Motivation Daily by Motiversity - BEST OF JORDAN PETERSON | Best Life Advice - Speeches Compilation 30-Mins Long
Episode Date: December 27, 2023JORDAN PETERSON'S BEST LIFE ADVICE! Special thanks to:Lewis Howes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylTHKT4HSBc&t=0sAubrey Marcus: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC604SM0YhltEKZ5hmDs_GqwPatrick Be...t-David: https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickbetdavidSpeaker:Jordan PetersonMusic:Epidemic SoundWays to stay connected with MotivationHub and stay motivated:▶Subscribe for New Motivational Videos: https://bit.ly/motivationhubofficial▶SHOP Official Motivational Canvases and Apparel:https://bit.ly/motiversityshop▶BECOME A MEMBER of our loyal community!https://bit.ly/hubmemberships Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Well, there isn't anything better to have than a problem that's worth solving.
Like, that's really worth solving, right?
And so the more of that you take on,
the more you have a reason to get out of bed in the morning,
no matter what.
I think I'm getting up.
I'm trudging forward.
It doesn't matter what I'm suffering from.
I've got things that need to be done.
They're necessary.
And that gives you that sense of purpose that is the antidote to be.
bitterness. You know, there's lots of different ways to interpret the world, and you can maybe even
make a case that there's an endless number of ways to interpret the world. And the problem with that is
that it kind of disorientes you in terms of what you should be doing. But just because there's a
very large number of ways to interpret the world doesn't mean there's a very large number of
productive, meaningful, and sustainable ways to interpret the world. These people that you're
comparing yourself to, you don't really know very well. What that means is,
is that you see their shiny outside,
but you don't see the reality of their life.
Well, first of all, there's danger
in just comparing yourself to others, period,
because they're not you,
and God only knows what struggles they had to undertake
to get to where they were,
or what burdens they're currently carrying
that you're not aware of,
but you can certainly contrast yourself with yourself,
and that's a lot better.
The possibility that you can make yourself slightly better
on a continual basis is,
I think that's something that's accessible,
everyone. I think that's equivalent to leading a virtuous life. If you do not listen to that thing
that beckons you forward, you will pay for it like you cannot possibly imagine. You'll have everything
that's terrible about life in your life and nothing about it that's good. And worse, you'll know
that it was your fault and that you squandered what you could have had. Always take into account
the cost of what you're doing now. Right? Because what people tend to think is whatever I'm doing now is
risk-free, and here's a bunch of options. It's like, no, whatever you're doing right now has all
sorts of risks. You're just blind to them because you've habituated to them. They've become invisible.
So if you keep yourself in the fog, then you can't tell when you screwed up. Now, that isn't
so good because you're still screwing up. You're just too blind, self-blind to notice, although
in the short term, that's less painful. If you make your criteria for success razor sharp,
then you know every time you screw up. But that's great.
because then you could fix it, or maybe you could adjust your damn plan.
Either way, you can fix it.
It seems to me you might as well make it the best one you could live in
because you don't have anything better to do.
These people that you're comparing yourself to, you don't really know very well.
What that means is that you see their shiny outside,
but you don't see the reality of their life.
There's always people out there who are doing far better than you
on pretty much anything you want to imagine.
And if all you're doing is seeing yourself in their reflected light, let's say,
then it's going to be pretty damn dismal.
But it's not a good comparison because, well, first of all,
there's danger in just comparing yourself to others, period,
because they're not you.
And God only knows what struggles they had to undertake
to get to where they were or what burdens they're currently carrying
that you're not aware of.
But you can certainly contrast yourself with yourself.
And that's a lot better.
It is the only way.
Well, it's also the only way of really measuring anything approximating proper improvement.
You can actually tell when you're a little better than you were yesterday.
And you can actually do that.
That's another thing that's so interesting about it,
is that you can actually make yourself a little better in some way
pretty much, well, I don't know if it's at every moment,
but you can certainly do it every day.
Be careful who you share good news with
because you want to share good news with people
who are going to be genuinely happy for you
and be careful who you share bad news with
because that's equally tricky.
You want someone who will listen to you when you're having trouble
and allow you your good.
grief. Beauty calls people to their higher being, I would say, and to make friends with beauty
is to introduce yourself very carefully to one of the mysteries of life that make it worth living.
There's never been a better time for the majority of people to be alive.
And the future, although we're vulnerable and terrible things can always happen to us,
it's hard to make a case that the future doesn't look comparatively positive.
We're becoming extremely technologically sophisticated
and the world is changing at an incredibly rapid rate
and the only way we're going to be able to manage that in a positive way
is if each of us or as many of us as possible
are capable of making wise and careful and truthful decisions
and if we do that then maybe things can continue to improve.
You don't get people to stand.
stand up on their own two feet and to adopt responsibility if everything is given to them.
And that's a real conundrum.
You know, maybe you're in California, see someone speeding down the road in a convertible portion.
You think, oh, man, what a lucky bastard.
And the truth of the matter is that he's thinking about wrapping his expensive sports car
around the next cement pillar that he comes close to.
You know, you can't tell.
And people have hard lives.
And even people who are comparatively fortunate,
have hard lives. And the ideal that you're observing that makes you jealous and resentful is in large
part an illusion that's created by your own mind. You have to be careful of what you're jealous of
because you don't really know what it is. And then the other thing that's kind of useful is to,
well, to understand, you're quite different from other people and you shouldn't be comparing yourself
to them because they're not like you. They don't have your family. They don't have your temperament.
They don't have your troubles. They don't have your abilities.
The only person that has those is you.
One of the rules, I think it's rule four, is compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today.
And see, that's a game you can win.
The possibility that you can make yourself slightly better on a continual basis is, I think that's something that's accessible to everyone.
I think that's equivalent to leading a virtuous life.
And there is something to be said for virtue and truth.
You know, and that is one thing, another thing that I've noticed about people who've been phenomenally successful is that they really do everything they can to live a truthful life.
And you can get a bloody long ways by being honest.
You've got to know that there are differences in intelligence.
It's really important.
If you go into a job and you're not smart enough for that job, you're going to have one bloody miserable time.
And you're going to make life wretched for the people around you because you're going to make life wretched for the people around you.
You won't be able to handle the position.
But what you really want to do, as far as I can tell,
if you want to maximize your chances for both success and, let's say, well-being,
is you want to find a strata of occupation
in which you would have an intelligence that would put you in the upper quartile.
That's perfect.
Then you're a big fish in a small pond.
And you don't want to be the stupidest guy in the room.
It's a bloody, rough place to be.
So, and you probably don't want to be the smartest guy in the room either,
because what that probably means is you should be in a different room.
If you want to be the best at what you're doing, bar none,
then having an IQ of above 145 is a necessity,
and maybe you're pushing 160 in some situations.
And maybe that's making you one person in 10,000
or even one person in 100,000.
And then also, to really be good at it,
you probably have to be reasonably stress-tolerant
and also somewhat conscientious.
Why is it that smart people are at the top of dominance hierarchies?
And the answer to that, in part is because they get there first,
right? I mean, everything's a race, roughly speaking, and the faster you are, the more likely you are to be at the forefront of the pack, and intelligence in large part is speed. That's not all of it is. So if you're moving towards something difficult rapidly, the faster people are going to get there first. You're going to have to put some effort into your life. And you need to be motivated to do that. And so what are the potential sources of motivation? Well, you could think about them in the big five manner. You know, if you're extroverted, you want friends. If you're, if you're, you're, you're, you're, you're
agreeable, you want an intimate relationship, if you're disagreeable, you want to win competitions,
if you're open, you want to engage in creative activity, if you're high neuroticism, you want
security. Okay, so those are all sources of potential motivation that you could draw on, that you could
tailor to your own, you know, your own personality. But then there are dimensions that you want to
consider your life across. And so we ask people about, well, you know, if you could have your life the way
you wanted it in three to five years, if you were taking care of yourself properly, you know,
what would you want from your friendships? What would you want from your intimate relationship? How would you like to structure your family? What do you want for your career? Well, how are you going to use your time outside of your job? And how are you going to regulate your mental and physical health and maybe also your drug and alcohol use? Because that's a good place to auger down. And that tangles in your your incentive reward system. You know, we talked about the dopaminergic incentive reward system. And that's the thing that keeps you moving forward. And the way it works is that it works better if it produces,
is positive emotion when it can see you moving towards a valued goal. Okay, well, what's the implication of that?
Better have a valued goal because otherwise you can't get any positive motivation.
Most creative people fail at producing their creative product and monetizing it. Right? So your
default position, if you're a creative person, is you're going to fail. And so, and that's because it's hard to come up with something new and it's hard to
present it to the market at the right time and it's hard to market it.
Like those things are really, really difficult.
And so what successful entrepreneurs do is they just keep doing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
And eventually, if they're fortunate, one of their ideas happens to hit the right place at the right time.
Even if your idea is good, that doesn't mean it will be successful.
There's so many things that have to be taken into account.
So this is partly why persistence, and that's part of constant.
conscientiousness is so useful. It's like persistence is helpful because it enables you to run many, many experiments.
And you need to know that the baseline is failure. You know, it's important because otherwise you'll blame that on yourself.
You know, and some of that's useful because there's probably some things that you could improve about yourself.
But it's very difficult to go from zero to one, you know.
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 interfering with other important goals.
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.
Stop abusing substances if you can, right?
If you see that they're hurting you.
Physical health.
Are you in decent shape?
Are you strong and coordinated?
And if you're not, you'd be better if you were.
You'd feel better.
You'd be more effective.
you'd live longer, you'd be less sick.
And you really see that mount up.
Like if someone's been 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 intact.
Those don't work.
There's no evidence that they 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.
It's just like this, quite ugly.
If you exercise, you stave that off.
Maintain your relationships and foster them.
So 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.
So it's one advantage that older people really have over younger people.
They have a connection network and a connection network is huge.
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's so absolutely remarkable
about the situation that I'm in right now
as far as one of the great benefits,
is I can contact pretty much anybody
and they'll talk to me.
It's like, really?
That's so cool.
Having a connection network is of an estimable value.
Reliability, generosity,
you can work on both of those.
Philosophical sophistication,
it's very useful because it orients you properly.
You have a sophisticated sense 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 helps someone else,
and it genuinely helps them,
I defy you to find another experience that is that satisfying.
It's actually quite stunning how satisfying that is.
And so that's a very useful thing to realize.
There's no better life strategy.
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,
then be a good person.
The better a person you are, the more likely that is to happen.
That doesn't mean that you're completely protected against getting cut off at the knees.
But there's no better strategy.
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.
The professorial job was difficult.
The company I was running was difficult.
The writing was difficult.
The lecturing was difficult.
It was all difficult.
And I'm not complaining about the difficulty.
I actually loved that.
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 very easy for us to call people who are doing something that we're not doing stupid.
It's like, don't be 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 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 it.
I was driven to do that, just to see how far I could go in these multiple directions.
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.
What are two or three things that everyone should focus on in their 20s?
Well, it certainly doesn't hurt to be in 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 interfering with other important goals.
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.
Stop abusing substances if you can, right?
If you see that they're hurting you.
Physical health, are you in decent shape?
Are you strong and coordinated?
And if you're not,
You'd be better if you were.
You'd feel better.
You'd be more effective.
You'd live longer.
You'd be less sick.
And you really see that mount up.
Like if someone's been 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 intact.
Those don't work.
There's no evidence that they 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.
It's just like this, quite ugly.
If you exercise, you stave that off.
Maintain your relationships and foster them.
So 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.
us and they have a wide, wide connection network, which becomes more and more valuable as you
get older. So it's one advantage that older people really have over younger people. They have a
connection network and a connection network is huge. 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's so absolutely remarkable about the situation that I'm in
right now as far as one of the great benefits is I can contact pretty much anybody and they'll talk to me.
It's like, really? That's so cool. Anything that's every day is a significant percentage of your life.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today.
One of the things I tell people when they're trying to develop a vision for their life or an implementable plan is make a bad plan.
Make the best one you can, but don't get obsessive about it.
It's like make a plan, implement it.
You'll figure out when you implement it why it's stupid, exactly, and then you can fix it a little bit, and then you can fix it a bit more, and then you can fix it a bit more.
I don't think that I've ever been in a situation where if something wasn't going right for me and I sat and thought, okay,
all right, I'm willing to figure out what I'm doing wrong,
which is a big thing to think,
because you never know how much you're doing wrong.
It might be something that you really don't want to contend with.
But if you clear some space to meditate on that,
the probability that you'll figure out something that you did that was stupid,
that's bending you and twisting you in the wind,
you'll get an answer very, very rapidly.
The answer to how you pay for your past sins isn't by jumping off a bridge.
Well, how much do you need to be beat up?
enough so you fix the problem.
No more than that.
Minimal necessary force.
Don't hit anything harder than it needs to be hit.
That's a good rule of thumb.
Is there something I can do now to atone for what I failed to do in the past?
So let's say you go over your past with a fine-tooth comb
and you decide you're going to take responsibility for everything that you did that was wrong
and everything that you failed to do that you could have done that was right.
Like does that change the world?
It's like it depends on how thoroughly you do it.
You might say it changes the world like.
nothing else possibly can.
And I think that that's actually right.
And that's also a frightening thought
because it means that things would be way better than they are
if you weren't so damn useless.
There's this unlimited power that's associated with genius,
but it's constrained.
And that's really what the human spirit is like
because it has this aspect of the infinite.
When you don't get what you want,
then a landscape of questions emerge
and those questions can resonate
through different levels of your identity,
from the trivial, oh, I told the joke wrong, to the profound.
There's nothing desirable about me and I'll be alone for the rest of my life.
It's daunting to even consider that.
And then there's the discipline and responsibility that that necessitates, which is also daunting.
It's like, oh, my God, the problem's that serious.
I'm really going to have to get my act together in order to not contribute to it, much less solve it.
And so the problem is terrible.
And then the solution is daunting.
When I commit to something and make sacrifices, you know, if something's valuable, you'll make sacrifices to attain it.
That discovery of sacrifice, it's one of the primary factors separating human beings from animals.
Because we discovered that we could let go of something we value in the present, and we would gain something, we value even more in the future.
Go to aim at something.
It's like otherwise your life is meaningless.
Well, what should you aim at?
Well, I don't know.
Well, pick something.
aim at it, as you move toward it, you'll get wiser, then maybe your aim will change.
That's okay.
But at least it'll change in an informed way.
It's like discipline yourself in one dimension.
See what happens.
Well, that's exciting.
If you do not listen to that thing that beckons you forward,
you will pay for it like you cannot possibly imagine.
You'll have everything that's terrible about life in your life and nothing about it that's good.
And worse, you'll know that it will be able to.
was your fault and that you squandered what you could have had. All right, you got three years, man.
You're going to live them anyways. Devote those three years to setting the world up around you so that
it's the best it could possibly be for you, as if you were taking care of yourself, as if you cared for
yourself. Well, what would that look like? You know, let's say, just for the sake of argument,
if you figured out where you were, that you could have what would be best for you. Well, what is that?
I bet you never asked.
People don't ask.
So life comes at them like random snakes,
and they sort of fend them off.
And life goes by,
and things don't work out the way people expected them to.
But a huge part of that is they didn't know where they were
because they wouldn't look or didn't know that they should look.
Ignorance and willful blindness, right?
Two great catastrophes.
And they never figured out where they wanted to go or why.
Now there's a problem with figuring out where you want to go.
And the problem is that you make your conditions for failure clear to yourself.
And people don't like that.
So if you keep yourself in the fog, then you can't tell when you screwed up.
Now that isn't so good because you're still screwing up.
You're just too blind, self-blind to notice.
Although in the short term, that's less painful.
If you make your criteria for success razor sharp, then you know every time you screw up.
But that's great because then you could fix it or maybe you could adjust your damn plan either way you can fix it
It seems to me you might as well make it the best one you could live in because you don't have anything better to do
You can't make yourself interested in something
Interest manifests itself and grips you
That's a whole different thing and so what is it that's gripping you and how do you conceptualize that is that a divine power?
Well it's divine as far as you're concerned because it's a
It grips you, and you can't do anything about it.
And so there's a calling in you towards what you're compelled by and what you're interested in,
and sometimes that might be very dark, and sometimes not.
But you're compelled forward by your interest.
And so the idea that what moves you away from your country and your father's house
and the comforts of your childhood home is something that's beyond you,
that you listen to and harken to, that's exactly right.
And you can say, well, I don't want to call that God.
It's like, it doesn't matter what you call.
It doesn't matter to what it is, what it's called.
It still is.
Let's say you want to become who you could be in the fullest sense.
So let's say you're someone who's going to solve some serious problems.
Okay, the first thing you have to do is admit to the seriousness of the problems.
That's no joke.
And so the first thing is just the terror of the problem itself.
And that's enough to paralyze you, right?
And that's the Hidro, that's the Gorgon with the head of snakes.
It'll paralyze you and turn you to stone.
That's the basilisk in the Harry Potter series.
You look at it and turns you to stone and lurks underneath everything.
Right?
And it's malevolence and tragedy.
And so there's that.
And then the next is, well, you're going to take responsibility for that?
You're really going to do that, are you?
That's a hell of a load, man.
And so it's daunting to even consider that.
And then there's the discipline and responsibility that that necessitates,
which is also daunting.
It's like, oh my God, the problem's that serious.
I'm really going to have to get my act together
in order to not contribute to it,
much less solve it.
And so the problem is terrible,
and then the solution is daunting.
But the upside of that is,
is like, well, there isn't anything better to have
than a problem that's worth solving.
Like, that's really worth solving.
Right?
And so the more of that you take on,
the more you have a reason to get out of bed in the morning,
no matter what.
I'm getting up.
I'm trudging forward.
It doesn't matter what I'm suffering from.
I've got things that need to be done.
They're necessary.
And that gives you that sense of purpose that is the antidote to bitterness.
Okay, well, let's say you want your life to be meaningful.
It's like, okay, then what you do matters.
It actually matters.
So that's an interesting thing.
Well, so let's say you go over your past with a fine-tooth comb
and you decide you're going to take responsibility for everything that you did that was wrong
and everything that you failed to do that you could have done that was right.
it's like does that change the world it's like depends on how thoroughly you do it you might say it changes
the world like nothing else possibly can and i think that that's actually right you have to allow
yourself a certain latitude for error and that's a useful thing to know too one of the things i tell
people when they're trying to develop a vision for their life or an implemental plan is make a bad
plan make the best one you can but don't get obsessive about it's like make a plan implement it
You'll figure out when you implement it why it's stupid, exactly, and then you can fix it a little bit.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today.
The same basic idea, right, is that you have to get your markers for success right,
because otherwise you can end up in the situation you described,
which is that, like, there's always people out there who are doing far better than you
on pretty much anything you want to imagine.
And if all you're doing is seeing yourself in their reflected light, let's say,
then it's going to be pretty damn dismal.
But it's not a good comparison because you shouldn't just compare it.
Well, first of all, there's danger in just comparing yourself to others, period,
because they're not you.
And God only knows what struggles they had to undertake to get to where they were
or what burdens they're currently carrying that you're not aware of.
You just don't know any of that.
But you can certainly contrast yourself with yourself.
And that's a lot better.
It is the only way.
Well, it's also the only way of really measuring anything approximating proper improvement.
You can actually tell when you're a little better than you were yesterday.
And you can actually do that.
That's another thing that's so interesting about it,
is that you can actually make yourself a little better in some way,
pretty much, well, I don't know if it's at every moment,
but you can certainly do it every day.
It's funny.
I mean, you know, obviously, if you have a problem and you think about it,
you can think up a solution.
And it's not obvious how you do that.
You know, I mean, it's not like you know how you're manipulating your neurons or something.
it happens of its own accord in some sense
like you can participate in it, I guess,
and you can interfere with it,
and it seems to take a certain amount of willpower,
but it still all happens mysteriously behind the scenes.
One of the things that I've been,
so, you know, there's lots of different ways to interpret the world,
and you can maybe even make a case that there's an endless number of ways to interpret the world.
And the problem with that is that it kind of disorients you
in terms of what you should be doing.
but just because there's a very large number of ways to interpret the world
doesn't mean there's a very large number of productive, meaningful,
and sustainable ways to interpret the world.
And one of the things you do have to do is figure out how you conduct yourself today
so that you don't upset the apple card in a week or a month or a year.
And so, you know, what you do in some sense psychologically is you admit to yourself
that your current frame of reference is faulty,
and then you start opening the door to a different kind of thinking,
which is more creative thinking, it's more lateral thinking.
I think, well, I'm wrong, but that's not necessarily a problem
because I could be right if I thought some other way.
Well, that's great. Often it works.
Yeah.
There's almost no lack, there's almost no end to the utility
of trying to figure out which ways you're wrong.
Yeah.
Because there's lots of them.
And every time you discover one,
then you don't have to be quite so wrong anymore.
That's a really good deal.
Yeah.
The day is like a page in a book.
Of course, there's many pages in a book.
but the page repeats.
And so one of the things I often had my clients do,
I'll tell you a little story.
I had one client who was spending about 45 minutes a night
fighting with his young son about when to go to bed.
And so, you know, they weren't having a pleasant time of it
because it was just a constant battle.
And that's common.
Like, it's very common for parents of young children
to be locked in a battle that occurs day after day.
Sometimes it's around eating, sometimes it's toilet training,
sometimes it's general behavioral issues,
sometimes it's bedtime.
So we did some arithmetic.
It's like, okay.
40 minutes a day. So that's 280 minutes a week. So that's, let's say, five hours. It's 20 hours a month. It's 240 hours in a year. That's six work weeks. That's a month and a half. You're spending a month and a half of work weeks doing nothing but fighting with your son. What makes you think you're going to like him? Right? Well, and you know, it's, it's, you think, well, it's only 40 minutes a day. It's like, don't fool yourself. Anything that's every day is a significant percentage of your life. You know, because what you, you're, you're, you're,
awake, let's say 16 hours. Five of those hours are basically maintenance. So you go to about 11,
and then seven of those are work. So now you're down to four. And so if you're spending 15 minutes a day
doing something painful and stupid and you do it every day, it's like 10% of your productive life.
And so it's really useful to get, because people think backwards. They think, well, I have a vacation
coming up and that's really important. It's like, no, it's not. You're only going to do it once.
It's not that important.
How you treat each other at lunchtime, if you eat together every day, that's your life.
Fix that.
Get it so that the food's good.
Get it so that you're happy with the people that are sitting there.
Fix that.
It's like, poof, 10% of your life is fixed.
While you admit that there's a problem first.
And then you ask for the minimum necessary intervention, which would be, all right, well, I'd like to move forward on this some small amount that someone like me could actually manage.
and I'd be willing to carry it out.
And then you reorient the way you're thinking as a consequence of that.
And something usually pops out of the abyss to guide you.
It's very strange.
But it's not really any stranger than the fact that we can think at all,
because the fact that we can think is actually very strange.
It's strange like the fact that we can dream is strange.
And that's strange beyond belief that you can dream.
Or that something in you dreams,
which is a much better way of thinking about it,
because it's not like you really in control of your dream.
It just sort of happened.
