[Music] you write in the book there is no faith and no courage and no sacrifice in doing what is expedient what do you say to those viewers that don't pursue their dreams and are locked in their careers because they're too afraid to take risks and pursue something meaningful well the first thing I would say is well you should be afraid of taking risks and pursuing something meaningful but you should be more afraid of staying where you are it's making you miserable you're paying a price by sitting there being miserable you might say well the devil I know is better than the one I don't it's like don't be so sure of that the clock is ticking yeah and if you're miserable in your job now and you change nothing in 5 years you'll be much more miserable and you'll be a lot older but isn't it a luxury to pursue what is Meaningful our viewers have morees they have children they have payments and Loans it's a luxury to pursue because we we like to resources well I don't think I don't remember now I'm not talking about what makes you happy it's a luxury to pursue what makes you happy it's a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful and that doesn't mean it's easy it might require sacrifice if you need to change your job too let's say you have a family and and and and children and and a mortgage you have responsibilities you've already picked up those responsibilities you don't just get to walk away scot-free say well I don't like my job I quit that's no stress strategy but what you might have to do is you think well this job is killing my soul all right so what do I have to do about that well I have to look for another job well no one wants to hire me it's like okay maybe you need to educate yourself more maybe you need to update your your curriculum V your resume maybe you need to overcome your fear of being interviewed maybe you need to sharpen your social skills like you you have to think about these things strategically if you're going to switch careers you have to do it like an intelligent responsible person that might take you a couple of years of of of effort to do properly we're built for struggle us human beings we're built to contend with the world we're built to contend with reality you want a challenge and the best way that you can take on a challenge because a challenge fortifies you so you don't want to be secure you want to be strong and you get strong by taking on optimal challenges and so you lay out your destiny in the world and you take the slings and arrows of fate and you make yourself stronger while you're doing so and you might fail and Fortune might do you in but it's your best bet and you know people have have extracted unbelievable successes out of catastrophic failures and so and I'm not saying that in a naive way I know perfectly well what happens to people you know you're doing fine in life and then you get cancer and then 6 months later you're dead and all the heroism in the world isn't going to save you at that point but that's not the point that's not the point life is bounded by mortality but that doesn't mean that you don't get out there and contend and you develop by contending and you minimize the net amount of suffering in the world and that's something man that's something to [Music] do compare yourself to who you were yesterday not to who someone else is today because you need to have a a hierarchy of improvement you need to be aiming for something and that means you're going to be lesser than people who've always already attained along that Dimension so the question is who should you defeat in the final analysis and the answer is you should defeat your former self you should be constantly trying to do that and you're the right control for yourself too because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages and so if you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you if you're improving yourself then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self and then you might also ask well what is that lesser self and that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and aggressive and Vengeance seeking and all of those things that go along with having a negative moral character and those are things that interfere with your ability to progress as you move forward through life so it's very necessary to understand that this is why you know I've been stressing this idea of personal responsibility it's like well personal responsibility is to compete with yourself is to be slightly better than yourself the next day and it's better in some way that you can actually manage and that's humility like well I'm a flawed person I've got all my problems could I be as good as person X it's like not the right question the right question is could you be slightly better tomorrow than your currently flawed self and the answer to that is if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low then you could be better tomorrow than you are today and you might say well what's the right way of being in the world if there is such a thing and it's not acting according to a set of rules it's attempting continually to transcend the flawed thing that you currently are and what's so interesting about that is that the meaning in life is to be found in that Pursuit so I've been laying that out in these disc discussions too because I say well the the fundamental issue is that life is tragic and difficult very tragic and difficult for everyone and it's also tainted by malevolence because no matter how things are tragic and difficult but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be and so that's life and you need an antidote to that because that can embitter you constant contact with that just the tragedy but the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence that makes it even worse especially if it's self-induced okay so you need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful what do you set against that doing something worthwhile by your own definition say you need some reason to get the hell out of bed on a terrible day because you've got something good to do well what's the best thing you can do transcend your current wretched and miserable self there's meaning to be found in that and that's a meaning that's associated with responsibility one of the things that I've been trying to lay out clearly is that life is hard it's tainted by malevolence and betrayal that can make you bitter you need a meaning to offset that where's the meaning to be found not in rights not in impulsive pleasure but in responsibility you take responsibility for yourself so you take care of yourself if you're good at it you have some excess left over to take care of your damn family if you're good at both of those then you have some excess left over to take care of your community those are heavy burdens you pick up the burdens you find that's meaningful the best way to pick up the burden is to Contin continually improve yourself and that's where the meaning is to be found and so that meaning is in the continual self Transcendence that's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn even if things are going really well for you now there's going to be a time in the future where things are rough you know you're going to be ill family memb going to be ill a dream is going to fall apart you're going to be uncertain about your employment status like the the flood is coming right the apocalypse is coming it's always the case in life and and you have to be prepared for it and the question is how to prepare for it and the answer to that is to find a way of being that works even under the direst of circumstances you've got the possibility to slowly raise yourself out of the Meer you've got the the possibility to do just what the fighter does when he's defeated which is to say well regardless of the circumstances that might have led to my defeat like even if there were errors on the part of the referee this is no time to whine about it this is a time to take stock of what I did wrong so that I could improve it into the future and that's the right attitude the point is your best strategic position is how am I insufficient and how can I Rectify that that's what you've got and the thing is you are insufficient and you could rectify it both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough and I I don't mean don't aim and I don't mean don't aim up but you have to accept the fact that you could you can set yourself a goal that you can attain and there's not going to be much glory in it to begin with because if you're not in very good shape the goal that you could attain tomorrow isn't very glorious but it it's a hell of a lot better than nothing and it beats the hell out of bitterness and it's way better than blaming someone else it's way less dangerous and you could do it and what's cool about it it's one step on a very long journey and it starts to Compound on you so a small step today means puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next and then that puts you in a position to take a slightly bigger step the next day and you do that for 2 or 3 years man you're starting to stride I don't know how many people have come and told me it's so strange they said well I started making my bed and that made all the difference it's like well yeah you decided to aim up man and the first concrete instantiation of that was that you made your bed and you think well that's nothing heroic it's like no but aiming up is heroic that's something and then lowering yourself to the point where you're not above the mess in your room you know you're not superordinate to that you lower yourself so that you straighten up you you're grateful for what you have right in front of you and you take care of it you put it in order it's like all of a sudden things start to get better and one of the reasons that audiences are responding to what I've been saying in my lectures and what I've been writing about is that I don't tell people that they're okay the way they are now I say no no you could be way more than you are and they're relieved about that you see because if you're in a dark and terrible place and someone says you're okay the way you are then you don't know what to do about that it's like no I'm not I'm having a terrible time and I'm hopeless you're okay the way you are well then what what that's it that's where I am and what do you want to tell a young person you're 17 you're okay the way you are it's like no you're not you got 60 years to be better and you could be way better you could be incomparably better across multiple dimensions and in pursuing that better that's where you'll find the meaning in your life and that will give you the antidote to the suffering this is the trick though you have to pay pick a path of discipline whether what path of discipline you have to pick is a different issue so there could be a rule the rule could be the rule might not be follow this rule the rule might be you have to follow some rules so it's a meta Rule and The Meta rule is you have to discipline yourself and the issue is well how that's not really the relevant question you can pick a disciplinary path it's why I often tell my clients especially young people they say well I don't know what to do it's like that's okay nobody does go do something do the best thing that you can think of put the best plan you have into practice it's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path and as you become disciplined you become wiser and as you become wiser you become able to formulate better and better plans so you can start vaguely and confused and develop a plan that's not so great and you start to implement it and then you you acre incremental wisdom as you implement your flawed plan and that enables you to fix the plan PL and so that's part of that process of incremental self-improvement as well imagine you only got 100 you only have $100,000 to go buy a house and so you go by you go look at this house and it's like Jesus this house man it's like it needs a lot of work it's like well that's all you've got well are you going to pretend that the house is okay the way it is or you going to look for where it's rotten and where the plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work you have to go and look and see where everything needs to be fixed and that's like that is Harsh man and then in order to do that properly someone has to have taught you it's look you aren't your problems you're most fundamentally that which if it confronts its problems can solve them and that's the hero myth in a in a in a nutshell by the way the hero is the person who confronts horrible chaotic potential and tames it and makes something of it right that's the that's the fundamental human story but the problem is is that you have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it so you look at all the things about yourself that need to be burned off that that need to be dispensed with and that man especially at the beginning especially if you're screwed up that may be like 95% of you it's not pleasant but if you know that you're the thing that can transcend your problems most fundamentally if you know you're the thing that if it faces the problems can transcend them then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you [Music] are my daughter was very ill when she was well when she was a kid but well particularly when she was a teenager had a very terrible time of it um she had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and when she was between the ages of 14 and 16 it first destroyed her hip which had to be replaced and then it destroyed the ankle on her other leg which had to be replaced and she walked around for 2 years on broken legs and she was taking massive doses of opiates and could hardly stay awake and you know and as a test of your faith there's almost nothing that's more direct than a serious illness inflicted upon an innocent child right and so the chapter is a meditation on that and also on well what to do in a situation like that because everyone is going to have a situation like that in some sense you know because you'll be faced with illness in the people that you love and in crisis and so it's a practical guide to coping with those sorts of things like and one of the things you do when you're overwhelmed by crisis is you shorten your time frame you know it's like you can't think about next month maybe you can't even bloody well think about next week or maybe not even tomorrow you know because now is just so overwhelming that that's all there is it's like and that's what you do you cut your time frame back until you can cope with it and if it's not the next week that you see how to get through then it's the next day and if it's not the next day then it's the next hour and if it's not the next hour then it's the next minute and you know people are very very very very tough and it turns out that if you face things it turns out that if you face things that you can put up with a lot more than you think you can put up with and you can do it without becoming corrupted you have to be alert when you're suffering you have to be alert to the beauty in life the unexpected Beauty in life and you know you have to look for those little bit of that little bit of sparkling crystal in the darkness when things are bad you have to look and see where things are still beautiful and where there's still something that's sustaining and you know you narrow your time frame and you'd be grateful for what you have and that can get you through some very dark times and maybe even successfully if you're lucky but even if unsuccessfully then maybe it's only tragic and not absolute hell and you can do that you know in the worst situation you can make it only tragic and not hell and there's a big gap between tragedy and hell you know there's nothing worse at a deathbed than to see the people there fighting the death is bad enough but you can take that as terrible as it is and make it into something that's absolutely unbearable and maybe I think in this is sort of what I closed the book with is this idea is that if we didn't all attempt to make Terrible Things even worse than they are then maybe we could tolerate the terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist and maybe we could make the world into a better [Music] place it's a constant storm to try to figure out what you're about and you change at 26 you're all about the hustle you're going to be a billionaire this and that and then you go to the bar one night and you fall in love and it changes what you care about right and then you have a child and then this happens and then that happens things change you just have to always consistently try to figure out what's driving you and not because other people are watching and not because that's what your dad wants and not that because that's what you said was going to happen and it doesn't look like it and your family's going to judge you you just have to be as real with yourself as possible and that is a very difficult struggle but when you're not you create enormous vulnerability and unhappiness truthful conversations redeem people cuz if you come to a clinical psychologist whose worth is salt you have a truthful conversation the conversation is well here's what's wrong with my life and here's what caused it you know maybe it takes a year to have that conversation and here's how it might be fixed here's what a a beneficial future might look like and so it's a completely honest conversation if it's working well and all that's happening in the conversation is that the two people involved are trying to make things better that's the goal let's see if we can have a conversation that will make things better I think one of the factors in the resistance to these ideas of discipline and of taking responsibility for yourself is people recognizing that that they're not doing that in their own lives and they get upset and instead of looking internally they try to attack the thing that's upsetting them they they attack your message they attack the philosophy behind it rather than look internally and objectively and having some sort of introspective point of view where you go okay am I uh reacting to this because this this resonates like I'm I'm missing this aspect of my life does this diminish me or is this guy pointing something out that I can benefit from very few people are willing to do that very few people are willing to take that critical moment to look at their own behavior and look at their own thought process and wonder if the actual adverse reaction they have to this person's message is because they know that they're wrong start the process of becoming much more honest with yourself it will help you make much better decisions and it will help you in the long run it may not taste as fun or as glamorous in the short term but it will put you in a much better position stop doing the things that you know are wrong that you could stop doing right so it's it's a fairly it's a fairly limited attempt first of all we're not going to say that you know what the good is or what the truth is in any ultimate sense but we will presume that there are things that you're doing that for one reason or another you know are not in your best interests there's something about them that you just know you should stop they're kind of self-evident to you other things you're going to be doubtful about you're not going to know which way is up and which way is down but there are things that you're doing that you know you shouldn't do now some of those you won't stop doing for whatever reason you don't have the discipline or maybe there's a secondary payoff or you don't believe it's necessary or it's too much of a sacrifice or you're angry or resentful or or afraid who knows but there's another subset that you could stop doing it might be a little thing well that's fine stop doing it and see what happens and what'll happen is your vision will clear a little bit and then something else will pop up that you will also know you should stop doing and that you could stop doing and you could do that repeatedly for for an indefinite period of time and and you know that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to ever be able to formulate a clear and final picture of what constitutes the truth and the good but it does mean that you'll be able to continually move away from what's untruth and what's bad and you know that's not a bad start discipline it does start with waking up early it really does but that is just the beginning discipline is the root of all good qualities but you have to absolutely apply it to things outside of just waking up early it's it's everything it's working out every day making yourself stronger and faster and more flexible and healthier it's about disciplining your emotions so you can make good decisions it's about doing the tasks that you don't necessarily want to do but that you know we'll help you and that's what discipline is discipline means taking the Hard Road the uphill Road to do what's right