's the ultimate betrayal right it's the
00:55:14
it's the a child sexual predator is someone who takes the role of Guardian
00:55:19
to be the wolf right it's the worst form of betrayal and so it just devastates
00:55:25
children and because they're actually faced with the problem of malevolence at a very early age and they what they it's
00:55:32
like you're four and now you see the bottom of Hell well that's trauma and
00:55:38
the only the way you treat that by the way is you walk people through a Topography of hell that's what you do
00:55:45
and and you can do that well let's say you were abused when you were a kid okay so what's your problem well your problem
00:55:50
is you've seen Into the Heart of Darkness that's your problem and just blew you into pieces could people really
00:55:57
be like that is that my father right is that my uncle how could
00:56:03
he do that well that's you're gazing into the face of malevolence itself you
00:56:08
have to develop a philosophy of Good and Evil it's a religious philosophy essentially because a philosophy of Good
00:56:13
and Evil is a religious philosophy those are the same thing you have to you have to develop a philosophy of evil and then
00:56:19
you have to understand how you combat that and that's very complicated now how do you combat evil with truth with love
00:56:27
with beauty you have to start to embody that you know or maybe it's even worse you're traumatized because you did
00:56:33
something like brutal seriously brutal and maybe you enjoyed it that's a very common Pathway to post-traumatic stress
00:56:40
disorder for people and that posttraumatic stress disorder occurs when you have a very large hole that you
00:56:46
know gapes large enough to swallow virtu virtually everything that hasn't been fixed or papered over you do that by
00:56:54
finding your way out of hell and that's what happens in in The Inferno too Dante is guided through Hell by Virgil who's
00:56:59
the spirit that guides you through hell that's a good way of thinking about it so and every problem if the problems
00:57:06
your wife brings to you especially if they repeat there are levels underneath that and at the bottom there's a
00:57:11
betrayal something like that there's some bit of Hell in there somewhere and so and sometimes you know if you go all
00:57:17
the way to the bottom and you solve that bottom problem you'll solve a whole bunch of peripheral
00:57:23
problems so in there's a movie Apocalypse Now that's about a journey to the Heart of Darkness and that's what
00:57:29
the book is about con Joseph Conrad's book and there's a documentary called Heart of Darkness that describes the
00:57:36
making of Apocalypse Now and the people who made Apocalypse Now which was a movie about a journey to the Heart of
00:57:42
Darkness it had an effect on them while they were making the movie and all of the people that were acting in the movie
00:57:47
and directing and producing and financing all went on a journey to the Heart of Darkness inside and it
00:57:54
virtually killed them one of them had a heart attack ATT one of them went completely broke like they just had a
00:57:59
catastrophe when they were making this movie they fell into its archetypal clutches Heart of Darkness is the name
00:58:05
of the documentary it's fascinating have you been on that Journey yourself yeah yeah
00:58:12
yeah sort of I would say in some ways permanently when I when back when I was
00:58:18
20 something like that 20 I started studying atrocity right and so I was
00:58:24
I've always been interested in the Holocaust osz in particular but it's
00:58:29
a very particular interest like evil Nazi
00:58:36
Germany owitz prison guard prison guard who
00:58:41
enjoyed his work right because my my question was how could you be an owitz
00:58:47
prison guard who enjoyed his work now one answer is well you're just like a demon from another planet who's so
00:58:53
unlike me that I don't even have to worry about it and that's a very convenient answer but it's not
00:58:59
true many many many many of the people not all many of the people who were involved in the Nazi atrocities were
00:59:07
perfectly Ordinary People they were just like you and you think no I wouldn't do
00:59:12
that it's like that's not what the evidence suggests the evidence suggests that the
00:59:19
vast majority of people in Nazi Germany went along with it now not all of them were dragged into the abyss itself but
00:59:26
plenty were and if you think you wouldn't have been one of them that just means it's highly likely that you would
00:59:32
have because you have no idea what you're capable of there's a great book about that it's terrifying book called
00:59:37
Ordinary men and it's about the initiation of a police Battalion from
00:59:43
Germany who went to Poland after the Germans marched into Poland now these
00:59:48
were ordinary men they were policemen middle-aged who had grown up before the Nazi propaganda Mill got going okay so
00:59:56
so they weren't indoctrinated Nazis from like the time they were four they're just ordinary middle class guys plus
01:00:03
their Commander told them in Poland when they were starting to do military work
01:00:08
even though they were civilian policemen that they could go home that they didn't have to do this job and that there would
01:00:14
be no repercussions and in fact out of the Battalion a number of men right at
01:00:19
the beginning said I'm not doing this and they went home Mo the vast majority went along now why okay so now these
01:00:27
policemen are in Poland and they've been told a story which is that you know Germany's at War and the reason for that
01:00:33
is that evil Jews have conspired up a you know a conspiracy and they've United the Western World against us and they're
01:00:39
a fifth column within the country and your patriotic duty is to root them out now that we're in Poland and you're
01:00:45
saving the Fatherland and there's going to be Dirty Work associated with it and do you really want to leave all that to
01:00:50
your compatriots you know your companions your your guys cuz like if if
01:00:56
you and I are together and someone that we're working for presents us with a dirty job and I say well I'm not doing
01:01:03
that well then I leave it to you so there's a kind of betrayal that's built into that now the guys that left thought
01:01:09
I don't care I'm not doing this but most people didn't and part of the reason they didn't do it is because they were loyal to their to their peers by the end
01:01:17
of this which took months these guys were taking n naked pregnant women out into the middle of fields and shooting
01:01:23
them in the back of the head like and be becoming violently ill because of doing so and tearing themselves into shreds
01:01:29
internally like sick sick at heart but doing it and that's a it's a
01:01:35
terrible thing to look at and I started looking at that like it's 40 years ago now you know was
01:01:42
shocking and so what did I discover well I discovered a lot of things I discovered that the ro road to
01:01:48
totalitarian hell and atrocity is paved with lies like lies are the pathway to
01:01:55
hell really like practically and metaphysically and so one of the things
01:02:01
I decided this was in 1985 was that I was not I was going to stop lying what
01:02:07
does that mean practically lies ruin your life there's so you will not accept a
01:02:13
white lie you won't C well look a white lie is worse than better than a black lie but
01:02:19
look if you're really telling the truth you're serving Truth at every level of
01:02:24
analysis simultan ously it's right so if if my words are landing properly they're
01:02:30
going to be the words that work right now and tomorrow and a week from now and a month from now and they're going to
01:02:36
work for me and they're going to work for you so a true statement has levels
01:02:41
of application and a white lie is a statement that's true at one level and false at another now you might not be
01:02:48
able to maybe you don't have the wherewithal at that moment to come up with the statement that satisfies all
01:02:53
the truth conditions at every level and so you default to the best you can manage you know your wife says do I look
01:02:59
fat in this dress you know or or maybe she says how do I look in this dress and
01:03:05
you think you don't like that dress and you know the easy thing to do is to say I love it dear whatever you want or you
01:03:11
know of course not but that's and that's a white lie but that's not the optimal
01:03:18
answer like a better answer to that is um don't ask me questions like
01:03:23
that and then you can have a discussion about it see the thing is I've done I've bought a lot of clothes for my wife I
01:03:29
like clothes shopping for my wife and I tell her how I think she looks and the
01:03:35
advantage to that is that if I tell her that she looks good she knows I mean it
01:03:40
right I'm not muddying up the water and if I have to say something I mean I it's
01:03:47
not like I the number of times that I've told her that I'm not happy with the way she's presenting it like it's it's
01:03:53
virtually that virtually never happen she actually has extremely good taste and so it's just an example but if
01:04:01
you're forced into a situation where you have to tell a white lie there's snakes somewhere that you haven't dealt with
01:04:08
and maybe the best you can do and that's Leonard Cohen the poet said there's no decent place to stand in a massacre you
01:04:14
may have already compromised yourself to the point where in that situation the best you can do is a lie but that means
01:04:21
that you shouldn't have Bloody well being there to begin with and the antidote in many respects is honesty
01:04:26
further Upstream honesty with yourself and others further Upstream you can get yourself in positions where all of your
01:04:32
options are bad and what that means is exactly as you pointed out you did something Upstream man now one of the
01:04:39
things you do in therapy is you find out what people did Upstream you know and you'll find this in your discussions
01:04:45
with your wife there'll be a problem and as you Circle towards it you'll see
01:04:51
oh this is where I made a mistake right this is what's wrong with me and then
01:04:57
you can even you can even find out if you look you can you can go back into your past and you can think oh yeah
01:05:03
that's when I made that decision I knew when I made it it was bad decision you know and your life is full of the
01:05:11
consequences of decisions you took in the past that put you on the wrong path and you said we were talking about
01:05:17
repairing things what you do is you go back to where you made the mistake you figure out what the mistake
01:05:23
was you know there's this cartoon trope that there's an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other well you come
01:05:29
to a crossroad that's also where you meet the devil go this way or that way if you go the wrong direction your life
01:05:36
will be then the consequences of that bad choice and then that will tangle you up and then you'll suffer for it then
01:05:43
you have to figure out okay what's the suffering what's the problem when did I make the bad choice which road should
01:05:49
have I taken that's how you fix a trauma you you replace the road you did take
01:05:55
with the road you you should have taken and now you have a road forward and once you have a road forward the trauma is no
01:06:00
longer traumatic because you have a road your brain brings up the
01:06:06
past because you have not specified the proper Road forward you go back into the
01:06:12
road you took that was the wrong road you find out what the right Road was now you've you've atoned you've
01:06:21
confessed you've repented and you have specified the proper pathway forward and
01:06:26
that's what you do when you negotiate a solution to a problem with your wife too here's what we're do here's the problem here's what we did wrong here's what
01:06:34
we'll try to do in the future and if that new future Map works that past
01:06:39
trauma will be rendered irrelevant as you know because I've been
01:06:45
sent thousands of messages these conversation cards sell out exceptionally quick so here's the deal
01:06:50
I'm going to make with you if you join the waiting list which is in the description below you will get sent access to buy these conversation cards
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to get your hands on them please do add your name to the waiting list in the description below and you can find that
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waiting list at theconversation cards.com but I'll also include it in the description below wherever you're
01:07:14
listening to this episode how much do you really know about your health for me the answer was simple the answer was
01:07:21
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01:07:45
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it and let me know how you get on I was looking at our past conversation and I thought it would be interesting to see
01:08:17
who the audience were that their demographic and the the age group were
01:08:22
20 to 40 year olds really 18 to 40 year olds my question to you is in their
01:08:30
lives in that demographics lives what do you think the biggest challenge is because your both your kids Julian and Michaela both fit into that that
01:08:37
category as well what is the greatest challenge that that demographic face
01:08:42
well the biggest challenges we had with our kids was see I think the big biggest challenge I had in my generation was
01:08:50
negotiating the years between 13 and 15 something like that but my sense is now
01:08:55
the biggest challenge to young people is negotiating the transition into adulthood into adulthood identity and I
01:09:02
think that's partly why we have this terrible war in our culture about what constitutes identity and I
01:09:09
think the reason that identity has become such a problem is that our concepts of identity are unbelievably
01:09:17
unsophisticated narrow hedonistic and self-serving so the identity groups that
01:09:24
have popped up are all you could say whim based identity groups they're
01:09:30
sexual identity say or something arbitrary like sex like SE sex or race
01:09:35
or ethnicity something arbitrary but the sexual identity groups are particularly interesting because the idea that that's
01:09:43
your identity is predicated on the notion that there isn't anything more vital to you than your than the
01:09:49
immediacy of your sexual behavior well you're not a sex machine you're not a
01:09:55
short-term sex machine that's not what a human being is so if you revert to that
01:10:02
all you're going to do is produce like anxiety hopelessness and misery it's not a good solution so then you might say
01:10:09
well what's the solution and the solution is something called a subsidiary solution it's like so what's your identity well you should get your
01:10:17
act together and take care of yourself so you have to integrate yourself you have to integrate across anxiety and
01:10:25
hatred and pain and jealousy and fear and hunger and lust and all the that
01:10:31
that plethora of spirits that wage war within you it's a lot it's a lot you
01:10:36
have to bring that into a Unity okay and one of the things n said the famous German philosopher was that every Drive
01:10:44
attempts to philosophize in its spirit so all those subsidiar sub subordinate
01:10:50
spirits that war inside you will try to dominate I'm only my anger I'm or rage
01:10:55
that's the protester type you know I'm only my sexuality I'm only my my my
01:11:00
appetite that's the consumer model but all that has to be integrated and then you might say well integrated into what
01:11:07
well integrated into a structure that serves all of those Spirits simultaneously and harmoniously across a
01:11:15
long time that's maturity okay but that doesn't happen in
01:11:20
isolation so then the next there's stages above that okay so the next is
01:11:26
maybe you've got your act together enough so that someone can tolerate being around you so that so there's
01:11:31
enough left over from you so you can play with someone else so you establish a relationship marriage let's say you
01:11:39
invite someone else to join forces with you you produce a United Vision okay so
01:11:44
now there's you and there's you as husband and it's the joint interplay of those that's now your
01:11:51
identity okay and so now you have a role and you have obl ation and responsibilities and opportunities you
01:11:58
know you say well I'm constrained by my marriage you know there's all sorts of things I can't do which really means I
01:12:04
can no longer in the most primitive way it means I can no longer immediately gratify my short-term whims although it
01:12:12
could also be more complex in that I don't get to pursue the things that I need to pursue which means you haven't negotiated with your wife very well like
01:12:18
if your marriage is a prison you have you're either very immature in what you want or you haven't negotiated properly
01:12:25
if you've done it well you've got your individual Unity established and then
01:12:30
there's a Unity within the marriage that's better and why would it be better well you could learn to love someone and
01:12:36
that would be better because getting outside yourself decreases your anxiety
01:12:43
so we know as psychologists one of the things that was learned 20 years ago is that there's no difference between
01:12:50
thinking about yourself and what you want and being miserable those are
01:12:56
self-consciousness and negative emotion are so tightly tied together that they're statistically indistinguishable
01:13:03
does that not raise the question about the decline of religion absolutely well that's the next level it's like okay so
01:13:09
there's you now you're a husband right and so your identity is those two things in lockstep but that's not enough now
01:13:16
maybe you're a father now you have kids now you have a whole another level of responsibility and opportunity to flesh
01:13:23
yourself out and support support and love right so now and then well you so
01:13:30
you've got your family together that's not enough you've got the community to serve so you want to serve the community
01:13:36
and then Community scale you know maybe you're good in your local business and you have a local business organization
01:13:42
and you're good in that and then well then there's the town level and the city level and the state level and the
01:13:48
country level and then you know America is one nation under God that's the
01:13:53
ultimate level of this hierarchy of identity and that's what should be served most fundamentally that's a
01:14:01
definition okay God is that which should be served most fundamentally it's a definition so
01:14:08
when you're thinking that b is better than a what you're saying even if you
01:14:13
don't know it is that b is a step from a on the road to God that's what you're
01:14:18
saying the the medieval definition a medieval definition of God was something like the sum of all that is good or the
01:14:26
essence of what is good and so if you believe that there is a good then lurking behind that is the
01:14:34
spirit of all that which all which all of that which is good that's God by
01:14:40
definition now you can debate forever about what that is but it is something
01:14:45
you live in relationship to like that's in escap that's absolutely inescapable and you might say well I don't believe
01:14:50
in God and then I would say well do you believe in good and you'll say no I say well then you can't act because you act
01:14:57
towards a good or you're not motivated I called Simon gunning who's
01:15:02
the CEO of campaign of living miserably it's a big man's health charity here and I said give me the updated stats he said
01:15:07
to me 19 to 35 year olds which is that demographic that are listening to this predominantly um are twice as likely to
01:15:14
report being in crisis than any other group right and the there's a reason it's a very straightforward reason it's
01:15:21
it's literally this the more you are focused on your s the more miserable you
01:15:27
are it's it's as simple as that but that's society now these days we're very I know well we're in Cur well and there
01:15:34
are terrible forces pushing Us in that direction you know like I could attribute this to the idiocies of a
01:15:39
degenerate Protestant liberalism driven by postmodernism but you could also just as easily point to consumerist
01:15:46
capitalism it's like it's all about you it's all about what you want worse it's all about what you want right now worse
01:15:54
it's all about what your basist appetites want regardless of cost right now well that that's the same as being 2
01:16:02
years old it's there's nothing about that that's and why do you think that's you anyways it's like since when did
01:16:09
what you are become what the most idiotic part of you who cares nothing about anything else and any other people
01:16:15
wants right now why is that you how about this though so this is where I'm trying to make a distinction is
01:16:22
responsibility is a good thing but but with responsibility sometimes comes this idea that it's about me my outcomes are
01:16:30
about me it's all about me my success and failure are a consequence of me me
01:16:36
me me yeah well that right right absolutely absolutely well that's why the classical Christian philosophy has
01:16:44
always been that you cannot infer someone's moral worth by the level of
01:16:50
accomplishment so the aristocrats would have said the Roman Aristocrats would have said well look at me
01:16:55
like it's pretty obvious speaking to a slave say it's pretty obvious that I'm better than you first of all I can slap
01:17:02
you and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it and you have to do what I tell you to do and I've got all the
01:17:07
money and all the stuff and I can make all the decisions and I have all the power clearly that's evidence that I'm
01:17:15
morally Superior to you but didn't they believe that a God had granted them that superiority to some degree so didn't
01:17:20
they often believe in Fortune as the sure sure of course they did that just
01:17:26
made it even better it's like it's a the fact that I've got the power is a reflection of the fact that the cosmic
01:17:33
order is clearly on my side and we believe that less now because of the decline of religion so we now think that
01:17:38
our outcomes are more determined by our own actions yes but lurking underneath that is is there's a hidden God lurking
01:17:45
underneath all that too it's just that the God has become subjectivity it's something like that when God talks to
01:17:50
Moses out of the depths of the burning bush he says I am what I am and that's what every degenerate Protestant liberal
01:17:57
says now I am what I am and they also say and if you don't go along with it the consequences for you are going to be
01:18:03
pretty damn dismal use my pronouns adopt my identity play the game that the worst
01:18:10
part of me insists on or else and it is a consequence I I said Protestant
01:18:15
liberalism for a reason like as we've moved away from God we've moved into a radical
01:18:23
subjectivity now the problem with that is that a radical subjectivity
01:18:28
especially one of impulse is unbelievably immature and counterproductive it just doesn't work
01:18:34
any more than a room full of two-year-olds Works what's the better idea this subsidiary structure it's the
01:18:40
adoption of voluntary responsibility May way more complex identity it's like you know take on the
01:18:49
load pick take someone in your life make a permanent relationship work it out have some kids serve
01:18:56
your Society at all these different levels strive upward what's up okay
01:19:02
here's the definition of up a better solution unites more situations and
01:19:11
people across broader spans of time is this why this brings me to you're doing
01:19:18
Peterson's Academy which is an online sort of Interactive Learning platform you've designed which is kind of seems
01:19:23
like it's taking on the this typical University structure I've I was on there I see people can sign up right now but
01:19:29
why are you doing Peterson's Academy well um
01:19:35
curiosity um I'm curious about virtually everything I started putting my lectures
01:19:41
on YouTube because I was curious what'll happen if I use this you know so curiosity but then the more deliberative
01:19:49
answer is I'm in a very fortunate position because I can meet pretty much anyone I want to meet and the people I
01:19:54
want to meet are almost always interesting thinkers let's say or people who have done interesting things
01:20:01
repeatedly in their lives and so I can find those people and some of them are very charismatic and they have lots to
01:20:06
say and they I am providing them with a platform to say those things and we can
01:20:12
do it at extremely high quality and very very low cost and we can distribute that to everyone and I am an educator I'm a
01:20:19
professor or at least I was I'm still a professor emitis and I it's time for the
01:20:26
for what we've been doing in universities for all these centuries to be made available on a mass scale
01:20:33
because it can be done very well and it can be done and it's entertaining to do
01:20:39
and there's no reason not to do it okay so that's all on the positive side and then there's a sense of humor aspect to
01:20:45
it too because it became impossible for me to work in a university and so I
01:20:51
thought fine I'll go build my own university cuz I thought and maybe there's something arrogant about this
01:20:56
when the university came after me there was part of me that thought you think I need you it's like I don't think so I
01:21:05
think you need me and if you don't want me around anymore we'll see who needs
01:21:10
who now like I said you know I was irritated and peeved and maybe there's something arrogant about that but let's
01:21:17
reconfigure it so here's one of the experiences I've had bringing these professors down to Miami this is
01:21:23
especially true with the professors from Cambridge and Oxford like some of these people man they are deadly you're lucky
01:21:30
to have a conversation with them they've been thinking a long time they're super smart they're wise they know their field
01:21:36
they're great communicators these are Stellar people and their universities treat them terribly no respect they let
01:21:43
their students walk all over them they pay them abysmally they treat them as if they're Pawns of the administration it's
01:21:50
sickening and so I invite them down to Miami and we we make them a good Good Financial offer and we treat them like
01:21:57
people we're very pleased to have there and that we hope they'll come back and they have a really good time and they
01:22:03
deliver and we say look they say well what what H what function do you want this course to serve you know because
01:22:10
maybe they're worried that there's a political agenda or something like that and our rule is we picked you for a
01:22:15
reason you know what we're doing you tell us how to get the hell out of your way so that we can enable you to teach
01:22:22
the course you've always dreamed of of teaching we will provide you with the audience you've always wanted which will
01:22:28
be people because they have a live audience the live audience members we select are selected because they want to
01:22:34
come and listen which is what you want for students and so we want to have the dream experience for the professor come
01:22:41
talk about what you love to people who want to listen plus we'll provide you with maybe enough financial security so
01:22:49
you don't have to be concerned about your damn University anymore which is also something I'm quite pleased
01:22:55
now I don't know if we can deliver on that but even the initial we give them an advance like like with a book deal
01:23:01
and even the initial Advance generally is a sizable sum it depends to some
01:23:06
degree on their following right because we do some economic calibration but I
01:23:12
would love to be in a position where I could take like the best thousand lectures in the world bring them on to
01:23:17
Peterson Academy give them Financial Independence because that would be really amusing and then to bring what
01:23:24
they have to say to to everyone for like for almost no cost you first you've
01:23:30
taken a first principal approach to trying to build a university um bringing the best professors together giving them
01:23:35
the freedom making sure they're not they're not sensored in any way giving them the audience and the remuneration
01:23:40
and appreciation they deserve when does this University Peterson Academy launch
01:23:46
early 2024 we already have 30 courses uh recorded something like that I'll put
01:23:53
the link to the university in the description below on on this episode but also you can just search Peterson's University online and it comes up the
01:23:59
first thing we usually have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next
01:24:04
guest in the diary but um I wanted to ask you my own question because it was quite pivotal to our it was really
01:24:10
informative and the honesty you brought with it in our last conversation really changed my life in a number of ways how
01:24:17
I'll tell you after I ask you a question okay okay the question
01:24:22
is how are you doing good good you know I I still have a lot
01:24:28
of pain so that's annoying but not anywhere near as much as I did have when
01:24:34
I was really sick so like I almost always feel like I have a relatively serious flu achy it's some neurological
01:24:43
problem and I have no idea what it is and neither does anyone else but but I'm
01:24:49
not anxious at all and my head is very clear and I have such a ridicul ully
01:24:54
interesting life that the the the leftover trouble is
01:25:01
basically irrelevant you know I wish it would go away but whatever it's not that big a problem so and I I mean I just
01:25:08
have an absolutely miraculous realm of
01:25:14
opportunity in front of me it's crazy every day I have is so interesting that it's almost unbearable and I would tell
01:25:20
people who are listening you know you might want that for yourself let's say you might want to have that and I can
01:25:26
tell you you can one way to increase the probability that things will unfold for
01:25:31
you properly is to is to not lie it's just stop lying
01:25:37
period stop saying things you believe to be untrue stop doing things you know to be wrong just start with that you'll get
01:25:45
closer and closer to the truth and the truth is the truth is the adventure of life that's the advantage to the truth
01:25:52
you have the world on your side but obviously because if you're lying about things you're opposing reality who
01:26:00
are you who are you to oppose reality good luck unbearable it's almost
01:26:08
unbearable your life is so exciting and so full of opportunities
01:26:13
that it's almost unbearable yeah yeah it's like an action adventure movie all the time it's crazy
01:26:20
it's crazy you know wherever I go I can talk to whoever I want essentially you
01:26:26
know I'm going from country to country people stop me on the streets they're happy to see me it's like I have friends wherever I go really it's crazy and
01:26:34
people you know they feel they know me because they've been watching hours often and they do know me you know I don't know them but they certainly
01:26:40
approach me on good terms you know and so and I go I just was in nine different
01:26:47
countries and I have a team of people who set up meetings for me like dinner meetings and so on in these countries and they're always people they're
01:26:54
well-placed people in the political realm in the cultural realm they're hyper interesting people and you know so I meet 30 people like that every second
01:27:01
day in in different countries all over the world and so and then I have these podcasts and I can basically phone
01:27:07
anyone I want who I would like to talk to and they'll talk to me and so you know three times a week I get to sit
01:27:13
down with someone who's like a bloody genius and for 90 minutes they'll tell me a whole bunch of things I don't know
01:27:20
so that's superbly interesting and so and you know my books are selling like
01:27:27
mad and I'm writing another one which I'm really interested in and yeah it's great it's ridiculously interesting and
01:27:33
you can I truly believe that people have that at hand they have you have that at
01:27:40
hand that's there for you Jordan thank you my pleasure it's
01:27:46
always good to talk with you it's always good to talk with you too and it's you've given me a gift as you did last time in so many ways so thank you so
01:27:52
much for making the decision cuz I you could be anywhere so if you to come here that that that honor and that that
01:27:58
decision is not lost on me so it means a lot to me thank you so much for the work that you do yeah well I'll tell you just so you know too it's like there's a
01:28:05
reason I'm here you know I have a team that because I do have a lot of requests and when you have more requests than you
01:28:11
can possibly fulfill there's a certain pain in that because there's the
01:28:17
requests are almost always of some quality you know so we triage and we're
01:28:22
looking for people whose podast CS have reach and who have been successful and who will conduct a straightforward and
01:28:28
honest interview and that will you know that are aiming up and that won't play games and there's a reason I'm here and
01:28:35
the reason I'm here is because of the work that you've done so right it's no
01:28:40
favor I'm glad to be here but I'm I'm here because this is the right place to be right now so congratulations on that
01:28:49
thank you so much [Music]
01:28:54
a quick word on hu as you know they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company it is finally here 3 years of work from hu to try and
01:29:01
make a bar a snack bar that is nutritionally complete as of the recording of this episode they finally
01:29:07
released these bars that are high in protein 27 vitamins and minerals and
01:29:13
just 2 gram of sugar The Impossible has been done and it tastes so godamn good
01:29:18
often these snack bars these like high protein snack bars taste like you're eating Play-Doh or cardboard or
01:29:24
something it's so hard to make one that is nutritionally complete and that tastes good and ladies and gentlemen
01:29:31
here we have it I'm going to put the link in the description to get your bar below try it out and tag me and let me
01:29:36
know exactly how you get on because it's so nice to finally have a bar that is nutritionally complete and that actually
01:29:41
doesn't taste like cardboard and that tastes delicious The Impossible has been accomplished
01:29:50
[Music] ah
01:29:56
[Music]