WATCH THIS EVERY DAY – Motivational Speech By Jordan Peterson
when I was 25 or so I probably weighed
about 138 pounds I smoked like a pack of
cigarettes day I drank tremendous amount
of alcohol I was from northern Alberta
this rough little town up and northern
Alberta called Fairview and you know
there were long winters there and my
friends were heavy drinkers and most of
them dropped out of school by the time
they were 15 or 16 went off to work on
the oil rigs and you know it was a rough
town and we drank a lot I started when I
was 14 and you know and so I was I had a
lot of bad habits let’s say and things
that were and I wasn’t in great shape
physically and I was also still
intellectually obsessed by as I am now
and so that would have been that would
have been in 85 but when I but I decided
around that about 85 84 or something
like that maybe a little earlier that I
was really gonna try to get my act
together and so I started doing that I
you know I first of all I quit smoking
well that took a long time because I
eventually had to quit drinking to in
order to quit smoking and I started
working out started playing sports which
I’d never done I was a small kid I mean
skipped a grade and I was a small small
for my age so sports were never
especially team sports were never really
a domain of expertise for me although I
skied and went trapping with my dad went
you know cross-country skiing and
camping and all that so but when I went
to graduate school I started swimming
the first the first physical exercise
routine I did I enrolled in a swim sir
sized course I think it was called it
was me and this like really overweight
kid and like these 60 year old women and
men make it out exercise me like Matt it
was really embarrassing me in the
overweight kid you know we’d be just
panting ourselves 3/4 to death at the
end of the bloody workout and these 6
year old women who weren’t great shape
or like you know chatting away as if
nothing was going on at all in the book
so
that was quite embarrassing and as was
going to the weight room you know
because when I started I could barely
best benchpress 75 pounds and people
used to keep coming over and helping me
which was last thing I bloody well
wanted but certainly needed I got to the
point where I could benchpress 225
pounds I think that was the best I did
and I gained about 30 pounds of muscle
in a year and a half so that was good
thing so like I was kind of a wild man
and you know I’m a little bit manic in
my in my temperament so you know I was I
was kind of going every direction at the
same time so and you know I don’t regret
that I had a fine time when I was a kid
and but I needed really to get
disciplined and I had to do it because I
was working on these hard problems that
you know that I’ve been discussing with
all of you and I’ve been working on them
really you know obsessively since I was
probably about 18 maybe even earlier
than that got to the point around 25
when I was in graduate school trying to
get my PhDs doing all my research like I
published 15 papers by the time I
graduated to my PhD which was but I
think by a fairly large measure the most
papers that any graduate student at that
time had ever published at McGill I
think that’s right might have been twice
as many or maybe twice as many maybe
even three times as many and at the same
time I wrote maps of meaning which was a
terrible terrible terribly difficult
thing to do because I was writing about
three hours a day doing that and I
couldn’t do all that and continue with
my misbehavior you know my sort of my
what would you say my why my hedonistic
my hedonistic my massive hedonistic
consumption of alcohol and all of that I
just couldn’t keep it up and also work
seriously on the issues that were at
hand so you know I had to stop that’s a
sacrifice I had to stop messing about
and straighten myself out and I I got
married well my the woman who’s my wife
Tammy who I’ve known since she was 8
years old she lived across the street
from me in this little town called
Fairview and I was in love with her like
the first time I saw her which is quite
the bloody thing so that’s worked out
pretty well for me but she came to live
with me about the same time and you know
we
decided jointly to get her act together
and we swore that we tell each other the
truth which I think she’s actually done
better than me like I don’t think I
don’t think she’s lied to me ever in our
entire marriage which is unbelievable
you know it’s being so useful because I
can really tell her things that we can
really talk so I tell you if you want to
have a good relationship man you
embedded in the truth because if you
don’t embed it in the truth you don’t
have a relationship it’s just lies it’s
a tissue of lies and it will it will
dissolve in the chaos as soon as the
crisis comes along so the truth is a
terrible thing but not not compared to
falsehood so
[Music]
