TRANSCEND YOURSELF – Jordan Peterson Motivation
compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today because you need to have a hierarchy of improvement you need to be aiming for something and that means you’re going to be lesser than people who’ve always 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 it 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 as person x it’s like not the right question the right question is 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 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 discussions too because of 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 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 said 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 an 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 continually 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 the flood is coming right the apocalypse is coming it’s always the case in life and you 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 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 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’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 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 super ordinary to that you lower yourself so 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 right 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 that’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 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 by 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 why are you going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is are 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 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 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 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 percent 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 are
