Daily Motivations - STOP ACTING TOO NICE.

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Credit to the speaker: Dr. Jordan B Peterson Instagram - @daily_motivationsorg     Facebook- @daily_motivationsorg Interested in sponsoring this show reach out to us via [e-mail] Kindly Support Us Below to sustain future episodes. Support the Show.

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BidMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome to Daily Motivation, where you get motivated and inspired. One of the things that characterizes people who develop post-traumatic stress disorder is that they're often naive. And then they encounter something that's really not within their framework of thinking, and it's usually something bad, and so they end up fragmented and devastated. If you ask a disagreeable person what he wants, say, or she wants, they'll tell you right away.

They know, it's like, this is what I want, and this is how I'm going to get it. But agreeable people, especially if they're really agreeable, are so agreeable that they often don't even know what they want because they're so accustomed to living for other people and to finding out what other people want and to trying to make them comfortable and so forth that it's harder for them to find a sense of their own desires as they move through life. And that's not...

Look, there's situations where that's advantageous, but it's certainly not advantageous if you're going to try to forge yourself a career. That just doesn't work at all. And so even though on average men and women aren't that much different in terms of their levels of agreeableness by the group, if you go out and you look at the extremes, they're very different. So all of the most agreeable people are women and all of the most disagreeable people are men. And the thing is, the extremes are often what matter rather than what's in the middle. And so one of the ways that's reflected in society, by the way, is there's way more men in prison. And the best personality predictor of being imprisoned is to be low in agreeableness. It makes you callous. Now you may think, well,

what's the opposite of compassion and politeness? And the answer to that is, I think it's best sort of conceptualized as a trading game. So let's say that we're going to play repeated trading games. And if you're very agreeable, then you're gonna bargain harder on my behalf than you're gonna bargain on your own behalf.

Whereas if you're very disagreeable, you're gonna do the reverse you're gonna think I'm in this trading game for me and you're gonna take care of your own interests where an agreeable person is gonna say no No at best this is at worst this has to be 50-50 But I'd like to help you every way I can one of the things you have to be careful of if you're agreeable is Not to be exploited because you'll line up to be exploited and I think the reason for that is because you're wired to be exploited by infants and so that just doesn't work so well in that actual world and one of the things one of the things that happens very often in psychotherapy you know people come to psychotherapy for multiple

reasons but one of them is they often come because they're too agreeable and so what they they get is so-called assertiveness training. Although it's not exactly assertiveness that's being trained. What it is, is the ability to learn how to negotiate on your own behalf. And one of the things I tell agreeable people, especially if they're conscientious, is say what you think. Tell the truth about what you think. There's going to be things you think that you think are nasty and harsh. And they probably are nasty and harsh. but they're also probably true. And you need to bring those up to the forefront and deliver the message. And it's not straightforward at all, because agreeable people do not like conflict. Not at all. They smooth the water. You know, and you can see, you can see why that is in accordance with the hypothesis that I've been putting forward.

You don't want conflict around infants. It's too damn dangerous. You don't want fights to break out. You don't want anything to disturb the relative peace. And if you're also more prone to being hurt physically, and perhaps emotionally, you also may be loath to engage in the kind of high-intensity conflict that will solve problems in the short term. Because a lot of conflict, it takes a lot of conflict to solve problems in the short term.

And, you know, if that can spiral up to where it's dangerous, which it can if it gets uncontrolled, it might be safer in the short term to keep the water smooth and to not delve into those situations where conflict emerges. The problem with that is it's not a very good medium to long-term strategy, right? Because lots of times there are things you have to talk about because they're not going to go away. And the advantage to having a well-socialized, disagreeable person is that they really don't let much get in their way. So it's really useful to investigate the viewpoints of people who have opposing views to yours. Because they'll tell you things. Not only will they tell you things you don't know, they'll also tell you how to see the world in ways that you don't see it.

And they'll also have skills that you don't have that you could develop. So, for example, if you're an introverted person, it's very useful to watch an extroverted person because the extroverted person has ways of being in the social world that aren't natural to you that you can use to improve your toolkit. And if you're disagreeable, one of the best things to do with disagreeable people, especially if that's alienating them from other people, for example, because it can people treat you like you're a selfish, arrogant son of a. Maybe that's because you are.

It's like, okay, so what do you do about that? One of the most promising treatments, let's say, for that is get the person to do something for someone else once a day. Just as a practice. And learn how to do it. Maybe you can wake the circuit up, you know, if you think that it's lying dormant in you. Which is probably right. You know, I think we have a very wide range of propensities within us. Some are switched on.

Genetic propensities. Some are switched on. Genetic propensity. Some are switched on. But I think that if you put yourself in the right situation or walk yourself through the right exercises, you can switch some of these other cross purposes to your temperament because it's just too damn difficult. But having done that, then you should work on developing the skills and viewpoints that exist in the space opposite to your personality, because that's where you're fundamentally underdeveloped. And that way, I think you can extend out your temperamental capability across a wider range. And to me, that's roughly equivalent as bringing a richer toolkit to each situation. So if you're hyper-extroverted, you should probably learn to shut up at parties now and then. And listen, just to see what's going on, to see if you can manage it. And if you're introverted, well then you should learn how to speak in public.

And to learn how to go to parties without hiding in the corner and saying nothing to anyone. And if you're agreeable, then you need to learn how to be disagreeable, so people can't push you around. And if you're disagreeable, you need to learn how to be agreeable, so that you're not an evil son of a bitch. And the same thing applies even in the conscientious domain. It's like, if you're too conscientious, you need to learn to relax and let go a little bit. And if you're unconscientious, it's time like, get out the Google calendar, man, and start scheduling your day, right? And beat yourself on the back of the head with a stick until you're disciplined enough so that you can actually stick to something for some length of time.

And not living in absolute squalor, which is something that would characterize someone who's very disorderly, for example. Because they just, they don't notice. It doesn't bother them, disorder. It's like, maybe they can see it, but it doesn't have any emotional valence, and so it doesn't have any motivational significance. You know, so the other thing you might want to think about, too, if you're choosing a partner, is try not to choose someone who's too distant from you on the temperamental variables, because you're going to have a hard time bridging the gap. You know, it's hard for an introverted person and an extroverted person to coexist. And it's really hard for an orderly person and a disorderly person to coexist, because they will drive each other nuts.

Why don't you pick up? Why are you so obsessed by it? That's the basic argument, you know. So it's useful to know about your temperament so that you can negotiate the space with your partner as well And I don't think you should try to find someone who's exactly the same as you Because then you don't have the benefits of the alternative viewpoint But you got to watch it because you may hit error-concilable Differences of various sorts and I've seen that most particularly among couples who are high and low in openness. That's a rough one.

And also high and low in conscientiousness. That's another rough one because they just cannot see how the other person sees the world at all. Thanks for listening. Kindly support the movement of this podcast by supporting us or subscribing to our premium content for more exclusive stuff. When you do so, you also get a shout out in our next episode. Thank you.