Transcription
[Music] You write in the book, there is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient. What do you say to those viewers that don't pursue their dreams and are locked in their careers because they're too afraid to take risks and pursue something meaningful?
Well, the first thing I would say is, well, you should be afraid of taking risks and pursuing something meaningful, but you should be more afraid of staying where you are if it's making you miserable. You're paying a price by sitting there being miserable. You might say, "Well, the devil I know is better than the one I don't." It's like, don't be so sure of that. The clock is ticking. Yeah, and if you're miserable in your job now and you change nothing, in five years you'll be much more miserable, and you'll be a lot older.
But isn't it a luxury to pursue what is meaningful? Our viewers have mortgages, they have children, they have payments and loans. It's a luxury to pursue because we, we lack the resources. Well, I don't think, I don't remember now. I'm not talking about what makes you happy. It's a luxury to pursue what makes you happy. It's a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful. And that doesn't mean it's easy. It might require sacrifice.
If you need to change your job, too, let's say you have a family and and and children and and a mortgage, you have responsibilities. You've already picked up those responsibilities. You don't just get to walk away scot-free and say, "Well, I don't like my job, I quit." That's no strategy. But what you might have to do is, you think, "Well, this job is killing my soul." All right, so what do I have to do about that? Well, I have to look for another job. Well, no one wants to hire me. It's like, okay, maybe you need to educate yourself more. Maybe you need to update your your curriculum vitae, your resume. Maybe you need to overcome your fear of being interviewed. Maybe you need to sharpen your social skills. Like, you you have to think about these things strategically. If you're going to switch careers, you have to do it like an intelligent, responsible person. That might take you a couple of years of of of effort to do properly.
We're built for struggle, us human beings. We're built to contend with the world. We're built to contend with reality. You want a challenge. And the best way that you can take on a challenge, because a challenge fortifies you, so you don't want to be secure, you want to be strong. And you get strong by taking on optimal challenges. And so you lay out your destiny in the world and you take the slings and arrows of fate and you make yourself stronger while you're doing so. And you might fail, and misfortune might do you in, but it's your best bet. And you know, people have have extracted unbelievable successes out of catastrophic failures. And so, and I'm not saying that in a naive way. I know perfectly well what happens to people. You know, you're doing fine in life and then you get cancer and then six months later you're dead, and all the heroism in the world isn't going to save you at that point. But that's not the point. That's not the point. Life is bounded by mortality, but that doesn't mean that you don't get out there and contend. And you develop by contending, and you minimize the net amount of suffering in the world. And that's something, man, that's something to [Music] do.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Because you need to have a a hierarchy of improvement. You need to be aiming for something. And that means you're going to be lesser than people who've already attained along that dimension. So the question is, who should you defeat in the final analysis? And the answer is, you should defeat your former self. You should be constantly trying to do that. And you're the right control for yourself, too, because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages. And so if you want to compete fairly with someone, then you should be competing with you.
If you're improving yourself, then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self. And then you might also ask, well, what is that lesser self? And that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and aggressive and vengeance-seeking, and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character. And those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through life. So it's very necessary to understand that this is why, you know, I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility. It's like, well, personal responsibility is to compete with yourself, is to be slightly better than yourself the next day. And better in some way that you can actually manage. And that's humility. Like, well, I'm a flawed person. I've got all my problems. Could I be as good a person? X? It's like, not the right question. The right question is, could, could you be slightly better tomorrow than your currently flawed self? And the answer to that is, if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low, then you could be better tomorrow than you are today.
And you might say, well, what's the right way of being in the world, if there is such a thing? And it's not acting according to a set of rules. It's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are. And what's so interesting about that is that the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit. So I've been laying that out in these discs too, because I say, well, the the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult, very tragic and difficult for everyone. And it's also tainted by malevolence, because no matter how things are tragic and difficult, but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be. And so that's life. And you need an antidote to that, because that can embitter you. Constant contact with that, just the tragedy, but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence, that makes it even worse, especially if it's self-induced. Okay, so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful. What do you set against that? Doing something worthwhile by your own definition. Say, you need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day because you've got something good to do. Well, what's the best thing you can do? Transcend your current wretched and miserable self. There's meaning to be found in that. And that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility.
One of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that life is hard. It's tainted by malevolence and betrayal that can make you bitter. You need a meaning to offset that. Where's the meaning to be found? Not in rights, not in impulsive pleasure, but in responsibility. You take responsibility for yourself. So you take care of yourself. If you're good at it, you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family. If you're good at both of those, then you have some excess left over to take care of your community. Those are heavy burdens. You pick up the burdens, you find that's meaningful. The best way to pick up the burden is to continue improve yourself. And that's where the meaning is to be found. And so that meaning is in the continual self-transcendence. That's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn.
Even if things are going really well for you now, there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough. You know, you're going to be ill, family members going to be ill, a dream is going to fall apart, you're going to be uncertain about your employment status. Like, the flood is coming, right? The apocalypse is coming. It's always the case in life. And have to be prepared for it. And the question is, how to prepare for it? And the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the direst of circumstances. You've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the mire. You've got the the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated, which is to say, well, regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat, like even if there were errors on the part of the referee, this is no time to whine about it. This is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future. And that's the right attitude. The point is, your best strategic position is, how am I insufficient and how can I rectify that? That's what you've got. And the thing is, you are insufficient, and you could rectify it. Both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough. And I, I don't mean don't aim, and I don't mean don't aim up, but you have to accept the fact that you can set yourself a goal that you can attain. And there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with, because if you're not in very good shape, the goal that you could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious. But it, it's a hell of a lot better than nothing. And it beats the hell out of bitterness. And it's way better than blaming someone else. It's way less dangerous. And you could do it. And what's cool about it? It's one step on a very long journey. And it starts to compound on you. So a small step today means, puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day. And then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day. And you do that for two or three years, man, you're starting to stride.
I don't know how many people have come and told me, it's so strange, they said, "Well, I started making my bed, and that made all the difference." It's like, well, yeah, you decided to aim up, man. And the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed. And you think, well, that's nothing heroic. It's like, no, but aiming up is heroic. That's something. And then lowering yourself to the point where you're not above the mess in your room, you know, you're not superordinate to that. You lower yourself so that you straighten up. You, you're grateful for what you have right in front of you, and you take care of it. You put it in order. It's like, all of a sudden, things start to get better.
And one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are now. I say, "No, no, you could be way more than you are." And they're relieved about that. You see, because if you're in a dark and terrible place and someone says, "You're okay the way you are," then you don't know what to do about that. It's like, "No, I'm not. I'm having a terrible time and I'm hopeless. You're okay the way you are." Well, then what? What, that's it? That's where I am. And what do you want to tell a young person? You're 17, you're okay the way you are. It's like, "No, you're not. You've got 60 years to be better, and you could be way better. You could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions." And in pursuing that better, that's where you'll find the meaning in your life, and that will give you the antidote to the suffering.
This is the trick, though. You have to pick a path of discipline. Whether what path of discipline you have to pick is a different issue. So there could be a rule. The rule could be, the rule might not be, "Follow this rule." The rule might be, "You have to follow some rules." So it's a meta-rule. And the meta-rule is, you have to discipline yourself. And the issue is, well, how? That's not really the relevant question. You can pick a disciplinary path. It's why I often tell my clients, especially young people, they say, "Well, I don't know what to do." It's like, "That's okay. Nobody does. Go, go do something. Do the best thing that you can think of. Put the best plan you have into practice." It's not going to be perfect, and it will change along the way. But it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path. And as you become disciplined, you become wiser. And as you become wiser, you become able to formulate better and better plans. So you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great, and you start to implement it. And then you, you accrue incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan. And that enables you to fix the plan. And so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well.
Imagine you only got $100, you only have $100,000 to go buy a house. And so you go buy, you go look at this house, and it's like, "Jesus, this house, man. It's like it needs a lot of work." It's like, "Well, that's all you've got." Well, are you going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is, or you going to look for where it's rotten and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work? You have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed. And that's like, that is harsh, man. And then in order to do that properly, someone has to have taught you. It's like, "Look, you aren't your problems. You're most fundamentally that which, if it confronts its problems, can solve them." And that's the hero myth in a in a nutshell. By the way, the hero is the person who confronts horrible chaotic potential and tames it and makes something of it, right? That's the, that's the fundamental human story. But the problem is, is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it. So you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off, that need to be dispensed with. And that, man, especially at the beginning, especially if you're screwed up, that may be like 95% of you. It's not pleasant. But if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems most fundamentally, if you know you're the thing that if it faces the problems can transcend them, then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you [Music] are.
My daughter was very ill when she was, well, when she was a kid, but well, particularly when she was a teenager, she had a very terrible time of it. She had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. And when she was between the ages of 14 and 16, it first destroyed her hip, which had to be replaced. And then it destroyed the ankle on her other leg, which had to be replaced. And she walked around for two years on broken legs, and she was taking massive doses of opiates and could hardly stay awake. And, you know, and as a test of your faith, there's almost nothing that's more direct than a serious illness inflicted upon an innocent child, right? And so the chapter is a meditation on that, and also on, well, what to do in a situation like that? Because everyone is going to have a situation like that in some sense. You know, because you'll be faced with illness in the people that you love and in crisis. And so it's a practical guide to coping with those sorts of things. Like, and one of the things you do when you're overwhelmed by crisis is you shorten your time frame. You know, it's like, you can't think about next month. Maybe you can't even bloody well think about next week, or maybe not even tomorrow, you know, because now is just so overwhelming that that's all there is. It's like, and that's what you do. You cut your time frame back until you can cope with it. And if it's not the next week that you see how to get through, then it's the next day. And if it's not the next day, then it's the next hour. And if it's not the next hour, then it's the next minute. And, you know, people are very, very, very, very tough. And it turns out that if you face things, it turns out that if you face things, that you can put up with a lot more than you think you can put up with. And you can do it without becoming corrupted. You have to be alert when you're suffering. You have to be alert to the beauty in life, the unexpected beauty in life. And, you know, you have to look for those little bit of that little bit of sparkling crystal in the darkness. When things are bad, you have to look and see where things are still beautiful and where there's still something that's sustaining. And, you know, you narrow your time frame, and you'd be grateful for what you have, and that can get you through some very dark times. And maybe even successfully, if you're lucky. But even if unsuccessfully, then maybe it's only tragic and not absolute hell. And you can do that. You know, in the worst situation, you can make it only tragic and not hell. And there's a big gap between tragedy and hell. You know, there's nothing worse at a deathbed than to see the people there fighting. The death is bad enough, but you can take that, as terrible as it is, and make it into something that's absolutely unbearable. And maybe, I think, and this is sort of what I closed the book with, is this idea, is that if we didn't all attempt to make terrible things even worse than they are, then maybe we could tolerate the terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist. And maybe we could make the world into a better place. [Music]
It's a constant storm to try to figure out what you're about. And you change at 26, you're all about the hustle, you're going to be a billionaire, this and that. And then you go to the bar one night and you fall in love, and it changes what you care about, right? And then you have a child, and then this happens, and then that happens. Things change. You just have to always consistently try to figure out what's driving you. And not because other people are watching, and not because that's what your dad wants, and not that because that's what you said was going to happen and it doesn't look like it and your family's going to judge you. You just have to be as real with yourself as possible. And that is a very difficult struggle. But when you're not, you create enormous vulnerability and unhappiness.
Truthful conversations redeem people. Cuz if you come to a clinical psychologist who's worth his salt, you have a truthful conversation. The conversation is, "Well, here's what's wrong with my life, and here's what caused it." You know, maybe it takes a year to have that conversation. "And here's how it might be fixed. Here's what a a beneficial future might look like." And so it's a completely honest conversation. If it's working well, and all that's happening in the conversation is that the two people involved are trying to make things better. That's the goal. Let's see if we can have a conversation that will make things better.
I think one of the factors in the resistance to these ideas of discipline and of taking responsibility for yourself is people recognizing that they're not doing that in their own lives. And they get upset. And instead of looking internally, they try to attack the thing that's upsetting them. They, they attack your message, they attack the philosophy behind it, rather than look internally and objectively and having some sort of introspective point of view where you go, "Okay, am I, uh, reacting to this because this, this resonates? Like, I'm, I'm missing this aspect of my life. Does this diminish me, or is this guy pointing something out that I can benefit from?" Very few people are willing to do that. Very few people are willing to take that critical moment to look at their own behavior and look at their own thought process and wonder if the actual adverse reaction they have to this person's message is because they know that they're wrong.
Start the process of becoming much more honest with yourself. It will help you make much better decisions, and it will help you in the long run. It may not taste as fun or as glamorous in the short term, but it will put you in a much better position. Stop doing the things that you know are wrong that you could stop doing. Right? So it's, it's a fairly, it's a fairly limited attempt. First of all, we're not going to say that, you know, what the good is or what the truth is in any ultimate sense. But we will presume that there are things that you're doing that, for one reason or another, you know are not in your best interests. There's something about them that you just know you should stop. They're kind of self-evident to you. Other things, you're going to be doubtful about. You're not going to know which way is up and which way is down. But there are things that you're doing that you know you shouldn't do. Now, some of those, you won't stop doing for whatever reason. You don't have the discipline, or maybe there's a secondary payoff, or you don't believe it's necessary, or it's too much of a sacrifice, or you're angry, or resentful, or or afraid. Who knows? But there's another subset that you could stop doing. It might be a little thing. Well, that's fine. Stop doing it and see what happens. And what'll happen is your vision will clear a little bit. And then something else will pop up that you will also know you should stop doing, and that you could stop doing. And you could do that repeatedly for for an indefinite period of time. And, and, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to ever be able to formulate a clear and final picture of what constitutes the truth and the good. But it does mean that you'll be able to continually move away from what's untruth and what's bad. And, you know, that's not a bad start.
Discipline. It does start with waking up early. It really does. But that is just the beginning. Discipline is the root of all good qualities. But you have to absolutely apply it to things outside of just waking up early. It's, it's everything. It's working out every day, making yourself stronger and faster and more flexible and healthier. It's about disciplining your emotions so you can make good decisions. It's about doing the tasks that you don't necessarily want to do, but that you know will help you. And that's what discipline is. Discipline means taking the hard road, the uphill road, to do what's right.