This is episode number 1093 with Jordan Peterson. 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 Abraham.
Lincoln said, I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. And Viktor Frankl said, everything can be taken from a man, but the last of the human freedoms to choose one attitudes in any given set of circumstances, my guest today is Jordan Peterson. He is known for teaching mythology to lawyers, doctors and business people helping his clinical clients manage, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia his
Pictures have been viewed by tens and millions and hundreds of millions of people online and Jordan has published over 100 scientific papers transforming. The modern understanding of Personality his previous Book. 12 rules for life was a New York Times bestseller and mega-hit around the world. He's now back with a new book titled Beyond order 12, more rules for life. This interview ended up going over an hour longer than we planned. Almost two and a half hours in total. I couldn't stop interviewing Jordan, I didn't
Want it to stop because it was captivating me the entire time. So this is part 1 and part 2 will come next. But in this episode, we discuss the keys to Jordan's 50-year relationship. And it was great, hearing him really open up about marriage and relationships. How to start opening up and admitting what you want in life. How Jordan thinks about discipline, how feeling resentful can actually be useful to you and how to heal the memories of our past. I'm telling you this
Will open you up and inspire you in a new way, if you're a big fan of Jordan, and they've watched or listened to some of his stuff before he shares things, here that I've never heard him share before and it's pretty inspiring in this episode and also what you're going to hear in the next episode who man? It gets deep and it gets really inspiring. So make sure to listen to this episode and then come back for part 2 after this one. And if you're inspired make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired as well. And I want to let you know if this is your
First time here, welcome to the school of greatness. Please click the Subscribe button right now in apple podcast as well as let us know what you thought about this episode or the part that you enjoyed the most in the ratings and review section over on Apple podcast, okay? And just a moment, the one and only Jordan Peterson
Welcome everyone. Back to the school of greatness. I am very excited. We have Jordan Pederson in the house who has become one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. In his last book, 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos. Sold over 5 million copies internationally. He's got a new book beyond order. 12 more rules for life. It is going to change the game for you. I highly recommend you check it out. Jordan. Welcome to the show. Good to see you.
Thanks Lou.
Lois, I appreciate the invitation,
very excited. Our last interview, we were just talking did millions of views and we had a we had a clip that did over 30 million views on Facebook that people really inspired by. And I think the thing that we did that was cool in the last interviews. We talked about some stuff that you normally don't talk about. And so I want to ask you a question that I'm not sure if you talk about it frequently at least the stuff that I've seen you put out, you haven't and I know how important your wife is to you and it's actually the first thing you write about
Is the importance of the 50 years you've been in love with your wife. I'm curious. What is the thing you love most about your wife? That's my first
question.
I think it's very difficult to say exactly why you're attracted to someone. It's there's lots of factors and many of them aren't known to you really
She's very, she's provocative, she's witty and sharp and so there's always an element of game playing. Like it's not dishonest game playing but there's a TZ flirtatious provocative - that characterizes her quite deeply. She's no pushover by any stretch of the imagination and I find that constantly interesting and intriguing.
It's particularly its can be somewhat hard on me when I'm not feeling well, but when I'm up and functioning properly, then that works out extremely well and whoa,
yeah. What would you say? Would be the keys to your success of 50 years of loving each other and being in a, what seems to be a healthy functional relationship? When in society today, that doesn't seem like many of
those
Well, we really do our best, not to lie to each other, about anything and we also have fights when they're necessary, we don't let things, we don't hide things in the fog. That's the title of Chapter 3, of my new book, don't hide things in the fog and we work through our issues. Our if we're if we have a dispute we do our level best to get to the bottom of it to find out what
In the world's causing it, whose needs to change and why, and how and win, and then how we can progress forward into the future without having that issue, dog, us or drag behind us, or interfere with us at all. And that means a fair bit of Confrontation, I would say. But last so, over the years, as we've settled more and more things, but
Everything's out in the open everything that we can get is out of out in the open. You can't have a relationship without trust.
And you trust your partner courageously. If you're not naive knowing that you can be hurt and that you can be deceived in that you can also do both of those things. So you offer your partner, your trust as an invitation to them, to be honest and forthcoming and and
Well, and then issues come up and you delve into them and straighten them out. And we also attend to the relationship. I'm not going to refer back to this new book continually, but it's relevant in this context, it's chapter 10 plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship. And we do that as well and it is effortful mean we try to have
Throughout our relationship, we tried to have romantic dates one, two, three times a week and they require preparation and cooperation and the will to do it and the will to put yourself on the line and the desire to make that a priority even when other things are more pressing.
We both want it to work. That's another thing we're committed to it and not interested in finding another relationship, and so far. We've been fortunate and that's worked. We have fun together. We love our kids. We have had joint projects of All Sorts. Together renovating houses traveling, raising our children and our grandchildren.
But of all of that is the most important thing as far as I'm concerned, is to not to lie to your partner.
You mentioned, you don't have a relationship if you don't have trust, or if there's not trust in the relationship. How does someone if someone is not trusting the other partner? How do you cultivate trust? If you're a hundred percent honest with that person, if you are transparent about every action, you
Make in your life. If you're, you know, they have access to whatever they want to see and you're you're constantly creating trust but for whatever reason, they still might be jealous or insecure are not believing you. How does someone get someone to trust them? Or is it not about them at that stage? And it's about the other person and their insecurities?
Well, it depends very much on the particulars of the situation, you know? So I don't know if there's a generic answer to that. I think that you can establish the ground rules explicitly, you know, and have a discussion about it. Are we going to lie to each other or not?
Are we going to tell each other the truth to the degree that we can to make that an actual goal and to talk through the consequences of doing that and not doing it? And then I would also say, whenever a hiccup occurs in the relationship, maybe don't call it out at each hiccup, you know, because you have to have a certain amount of Silent tolerance in any relationship to let small infractions dull. But if they repeat, my rule is
Three times. And it's the rule that we shared with my wife. If something happens three times that is causing emotion, lat upset anger, jealousy, disappointment, resentment, frustration. Any of those things, anything that you don't want to experience and that you especially don't want to experience repeatedly, then you can call it out. And and if you if you have three examples, your case is much better made than if you just have one. And I would also say that when you call
it out, you know, you could say look, we were at a party the other night and you were it looked to me I felt as if you were paying
Too much intense intent attention to Dave. There is some flirting going on there. That's what it looked like to me. There were some flirting going on there and you know that made me uncomfortable. Well, you don't say, well, you were flirting, stop doing it. You say well this is how it looked, this is what it looked like to me. And here was my response and then you want to thank and maybe I'm a damn fool and blind and jealous and stupid and
And I'm misinterpreting, or maybe it was a harmless flirtation of the sort that people will engage in, because it adds a little bit of spice to a social interaction. You want to find out like it, it's really convenient if it's the other person's fault except that in your Laden with living with that person. So it really doesn't help you anyways. But it's convenient because then they have to change. But you got to think about this, over the long run, you're going to be interacting with this person on a minute-by-minute.
It basis for decades, if you're the idiot and that's causing trouble, then you should find out. So you want to say, well, look, this is what I saw. What's your explanation of what's going on, and then they'll offer you their Viewpoint, and hopefully, they'll do the same thing, they'll think. Well, this is my intent.
And maybe they have to go think about it. But this is my intent and this is what I saw and I think you're being oversensitive in that situation and you peel back the explanations layer by layer until you both agree on what happened and more importantly on what you're going to do about it in the future. And that's really hard and especially if there is something going on, that's not straight because that will require quite a bit of digging. It will probably result.
Alton anger and tears and to fight and that's very unpleasant. It's it's easier in the short term to avoid that but hopefully the consequence of that is you don't have to have that fight again, right?
you have to come to a negotiated agreement about about that situation and you have to pay attention to your own
uncomfortable negative emotions in order to manage that and not and not pretend that everything's, alright, or that you're nicer than you are, or that you're less jealous than you are or or less blind or
See, one of the things I learned from Carl, Jung psychoanalyst about marriage, was that there is a reason marriage was a vow.
The Vow is that you stick together. Okay. So now imagine that's a vow, okay? You do not get to leave period. Okay. So what does that mean? Well, on the upside, it means that you don't have to be alone.
It means that your family will have continuity over decades. It means that The Narrative of your life won't be fragmented and broken by divorce or sequential divorce. It means that your children can grow up and maybe have their children within a continuing family. It means that your children will be able to maintain relationships with the grandparents on both sides and the cousins. Like it's a big deal to maintain that. There's huge advantages in it.
It means that you'll have someone there when you're not well and so will your partner and it'll means that you have someone to share all of the positive things of life with. So there's huge advantages to it. Okay. So why does it have to be a vow? Well, I don't think you can tell the truth to someone who can run away because if you tell the truth to someone,
And they can run away, then they'll run away. Right? Right, because you're a mass man and not, not just because of your own inadequacies, but because human beings are so complicated and and have such dark corners and and and have had, you know, unresolved problems in their life, sometimes that stem back generations and are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways and you you can't, it's very, very difficult to reverse.
The old that.
Except to someone who can't run away now that that, you know, I'm not saying that people should never separate.
I am saying though that it's better not to if you can manage it. But then the other thing too, is if you can't run away, then you're motivated it a different way. It's like I'm stuck with this woman and she's stuck with me. And unless we want to have the same goddamn fight over and over and over for the next, who knows how long, why don't we straighten it out? And then we can put it behind us and see The Vow gives you a kind of desperation.
That is another motivation to actually solve the problems. And if you've got a way out,
you can always stay hidden, you can guard yourself, you can protect yourself and even protect that part of yourself that thinks that it can leave if things get too bad. Now, the problem with that in my estimation is that you're going to drag your stupidity into the next
relationship, right? Always do right
well, generally speaking, right? And so now you can get very you can you can
Under unfortunate circumstances, you can get tangled up with someone who's not playing a straight game with you and won't and and it's just impossible. But
I'm not talking about the limit cases, you know, I'm talking about the average case, the average amount of unhappiness in trouble. It's still plenty. And then the sorry, just one more thing I'd add to that. You also have to, in some sense, shake the illusion that the other person is somehow, not you.
you're so tied up with them that
there's no difference between you and them. In some sense is that what's good for her is going to be good for you and vice versa. One of the things we try to do to the two of us is
we try to say yes to each other.
Now, there's rules that go along with that, which is, well, I'm going to say yes to you, but that sort of means that you shouldn't ask me unreasonable, you should make unreasonable demands, I'll say yes, as much as I possibly can, and then you'll do that Andres return. And then we get a, yes, out of the deal. Instead of no, that's also a huge Plus
Yeah, so that's that's there. Anything else about
You want you want you want, you have to want the best for the other person and you and for the relationship and in within that confine you want to tell each other the
truth. Yeah, the truth is is huge.
This is brought to you by the Capital One Saver Card with saber, you earn unlimited cash back for going out or staying in that's unlimited. Four percent cash, back on dining at a restaurant or on, take out at home for percent back on entertainment, from the front row of the game, or on popular streaming from your couch, and 3% back at grocery stores, where you'll find everything you need to make the meals that make their day. So earn unlimited cash back with the Capital One, Savor card,
Capital One, what's in your wallet terms? Apply see capitalone.com for details.
The school of greatness gets support from CarMax, is it time to sell your car? Are you ready to move on trade in or trade up? Well, no matter why you're selling or trading. In one thing is for certain the team at carmack's is ready to help you at carmack's. You can get an online offer for your car in two minutes or less. These are real offers not estimates, and your offer is good for seven days. That's a full week to think it over shop it around, or accept your offer and leave with payment and hand and carmack's will buy your
Car even if you don't buy theirs, so before you head to the dealer or post an ad, take two minutes and head to carmack's.com and get a real offer Real Fast Car Max the way it should be.
Attention e-commerce, Founders, entrepreneurs side Hustlers, marketers and growth hackers. If you're working Round the Clock to build your dream. E-commerce business, you need an e-commerce marketing platform. That works just as hard as you do. That means you need klaviyo with play. Vo, you'll Delight customers and drive Revenue. At the same time with personalized, email and SMS marketing campaigns that you can design and send in minutes plus building a marketing campaign is drag-and-drop easy.
You can get started with your first campaign in under an hour and build from there with Clay Vos best-performing templates to get started with a free trial of klaviyo. Visit clay veoh.com. Listen that's KLA v. Iy o.com listen.
And I heard you mention jealousy and insecurity at some point that that message is there room for jealousy and insecurities in a relationship, is there a healthy amount of jealousy that people should have in relationship? Or does jealousy? And insecurity, only cause more suffering and pain in a relationship?
Well, I think there's a reasonable amount of proprietary interest. Let's say, I mean,
in a classic monogamous relationship a marriage. There's sexual Fidelity is a crucial element of that.
And maybe you'll make an arrangement that differs from that but it's not easy to chart Uncharted Territory like that. Mean, if you want to have an adventure like that with the partner, a monogamous Adventure that also includes sexual exploration. Well maybe you can pull it off but I doubt it, it's a really complicated. Let's
say you're not having sexual Exploration with other people and you're telling each other the truth and you
Honest, is there room to be jealous or insecure in that relationship? Or it does does jealousy typically cause more harm than it does, you know, spice and good, I guess.
I think jealousy probably causes more trouble than good, but that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the proprietary interest. Should you care if your partner pays undue attention to someone of the opposite sex they find attractive? Well, probably, you should care. You might even say something about it. They might even be happy about that. Hmm, right. Because it indicates that you noticed.
And it matters to you. Now I think it's Shades into jealousy when it's harmless interactions, it's interactions. That would be regarded as harmless by a third party Observer. Let's say and no, that's a very difficult line to draw that are being magnified as a consequence of insecurity, on the part of the Observer or there's Envy where your partner is attracting attention status, success, any of those things?
And you're jealous of that, that's not helpful. You should be pleased. The optimal situation is for you to be pleased when your partner's successful. Mmm, I don't think competitive couples.
I don't think competition between people who are in a monogamous relationship is useful particularly not zero-sum competition. Yeah I mean you can compete in a game like
sense, right? Final one playful competition but not I'm kind of not life. Not
existential competition, you're on the same team. That's the point, right? You know and if one of you is feeling left behind for one reason or another, it's time to throw that out on the table and say, look, I'm I'm playing
Second fiddle here far too often. What can we do about that? Well, it looks like you need, like I've got an adventure. It looks like you need one, too. Well, how can we rearrange the situation? So I have my adventure and then it's up to that person to to figure out what obstacles, they might be putting up.
In their own pathway.
Right? That's stopping them. And then they have, you know, they're angry at you for getting in the way but it's actually a consequence of them using you as a convenient excuse for not doing something difficult, those things all have to be sorted through. It's very hard. Yeah, these conversations are extremely difficult so no wonder people avoid them. I also think people are not taught to negotiate, oh man, at all. They and that's, that's a real shame. First of all, you figure out what you want. This is what I
Then you tell the person then you strategize with them so that you can get what you want and they can get what they want and you both know what that is and way you go together. And that usually comes out, it's usually obscured and hidden and comes out, awkwardly and difficulty. And and with difficulty if it comes out at all and people fool themselves into thinking that it's okay, what they're doing. I'm sacrificing myself for the children and that's okay. I'm sacrificing myself for my husband's career.
And that's okay, I'm working at a job. I can't stand because I need to support my wife and children and that's okay. I mean sometimes that is, okay, but it has to be out clear in the open talked about negotiated discussed, you know, I think there's, you can be a slave or a tyrant or you can negotiate, those are your options.
And we default to slavery and tyranny, because that doesn't require any cognitive effort.
And then we pretend that everything's. Alright. And then it blows up in our faces and we end up divorced,
right?
So we got to learn how to negotiate. Yeah,
yeah. Well. And then you have to notice that there are things that you want, right? And you have to tell yourself what those are and then you have to let the other person know and then they can deprive you of them because they actually know who you are. And so that's a big risk.
If you yeah, it's well, if you, if you do lay it out and negotiate, then you have two people working in the same direction and they each bring their different viewpoints to bear on the problem and sometimes that'll save you. You know that additional cognitive complexity you have because there's two of you instead of one.
It can make you much more effective.
What happens when we feel like our partner is depriving us of what we want? If it's not, you know, infidelity or something of the likes of being with other people but something else that we want in our life, a
goal. It's actually that happens all the time, right? Because people, generally speaking men would like to have sex more frequently than women. So that's a
That's a sticking point in many relationships. But forget that, for the moment we might just as well, say that the probability that one partner and the other partner are going to have exactly the same level of sexual interest. Say, with regards to frequency is quite low. So there's going to be friction there.
So what do you do? Well, you you you negotiate about it. It's like well, I'd like to have sex 15 times a week. Well, I'd like to have sex once a week, right? Okay. Well, you know,
The Logical The Logical meeting point. There would be in the middle.
Then that has to be planned out and you also have to say exactly what you mean. Well, exactly. What do you mean by sex?
Do you because there's all sorts of variations of sex include include from ranging, from just intimate closeness to full-fledged sexual activity of various sorts and the various sorts matter to and these are painful discussions often. It's very funny in some sense that people will do and desire things that they won't talk about right there there. They'll engage in the ACT but they won't engage.
In the negotiation and they won't admit what they
want. Why is it so hard for us to admit what we want?
We're ashamed of it, that's easy with sex sex and shame regulate sex you know people say well you shouldn't be ashamed of sex. It's like well really really no that's a stupid Theory. We arrest people who expose themselves in public
Why? Well, because we don't want people masturbating in public. We assume they should be ashamed enough not to do that, shame regulates sexual behavior. So we're embarrassed about our desires and, you know, naively you'd think, well, you can just shed that. Well, first of all know you can't. And second of all, it isn't obvious at all that. You should what, you might be able to do is to determine how to
Play out your sexual life in the confines of your relationship in a manner that neither of you do find shameful. But that's, that's just think how hard that is. Like, you know, you think well, that's what I want. It's like, but then you think about how unlikely that is and how difficult it would be to attain it.
You know, you could say that if that ever happens to you and your life, once you're lucky, you know that it's perfect. Now I think that's pessimistic because I believe that solutions to that problem can be negotiated but it's not it's what everyone wants.
But it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to bring about, you know, so let's say you want the ideal romantic evening. Well, okay, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to put yourself in reasonable physical shape?
Are you so you're attractive, are you going to you to make a playlist and put some time into it? Are you going to buy some candles? Are you going to buy something nice to wear? Are you going to wear it? Are you going to dare to wear it? That might be true for you and for your and for your partner are they going to dare to? Where are you going to be smart enough? If they do wear it to respond in a way? That makes them feel confident and increases the probability that they'll do it again.
Are you going to?
Do whatever is necessary to make yourself. Physically attractive in that moment. Are you going to have the kids put away? Have you got the day-to-day aggravations with each other that are dragging you down and making a resentful under control so that you actually do want to give your partner some pleasure
These things are very hard. Yeah. But they're not impossible and they're worth it.
But it's not surprising that people don't do it. And then, then the next. Well, then there's the shame part. Two is well, okay, just exactly what is permissible or desirable and win and win should win our, your kinks counterproductive exactly.
You know, we can't we certainly can't have that discussion as a culture. You know, on the one hand we think we're so split on this. On the one hand, we think any sexual misbehavior should be subject to the harshest of punishments?
And everything goes and is acceptable. It's like, well, good luck. Having both of those ideas, right?
In so interesting to me to watch this, you know, there's just outraged constant outrage about sexual misbehavior and fair enough, like I do, you mean surprise mean when you
mean sexual misbehavior means someone cheating or someone having an affair or what, sexual misbehavior,
yes, or unwanted sexual attention, or sexual harassment. And I'm not saying these things don't happen or that they're not nefarious and and, and and awful.
They are it's no wonder that happens but at the same time, we also are obsessed with the notion that any sexual interest of any sort whatsoever with the possible exception of sexual interest in children is absolutely laudable. Well sorry you can't have both of those things.
Right, right.
So and because we want both of them insist upon both of them then we can't even have a discussion. We
We can't have a discussion about pornography, it doesn't look to be like pornography is really, very good idea. I don't think it's helping anyone. Now, you know why, there might be coded cells to that freedom of expression, some potential educational, utility the pleasure. That's a consequence of sexual utilization of pornographic material, but I would still say see
All that.
That it's not a net social good. It doesn't do the people who produce it or who consume it any good. And I don't believe that anyone feels like a better human being after a utilizing pornography for sexual gratification.
Now you might say well that's because they've been shamed about sex since they're born and you know and that's a consequence of our crooked culture and you know in a utopian world we wouldn't have that shame and yeah no.
It's way more complicated than that and I read something in one of the YouTube comments on my video. The other day, I was talking to Abigail schreyer about the apparent fact that today's teenagers are having much less sex,
one person commented that
There's the shame that men feel when sex is a spectator sport rather than a participatory act and then you think well, you know, the mere fact that you're watching two other people, one of whom isn't you having sex instead of having sex really implies something? Either about your
It's it implies something about your desirability.
It's pretty hard to shake that, isn't it, or your courage? Why is it that you're sitting there alone at night with your laptop on your lap? What the hell's wrong with you? Well, nothing. It's just, we should dispense with sexual shame, it's like, no, probably not. That's probably not the answer. Mmm.
Well, so that was all, you know, why do people have a hard time to go shooting about sex or talking about helps? No bloody Wonder. Its sex is such
Dynamite. What's the high-grade? This could be a for our conversation on that. I'm curious.
Yeah, well that would be a good conversation. We need to have about a 50 hour conversation about
that. There's do a series on your YouTube channel about that. I'm curious about
The biggest challenge you've had overcome personally in your marriage that you're really proud of that. You overcame in the last. I don't know if you've been married for 50 years but I know you wrote that you've loved your your wife for 50 years. But what's the hardest thing that you had to overcome as a man or human being in this relationship that you're extremely proud of that you did? In fact overcome it or you've improved upon it in a major way.
I don't know if I'm proud about it proud of it like the the success at these, things seem so unlikely and so dependent on
Good luck in some sense that, you know, mostly I'm Jen if things go. Well for me, I'm generally grateful that I escaped from The Acts, you know, rather than being proud of it.
We did a good job of working through our our attitude towards how we're going to treat our children. So we're on the same page all the time, pretty much all the time and so the kids couldn't we didn't let the kids appeal to one of us or the other. We really participated in their upbringing and we talked all that through and that that's that's good. We have good relationships with our kids, both of us and and
That was really necessary to because my daughter got unbelievably sick for massive amounts of time. And and my son, we had to ignore him a lot because he just wasn't dying. So it was like, kid. Sorry. Like we got a problem here and you and and he was great man. He he just rode through that like like a master. But if we hadn't sorted out our
Child-rearing philosophy. Let's say we would have. It would have sunk us for sure, well, because it was so close to the edge that, you know, few marriages survive, the death of a child and no wonder, you know, but the serious illness of a child is also an unbelievable stressor. And you know, we sailed through that
As well as could be hoped. You kind of know that because you look back and you think well do we regret?
Right? And of course, there's the odd regret, you know, one thing, when you have a sick child, you have this terrible conundrum all the time of well, how hard you push them.
When do you allow the illness to be a reason that they aren't doing something? When do you allow them to use the illness as a reason that they're not doing something? Well, it's really, it's really, really hard to get that, right? And sometimes we pushed harder than we should have and misunderstood to. And, but at least, we did that together and my, my wife, you know, she, I've seen many many women, protect their children from the father, they don't trust.
And so every time he interacts with the child, they'll do something disapproving a look, they'll put him down now, it's not like men. Don't do that to their wives, there's all sorts of tricks that men have for their wives. Men are very good at turning their wives, into drudges, for example, for a variety of reasons, which we can go into, but
If you don't trust men you won't let them have a hand in the children, the discipline of the children. You know, when you think of discipline you think of punishment threatened Dad saying no, that isn't discipline. Discipline is discipline. If you discipline someone proper, they become disciplined, right? They that means they're
competent. They're organized app structure, they have? Yeah,
they can control themselves. So, I'll give you an example. What my son,
Is quite a disagreeable person by Nature so he's very masculine. He's very high and emotional stability. So he doesn't have much negative emotion and he's very and he's relatively low and agreeableness. He's, he's and that's, that's typical masculine pattern that the two big personality differences between men and women are agreeableness, women are higher, and neuroticism tendency to feel negative, emotion, women are higher. So so what that meant was that when he was a kid, he was a stubborn little pup.
It was hard to get him to do, what he didn't want to do. And, you know, that's the mark of a character that is hard to stop. So there's real advantages to it, but it kids who are disagreeable are a handful because they think I'm not doing that and you can't make me
right? Is that he's really quite good at that. It isn't one of your rules for the first book. Like don't let your kids do anything that would make you not like them.
Yeah. Yes. And the reason we should talk about that because that's such a good rule I think. But anyway,
Used to the rule for him was, you know, he'd pushed the limits in variety of ways and he's really good at that and quite persistent at it. And I'd talk to my wife and say, look, Julian's, getting a little too. Pushy. Here we have to crack down on them and stop them. And this is what I see and she'd say this is what I see and we'd think well, this is what we're going for a week. He isn't going to get away with anything. It's like the line man. It's like kid he'd be three or three and a half.
This time, sit on the stems, sit on the steps. And if he wouldn't because he was stubborn, well, I'd bring him over and put him on the steps like it was yours. If I say, you're going to sit on the steps you are absolutely going to sit on the steps. So it was so interesting to watch him because he'd be angry. You know, because he got into feared with he didn't get to do what he wanted to do and he'd be and he would go and sit on the steps but he'd be like mad as hell on the way their arms pumping up and down and just Earth he goes.
Down the steps. Like you know like this just overcome with anger and the rule was as soon as you get yourself under control and you can act like a civilized human and you want to have a good day. Then you come and tell me and all that's it, you're done but it had to be real and look my my
my criteria for accepting his statement was whether or not, I liked him when he said it, you know, if he was still being asked, if he was still misbehaving and
And bending the rules. He wouldn't be genuine when he talked to me, but if he came and said, okay, dad? Like I've had enough, I'm, I've got myself under control. I'd rather have a good day and as soon as he said that I liked him, it was like, Hey man! You're back in
the fridge. What I do? Yeah,
well I didn't want him to sit on the steps anyway. I like to have him around so
sure sure.
So, but are, you know, we were on board with that and so the discipline. So the thing is see what was the discipline
Aspect, which is what I was talking about, is he learned how to integrate it into his personality and I could see him doing that sitting on the steps he was it was just this aggression circuit which is unbelievably powerful. Was just dominating him and he just force it. Get it under control, get it under control, calm down, bring yourself back into the social world and it was a victory for his developing ego. You see? Because he wasn't defeated by his own impulses and that's discipline. See
Then you're not defeated by your own impulses and so discipline has the wrong connotation. I was encouraging him. You can Master this man and and it worked and it was so useful to us later because when Michaela got so sick he was together.
We could rely on.
So it was necessary and it hasn't stopped being necessary and he's a very reliable person.
Who does what he wants. It's a great combination. Yeah, that's
beautiful. When do you feel the most loved Jordan 1? What's one, what's happening around you? Or when you're creating something, or when you're with people? When do you feel personally the most
loved
When I'm with my family, when I'm with my kids with my name with my family friends too. And that's even being more of the case over the last couple of years because my family and friends have been so unbelievably loyal and helpful to me and my family as we've had our troubles, terrible, terrible troubles. Over the last couple of years they've been so unbelievably, reliable and helpful, amazing. Certainly people have
Gone out of my way for me in a way that I I don't believe I would have done for them. Really. Well, look, I saw my father-in-law went and I tried about this and Beyond order. No, I read about it in 12 rules more, I think, but it doesn't matter. He's a like he's a really extroverted guy disagreeable guy, too masculine guy. Extroverted assertive, everybody in the little town. I grew up in knew who he was. He was a performer, you know, the life.
of the party and a good businessman, but a real character and
He did his own thing, but then his wife got. Prefrontal dementia. When she was quite young 55 and man, he took care of her for 15 years. Wow. Unbelievable. And it was so interesting too, because if we offered to help him, he would accept it right away in anything that we could do. That would like I suggested one time for example, that he buy a digital readout sign so that if he went out, he could type.
In where he was going on the sign and it would just repeat over and over. That's cool. And some recordings in the bathroom to help his wife. Remember what to do and he would just Implement those accept and Implement them right away. But he this guy who was who lived his own life who was very extroverted, social person, not someone who you would have regarded as soft and caring. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just that that wasn't him wasn't mother too.
You say, you know, he just he cared for her in a way that was absolutely astonishing and I saw that also in my friends and my family in the care that they've offered to Tammy and I over the last two years, mind-boggling mind-boggling, but I would say them like the place I like to be the best. Most is
You know, a family situation.
When everyone's, when there's no.
Elephants under the rug.
And everyone's playing.
If you ever have that, you should consider yourself fortunate. Well beyond belief because
It's unlikely and you can lose it at any moment.
Yeah.
I spin it. I was in the hospital more or less for a year, and then another year with Tammy, and I thought I'd lost all of that. Never get it back very Dreadful.
And so now when it happens, I mean I've always been grateful for it when it happens strive for that. You know, the animal in experimental is to have demonstrated that the ones who study play is jaak panksepp in particular, but there's a variety of them. Who study. Play brilliant. Brilliant. Scientists play as a circuit. It's a mammalian circuit. It's a specialized circuit and it's very important developmentally for that circuit to be given free rein.
To play its how children?
Play out roles in the world that they're eventually going to adopt they played mother, they play, father, they play, they play all these different roles and that's how they learn to to be those things.
The role of the father is to put up security so that play can occur. So the Securities there, that's the walls. They fortify the walls man, the walls guard the walls but within the walls then that's where play can can take place in plays very easily, disrupted, hunger, thirst, any emotional state, any motivational State can superseded, even though it's very, very important. So you have to have
Walled Garden in place, remove live in
fear, remove the fears. Yeah,
mmm, to make it safe, so that experimentation can take place within, that's Paradise, right? That's right. It's a Walled Garden. That's what Paradise means is a Walled Garden where structure and nature the walls and the garden are harmoniously interacting and where Eternal play can occur, that's paradise. And so
you get a glimpse of that when everyone's together often at the table,
Not fighting.
And, and also, not, not fading
right? Play for fighting, but not
much. It's when everyone's at each other's throats but no one's saying anything while we're not going to talk about, we're not going to bring that up. We're not going to discuss
that, because that's not very nice either. Yeah, no, that's pretense.
And and you see that negotiation is the eradication of the need for that pretense. It's like you got a problem with me. Let's sort it out, right? Because we're going to carry it with us. He want to do that. So, people wonder why I engage in Conflict, I hate conflict. It's and I find it very stressful, but conflict delayed is conflict multiplied. Oh, that's so
true.
It's worse to have lingering Conflict for months years decades, then the pain of direct conflict. That can hopefully resolve and move on.
Yes. Absolutely. Well in as the conflict is delayed, its the reasons multiply and the persons who are involved, because they're avoiding demean themselves and get weaker, and less confident. And so it's a vicious circle.
It's better to notice you. There's this there's a line in the New Testament Christ talks about prayer and so imagine that is communion with God. So you could imagine that as an attempt to
To confer with the ideal or maybe to even occupy that space for a while.
Well, he says, Christ says, if you have a problem with your brother fix that first, go, pray later. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's eat that. That's, that's, that's wise and that's a good thing. You know, if you're if you're angry with your, the people who are close to you if you're resentful I read a lot about that in chapter 11 resentment is so useful. It's so useful. It's so horrible. So toxic it's so destructive but it's
So informative, right? If you're resentful.
You're either being oppressed and not standing up for yourself or your whiny and should grow up. And both of those things are really useful to realize and all you have to do is notice that you're resentful and want to do something about it. Okay? I'm resentful. Okay. Am I immature? You know are people picking on me or I am an immature. Are if people are picking on me, do I have something to say or something to do?
I should do it. It's a gateway to Improvement resentment or you can let it
Faster faster, and let it devour you and take you places that? No one with a clear mind would ever want to go. Hell, that's resentment, man. That's the pathway to hell.
Then if you don't believe in hell, you don't have any imagination. That's my sense of things.
And what you mentioned Paradise being a safe space where we can play and have fun and feel protected? But a lot of times, at least in the last year, I'm seeing more and more in the world that the anxiety stress depression, challenges of the mind, or the heart. And the body have seemed to come to the surface for a lot of people even more. And it sounds to me and it looks to me like
I'm
connecting with people that a lot of things from the past past memories, past pains hurts traumas are being brought to the Forefront for a lot of people with the chaos of the now, how do we start to heal the the memories of the past, the traumas of the past so that they don't keep hurting us in the
presence?
well, the first thing I would say is,
you know, sometimes there's a crisis and well-meaning mental health professionals, Russian to discuss the trauma.
Well, it's still happening, that's a really bad idea.
People are generally traumatized because something actually horrible happened.
And dwelling on it in the moment. Just makes it worse. It's not like anybody has a solution. Here's how you should understand this. You know, someone's just shot up your kids school. Here's how you should understand this. That'll make it all better. It's like, no, it won't.
if you have old,
Baggage.
That often comes up if you're having an argument with someone doesn't it? You know, how it, you know how it is. This is partly why people don't like to have a dispute with in a relationship because it's a thread and you pull on that thread and just God well that we had another rule. Do not agree with something. You don't agree with who like if we're gonna, if we decide you and me that we're doing this,
We don't go back and say well I didn't really mean it. We don't get to play revisionist with our history so if you, if you don't agree, don't agree. Fight object.
Or hold your peace because you see what happens with couples is. There's a little fight and then one says to the other. Yeah. But you did this and then that person says yeah. I know I did that but then that was because you did this and each this gets bigger until what's on the table is why the hell should we stay together at all? Right, and so, every fight becomes, why the hell should we stay together at all?
So that's another thing you want to do is you want to have the fight about this thing, not about everybody in the past, not everything. It's like okay, you were flirting. I think you were flirting more than you should have be. Okay, so I go in, I think well. Okay, maybe I was okay. Well, then we have to have a discussion about why
Maybe we can solve that but mostly what we have to do is figure out how do not have that happen again. Okay, so we're going to go see the same couple again. What is it that you want me to do? So I'm the flirtatious one. Let's say what do you want me to do? Well, you have to figure that out. It's like, no, I'm stupid.
Like you were equally stupid, I need to know what would satisfy you and you need to figure out what would satisfy you. So I know and that like that's also extremely useful as let your can establish your conditions of satisfaction. Make them explicit let the other person know
you can't read someone's mind. Yeah, we're very bad.
You're bad at reading our own minds for that matter. Yeah.
So if we if I have a fight with Tammy, let's say sometimes I remember to say, okay what, what do you want me to do right now? What can I do?
What, what should I say and mean you know and you think well you shouldn't let the other person put words in your mouth. Well, fair enough, you know, I'm not act. I'm not asking for something false I'm saying. I'd like to not have this happen, can you see a way out? Is there something I could do to increase the probability? That that's the route we could take and, you know, sometimes that works.
But the other person has to let you know what they would find satisfying,
you mentioned you mentioned, sexual shame and it triggered something in me about just the shames of the past that people tend to hold on to. I think I might have mentioned this to the last time we talked am not sure if you know, but I was, I was sexually abused when I was five, my man that I didn't know. And for 25 years, I held onto the secret, the shame. And if anyone ever knew about this that I would never be loved. I, you know,
Right. Cause you feel contaminated permanently.
Yeah. I would you know, I wouldn't have any guy friends. No girls would find me attractive. My parents would disown me. You know, I went down the rabbit hole of this stories of, you know, I'm the only one this has ever happened to. I never saw any examples of this happening to and about eight years ago, I started to really heal that and start sharing that shame and many different therapeutic experiences that allowed me to start the healing process.
I'm curious from your perspective with all the work that you've done. What is the best approach for someone to really heal their shame? If whether it's around sexual abuse, or trauma or just anything, whether it be small or big or any type of shame that they might have, how does someone release shame in a healthy manner? So that it doesn't make them a prisoner of these emotions of the past that hold them back.
well, you hinted at a few things when you just describe what what happened to you is you said, well first of all,
You know, I thought I was the only person this had ever happened to. It's like, no, it's a universal.
Human Experience to one degree or another. Now, you know, I'm not saying everyone was sexually abused and I'm certainly not saying that some people
Aren't sexually abused to a degree that's so extreme it's unimaginable where there are others, you know, get off relatively lightly but it still it's it's well within the realm of normative Human Experience that sexual that sex goes wrong in some way at least you regret something that's happened. Something you've done or something that was done to you. So putting it in to when when you're the only person that something has happened to that's really not.
Good. Mmm, right. Because it alienates you even from yourself, you have no idea what to do with that. And so that's sometimes why people find it such a relief to have their illness diagnosed. It's like, oh there is, this is known, there's a category, other people have had this experience, maybe there's a pathway through it. So just knowing that, you're not the only person like that. Can be very helpful updating, its like how
You were how old five. Okay? Well, one thing to realize, when you're 25 and you were abused when you're five is that you're not five anymore, right, right. That the person to whom that happened is no longer there you're there. But so, you know, you might feel afraid of relationships, you might feel afraid of all sorts of things, but a lot of that was, your sort of feeling that like, that residual five-year-old.
I tell a story about one client, I had
She was abused by her older brother and she told me the story and I drew a picture in my head while she was you know I kind of pictured her of at 5 and this teenage hulking teenager, you know, taking advantage of her. But as she told the story I realized that her older brother was only
A year or two years older than her. Well, he was seven was like, okay. Well, they were she wasn't the victim of a tyrannical male. In some sense. She, they were too badly, supervise children. Now, that doesn't mean that what he did was right, but she was still the five-year-old in the memory, but she was 27, when or so, when she came to see me. And so, the first thing I did was just point that out, it's like, think about the seven-year-olds, you know,
Right from for a five-year-old, a seven-year-old is an adult but for an adult is 7 & a 5 year older clearly both children. Well that just change things. Somewhat it made her feel less vulnerable. In the moment, what your brain wants from you in relationship to a traumatic memory is indication that you're no longer vulnerable to the same problem. That's what memory is for, right? You remember something bad and you process it so that you change your
Interpretation or your behavior or the situation, or whatever, you can change so that it isn't going to happen in the future and that'll if you do that thoroughly, you'll generally let yourself rest.
It's too if you have the memory to protect yourself from it happening again.
Well that's the purpose of memory in general you you you make sense of your past Behavior so that bet the good things that happen to you can be duplicated in the bad things can be avoided. It's not to make an objective record of the world. Mmm, it's too.
Can functional map of the world that you can apply to the Future. And so how do we add?
Yeah. How do we let that go? How do we disassociate something that happened a year ago? Ten twenty years ago that is no longer happening but is seems to be triggering us. So
it's very it's very difficult. Well I would say you know one of the things you need to develop if you've had an experience like the one you had perhaps because I don't know the details. You probably need a theory of malevolence.
You need an explanation. It's like, how could a person do that? What do you have to have in it?
What if the explanation isn't good, they were just bad person. They
just well then you need a philosophy of bad. You need a philosophy of evil.
You have to understand it so that you're no longer a victim of it. You have because otherwise you can't put the event in in a context, right, you know, when sometimes that means the development of real real philosophical sophistication.
And that can help because then then you can start to separate out malevolence from benevolence because maybe you're afraid of any intimate relationship now, because it's been contaminated with out and everything's fuzzy and foggy. And so, you need to understand the person who did that at least to some degree, so that you can separate that person out from all the other people around you, who,
That you encounter in situations that might be reminiscent of it, you know. So you felt vulnerable for out, perhaps, you felt ashamed, all those things have to be going through. What do you think? You know, when you're ashamed, wind is what elicits that, what are the eliciting cues? What do you think when that happens, all of that has to be taken apart? I said in this Beyond order book that, you know, if you have a memory older than about 18 months, that still bothers you,
Right, it's still got emotional, resonance.
All of been hiding out over the 18 months ago or
before your 18 years older than 18 months ago or more. Yeah, otherwise it's not really in the past.
Right. It's still happening. That
Whether you should delve into something. How you should delve into something traumatic, that's currently happening. Is it whole different issue, but if it's an old memory and it still bothers you, it means that you haven't decomposed that experience, sufficiently to detach it from the Amo emotion, so imagine
When something terrible happens to you, you don't understand it.
So then you might say well if you don't understand something that's happening to you, how can it be terrible? Because doesn't terrible mean that you understand it. And the answer is well, you understand things in stages. And the first way you understand, the terrible thing is by freezing and Terror or running. That's the understanding. It's not conceptual. It's embodied and emotional.
and so,
Event Terror. That's the first category. Okay. Now the next question is, how do you get it out? How do you get out of the terror?
Well.
You realize that nothing truly dangerous is happening. Well, what if something truly dangerous did happen, then you elaborate your view of the world to the point where you're no longer vulnerable to that terrible thing, that's extremely difficult. So the memory of something terrible, stays terrible, until you effortfully process it and decompose it into will often into a much more sophisticated map of the world, and it's really
Hard to do
that.
What's the thing in your life? That was the hardest to do to deconstruct after the event so that it didn't consume you emotionally from the initial Terror.
Because you study this, you practice this, you teach this stuff but it wasn't you know as a practitioner teaching it, is there a was there a time where you're like, man this is really hard for me to
understand. Absolutely it's chronic. I mean that state is chronic for me at the moment. Say partly because I've become so insanely famous and I have difficulty with that for sure. It's very difficult to understand. I'm and so and I wouldn't say I've managed it. I'm managing
It I suppose and then Health trouble that is hit my family and me being so devastating that. I'm, I haven't managed that either. Like, you know, that's the thing. I suggest to people know, that isn't even that, it's that. What if I found that you do about Terrible Things, generally you don't run from them. Hmm, especially if they're not avoidable in the future.
Generally you stand confront decomposed, understand adapt, but just because you generally do that and it's the best bet, doesn't mean it's definitely going to work.
It's just the best shot. You have at it.
You know, it'd be lovely, if something always worked but if something always work people would never get sick and die, right? And we do all the time. So
We do our best but that doesn't mean that that always works but it's still the best that can be done. It's still better than all the alternatives.
How do you, how do you, how do you
cultivate your own personal inner peace, amongst the different changes that have come up? Whether you know, the fame, the health challenges personally may be challenges with family or friends. How do you personally keep a level of inner peace, amongst the
chaos?
I walk a lot, I exercise a lot, a lot like I'm walking about seven miles a day now and working out as well. And so and that's necessary. If I can take solace. If you
didn't walk and work out, where do you think you would be in the love? You really
definitely.
Yes.
Yes. Do you is that physically? Because you wouldn't be physically taking care of your body or because mentally and emotionally, your piece would be chaotic and it would drive you to
die.
That wow.
yeah,
so that you see you're saying, sorry I was interrupting you
Solace, she said
Peace, that comes to you if you're fortunate.
and sometimes it doesn't come, I try to do things that I think are worthwhile that it seem worthwhile and that
Gives me.
Solace, I suppose.
So I'm writing, I'm talking to people who I find interesting about things that I think are crucially important. I'm trying to learn and to communicate as a consequence of talking to these people.
I'm trying to do what I can for my family and my friends and to do what I can beyond that as well in a variety of different ways.
Those are all useful Endeavors and they keep me going.
What have you found to be the best practices of managing Mass attention, whether you want to call it Fame, Mass attention, Mass audience, people being fanatical about your message or work you as an individual, you know?
Luckily that that hasn't happened too much the fanatical side of things. You know, I've had the odd, the odd brush with people who
We're a little more persistent than was probably good. And, you know, I could see lurking signs of mental health, issues behind that and but fortunately, very little of that has happened. And that's certainly all for the good. It's because you're not, you're
not living in La, that's probably why.
Well, could be could be but it will for whatever reason I've been pretty fortunate about that. Yeah, I talk over what I'm doing.
With the people around me all the time and try to keep it on the proper Pathway to the degree that I'm able to do that. And and to see if what I'm doing is justifiable and ethical and we're all terrified of this, you know, to a degree that is very difficult to communicate. You know we live in a time where if you make a mistake you can be shredded and I would say to some degree, the more visible, you are the more
All the shredding. All right. Yeah. And so the cost of an error an ethical error is unbelievably High. The cost of the appearance of an ethical error is extremely high much less the cost of an actual ethical error. And so,
we're very careful to try to act ethically in every manner possible appearance and reality
because everything is being
watched. Yeah, well I mean, I can I have no idea how any of this looks from the outside but
my reputation has been on the line publicly many, many times and partly, sometimes outright accusations sometimes
As a consequence of things, I hypothetically said, sometimes there's a consequence of newspaper articles that, you know, have taken a particular twist.
And God only knows how many times the consequence of my own inadequacies and errors.
but every time that rises up as an issue,
there's a two week period where no one in my family knows. If this is the time that it's just going to go to
hell, really where it's all quotable
solutely. How do I look at how many people it happens to? I do look how people respond man you know, it doesn't take a very big Twitter mob to chase anyone back into their hole. How do we case a company for that matter? I know back into its on its heels? I mean,
Isn't that doesn't just that, is that how it looks to you? Ben, what do you think this? Yeah,
I'm just curious, you know, as people individuals would be me you or anyone wants to build something wants to have a goal and aim as you talked about, and go after this thing that they care about and share their opinion, share their voice. Have good, intentions. Maybe someone doesn't like those in tennis, but have good intentions.
Is how do we as human beings? Think about reputation, and the reputation even matter anymore? If anyone can try to tear your reputation down, should we be focused on having a good reputation or and how do we protect the registration
when should you be more focused on deserving? A good reputation? Hmm. What does that mean? Don't don't do things, you know to be wrong.
And even if you don't lie, yep, don't
lie.
Don't be careless. You mean especially if you're
See, I'm fortunate, I suppose.
I put all my lectures online.
So virtually everything I've ever said to a student is, I mean, obviously not but an unbiased sample of everything that I've ever said students is available.
Well, it hasn't come back to bite me
right now. It's hundreds of
hours.
Why? Well, because I've been fortunate enough not to have said anything fatal.
and, you know,
maybe that's because I'm careful with my words. I don't want to attribute too much virtue to myself in relationship to that. I know that good fortune plays an immense role in how things turn out for people and that you can get unlucky.
but,
You know, one rule I didn't write down is act so that you can speak of what you do.
So there's two domains of lying, right? So one lie is
A statement, the other lie is an action, you know, it's wrong. You do it. Anyway, it looks to me like that's becoming riskier and riskier,
right? People aren't doing that anymore because it getting caught.
Yes, and the consequences are dire well in, but then you think about this, you tell me what you think about this.
one of the things that Carl Jung taught me again, was that, you know, as we become more technologically powerful
The quality of our individual. Morality becomes an increasingly pressing social concern because each of us are far more powerful than we were once were for good and for evil.
And so with this technological prowess comes and Associated, ethical demand and and I don't see a flaw in that argument. I don't see how that can be anything other than true. If technology multiplies your power, then it multiplies, the cataclysmic consequences of your own
immorality, right? And if you did one thing ten years ago and someone finds it, it could haunt you. It seems like is what's happening for lunch,
there's no doubt about that. Not only could it, it
will
Will you know all likelihood, you know and that's a problem too because of course people do make mistakes, you know? And I'm perfectly pleased that my teenage years aren't stored on YouTube.
For example, you must be Tara got a long
time ago. It must be terrifying to be a teenager. Now, knowing that you're drunk and foolishness at a party, could become the next viral YouTube
video. I mean, yeah, I was lucky enough never to I've never been drunk.
Think in my life, and that was a conscious decision because my brother actually went to prison for drugs when I was a kid. And I was in a prison visiting room, many weekends for many years, and witnessing the consequences of doing certain things. So for me, oh my God. I want to touch any of this stuff. I don't even care if it's like, I'm gonna sell it, but I'm not going to take anything and, but it doesn't mean that I didn't do bad things like, you know,
Cheated I lied. I stole. You know I did all these things that I'm not proud of when I was 10 to 13 until I got caught and I was like, oh my caught, my actions actually affect a lot of people and I remember
the shame. Well, it's normative behavior. And yeah, if you look at adolescence, imagine there are adolescents who break rules all the time, including criminal including legal rules. Okay? Well, they tend to become criminal. It's too much.
Much. But then at the opposite end of the distribution or adolescents, who don't break any rules and they tend to develop internalizing disorders, depression anxiety, disorders, that sort of thing. So there are two constraints. So there is a certain amount of exploration of rule-breaking. It's a normative part of healthy development and but but now you know you could take a chunk of that a video of it record of it and its permanent, you imagine.
Not being able to forget your
past.
Painful.
So
painful and not even you forgetting it but the world knowing your past seeing it or witnessing
it. Hmm. Yes. And and sort of unconcern what unexpectedly and at any moment. Yeah. Right. What's your what's your
greatest fear with the fame and the acknowledgement that you have at the level of you have it? What's the greatest fear? You have moving forward or
insecure? That all that all do something too.
You know, they'd all betrayed, the people that that I've been speaking to with, you know, that all be insufficient to the challenge in some manner. Yeah. Ethically particularly. But more than that, even just physiologically, let's say,
So, that's that's definitely it.
Did you ever have a
Goal to impact as many people was that part of your life's mission that I want to reach more people than outside of the classroom and you know sell 5 million copies of my books and be so well known that you are was that ever a mission or was it always just I want to learn and teach and if ten people watch great if ten million people watch great.
I probably knew.
I knew when I was working on my maps of meaning book that I was look II. Tried to, I tried to write about the most serious problem I could find in the most serious way I could manage manage. And I thought, well, if this is a serious problem and I'm addressing it seriously. It's probably a serious Endeavor and we'll have the consequences of that that whatever those might be. And when I started to lecture about what I had,
Thinking about and learning about the impact was obvious and, and, and unique, in some sense. I mean, there are my lectures
The most typical response I got from students in my classes was especially in the class on my first book maps of meaning was this course changed how I looked at everything.
I would say
life the world the universe God
every. Yeah. Or they'd say, well, I've learned all these things. I don't know how to talk about them with anyone else, which was the same sort of thing and and a lot of the public commentary on my work is similar to that but you know in some sense that wasn't a surprise because what I learned changed the way I looked at things completely to absolutely completely 100 like completely revolutionary way and so
and I,
Had sense of that from. I don't know how old very young
yet. A sense that were that I had a sense. You got a sense that your life would impact.
Millions of people.
Yes,
it was a kind of like an inner dialogue or an inner calling or something that
was just like a dream. Yeah. Sorted or the remember memory of the dream. That's crazy.
Look, I talked to jakka willing the other day. I'm looking forward to releasing that. It was such a good conversation, such a good conversation with him. He made such this immensely tough person, tough guy, very he knew. He knew he wanted to be a soldier from the time. He was like three. Wow. And he said, what? And don't be thinking that it was for any High Noble reasons. I like mean he's quite funny.
Not just what it? Did he just destroy
he States like this. Is my character. This is who I am.
It's me. And, you know, with my kids, I could see who they were. They were the same person right from the time, they were born, like they developed and unfolded and all of that. But it was the unfolding of something. That was there was the bringing of something there to light. It's shocking and surprising to me constantly, and exactly what I expected at the same time. Yeah. And that seems completely
Dark Circle. It's sort of like, one part of me, knew and accepted. And the other part is too old and too much. The way that I was
To adapt to it. Thank you
so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it and want to dive into another similar School of greatness episode, then check out the links in the podcast description. I've done over 1,000 episodes in the past 8 years and I want to bring you more inspirational content just like this one more thing, my team and I are still giving away Amazon gift cards to our listeners and we've been choosing for Lucky winners. Each week like Joseph asks from Perth Australia and Natasha be from Lisbon Portugal.
I am from Texas and so many others and that's right. Each one of them one Amazon gift card, but here's why I need your help to get to know you my listeners a lot better. So I created a short and simple survey and all you have to do is fill out this quick questionnaire at Lewis house.com survey and that's it. It only take a couple of minutes but it'll go a long way towards helping me and this podcast, serve you at the highest level possible. And as a thank you for completing it. I am choosing for new winners. Each week to get a $25 us Amazon gift card, so go to Louis house.com.
Tom survey to fill it out right now. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. My friend, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did, and this is just part one. It's good to continue to get better for part 2. Just you wait. I can't wait to see what you think about what Jordan talks about, especially towards the end of part 2, who it's gonna get hot in here. If this is your first time here, then welcome, and please, click the Subscribe button over on Apple podcast right now. As we interview, the world's greatest Minds athletes,
Authors scientists researchers. Spiritual thought leaders to help you unlock your inner greatness and bring that gift that you have to the world. Again. Leave us a rating and review. I'd love to hear what you thought specifically of this episode over on the rating and review section on a podcast within School of greatness. So let us know over there and click that subscribe button right now. And if you want, inspirational messages sent to your phone every single week. From me, then text the word podcast. Right now 2614 350 3960 to get on my secret and
Special texting Community list and I want to leave you with this quote from Laos. Ooh, who said be content with what you have rejoice and how things are when you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you. Boo again, I can't wait for you to listen to part two of this episode with Jordan makes you come back here in a couple days and listen to this. When it's out, subscribe to the podcast here. And I want to remind you. If no one has told you lately that you are loved. You are worthy and you.
Matter. I'm so grateful for you. And you know, what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.
