WATCH THIS EVERY DAY | Motivational Speech By Jordan Peterson

 

You Are Not the Master of Your Own House

You are not the master of your own house. There are spirits that dwell within you. Meaning, you have a will and you can exercise a certain amount of conscious control over your being, but there are all sorts of things that occur within you that seem to be beyond your capacity to control. Your dreams, for example, are a really good example. Are your impulses, for example? You might think of those as so foreign from you that they're not even you, don't even want them to be part of you. But, but more subtly even, how about what you're interested in? What compels you? Where does that come from exactly? Because you can't conjure it up of your own accord. You know, if you're a student and you're taking a difficult course, you might say to yourself, "Well, I need to sit down and study for three hours," but then you sit down and that is what happens. Your attention goes everywhere. And you might say, "Well, whose attention is it then, if it goes everywhere?" Because you say it's your attention, it's like, "Well, if it's your attention, maybe you would be able to control it." But you can't. And so then you might think, "Well, just exactly what the hell is controlling it?" And you might say, "Well, it's random." It's better not be random, I can tell you that. That happens to some degree in schizophrenia. There's an element of randomness in that. But it's not random. It's driven by the action of phenomena that I think are best considered as something like sub-personality. You can't make yourself interested in something. Interest manifests itself and grips you. That's a whole different thing. And so, what is it that's gripping you? And how do you conceptualize that? Is that a divine power? Well, it's divine as far as you're concerned, because it grips you and you can't do anything about it. And so there's a calling in you towards what you're compelled by and what you're interested in. And sometimes that might be very dark, and sometimes not. But you're compelled forward by your interest. And so the idea that what moves you away from your country and your father's house and the comforts of your child at home is something that's beyond you and that you listen to and hearken to. That's exactly right. And you can say, "Well, I don't want to call that God." It's like, it doesn't matter what you call it, exactly. It doesn't matter what it's called. It still is. And if you don't listen to it, that's the other thing. If you don't listen to it, and I've been a clinician and talked to enough people now as old as I am to know this absolutely, if you do not listen to that thing that beckons you forward, you will pay for it like you cannot possibly imagine. You'll have everything that's terrible about life in your life, and nothing about it that's good. And worse, you'll know that it was your fault and that you squandered what you could have had. So this is not only a calling forth, but a warning.

Nothing is Wasted

One of the things that I've noticed in my life is that nothing I've ever done was wasted. By done, I mean put my heart and soul into, you know, like attempted with all of my effort. That always worked. Now, it didn't always work the way I expected it to work. That's a whole different issue. But the payoff from it was always positive. Something of value always accrued to me when I made the sacrifices necessary to do something worthwhile, go somewhere. You don't understand. You have to go into the unknown. And that's God's first command: go into the unknown, because you already know what you know. And so, and that's not enough, unless you think you're enough. And if you're not enough and you don't think you're enough, then you have to go where you haven't been, get away from your family enough so that you can establish your independence. And that isn't because there's something wrong with your family, but it means get away. You know, I talk to people very frequently whose families have provided them with too much protection. And they know it themselves. And that means they're deprived of necessity. Then you have to get yourself away from your dependency in order to allow necessity to drive you forward. And that's to become independent and to become mature.

Truth and Responsibility

We've been fed this unending diet of rights and freedoms, and there's something about that, there's something about that that's so pathologically wrong. And people are starving for the antidote. And the antidote is truth and responsibility. Right? And it isn't because that's what you should do, and some, I know better or someone knows better for you what you should do, since it's that that's the secret to a meaningful life. And without a meaningful life, then all you have is suffering and nihilism and despair and all of that and self-contempt. And that's not good. And it's necessary for men to stand up and take responsibility. If you were able to reveal the best of yourself to you and the world, that you would be an overwhelming force for good. And that whatever errors might be made along the way would wash out in the works, if you forthrightly pursue that which God directs you to pursue. Let's say that all things are possible. And so, we don't know the limits of human endeavor. We truly don't. And it's premature to put a cap on what it is that we are, what it is that we're capable of. And so, you know, you're already something, and maybe you're not so bad in your current configuration, but you might wonder if you did nothing for the next 30 years except put yourself together, just exactly what would you be able to do? And you might think, "Well, that's worth finding out." But of course, that's the adoption of responsibility. There's lots in the world to fix. Everything that bothers you about the world and about yourself should be fixed. And you can do that.

Pay Attention and Clean Up

I have a friend, he lives in Montreal, his name is James Simon. He's a great painter, and he's taught me a lot of things. Help, he's helped me design my house and beautify it, and I bought some paintings from him a couple of years ago. And he did this series of paintings where he went around North America and stood in different places, and then he painted the view from here down. So it's his feet planted in different places, on roads, in the desert, on the ocean. Yeah. Well, you know, he was trying to make a point. And the point was that wherever you are, it's worth paying attention. And that's because, you know, all these places that he visited, he looked exactly where he was standing, by the side of the road, in the desert. It sounded mundane in some sense, but then maybe he put 40 hours into that painting, you know. It's a very, very realistic painting with really good light. And what he's telling you as a painter is everything is worth paying attention to an infinite amount. But you don't have enough time. So the artist does that for you, right? The artist looks and looks and looks and looks and looks and then gives you that vision. And so then you can look at the painting, and it reminds you that everything that there is is right where you are. And that's a hard thing to realize, but it's actually true.

So, I've been telling people online in various ways and in lectures that they should start fixing up the world by cleaning up their room. How would you like your life to be? What would you like your character to be three to five years down the road if you were taking care of yourself like you were taking care of someone that you actually cared about? So you kind of have to split yourself into two people and treat yourself like you like someone you have respect for and that you want the best for. That's not easy because people don't necessarily have respect for themselves, and they don't necessarily want what's the best for themselves because they have a lot of self-contempt and a lot of self-hatred, a lot of guilt. I think you have an obligation. It's one of the highest moral obligations to treat yourself as if you're a creature of value.

How would you like your friendships to be conducted? Because it's useful to surround yourself with people who are trying to move forward and, more importantly, who are happy when you move forward and not happy when you move backwards, not when you fall. That isn't what I mean. But when you're doing self-destructive things, your friends shouldn't be there to cheer you on.

Moving Towards a Better Future

You look at the world through a story. You can't help it. And this story is what gives value to the world. Or the story is what you extract from the value of the world. You can look at it either way. Here, somewhere, and it's not good enough. That's the eternal human predicament. Wherever you are isn't good enough. And to some degree, that's actually a good thing because if it was good enough, well, there's nothing for you to do. So it's actually maybe a good thing that it's insufficient. And that might be why sometimes having less is better than having more. And I don't want to be a Pollyanna about that. I mean, I know that there's deprivation that can reach to the point where it's completely counterproductive. But it isn't always the case that starting with little is... You know, if you start with little, you start with more possibility. It's something like that. So you move from always from what's unbearable about the present to some better future. And if you don't have that, then you have nothing but threat and negative emotion. You have no positive emotion because the positive emotion is generated in the conception of the better future and then the evidence that you generate yourself that you're moving towards it. That's where the positive and fulfilling meaning of life comes. So you want to set up this structure properly. It's very, very important. And so what it means is that you want to be going somewhere that's good enough so that the going is worth the while. And you can ask yourself that. And well, we know what's wrong with life. It's rife with suffering and insufficiency and deception and evil. It's all of that, obviously. Okay, what would make the journey worthwhile? Well, you can ask yourself that. It's like, all right, in order to bear up under this load, what is it that I would need to be striving to attain? And if you ask yourself that, that's to knock. And the door will open. That's what that means. If you ask yourself that, then you will find an answer. And you'll think, you'll shrink away from it. You'll think, "Well, there's no way I could do that." It's like, "Well, you don't know what you could do. You don't know what's possible. And you're not as much as you could be. And so God only knows what you could do and have and give if you sacrificed everything to it. You have to sacrifice that which is most valuable to you currently that's stopping you. And God only knows what that is. It's certainly the worst of you. It's certainly that. And God only knows to what degree you're in love with the worst of you.