How to Have A Meaningful Life (Despite Pain, Illness & Suffering) Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

here's something to think about it might
be that the sense of meaning that life
can provide to you is proportionate to
the amount of responsibility you decide
to take on not that would be very
strange if it was the case you know
because responsibility of course is a
kind of weight obviously and it's
difficult to take on responsibility but
if any positive emotion that you feel
and your control of anxiety and the
control over pain is dependent on the
activation of these systems that watch
you move towards a desired goal then the
more complete and weighty the goal is
the more Kip there's going to be in the
observation that you're moving towards
it and you know you kind of already know
this because you'll you'll have observed
in your own life that when you're
engaged in something that you believe in
that the time passes properly you know
you can see this even if you're maybe
you're reading a paper and it's actually
related in some intelligible manner to
something that you want to learn so even
though it's difficult you get engaged in
it you can remember it better you can
process it better and you don't you're
not so likely to fall asleep and you're
not so likely to want to find
distractions all of that you can get
into it and it would be very interesting
if that was proportionate to the degree
of responsibility that you're willing to
shoulder and I think you can make a
strong case for that I've also often
wondered imagine you could offer people
a choice here's the choice you could say
well your life isn't meaningful the
nihilists have got it right there's no
meaning in your life and because of that
there's no reason for you to accept any
responsibility so you can live a
responsibility free life and maybe one
of the impulsive pleasure-seeking got a
responsibility free life but the price
you pay is that it doesn't get to be
meaningful or you could say to someone
know we're gonna do the opposite we're
gonna say you can live a meaningful life
but it's only gonna be as meaningful as
the amount of responsibility that you're
willing to bear and then you might say
well what would people choose because
everybody also always makes noises about
wanting to have a meaningful life but if
the price you pay for that is the
adoption of responsibility that it's not
so obvious that
people would choose meaning over you
know over pointless pursuits if they had
to if the benefit they got for choosing
the pointless pursuits was that they
really didn't have to care about
anything they ever did right it's no
responsibility and that's really what
Pinocchio is offered and that's what the
coachman offers them and that's
interesting because you know so far it's
beating the Fox and the cat and they're
kind of two-bit hoods and so the
pathological pathway that they offer
Pinocchio is not the worst of the
pathological pathways but here at least
as far as the imagination the collective
imagination that created this movie is
concerned is this is where you get to
the most pathological form of let's call
it temptation and that's the temptation
to engage in to abandon responsibility
and to engage in impulsive pleasure
seeking short-term pleasure seeking so
here's the Fox pretending to be a doctor
investigating Pinocchio's illness and he
makes some notes which is all just
meaningless scribble right it's like
white noise and it doesn't matter that
the arguments that he's making is are
completely incoherent and it doesn't
matter that he actually doesn't know
anything he what he's selling is easy to
buy and so Pinocchio buys it and by the
end of the conversation with the Fox
he's pretty convinced that he's useless
and they needs a vacation no this is an
eatable such an edible situation as well
which I touched on the other lecture
I mean it's fair let's imagine that you
have a child that is little on the
neurotic side so high negative emotion
and maybe one that's also a little bit
on the sickly side so has a variety of
let's say relatively minor ailments but
the ailments nonetheless and so what
that means as a parent will say mother
for this example because I want to use
the eatable example you have to make a
decision all the time about exactly how
you're going to treat that child one
decision is
well I'm not gonna you don't have to go
to school today because you're not
feeling well
it's like fair enough but do you make
the same decision the next day and do
you make the same decision the next day
and let's imagine that you enable the
child to avoid responsibility as a
consequence of capitalizing on their
illness well then that's not going to be
very good for the child the rule with a
sickly child has to be something like
I'm gonna push you right to your limit
because otherwise how is the person
going to figure out what they can do and
if they can't figure out what they can
do then they're not gonna be able to
make their way in the world at all and
then that gets muddied very badly if
you're not exactly sure that you want
them to make their way in the world you
know maybe you're just as happy because
you'd be sitting at home alone if your
child was there with you and maybe you'd
be just as happy at some level if they
never grew up at all because then they
won't leave and so and maybe that's
because you have a terrible marriage and
you're lonesome you know maybe it's an
abusive marriage and your husband has
chased away all your friends and so you
don't have anything at all and maybe
that's because he didn't stand up for
yourself very well apart from the fact
that he was you know tyrannical in his
central nature and so then all those
little warps and bends in your psyche
are gonna manifest themselves right
right in the background of every single
one of those decisions my daughter had a
lot of illnesses when she was adolescent
and they were very serious and it was
very difficult to figure out what to do
about that because you couldn't exactly
apply normative rules right and we
always had to figure out if she was
communicating her symptoms to us how
seriously to take those and the answer
was the least amount of serious possible
it's something like that because we
needed to know and she needed to know
what she could do in spite of the fact
that she had problems and one of the
things I really tried to instill in her
and I think it worked is that you don't
ever want to use it your illness as an
excuse for not doing anything not
consciously you know sometimes you might
not know I'm not feeling well how what
I do what you don't know right because
sometimes when you're not feeling well
you can do more than you think and
sometimes you can do less than you think
it's not like it's obvious but sometimes
it's obvious you know this little
temptation Flitz through your mind and
you think well I don't really want to do
what I'm doing today and I'm not feeling
very well so I don't have to do it you
do that a hundred times then you don't
know how sick you are anymore
and then you're then you're in real
trouble because not only are you sick
but you actually have you've muddied the
waters and so you have both problems
that is you're actually ill and you've
betrayed yourself by using that as an
excuse not to pursue your
responsibilities and that I think if you
do both of it those both of those things
happen to you at the same time you're in
real trouble it's really hard not to
have that happen one of the things
that's so sad about what I'm doing you
know I'm going all around the world and
I'm talking to many many people I've
talked to about 250,000 people in the
last six months and I offer encouraging
words you know that people I believe
that people are stronger than their
misfortunes I believe that if you turn
around and confront the vulnerability
that's part and parcel of life you'll
find within yourself a strength that
will transcend that and I believe that
not only to be true but supported by the
best clinical evidence and that it's
important for lost young people male and
female alike to develop a vision and
take on some responsibility and
understand that they have a vital role
to play in the world that the lack of
their best hurts everything and I think
that's true and the sad thing is that
very there's very many people who have
not heard an encouraging word in their
life and it takes so little to encourage
them that it's rather tragic