This is episode number 1094 with Jordan Peterson part 2. Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes former pro athlete turned, lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week. We bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin Sharon salzberg said
Ed difference between misery and happiness. Depends on what we do with our attention and psychologist. Ellen Langer said, it is not primarily our physical selves that limit us, but rather our mindset about our physical limits. I am so excited. If you listen to part 1 of Jordan Pederson, and then, you know, you're in for a special treat today because Jordan Pederson is back for part 2 and he is known for teaching mythology to lawyers, doctors and business people all over the world, helping his clinical.
Manage depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia, his lectures have been viewed by millions and millions of people around the world needs published over. 100, scientific papers transforming the modern understanding of Personality his previous Book. 12 rules for life was a massive New York Times, best-selling. Hit selling millions of copies and he's now back with a new book titled Beyond order 12 more rules for life. And this is part two of our episode with Jordan. And if you haven't this
The part 1, it is going to blow you away. You can check it out just by going back, one episode on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you're listening to this, or go to Louis house.com 1093. And in this episode, we discussed the keys to building confidence and attracting the life you want. How to overcome feeling lazy and unmotivated in your life, why Jordan believes in cultivating inner peace, even when there's chaos happening around you, the skills that Jordan believes everyone should be developing.
Now, in their life and what Jordans mindset is around money and how you can prepare yourself psychologically to start earning more. And if you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with someone. You think needs to hear it or who would be inspired by this message. If this is your first time here, please subscribe to the school of greatness over on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a rating and review. Sharing your biggest takeaway from this episode as well. Okay, and just a moment, the one and only Jordan be
Peterson.
Don't let anxiety and stress, take away from your ability to rest, relax and recoup. Do cysts. Health offers an advanced assortment of plant-based CBD plus products, designed to help address specific needs like sleep, calm and relief. And if you're like me and many other Americans who struggle to get enough sleep, the do cysts Health Sleep gummies and blackberry. Lavender will quickly become your bedside. Go to all do cysts, Health gummies, are vegan non-GMO and made with natural flavors find the new CBD plus performance gummies. And
Holt doses, Health lineup today at doses health.com use promo code greatness for 20% off your first purchase. Now through December 31st 2021.
It's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one Commerce platform to start run and grow your business Shopify. As a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs, like myself the resources, once reserved for big business, bringing your ideas to life opens, Endless Possibilities. It's a journey, but that's the beauty of Entrepreneurship. I love how Shopify makes it easy for anyone to successfully run their own business. Get started by building and customizing your own online store with no coding or design experience access power.
The tools to help you find customers Drive sales and manage your day-to-day go to Shopify.com greatness, all lower case for a free 14-day trial and get full access to shopify's. Entire Suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com greatness right now, Shopify.com greatness.
I saw a clip from an interview of your daughter and your wife together. I think was on your daughter's podcast and your wife was mentioning something about how you were spending over her for out of Noah period of time maybe this was years, but she was never showing the interest in return
until just just glimpses of it. Just enough to keep me,
right? But she wasn't going to date you, you know our be committed, I guess or whatever she said. And
L
there was I can tell you what she's like it's easy. I one day I went over there. I was about 13 to her house. I was delivering papers and it was her paper route. I'd taken it over and and so she was there with one of her friends and my wife Tammy. She was very popular among all the boys, even when she was in grade 3 and 4 like there was like 10 of us was a very big town and we're all in love with her. Yeah, except for one guy who was not just
Out of spite and this is true. Like, I can remember this very clearly. Anyways, I went over there when I was, she was a friend of mine when I was a kid, but there was always this romantic interest part of it, even when we were very young, and we didn't see much of each other when we were on 13th, you know, girls mature faster than boys, and I was also, one year behind in any case, I went over to her place. One day, delivering these newspapers, and she
Talking to her friend Hazel blond girl who is very attractive girl as well and they were talking about getting married and they were you know, being kind of cynical smartass about it. Tammy said, to her friend. I don't want to change my name when I get married. I'm going to have to marry some Wimp And she turned around to look I'm smiling. She said Jordan, would you like to get married? Wow, and I thought, and she was playing like, it was a poke and it was, you know, generally people but she
I knew I liked her and and so, you know, it was one of those Barb's, that's funny. Because it's close to the Drone. Right? Right. Well, that's where real humor exists, right? It's right on that Cutting Edge. And so that was her. She was provocative like that. And I told her that story when we decided to get married and I said, well, you're Tommy Peterson so that, you know, I got the last laugh and that story, but it took like,
Twenty years for sure. So what she had mentioned something like, you know, he wasn't suitable or ready for me until until you were and I
don't know how she, you know, it's typical like
And then she found out that I was attractive to other women, because vaguely competent, then she swooped in for the kill.
Exactly. So I'm curious. When what is the, what is the keys to building confidence? When you feel insecure or afraid or scared of being embarrassed, whether it be dating, someone, or career, or anything? What's the keys to building confidence so that you're attracting? What you
want? Look, you. I read some of your biographical history before we talk today.
You tell a story about being picked last and then you compensated for that. Yes. Now, they're Alfred Adler. By the way, the psychoanalyst associative Freud built his whole theory around compensation of, that sort inferiority complex, plus compensation, but it's adaptive, right? Like, you got picked last in embarrass the hell out of you. So, what did you do? You decided that is not going to be never
again for Reverend
again. Okay? Now you
Did say, you know, that you adopted a maybe two.
What? Inflexible model of what it meant to be masculine as a consequence? When I read that, I thought. Yeah, but still you fair enough. It wasn't that the new you that you were adopted wasn't optimal in all possible manners, but it was definitely improvement over the previous
you exact I wasn't picked last again, that's for sure.
Right, while exactly. Okay. So so, so the first thing I would say is that if you feel insecure and less and ashamed and all of
That that you have to take stock. And look, I have an exercise on line itself. Authoring.com., It's, there's three exercises there. One helps, you write about the past one about the present and what about the future? The present authoring program, helps you assess your faults and your virtues. Okay. Well if you have some faults and you feel insecure and inferior, because of that, well, you should
Now it shouldn't be so much that you're crippled by it. And unable to take action. You shouldn't be beating yourself into the ground because you're not everything you could be because no one is. And if you beat yourself into the ground, then you can't get up and improve. But you, you, you, you have to differentiate. It's like, okay, to what degree of my being hard on myself. Counterproductive lie, critical hearing the voice of my too harsh and angry father in my head, right? I'm adopted.
Inappropriate stereotypical representations of masculine competence. How much of myself criticism is ill-advised, fair enough, and you want to deal with yourself with a certain amount of care, but then along with that, there's the well
fix your weaknesses, you know, if you're ashamed of being ignorant, you're shown up at a party because, you know, you claim to knowledge that you don't have in someone exposes you. Well, you can be angry at them and you probably will, but they've actually done you a favor.
They pointed out an inadequacy is a pathway that you can travel down, right? A recognized inadequacies as soon, it's such a gift in some sense if it's accurate. I'm in because you think, well, what should I do? What should I do with my life? That's a real complicated question. Oh, here's an inadequacy. Excellent. You have a, you have a goal. Now, Rectify it. Now, you still have to think strategically and figure out how to rectify it and do it step-by-step and about.
Carl Rogers. The psychotherapist pointed out that the person first for therapy to be successful. The person has to want to change. So they have to have a recognize that they have a problem. If if someone is mandated by the court to attend therapy, it's very difficult for the therapist. To convince them that they have a problem. Once you're convinced. You have a problem. It's like away you go. You know, I know it's
Technically difficult, it requires discipline and all of that. There's no magic solution. But if you're plagued by feelings of inferiority, you should rectify the most obvious inferiorities,
right? Focus on those first over optimizing. Strengths, would you say,
No, not necessarily. Not necessarily. I'm and you don't have to redress every I can't I'm a terrible jazz musician, but it's not it's not,
it's not a thing where you hold shame around her like in.
So it's not an impediment. Yeah, I would say that you have to rectify an Indian adequacy when it's clearly an impediment to your goal, or you have to shift goals. But if you're shifting goals because of an inadequacy related impediment, then you have to ask yourself. Are you
Is your desire to shift, the goal reliable? Or are you just taking the easy way out, right? You can protect yourself by picking a different goal. That's more difficult. That's a good mental hygiene practice because sometimes you should switch goals rather than rectifying. Inadequacies, but you can fool yourself then and and that's that's not good.
And if someone is goalless lazy unmotivated, not sure what they want to do.
Do what would be a few key steps to get started to turn their life around her to find the motivation for something greater than where they're
at.
Well, I think a fair bit of thats probably to be found in. You can find it in shame. You can find it in guilt. You can find it in conscience. You can find it in Anger, you can find it in interest.
And and, and engagement, and Beauty. There's lots of Pathways, if you're angry about something in the world. Well, you know, that's an indication that that's in some sense, your problem, right? It is speaking to you in a moral sense. This shouldn't be that way. Well, maybe you're the person who should do something about it in some manner. Maybe it'll take your whole life to figure out how to do that.
But it's bothering you for a reason.
so,
The negative emotions can be a pathway to transformation. I'm not trying to romanticize them. They can Crush you completely and leave you with nothing. Yeah, right for sure. And they can go badly astray, but
Shane, that's a good one. What am I ashamed of? Well, can you fix any of that? Because you might ask yourself? Let's say you're so ashamed and so crushed that your nihilistic, and you can't see any hope for life. You're just done. You might think. Well, what if I was less ashamed, like, I'm not going to jump off the bridge. Today. I'm going to wait a year. I'm going to not. I'm going to work on these things that I'm ashamed of.
And and just see like, does my life improve enough so that I'm not so bitter about it now, or I'm not so hopeless about it. Now.
And my experience has generally been that that works. It works.
And then some of some of its practical knowledge to. It's like you can get a really long way with very small changes incremental changes. Yeah, micro habit changes. So, aim low
don't have big big goals or big
transformation you can, but, but the problem with a big goal is that it's daunting enough so that it might paralyze you and there's a high probability of failure. And so imagine that you're your own child. Okay now imagine you love
Child. And you would like, him will say him because it's you and I talked to succeed. Now, you have an ideal for this child. You would like him to grow up to be the best. He can be better than you the best man. He can be. That's what you want for your son. If the good part of you is talking. Yeah, you definitely want them to be better than you are but you want them to be the best. He could be if your vision is unclouded. Okay, but
Then you offer him at the goal. It's like, well, do this. Well, can he do it? Well, if he can do it without a second thought, there's no challenge in it. There's no developmental impetus. It's not in the zone of proximal development. You want to go all that, you can do.
What did require some improvement on your part? Mmm, because you want to attain the goal. That's satisfying. But then you want to make yourself into the thing that can attain goals. That means. So you want to push yourself. Yeah, you have
to try to push the transport fire. Yeah.
Yes, and and there's an ample psychological literature that suggests that that's where maximum motivation is to be found, interesting.
So you're you're pursuing a goal, but you're also pursuing the goal of transforming yourself. At the same time. You're doing both of those at the same time.
Do you need to know that you're transforming yourself in order to attain the goal or to most people just think I got to take these steps to make it happen, but they don't realize they're becoming better human
beings. They depends on what you mean by realize they have the sense of satisfaction and confidence that would indicate that although they might not be able to make what that means explicit. But I would say it would be better to make it explicit. It's it adds one other dimension of possible.
The vacation.
How do you think people lose confidence? I'm talking about gaining it, but how does someone how could someone like yourself who's accomplished so much, who's got millions of followers who, you know, is financially successful has a great marriage. How could someone lose confidence once they've built it
illness?
That'll do it. That's one way death of someone.
Los. I mean, there's lots of ways of having the rug pulled out from underneath you.
Moral error as the stakes get higher as we already discussed the consequences, get larger ingratitude. That's a big one.
You can succumb to the temptation to believe your own egotism. That's a big mistake.
There's lots of ways that things can go sideways. That's for sure.
So, it sounds like, you know, we start off with a lack of confidence, when we're pointed at your inadequate in this thing. And we go down a journey of
You know, building ourselves and overcoming the challenges and diving into the fear to have these small wins to build confidence. And then the more successful we become the more we succumb to losing that confidence again, when a lot
one of these, no, I wouldn't I wouldn't say necessarily.
Become more susceptible to that. But you asked, how can that happen? Right? Last longer? I think, I think I still believe that, you know, genuine accomplishment, but it's ethical. It's always ethical accomplishment. I believe that to be the case. Genuine ethical accomplishment is the best source of security, but it's not an unerring.
When you mean ethical accomplishment that you mean doing something good, right,
whether people know about it or not. Just good and right for yourself. Is that what I mean? You say do or did someone else need to acknowledge that? This was good and
right.
Um, I think if you, if you've done it for yourself, that's good. But if you do it, another people are in on it and along for the ride. That's also good. Sometimes that's better to bring people along. If it's just a matter of them acknowledging it. Well, there's value in that to I mean, you know, you people say well you shouldn't care what people think of you. It's like. Well, yeah, of course, you should Psychopaths don't care what people think of them now.
Shouldn't care so much what people think about you that you're willing to lie to maintain, whatever it is that you think they value the like There Are Places Beyond which that becomes counterproductive clearly, but of course, I mean, I read the comments in YouTube particularly and I pay attention to them. And if you know 30 people say something like here's something I do and I probably did it to you when I
I'm interviewing. I interrupt more than a certain percentage of my audience would like I guess that's my
comments is like just let them speak. You hit her up too much. So I just try to shut up.
Morgan. Do you know the
joke? What's the job?
Knock knock? Who's there? The interrupting cow.
That's a cow.
Stupid! Stupid.
Anyhow, so, you know, I read those and that's what people think and then I think, okay. I should probably try to interrupt last but I get excited and and then with zoom, there's a lag and that makes it harder. But I do pay attention and you should pay attention. I think when, you know, I hear a lot of people
say,
Don't let the opinions of other people, hold you back from taking action on your goals. Because I think a lot of people will listen to other people's opinions and they feel scared to do something based on someone saying I Told You. So or you couldn't do this or you're not good enough. How do we overcome that those opinions that keep us playing? Small? That hold us from putting our creation of the world are going after.
Well generally someone else's comment.
Is unlikely to bring you to a halt unless you value that comment it. So imagine you're going to pursue a goal but you're full of doubts. Mmm. And so 40% of you is doubts and 60% of you is pursuing the goal and then five or six people object and the object using the doubts. Mmm. Well your it's that's going to be really hard on you.
So, how do we overcome the self-doubt?
Well partly what that means is you probably haven't thought it through completely like what are you doing? And why? Hmm. And if you have a bunch of doubts and they haven't been addressed, Then You're vulnerable at that point and it may be that your goal is not everything, it could be and it may be that your strategy isn't fully fleshed out and
you have to have a conversation with your doubts and
take them seriously and see if you can construct a goal. That's
That you're on board with and then then add out pops up because some criticizes you triggers it out and you look at the don't you think? Okay. Here's the doubt and this is why what I'm doing, you know, maybe it won't work, but then you think, but this I've thought this through and I thought this through, and I thought this through and that all works and so know that that isn't going to stop me.
You know, so I look and I think well, I'm I'm writing something. Why? Well, I want to figure out this problem. I want to think about this problem. Why? Well, it's an engaging problem, but it's a problem that many people seem to have so that discussing it and figuring it out, seems to be useful. Why? Well, because the more of us who take problems, seriously and try to address them, and communicate about them the fewer problems. We might have and the less
Suffering they'll be and suffering. Doesn't seem to be a good thing, unnecessary suffering. Maybe we could work towards it and maybe that's what I should be doing. And that seems to be what's ethical and
And that's it. Right? And you might say you might say well what if you doubt that doing what's ethical is right? Well, it's not that easy to construct an argument that supports the idea that having more unnecessary suffering in the world is good. Mmm,
right?
So I would say, you know, you
Put yourself on firm, moral foundations, and people talk about morality all the time. This is what you should do or you're a bad person. It's arbitrary, you know, it's got this ring of patriarchal tyranny, but that's based on a misapprehension of what morality is. It's like, do you want to be tortured by your conscience?
Like how mean, how pleasant do you find it to be tortured by your content? It's horrible. How horrible it. Is there? Anything
worse scruciating? Yeah. I don't know if there's anything worse. I mean if you've got a job there you've gotta live with it. Yeah. For as long as you have it.
Yeah, well, I think that's a universal experience or near Universal experience. So you live ethically when you're not violating your conscience, right?
Well, there isn't anything better than that.
That might not be good enough. It might not even be good. Like let's say you manage it. Things can still come along and take you out sideways, but
But the purpose of living ethically is so that.
So that you have some peace. Yeah, what are and it's real? Yeah the ethical torment and and the peace that emerges as a consequence.
Sorry. I want to hear about what is no no problem. What is the biggest doubt you face at this stage of your life? And how are you working to overcome it?
The biggest out I have is whether or not I'm going to be healthy enough to to continue.
By far, that's it's an, it's an, it's a continual plagues me. Continually continually every second really, I'm so ill.
How are you?
Navigating
that.
Well, I I with great care. Yeah and and effort. I mean I wake up at 8:00, even though I'm not my sleep is not restorative at all. Hmm, it's disrupted and I don't know why so I sleep but it's not restored if I've had my sleep monitor, so I don't go into deep sleep, I get up at 8:00.
Period. I saw enough for 45 minutes. I walked seven miles. I work out. I write, I do my work. I stick to a very specific schedule and I hope that that's that I can manage that and then I'll improve across time. Yeah, so but we'll see. Yeah, but it's touch and go all the time. Yeah.
Is there anything you any skills? You wish you would have developed in your 20s and you didn't develop sooner. Maybe you have, maybe you have them. Now. Maybe
the really thought about that. I've really thought about that recently.
What would those well few skills be that you wish you would've felt and you wish everyone would develop
well.
When I, when my health fell apart and I was in the hospital for multiple hospitals, for long periods of time, you know, I stopped doing everything I was doing.
And everything I was doing was difficult. My clinical practice was difficult, Professor. Ariel job was difficult to company. I was running, was difficult. Writing was difficult
getting out of podcasting. Getting out of bed was difficult.
Yeah. Yeah, the lecturing was difficult. It was all difficult and I'm not complaining about the difficulty. I actually love that. That was, that was fine. I'm not complaining about it at all. But because it was difficult. I have to be in really good shape to do it.
And so then I wasn't in really good shape and so, because I wasn't really good shape. And everything I had done was difficult. I didn't know what to do and I couldn't get back on top of things because it was like trying to jump into a car going, 200 miles an hour.
You know, it's like hmm. Well, what I did was I started doing back in December. Really is when I started working again, although I had been writing to some degree over the last two years.
I started doing podcasts like this and they're not easy. Yeah, you have to be.
Again, I'm not complaining. I love doing them. They're really interesting. But you have to be engaging and you have to be sharp and you have to not say anything stupid, can't be too emotional and you can't be angry and, or that has to be very controlled. And you have to pay attention and focus, you have to line people up, and it's technically difficult. You have to advertise it. You have to get the social media, right? Yeah. You have to monitor the social media. You have to stay up on current events and you have to see who you're going to talk to. And
It's complicated and I have people helping me and they're helpful and great. But but there was no well, I'm going to go five. There's no beginner have a YouTube channel that a million people watch. Right? So and it's something you can really screw up publicly and catastrophically. Yeah, so it was very daunting. Yeah, very what I should have done when I was in my 20s and 30s is that I should have.
Cultivated some activities that were less demanding. Look, I went to a baseball game when I lived in, Boston, was only baseball game. I think I ever went to know, I've probably gone to two or three, but it was the first time, I'd gone to a baseball game, a professional baseball game. I thought Jesus baseball, who would go watch that. So bloody slow. It's like nothing has slow. It's so slow. It's nothing happens. And I have like 50 other things I should and and I
Went there. And then I realized I was looking at all these people, and I thought they're not even paying any attention to the baseball game. They're like talking to their friends and they're drinking beer and they're eating popcorn and then I thought, yeah, that's the point fool. That's the point. They're going there for that. Like you get to talk to your friends now and then someone hits a baseball and you can look at that and that's kind of interesting and you can eat popcorn and it's like they're relaxing.
They're not, you know, climbing Mount Everest or just relaxing and you know, one of the things I've learned, this is a good thing to talk about. It's really dangerous to be casually contemptuous. What does that mean? Well, I've seen many professors who are contemptuous of businesspeople.
Right. Well, they don't have businesses and they're angry that the business people can make all sorts of money. And so, and, and that's a whole skill set. They don't have. And so maybe they'd have to feel inadequate about that if they thought about it and then I've talked to lots of business people who, you know, regard professors as in the Ivory Tower and you know, easy job. It's like, you know, you try lecturing and see how easy it is about a complex subject and Publishing. It's not easy. It's really hard, just like your job.
Casual contempt stops people from investigating things. That might be good for them, you know, and and well when I realized that about the baseball game, I thought there's there's no content. No contemptuous this here, like clue in clue, in clue in there. Something here that these people aren't just stupid and going out to a baseball game because they're stupid, you know, it's very easy for us to call people who are doing something that we're not doing stupid. It's like don't
So sure about that, you know and it would have been better for me. If I would have had a wider variety of skills. That weren't so high intensity. I play ping-pong with my son that works out probably could have had another sport or two.
I could have had some leisure activities that I got good at music. Might have been good. That weren't so demanding. See what I tried to do. If I saw something was difficult. I wanted to master. I was driven to do that, just to see how far I could go in these multiple directions, right? And that left me vulnerable to one thing. It left me vulnerable to
Being in a situation where I wasn't healthy enough to manage it.
So you think if you would have had these other Leisure Hobbies things that you did for fun and play, you wouldn't be in potentially the
situation or well, it would have been easier to get going again. That's for sure.
It would I think you like I'm, you know, I'm trying sure. Sort it out. Yeah, but someone asked me the other day, you know, do you regret the pathway that you've taken? And that's a question that's worth considering. And the basic answer is, well, I don't know, I guess in some sense because if you, if you become extremely ill, especially if it isn't clear. Why?
You don't know what you might have, done to contribute to it because you don't know what it is. Yeah, and people say well, you know, you went on this hundred and sixty City tour in a year. Maybe that was too much. It's like it didn't seem like too much. I really enjoyed it.
Actually, right? You had fun. I heard it was great. They've told me all about how amazing it was and every night and his City and
it was great. But it was it was also very intense. And I did expose myself to a lot of misery, you know.
Meeting people so many people. So many thousands of people I opened myself up to a tremendous amount of misery and and longing and pain. And that was very emotionally impactful.
But I can't say with certainty that what the consequence of that was. Right. I mean I've worked as a clinical psychologist for decades and I had to deal with people who are in trouble all the time and that was actually an extraordinarily positive Enterprise because although I was dealing with very serious issues and people were in trouble, they were on a good path and getting better and we were collaborating in that. So it was lovely Enterprise. I loved it. Loved it.
Deep conversations, meaningful conversations devoted to making things better. It was great. So
it's tough to know I guess then. Yeah.
Well, I don't know. Yeah, it's what I have observed. However, yep. You also I've been opening up my day to work more and more. So now I work from 3:30 to 6:00 fairly intensely everyday and I started one day a week and then it was two and then it was three.
Then I could see was I better when I was working or was I better when I wasn't working? And the answer was clear. I was better when I was working and it wasn't just clear to me. It was clear to the people who were watching me. Right? And so it looks to me that that also indicates that it probably wasn't the work that mmm understand me.
I think it's possible that just too many things happened at once. Yeah, that's possible. It certainly distracted me. Right? And so maybe I wasn't paying attention to the exactly the right thing.
So, but but I don't know. I can't I don't know yet and maybe never will.
So that's, that's one skill. You wish you would have developed you and your kind of your twenties. What's maybe two other skills? You wish you would have
developed sooner. That's pretty much. That's, that's as far as I've got with that line of thinking. Yeah,
what do you think of the skills that people should start to develop in their 20s in general to make them better human being
More potentially open to success, financially relationship health-wise. What are two or three things that everyone should focus on their 20s?
Well, it certainly doesn't hurt to be in physical good. Physical condition. So we can walk through it. Stop drinking too much. How do you know? If you're drinking too much, you regret what you do when you're drinking. It's it's interfering with other important goals. It's, it's causing you financial distress. It's getting you in trouble with your friends or your family. It's getting you in trouble with the police. Okay, so stop abusing substances.
It says, if you can write, if you see that they're hurting you.
and alcohol is particularly pernicious in that regard, so,
Physical health.
Are you in decent shape? Are you strong and coordinated? And if you're not well, you'd be better. If you were, you'd feel better. You'd be more effective. You live longer, you'd be less sick and you really see that Mountaintop. Like if someone's being in shape, once in their life, they age way better and it's also a really good way of maintaining your cognitive ability. Like, you know, you hear about those exercises that you can do online to make you smarter and keep your cognitive ability and
Back, those don't work. There's no evidence that they work, people, keep saying that they make you smarter. They maintain your cognitive function.
Psychologists have studied that for 50 years, hoping that one of those things will work, trying all sorts of creative tax. They don't work. Exercise Works, cardiovascular and weightlifting. You start to decline in your fluid intelligence, at about the age of 25, and it's a linear Trend downhill and it can accelerate, as you get older, just like this, quite ugly, if you exercise, you Stave that off. So that's really useful.
Maintain your relationships and and Foster them their unsold when I look at successful people.
They're really good at something. They're reliable, right? You can count on their word. They're generous and they have a wide wide connection network, which becomes more and more valuable as you get older. Yeah. So it's one advantage that older people really have over younger people. They have a connection network and a connection network is cute. Well,
You could be connected to a thousand well-connected people. Okay, that means you are connected to the entire world. Right? It's unbelievably valuable. And that's one of the things that so, absolutely remarkable about the situation that I'm in right now. As far as one of the great benefits is the access. Yeah, I can contact pretty much anybody and they'll talk to me, like really, right. That is so cool. I'm interested in infrastructure.
ER for reasons, I won't get into but I'm interested in infrastructure development. I think it's a good method of wealth transfer. It's a good solution to the problem of inequality and and employment. I reached out to a leading expert leading expert on infrastructure last week. See if he talked to me, I thought I don't know anything about infrastructure except that it's worn to a frazzle and we should do something about it.
You know, he agreed to talk and having a connection at work is of on inestimable, inestimable value. Reliability generosity. You can work on both of those philosophical sophistication.
It's very useful because it orient's you properly, you have a sophisticated sense of of the world, you find, for example, that doing things for other people is actually more rewarding than virtually, anything else you can do, you know, when you hear you should be of service to other people. Well, if you actually watch yourself,
You pay attention to yourself, and you do something that help someone else and it genuinely helps them. I defy you to find another experience. That is that satisfied. It's actually quite stunning how satisfying that is. And so that's a very useful thing to
realize why is it, why is helping another person? The most satisfying thing for probably most people when they're if they're you know out of their ego of like I want to buy
More things to make me happy in this moment. Why is that such a satisfying thing for human
beings?
There's no better strategy for there's no better life strategy.
I mean, imagine.
I could give you a quick sort of technical example. So imagine I take two people and I say okay. I'm going to give you a hundred dollars and you have to give some of it to the person right beside you and they can either agree or disagree with the split. But if they disagree you don't get anything.
Okay, so a classical Economist would say that the person should take the hundred offer the person next to them a dollar.
And the person should accept it because why not? They get a dollar instead of nothing. And that's the solution. But what happens is that if you don't offer that other person, something close to 50/50, there's for you, tell you to go to hell. Yes, and then you get nothing, you get nothing to you think. We'll why would people do that? Because they just reject $50 and who cares? And the answer is, well, we don't just play one game with other people. We play a repeating game.
Mmmmm, and so, so imagine we did this. So imagine it's a crowd and they're all watching you and I offer you a hundred dollars and you have to share it with the person next to you. And you say, would you like to take $70 and the person says, I'm not sure that's fair to you. But if it's okay, yes, but then everyone else sees that and now they all have an opportunity to pick who they're going to play with next.
Well, you're not going to get picked last. Are you remember what you told me? You didn't want to get picked last. I did not. Okay. So what you did was you turned yourself into an
athlete machine. That was always give her
first. Okay, great. So but imagine we expand that gas and we say you want to be the person that everyone wants to play with you. Well, then all you have in your whole life is invitations to play. Well, how and how are you going to be that person be productive?
Straightforward generous,
make everyone else better around you and they're gonna want to play with you.
Absolutely. So there you go. And then you get to
play
exactly. Well. How is that not the best possible deal? It's clearly see. So so the reason if the ethical argument is put properly it is by far the most compelling argument. It's like if you want to have everything, you could possibly want.
And more than be a good person. The better a person you are the more likely that is to happen. That doesn't mean you that you're completely protected against getting cut off at the knees, but there's no better strategy. That's it. And you can even think about it selfishly and I talked about this to some degree of Beyond order.
Let's say you, let's say that I you want to be selfish.
You think that's the best possible strategy? Why should I care about others? Okay. Let's say, you should only act in your own best interest. Well, then it's like, well, what's your best interest? Well, what does interest mean? And what does you mean? What's in your best? Interest your best interest three mysteries. What's your what's best? What's interest? Okay. Well, there's you.
But you are just you right now. You're you and you tomorrow and you next week and you next month and you in five years and you in ten years and you when you're a pensioner, you're a community.
Of cells stretched across time.
And so, if you were enlightened and selfish you would act in a manner that would benefit that entire Community across time.
And I don't think that's any different than acting on the best possible part for other people. I think they're the same problem. So I think as soon as human beings discovered the future.
we we know we were no longer singular, individuals, were instantly each a community and then the community ethic prevails and the community ethic is
I want to win in a way that makes you win.
That's the best possible Victory.
If I waited, no one else wins. And what's the
point?
Well, you think it's a zero-sum game. It's either you or me. Or maybe I want the comparative status, but I would say even if you want the comparative status, let's say you just you motivated by that.
What what would confer upon you even? Hypothetically more status than to be the most popular person? Well, being chosen for games.
I mean, you think about it just think for a second because it struck me, that biographical. Uh-huh. Peace, Alfred Adler, who is the psychologist that I talked to you about earlier? He said, one of his claims was that many people have a, like, a stark memory that sets the course for their life. That's
true. A few moments, an instance. Yeah.
Hmm, and you have exactly that. So at Larry and psychology would be of great interest to you, I suspect
But but partly you see what happened was you had a true Revelation. You thought, I if I'm being picked last, something is wrong. And that's absolutely right. It's unbelievably, right? And you played it out first in the athletic domains, but you have to start somewhere, right? So that's a good place to start. Yeah. Jocko was telling me when we talked this week.
He's this tough character, man, who, you know, and he could have. And I'm not telling Tales out of school here.
He could have been a criminal, no problem. And he knows that perfectly. Well.
He's got their support. See,
I'm not saying that.
As a slur on his character partly because I believe the nietzschean dictum that a lot of morality is just cowardice, whatever. He might be. He's not a coward, right? And so and just because you obey the laws doesn't mean your moral just might mean you're afraid in any case. So the question is what what socialized this Brute.
Well, he was taught in the Navy. Seals. Yeah, take care of your team. That's your fundamental purpose and he noted and we had a long discussion about this, the successful guys, man. They've you know, they've got your back, right? They know that above all. Yeah, and if and if you aspire to a leadership position among those brutes, let's say and you aren't someone. They know to have
You're back.
They're not
following the it I got to make it.
Yeah, huh. You're not going to make it.
So that's this is why the discussions of power that are so prevalent in modern culture bother me so much. It's like you think male hierarchies are predicated on power. You really think that they are when they've gone rotten.
But when they're not rotten, that's not what they're predicated on at all. The capacity to exercise power. That's really important. You need that. It has to be part of you for you to be admirable. It's like you could be a badass son of a bitch. Yes. I see that. And and that way I'm somewhat intimidated by you and that's actually a testament to your moral virtue that you have enough force and power to be intimidating. But then if you can encapsulate that and take that potential,
Her power and harness it to this broader good. Well, that's Unstoppable and a real functional hierarchy. That's what it is. Yeah.
I've got about a 14 minutes to be respectful of your time until your you've let me know that that's the our time we've got. So I want to ask. I want to ask a different question and get to the final few questions to be respectful of time. And before I ask this question around money in the psychology of money.
I want people to make sure they get this book beyond order 12, more rules for life and make sure you pick up your other book as well, which is amazing, which is 12 rules for life, an antidote to chaos, but make sure you get a copy of this book or a few copies and get them for your friends because it'll be extremely life-changing. When you start going through this. I'm and heard a lot of people talk to you about money. Maybe I've just missed it and maybe you've talked about it a bunch, but I haven't
seen it.
That's a good. That's a good, that's good question. Yeah, definitely. I
don't want to make assumptions. But if I was making assumptions, College, professors, aren't typically multi-millionaires. Yeah, my fair to say that's semi accurate, that, if your professor, you're not making millions, you're not this financially abundant human, you have maybe a good salary, but you're not bringing in financial abundance at the next level.
And I'm
not going to try to assume where you're at financially before and you became more famous than the YouTube and the media sensation in the books, but I'm assuming that you've accumulated a lot more money than what you had. Let's say five years ago. How have you learned to manage the mindset around the wealth that has come to you? The level of wealth that has come to you. How have you managed it?
How do you deal with it? Now, as it keeps coming and I'm assuming more comes in with every book and success. And what were your thoughts about money before this level of money came to you.
I never made any bones about being an evil capitalist.
But I'll give you an example. So, I built this. I told you about this software that online program that helps people write out their past and their present and the girls goes for the future when we tested the Future Part of That to see if it worked and it worked quite well, it was effective and I sell it. Why don't I give it away?
Well, because that's not the right price at pricing decisions. Money is very, very complicated and pricing is very complicated. Pricing is value. Like what is the right price for something 0? Well, probably not, first of all, because it doesn't take 0 to make it right or sustain it. Like, there's an infrastructure. Customer service infrastructure. There are people working on constantly who could be making new things if you can't sell it. What makes you think it's worth anything?
If you can't sell it, what makes you think? You've got your communication, right? You can use price as an indication of whether what you're doing, works. If no one will pay for it. Maybe it's no good. Or maybe you're not talking about it properly. So I wanted to make things that would work. That would work in the marketplace was a challenge. There's the challenge aspect of it too. So I never had contempt for money.
And money for me was always, well, it was a challenge. That's one thing. And for many people who are motivated by money money actually serves as a challenge and it's like, can I can I make more of this? It's a competition in some sense, right? Like a game because he might think, well, they want all the things. It's like. Yeah. Sort of no, you kind of
If you're sensible, you sort of max out on things pretty
rapidly. Can I buy so much and use it
so well and indeed. Yes, and I'm not hedonistic in a manner that money. Would Aid in some sense course, partly. Because I'm not 16, you know, I'm 60. So what am I going to do with it? And I've also learned be careful what you buy because it's not clear who owns
Owns, who, when you buy something? Like, I knew this very rich couple and they had like, six houses. Mmm. Well the poor woman, the female member of the couple. All she did was worry about the houses. Like, one house is bad enough because it's always hard, six, big houses, fall apart all the time. So, you know, and you think, well, poor her. She had six houses. It's like, yeah. I know. The problems of the rich, right? Don't we wish? Every don't we all wish we had those. Yeah.
Fair enough, but but there's still a point to be made there. Yeah, I put together a financial team. I also had to abandon my supervision of my, my financial affairs because I couldn't manage them. But fortunately I had put together a team and people stepped in to manage it and and that's going as well as could possibly be expected under the circumstances. Yeah, and so
And that, that is a source of security, and I have accountants, who do taxes, and I hate doing my taxes everyone does. But maybe I hate it even more, it seems to bother me a lot. In any case, that's one thing that that having this money has been useful. For me, is that I don't have to do my taxes. Now. I have experts who can do that, but I've farmed it out to people and hopefully not too carelessly. So the
so for someone that
It's to attract more wealth, gain more wealth, make more money. What do you think needs to happen? Psychologically for them in order to create that beyond the actions, the doing the solving, the challenges, and adding value to It
is Well discipline like hard work. What is it? You work, 15% more hours. You make 40 percent more money interests. I think that's the data Warren Farrell accumulated. It's part of the reason men make more money than women.
And because they work slightly longer hours, but it actually produces a disproportionate return.
People who make money a mad at generally speaking, you know, I'm not talking about people who inherit wealth but it's pretty easy to squander money, you know, even if you inherit it, but
I'm talking about hurting it. If you don't have it you want to make more? Yeah.
Yeah, well conscientiousness, which is dutifulness industriousness orderliness, amount of time effort, put in, that makes a difference. Makes a difference. I would say if you're trying to
produce a product and and introduce it into the marketplace.
There are things. You should definitely know. The product should work. Should be reliable, your customer. You have put your customer service in place. If you despise sales and marketing, you're making a massive mistake, that's casual contempt. It's really hard to sell something. Hardly. Anybody is a good salesperson. It's an extremely demanding job, and you can, you know, oh, he's a Salesman. It's like, yeah, you try it. Yeah, I wouldn't sell out, that's because no one ever offered you. The opportunity.
Unity to sell out. If you have 10 opportunities to sell out and you reject all of them. It's like, great claim, moral victory, until someone until you're in that position. You're just not of Interest. That's why you're not selling out. You have to understand the marketplace. You have to communicate with your customers.
It's complicated and difficult. So so don't despise the necessary components, right? All of these things are important, the product, the engineers, the people who work on it, the creative inspiration. That's the entrepreneurial and make the product. That's extremely necessary. All the communication strategies. Those are crucially important because if you have a product and nobody knows about it, then, who the hell is going to buy it? No matter how good it is.
So you you despise the things that are necessary to your success at the expense of your success. So
you got a refund. You got a frame, the reframe, the way, you think. About those things.
You have to look at it like sales. It's like, okay. Well, you know, you're selling anything then. Yeah, so that's that's the end of that problem. So, or maybe you know, you have moral qualms about engaging in the capitalist Enterprise. Well, you know, good luck. Harry went along with you, you know, and if you may
The qualms are well-merited. It's like, okay, put aside a percentage of what you make to do something. You know, what would you call it?
Clearly not self-centered in generous with you. Can you can do that? I mean the products that I'm selling.
some of them are
What would you say? They have less ethical impact than others. I do. Do some merchandising.
Why?
The merchandising of me was taking place.
Anyways, would do it yourself. Yeah.
Well, I had my, I thought my son involved in it. I thought, well, you know, there's a market, people want this. We might, we might as well put up a genuine place. I mean, lots of the merchandise that's being produced related to me. I leave it alone. I let people do that. I don't bother them. I don't chase them down. If they can make a living, you know.
Putting my quotes in acrylic blocks or making posters. It's like that's fine as far as I'm concerned, but we have some things posters, and so on that and people want them. So, if they want them, I don't see that. It does any harm, you know, you might think it's kind of cheap, you know, what, you know, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like the disneyfication of loss of me but I am in for life and Community. Yeah. I'm interested in communicating with the public. This is sales and marketing.
You know, most academic work languages. Yeah, that's true. Well, I don't have contempt for my my readers listeners and viewers. I like them. I hope they do. Well if they want a poster of the 12 rules and they find that useful. Hey, okay, if they find a lobster tie funny good, it's fine with me. Yeah, and there's a bit of, you know, there's a bit of humor to it and
And I can use that. And so, can my message a little bit of levity would be wonderful. Yeah,
where can people get see some of your, your stuff. What's the best site to go to
the only thing you just go to YouTube channel? There's a little bar underneath it. That's jbp merchandise. I mean, it's absurd, right. There's also that element of Observer de T, which I kind of and surreal element to it that I find kind of interesting and, and, and ridiculous and perplexing.
And and hallucinogenic. It's very, very strange,
all fun. You know, it's all for what I want. Everyone to go buy a lobster tie and posters and the book. I want everyone to get Beyond order. Get a few copies for your friends as well. I've got two final questions before I ask the questions, Jordan. I want to acknowledge you for a moment because I know you went through a lot of, you're still going through a lot of pain and Challenge and adversity.
Since the first time I interviewed you a few years ago to now. And I also know that you went through a lot of pain in the diversity with your, your kids with your daughter specifically in other challenges that have happened in your life. And I knowledge you for continually showing up in a time of uncertainty, in a time of maybe a loss of Hope in different moments, in a time of physical pain. In a time of lack of sleep. Continually non restorative sleep. The fact that you continue to show up in search.
Irv is truly to be acknowledged. And I'm so grateful that you take the time to come on my show and share this knowledge because I know the impact it will have in the service of the message and all the work that you're doing for your own content. And everyone else is that you're being on. I'm really grateful that you've decided to continue to show up.
Well, whatever I might be doing for other people, they're certainly doing that for me. So I'm grateful to have
The privilege, the immense and staggering privilege of being attended to, it's amazing, you know.
it's
so-so.
I don't whatever I might be.
What would you say sacrificing for it? I'm gaining equivalently. I've had so much support from people. It's just absolutely staggering. And so
we appreciate you and you're making an impact on our lives. And we hope you're balancing and taking care of your health as well. That's the most important. I ask you two questions in the last interview that I love to ask you again. I'm not sure if you're going to remember them, but I want to see if you have the same or different response. The one questions hypothetical it's called.
Three truths question. I would like you to imagine that many, many years away. You get to choose the last day on Earth for yourself, but you eventually got to go and you accomplish everything you want to create into the world. You see your work, come to life, the impact, the family, everything happens, and it's magical, right, but for whatever reason, you got to take all your work with you. So you got to take Beyond order all your content, your videos podcasts. It's all got to go with you.
The next place, but you get to leave behind three truths, the three lessons. The biggest lessons you've learned in your life that you'd want to share with the world. And this is all, we would have all of your content Left Behind. What would you see? Would, what would you say would be your three
truths?
I would say have the faith strive to manifest the faith necessary to
Make things better rather than worse.
Pray that you have enough Terror.
To be.
Frightened out of your own deceit.
and,
Strive to be.
Grateful.
regardless of
Regardless, that would be.
That's good enough.
I think one, one of your rules is be grateful in the suffering right?
In spite in spite of. Yeah, that's the last Rule and the one that I've wrestled with most, I would say over the last, especially the last two
years. Yeah, that's probably got to be the hardest
to find the grass. Well, you know, people have the reasons I outlined them in chapter 11. Why are you bitter? Well, here are the reasons. Ho. Well, those are real.
Real reasons. No wonder, you know you listen to someone tell you about their life. It's so typical. So frequent catastrophic occurrences, you know, and yet people stumble forward positively and it's a miracle and a lot of that is its see that chapter be grateful in spite of your suffering. It's really a chapter about in some sense about faith and courage
and,
It's it's an Act of Faith and courage to be grateful.
Because there's reasons not to be and so it's like it's a decision and it's not like you make the decision and then you've got it, you've done it, right? And then you have it. It's a constant ongoing decision and the temptation to not.
To be ungrateful to be bitter. It's always there and compelling rationally compel. It's easy. Emotionally compelling. Yeah.
But it makes everything worse.
Oh so true. It's so true. It's like eating candy, you know, it tastes good for a moment. And then you feel sick for hours.
Bye. So you said you had three
questions. This is my final question right now. Okay, so my final question is what's your definition of
greatness?
The capacity. And
The capacity to utter and abide by beautiful truths.
Jordan Pearson, thank you so much. Make sure you guys get the book beyond order. Subscribe to Jordan's podcast YouTube everywhere else, online and Jordan. It's been a pleasure. My friend. Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much for the invitation, and thank you to everyone who's watching and listening much appreciated.
Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it and you want to dive into another similar School of greatness episode, check out the links in the podcast description. I've done more than 950 episodes of the past seven years and I want to bring you more inspiration. Just like this.
We've been choosing for Lucky winners, each week like many from Tel, Aviv, Israel. Kelsey from Toronto, Canada, Roberto from California, and so many others. That's right. They each one at $25 gift card to Amazon. But here's why I need your help to get to know you better. So I've create a short and simple survey. All you have to do is fill out a quick questionnaire at Lewis, house.com survey and that's it. It'll only take a couple of minutes, but it will go a long way towards helping me and this podcast, serve you at the highest level possible. And as a thank you for completing.
Yet, I am choosing for new winners, every week to get a 25 dollar. Amazon gift card. So go to Louis house.com survey to fill it out. Now. I'm excited to get to know you guys even more and be able to serve you in the best possible way. My friend. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again. If you haven't listened to part one yet, go back and listen to that right now, Lewis, house.com 1093. If you want to go to the show notes for part 1 or just going Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you're listening back, one episode.
So you can hear the full conversation. And again, if you enjoyed this, please subscribe to the school of greatness over on a podcast and leave us a rating and review. Let us know the part you enjoyed the most from this interview with Jordan and share this. With a friend. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this podcast or go to the show notes to do is house.com 1094 and share that out. Also, if you enjoy watching long form, video content, subscribe to us over on YouTube over 1.3 million subscribers there, and it is growing like crazy.
Easy right now. So make sure to check out our YouTube.com Lewis. Howes this full length interview will come out a week later when it comes out on audio over on video. So make sure you're subscribed to both channels so you can access to both types of content. And if you want inspirational messages sent to your phone sent to your text every single week. From me, then text the word podcast 2614 350 3960 to get on my special text and Community list, but we send updates and surprises.
As well as inspiration every single week. Again, text work podcast 2614 350 3960. Now I'll leave you with this quote from my friend, Nick view chich who says, life isn't about having. It's about being. And when you look for happiness and mere objects, they are Never Enough. Look around. Look within I. Hope you enjoyed this episode and I want to remind you of. No one's told you lately that you are loved. You are worthy and you matter. I'm so grateful for your time today. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there.
Do something great.
