Discipline Your Mind – Jordan Peterson

0:00The emptiness in your life isn't because you don't have enough rights. You have all the rights there are. You have more than you should. And isn't because you lack consumerist options. You have Amazon and pornography, man. You can get whatever you want whenever you want it. And if that's still not working? Well, what are you missing? Well, maybe you're missing the opposite of that. A little bit of restraint, a little bit of sacrifice, some responsibility. Man, stop bush. If you really got a problem with your life, you'll change it. You're not tired of being broke. You're not tired of being stuck. You're not tired because if he was tired, you would actually do some shit about it. I'm tired of everybody running around complaining. As if you're on the receiving end of whatever this world wants to dump on you. And you don't have a choice. It's time to grow up, man. Excuses sound best to the person who's making them up. Anybody who is determined to do something who wants something to be different,

1:01it will eventually be different. Everything around you is going to change as soon as you change the things around you. Change your mind and everything about your bank account, your surroundings, your environment will all change. If you're creative enough, can you find the answer? Yes or no? If you're determined enough, can you find the breakthrough? Yes or no? Creativity. Decisiveness. Passion. These are the ultimate human resources. And when you engage these resources, you can get any other resource on Earth. Stop telling yourself the story because you don't have the money all the time. That's bullshit. It's because you haven't committed yourself where you would burn your fucking boats. If you want to take the thin island, burn your fucking boats and you will take the outing because people, whether they're going to either die or succeed, tend to succeed. The most of us give ourselves a way out and that's why we don't have a lot. Put yourself in a position where you can't retreat. Where it's due or die, sake or smell. Here's what you'll find out. You'll develop incredible swimming skills.

2:03Do you find yourself stroking unlike you've ever seen before? Through the exploration of desperation, you'll become more creative than ever before. Throw your whole self into it. I'm talking about grit, I'm talking about endurance, just having more stamina than they got. In order to get to the next level, you've got to sacrifice, you've got to take risks, you've got to be willing to do by faith, whatever you're asked to do. Listen to me, there are no shortcuts to that. There are no discounts to success. It's always sweat, it's always blood, it's always tears. You always have to give all to be the best. Yes, it's hard. What I ask for and I'll do whatever it takes to maintain it. It is not easy, but I'm not about to quit. I'm not about to give up.

3:14If you've explicitly formulated a set of goals and you're pursuing them, then you've adopted the responsibility to act in a certain manner to make those goals realize themselves. That's responsibility that you've adopted rather than responsibility that's been opposed on. You're assuming that you've thought through the goals and you find your spirit in harmony with those goals, you can consult your resentment. I think that's a very useful step. If you find yourself angry and bitter about the things that you are responsible for doing, then that's an indication that you might be operating under some unhealthy compulsion that you're rebelling and that's the reason for the resentment against the insistence that you act in a certain way, although it's also possible that you're just immature and that you're rebelling against the discipline that's necessary to attain the goals that you

4:16genuinely do want to attain and that are valid and that you are what actively engaged in constructing. So you have to get that straight and some of that's a consequence of thought. Again, some of that's a consequence of discussion with other people with whom you're intimate enough to have a conversation like that and perhaps they have conversations about similar things with you if you're fortunate. At the end of God's creation, describing how order emerges from chaos or being from potential, there's this strange line which is probably the most important line that's ever been written in our culture at the basis of our culture and that is that men and women are made in the image of God. And what does that mean? Well, if God is that which confronts potential with truth and courage and makes what's good out of potential, that seems to indicate that we have

5:17the same faculty, like on a smaller scale, we're not omniscient, but we're not bloody well nothing. You know, our conscious is integrity tied into the structure of being in some manner, we don't understand and it certainly is the case that we take what isn't and turn it is into what is, that's something, man, that's that's quite the trick we've been able to manage. And so we're made in that image and so what are we supposed to do? Well, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to type our letters and make our phrases and construct our sentences and build our paragraphs and put our chapters together and make our books and communicate to people and straighten out the damn culture and constrain the malevolence and ignorance that besets each of us and push nature back and extend ourselves out into the unknown and confront the potential that's there in the limitable quantities and make the world better than it could be otherwise to move it away from hell which and it can certainly become that and toward heaven to the degree that we can manage that.

6:23And that is a good enough goal. That's the thing. You need something, you know, because your life is tough, it's hard, you need something, you know, you need something to get out of bed for and fight for and that's something right to fight, let's say against hell and for heaven, that's something to fight for is, you know, if you, if you don't, if you want to be convinced about this, like read a little bit about hell, read the Gulag Archipelago or read ordinary men or read the rape of men king or read about what happened in Nazi Germany during Auschwitz and all the catastrophes of the 20th century and see if you believe in hell and see if you think, well, maybe not having that happen anymore would be a good idea and then think about maybe that's something you could contribute to and then it wouldn't have to happen anymore and that would be a good thing and God only knows what great things we could manage under such conditions, we're becoming incredibly technologically

7:25powerful and what would it be if we became, what would it be like if we became equally wise? Well, that would really be something God only knows what we could manage in the next 20 years or the next hundred years, you know, we're running at 40% most of us, you know, because we're half in and half out and it's not surprising because life is difficult, it's like, well, what if you were 90% in or 95% in or or all in because you're all in anyways, right? It's a life and death game, no one gets out of this, everyone dies, you might as well commit yourself and you might as well commit yourself to the highest good that you can attain because why not? It'll imbue your life with meaning, it's hard, the responsibility is there, but all the meanings in the responsibility and that'll make your life better and it'll make your family's life better and it should make your culture better, maybe it make the world better, it's like that'll justify your damn miserable existence at three o'clock in the morning when you're wondering what the hell you're doing here

8:25and that's a good thing because there's going to be days when you're aching and tired and sore and there's people in your family that are sick and you're cynical and bitter and you need a reason to get up and you think, yeah, well, a little more heaven and a little less hell, maybe I can pull that off today and tomorrow and next week and that's worth struggling forward for. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him or to an unfinished work will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the why for his existence and will be able to bear almost anyhow by declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life. I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche as though it were a closed system. I have found this constitutive characteristic the self-transcendence of human

9:25existence. It denotes the fact that being human always points and is directed to something or someone other than oneself. Be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love. The more human hears and the more he actualizes himself, what is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all. For the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side effect of self-transcendence. A human being is not one thing among others. Things determine each other but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes within the limits of endowment and environment. He has made out of himself in the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this

10:29testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behave like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself. Which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions. What is demanded of man is not as some existential philosophers teach to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietz, he who has a why to live for, can bear almost any

11:35heart. What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to start asking about the meaning of life and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks and therefore the meaning of life differ from man to man and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible

12:35to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. Life does not mean something vague but something very real and concrete, just as life's tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man's destiny which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simple to accept fate to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness and there is always

13:36only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer he will have to accept his suffering as his task, his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.