Take OWNERSHIP of your Life | Jordan Peterson EP 473

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation show.

0:10I firmly believe that taking charge of your mindset allows you to be in the driver's seat of your life and unlock your potential. And that's why I'm thrilled to share that my new book is out right now. It's called The Greatness Mindset. In it, you'll learn how to build a plan for greatness through powerful exercises and toolkits designed to propel your life forward. This is the book that I wish I had 20 years ago. It's everything I've learned in the last decade with the research and the science to help you unlock your mind. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash 2023mindset to pick up your copy of my book, The Greatness Mindset, today.

0:53Why is there so much conflict in the world? Is it because there's so many different perceptions that people have? Part of it, of course, there's conflict because we have real problems. And so life is actually difficult, independent of the obstacles that we put in our own path. It's already challenging. It's already fatally challenging, right? Life is the ultimate challenge. We will die. Yes, yes. So there is a challenge, yeah. Yes. Uncertainty, fear, pain, all those things. Yes, everything that goes along with suffering is a challenge. And it's the full challenge because it takes everything you have.

1:28Part of the reason we disagree is because there are complex problems to solve. And then we also disagree because we're willfully blind and because we're more ignorant than we should be. And we're not everything we should be. And we tilt towards malevolence from time to time and we betray each other and ourselves. And so we take a bad lot in many ways and make it worse. I think people are most disappointed in life when they're disappointed in themselves. You know, they see that they've made things worse than they had to be, even though the baseline can be pretty brutal. So one of the things I've been talking to my audiences about is the relationship between responsibility and meaning, which is, what would you say, it's a constant refrain in the book.

2:07It's one of its underlying messages, let's say, or themes is a better way of thinking about it. If you start with the presumption that there's a baseline of suffering in life and that that can be exaggerated by, as a consequence of human failing, as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and self-betrayal and deceit and all those things that we do to each other and ourselves that we know that aren't good, that amplifies the suffering. that's sort of the baseline against which you have to work and it's contemplation of that often that makes people hopeless and depressed and anxious and overwhelmed and all of that and and and they have the reasons but you need something to put up against that and what you put up against that is meaning meaning is actually the instinct that helps you guide yourself through that catastrophe and most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility well you think about when you have a clear conscience first because that's a good thing to aim at, which is something different than happiness, right?

3:05A clear conscience is different than happiness. Yeah, it's better. Yeah. That's better. You're not guilting yourself. You're not feeling bad about yourself. That's right. You feel that you've justified your existence, right? And so you're not waking up at three in the morning in a cold sweat thinking about all the terrible things that you've involved yourself in. What you said to someone that you shouldn't have said or how you acted or lied. What opportunity you lost or the things that you've let go that you should have capitalized on and all of that. And so if you think about the times when you're at peace with yourself with regards to how you're conducting yourself in the world, it's almost always conditions under which you've adopted responsibility, right?

3:43At least the most guilt I think that you can experience perhaps is the sure knowledge that you're not even taking care of yourself so that you're leaving that responsibility to other people because that's pretty pathetic. and I unless you're psychopathic and you know and you're living a parasitical life and that that characterizes a very small minority of people and an even smaller minority think that's justifiable but most of the time you're in guilt and shame because you're not not only are you not taking care of yourself let's say so someone else has to but you're not living up to your full potential and so there's a existential weight that goes along with that so you suffer even more when you don't take care of yourself or take the best actions or do the work that you know you can do and you rely on someone else to support you financially, emotionally, physically, whatever, you know, home, whatever it may be.

4:34Yeah, well, because you're not only, you're not only not being what you could be, you're interfering with someone else being what they could be, right? So you're not only a void, you're a drain. Jesus, that's a catastrophe. And we usually don't even know it when we're in that situation because we're in a depressed state or we're or we don't want to see it you know you wake up at three in the morning and you know and so and then you think of the people that you so you admire yourself or perhaps you can at least live with yourself when you're taking responsibility at least for yourself and so that settles your conscience but then if you look at the people that you spontaneously admire the act of spontaneously admiring someone is the manifestation of the instinct for meaning, right?

5:17And this is partly why people are so enamored of sports figures because the sports figures are playing out the drama of attaining the goal. And to spontaneously admire that is to have that instinct for meaning latch onto something that can be used as a model. And then that model should be transcribed into something that's applicable in life. And you can see it too. You can see the spontaneous appreciation for the human spirit manifest itself when you see people rise to their feet spontaneously in a sports arena when they see someone do something particularly remarkable. You see an athlete who's extremely trained stretch themselves beyond what you'd think is a normative human limit, and everyone celebrates that spontaneously.

5:56So it's quite something to behold.

6:12Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:02Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.