Welcome to season two episode. Eight of the Jordan Be Petersen Podcast. I mean a Petersen dad's daughter and collaborator. Today we are presenting dad's lecture at the First Ontario Concert, Hall and Hamilton Ontario recorded on July twentieth. Twenty eighteen. Many of you guys know dad announced on you too, that my mama had surgery this week sojourn dealing with that probably the most stressed out, peerage my entire life and dad It looks like he's been hit with a bus slashed. That's been our but we're staying positive and it looks like everything went well so far. Thank God! Isn't it outpouring of support, which I know has helped me with this fairly to call time. So thanks everybody for that that's, why again dad part of this interest so we'll see how long that last, but it looks like things are looking up. So thank goodness,

when we return dad's twelve rules for life lecture in Hamilton, Ontario, please welcome my father doktor jointly Petersen. Thank you over much for coming tonight. It's a real pleasure to be here back in Canada and on this sector, part of my. I haven't nine city, canadian tour. This is the second city, and I just came back from Dublin in London, I talk to SAM Harris friend and Douglas Marie, so TAT was very interesting and hopefully those videos will be out in August. That's the! and once they're all properly edited for sound quality and all of that they're not going to be edited for content just four for quality. That's the plan anyways, so

it's very nice to see all of you here and and two partaken. What I hope will be a What will be a serious? And hopefully you well meaningful talk. I wanted to talk to you tonight. I thought I'd. Take you through twelve rules for life through the lens of courage. It's a nice virtue to to contemplate a good entry point into the content of the book, and I use lectures as an opportunity to think pass what I have already written to try to make it more coherent and to try to push my thinking and in new directions, and so that it stays fresh and vital, and so that I learned something because you can learn, thing by thinking which is generally where people do it so

I wanted to tell you some things. First of all, about fear, fears in instinct, we have a separate neural circuit for fear. It's the circuit, that's affected drugs that you might take like alcohol, because alcohol is a very powerful anti anxiety aged anxiety. Fear a very similar, technically people. Think of anxious anxiety is a fear of something that somewhat nonspecific. You might feel anxiety about going to a party or about new job, or something like that where you might be have phobia might be afraid of spiders or or snakes or miser horse or some or elevators or being exposed in the the outside world that be egg or phobia so fear is usually have something specific and anxieties of something more general, but in any case, We have a fierce circuit, it's very old. It's sign to stop us from being damage. So, essentially, you become

fraid of things that might damage that might hurt you. You became a frightening. Become afraid of things that might punish you and you have a separate circuit, pain to which is a response to punishment, so pain usually a signal that something is about to damage you in some manner or something is damaging you in some manner, that's more accurate and pain is pain, can be staved off with opiates rent. Those are technically energies. And fear and anxiety can be staved off by Ngos. Critics technically speaking in those include alcohol and bends Europeans, like volume, xanax and so forth and barbecuing, which are not very commonly used anymore, medically or for Non medical, say, recreational purposes, but our calls a drug that people really like because it dampens fear and anxiety, which is why people

of the many reasons that people use alcohol and social circumstances a variety of neural chemical effects. The very substantially depending on who it is that drinking, because people are differentially sensitive to the neural chemical effects of alcohol. Some for specially people with social anxiety who are sensitive to the anxiety, netteke properties like to drink if they are in a social circumstance, because it makes them less, less anxious. Other people also get a stick, kick out of alcohol. If you're one of those people that has a hard time stopping when start drinking and you probably get a stimulant. Kick from EL called that's dangerous, that's one of the things that can easily predispose, you'd alcoholism, so you have that response. Beware, but it also means really enjoy I'll call, so it's harder to be careful under those circumstances, because it such a wonderful drug. If that's, if that's the situation

you're going to have a separate fear circuit and the point of fear and anxiety his to stop you you see things that might damage you pain, signals that you are being damaged and fear signifies that you might be damaged, and so it's a newer circuit from an evolutionary perspective. Then the pain circuit, because it takes a smarter animal. So one thing to get hell out of their when you're in pain, but in others to be wary when you might be in pain. That's what fears for and so it's very unpleasant emotion, of course, although perhaps not as bad as pain- and I guess that's the that's the logical substitute and it's not so bad an emotion compared to pain. You need fear to protect you because you can be hurt. So there's plenty. Things to be afraid of an anxious about in the world, because not Can you be hurt? You know that you can be hurt and that's one of the things that really distinguishes

when beings from other creatures. We have a very, very clear apprehension, of our borders and limitations, we know that even if there's nothing It's making us anxious right here right now. We know that there are things that might our way that are quite negative in the future and so to some degree part of the reason that human beings are always so conch, so hyper consciousness, because we know that safe we are right now something is still lurking around the corner that might that might do us in? no. If you watch animals like zebras out on the African felt there through their pretty soon, change in some ways that their cognitive resources and their motion, responses are quite limited. No zebra heard, can be surrounded by lions and as long as the lions aren't you, a hunting Figuration zebras, don't really seem to mind the lions, which seem to them

bit, shortsighted on the part of the zebras. Don't seem to be healed figure out that those sleeping lions are all on the same lines that are going to eat them tomorrow. But I guess the advantage of being a zebra and not caring about the big lions. Is that why you know to be nervous, except when you're being hunted, whereas human beings in a situation like that would be thinking those damn lions. They look like they're sleeping, but you know what they are. Up to the moral and we do know what things will be up to the moral and tat means we can protect ourselves against what's coming to moral, but it's at the cost of eternal vigilance, and so that's part of it. He's in why we're susceptible to drugs like bends does in barbecue. It's an alcohol because those drugs do help us quell. Our eternal anxiety and so now when, when psychologists first started to study fear they thought about it wrong.

But I'm gonna go through the way they thought about it, because sometimes, if Think about something wrong, you think about it, wrong in an interesting way and You think about something in detail wrong. Then you can learn exactly why you're wrong, and maybe you can figure out how not to be wrong if you keep thinking which is part of the reason, by the way that free speech is so important, because in order to get to the truth, you have to do a lot of wandering. Through error, and so you have to be allowed or even encouraged to be stumbling around and stupid and careless and and objectionable, and offensive in all of those things in your speech, because you can't stumble around stupidly. You're, never going to be able to think anything through, because you'd have to know how to speak properly. To begin with about some, complex, if you're gonna do it properly and you don't know how to do comp, they things that you don't understand properly, and so are you not

to speak about them very well, and so, if you get to speak about them at all, which you have to learn about them, then you have to be encouraged to stumble around badly. I have this programme that some of you might be interested in its part of the self authorised. Which is a sequence of writing programmes that my colleagues I generated to help people clinic we, I would say we were trying to figure out how we could bring clinically powerful technologies to amass market at a very low cost and we discovered through reading the relish- literature and through our own scientific research, that if you had people write about uncertainty, then that would make them more productive and more engaged and healthier. Many people have done research of that sort. Not not all that by any means conducted in my lab, what the first programme is passed on, ring programme and it helps people write a structured out about. If so it helps you divide, you life up into six epochs and then

right about the emotionally significant events in each those epoxy, worse or sections, can't, and this is something I really think about its very relevant to the topic of tonight's talk. If you have a memory, that's older than about eighteen months and there's a reason that by the way, but but will say eighteen months for now and when you bring that memory to mind, it's causes an emotional reaction. I'm thinking mostly about a negative emotion reaction that mean that you haven't fully process that memory and it's still weighing down on you and me other things your brain is always trying to do is try to calculate how Dangerous the current environment is, and the answer to that is something like your rain as soon as the current environment is dangerous in proportion to the number of things that have occurred in your life that you haven't been able to figure out. So the more things that you haven't seen the more dangerous your brain assumes the environment is and the price

pay for? That is your more anxious, and not only that you you produce, more stress hormones, especially cortisol, and the pro with producing excess cortisol, you need to produce summit, it helps wake you up in the morning, but if you produce export excess cortisol that makes old, and so it can, which, to virtually every degenerative physiological process, that we know of and so cleaning up here ass is actually a really good idea. If something that happened to you, time ago, still bothers you the reason for that is that the most systems the underlying emotional systems that help you process the world, especially the emotions that are associated with fear and anxiety, are telling you that you we have encountered something in your pathway in in your in in your past n N, N n n. In your

asked that you did not master and that still would present a danger to you if you encountered again- and so it's it's interesting to contemplate that, because you know we don't often think about the purpose of memory. We think well. The purpose of memories remember the past and that's actually not true the pro. Some memory is to extract information out from the past, You don't do the same, damn stupid thing more than once and then truly is the purpose of memory. That is how you that's how your memories are constructed. That's how your mind looks at the past. What you're trying to do is to map out the world and you use your past experience to elaborate up that map, and then you use that map to orient yourself into the future right. So that's it Derivation of wisdom from the past, and so once you master fire, you don't have to be burned right, you, you can encounter truly dangerous things. Can learn how to master them and then, when you encounter them in the future there, are dangerous, and so that's perfect, but if

have something in your past and it still bothers you That means that, as far as your underlying emotional systems are concerned, you are master of that event and that bothersome. Emotion will never go away until you go back to that memory and you how it was that you were rendered vulnerable in that situation and what you would to do now in order to reconfigure the way you look at the world or the way you act so that that vulnerability would disappear, and so, if you do the past authoring programming Inuit reasonably care reasonably thoroughly. Let's say then you can. You can I know, those things in your past that you haven't masterpiece. Overcome, and that can that that will update you right here. Your map more differentiated ITALY do more skilful and it'll drop yours rest levels and its also useful thing to do from a conceptual perspective, as I said already, partly what you're trying to do in your life is

your way forward. Great, because people are forward moving. Creatures are always going from point, a to point b we're on a journey or an adventure and and and and you need to map out, Your journey, you, your adventure, while you need to know where you're going obvious silly, but you also have to know where you are. You know, if you're using a map like an actual man, it's completely useless to just know where you're going. You also have to know where the hell you are and if you're scattered all over the place, which is which really the case, if there's a lot, things in your past that are unresolved, then it's stored narrowly hard to map your way for because you don't even know where to start, and so that's that's a useful exercise and I often encourage people to do that exercise badly. Then that nap reflex, that's a reflection of what I do

said about about speech about thinking. You have to stumble around a lot if you're going to get to where you're going and so few and write about Europe asked and bring yourself up to date. You don't have to do it perfectly, but you definitely have to do it. You have to confront those things in your past that are weighing you down and making you bitter and making your resentful and freezing in place and all of that- and it also the case- will get to this in more detail as we progress so the second, the second part of the of the south sweet helps. You identify your virtues in your faults and too funny way of of stating it virtues. In particular, we talk about in the modern world, but we don't have to talk about virtues, it's kind of an old fashioned term, but I have picked it specifically for that reason, because virtually useful term and virtue is it's an unbelievably useful term. In fact, its funding thirdly, a useful term

other than a moral term, because your virtues are precisely that kit of tools that's that you have at hand that help you contend with world, it's best to think of virtues s tools rather than characteristics, and so, if you can identify false, while those are the things that are obstacles to your progress and so by Europe definition. Let's say that's how the exercises set up at least swimming. You want and need something you're pursuing it, there's gonna, be so your own character, they get in the way. We probably want to do something about assuming that you want to get to where you're going and, of course you do because if you didn't want there, you wouldn't have positive as a destination to begin with so, obviously you want to get there and if you are, if you do want to get there, and there are things about the way you're behaving in the world that are in the way, then. Obviously it would be better for you to rectify them that's very self evident and then equally its equally the case that some of the characteristics that you have

that will move you forward into the world are going to be useful. And you should know how to capitalize on the menu should be conscious of that, because why not be conscious of it? It's useful to know yourself so that you can news yourself more effectively and in the final exercise, is the future authoring programme, and we that lots of fun with that design that years go. When I noticed in my class this class on called maps class called maps and meaning which is both a book, I wrote a while Ago, which just came out an audio version by the way, if you like twelve rules, you might like maps of meaning, except it's a lot harder, but it's also a lot deeper. So if you want to go deeper well, that's gonna be harder, obviously met. But you know if, if you found twelve rules for life useful then going deeper, might even be more useful, and so the audio version might be good for that. When I that's it,

book about the story of your life, because your life This story and a story is, corruption of how you move from point a to b and what sort of pitfalls. I didn't counter along the way how you fall apart in your journey towards higher good in and how you put yourself back together, story and maps of meaning is about what stories are in and what perhaps, with the greatest story is, which is a good thing to know. Since you have to act out a story, you might as well act out a great one since well, since you don't have anything better to do fundamentally,. It's worth thinking about so because have some meaning was about stories and because I believe that people's lives are best construe, stories and perhaps even reality itself is best construed as a story, because otherwise we wouldn't you stories to represent it so continually. I had people write out start to ride out the story of their there. Their future life

And so it's kind of an interesting exercise its role is related to rule ten and in rule in twelve rules for life, which is precise in your speech and no one's ever no one's ever really told why you should be precise in your speech, The reason is for the same reason that when you shoot a rifle at a target, you aim at the centre right. It's not ran You know just sort of point your gun in shooting approach Thirdly in the direction of the target you you specify It is precisely as you can and then you pull the trigger and- and you might think well, it's a strange thing to user Sayer, a military analogy, an analogy with weapons, but it's not a strange thing at all, because if you think about the things that people do, if you think about the dramatic things that people do.

Where it we're trying to hit the centre of targets all the time, and we love to see people do that would do that with hockey? We do that with soccer. We do with baseball. We do with basketball. The idea of specifying a target and hitting the centre of it. There's something that we're we're absolute The obsessed about that we're so obsessed with other together and huge stadiums and watch people. Do it right right, without even really without ever really contemplating what we're doing we're in you see a sports team. It's it's a cooperative and competitive attempt, to specify and hit a target. So excited about that, probably because, at least in part were built physiology on a hunting platform and throwing platform right, I mean human beings can throw and we can throw a punch and we can throw a ball and end. We can throw a spear and that's a big deal. That's a big part of what we are, and so we're target seeking creatures and so to be

sites in your speeches, to specify the target and to specify the target is to have an aim and to have an aim, is to have a purpose and improperly, is to attain your purpose, at least in principle, and so partly what you're doing in the future authoring exercises to specify your purpose with your precise speech, and so we ask people to well here's another thing to contemplate. We are creatures. We are built on a hunting platform, we'd like to hit targets as possible that we're good at it and then That also means is that if we are good at it and if that's part of what we are, then, if you specified target, you might be able to hear That's a hell of a thing: there's a theirs payment in the new testament. It's it's quite a strange statement and it's it's it's a suggestion. The suggestion is that if you knock the door was open and if you ask you will receive an you think. Well, that's

highly unlikely and it does seem highly unlikely right, mean sure. That's the way the world is set up. It's like you know that is the way the world is set up its very range thing, and it's not that surprising if you start to think it through, because I mean After all, hypothetically you're, adapted to the world, evolution has been working three and a half billion years to produce you- and so you know, I think, maybe put it down a better job, but that's not, but but Maybe you didn't do such a bad job ban, and so maybe you could obtain your aim and one of the things I certainly learned as a clinical psychologist- was that a lot of the people that I saw who were unhappy their lives say in their fortys and sometimes earlier than that and who had detained what they wanted. Hadn't detained often in large part, because they never specified it and the probability you're going to hit a tiny tar

precisely without aiming at. It is zero, that's not gonna happen, and so well. So what would happen if you would aim at it? That's a question and how should you best aim? That's another question and that's part of what twelve rules for life, but is about in the second, rule, for example, is treat yourself like you're someone responsible for helping kind of a nice start site can imagine version that. If your aiming a rifle you, you have to put yourself in a certain physiological state writing. Why not take some deep breaths, calm down and you want to make sure your hands are shaking and jiggling and so forth. You know you gotta put yourself in the right frame of mind and, if you're take aim with your life. It's the same thing you have to put yourself in. Right frame of mind and watch right frame of mind. It might be something like while you could assume that you're actually hypothetically Valuable creature, even though you might not think that about yourself, because you are so absolutely knowledgeable.

Your own flaws and insufficiency, but indeed and if that you might think well, could lend yourself a hand, and you could do something good for yourself just out of the goodness of your heart in all you might do for someone that you cared about? That's that's actually very difficult for people. You know like most of us love someone or a couple of people least half heartedly released. I wish that with our children as well. You know it's hard to be fully committed to something, but generally is generally we do pretty good job with Europe with our partners, are husbands and wives and a pretty good job with our children little more empty there and a decent with her parents well, you know it's seventy thirty or whatever, but maybe you can maybe you can. Elevated more than that, with a lot of effort But I dont know how good we are about doing that for ourselves, I would say much less so, and part of that is definitely the fact that we're very aware of our own flaws and inefficiencies? Personally, you know more about how wretched and useless you are fundamentally,

about anyone else, and so that's rather disheartening and given its disheartening, then it's not so easy to care of yourself properly, but it isn't obvious to me that you really have that that right not to take care of yourself. I think you have a responsibility to take care of yourself as if you're, something of value which you are, and so that's a responsibility, and so, when you fill out the future authoring programme, you're you're ass to A job for the sake of experimentation, the frame of reference, a frame of reference within which you self, the benefit of the doubt and assume that there's something about you might be usefully brought forward into the world, and you know it's. It's. Axiom of our society that There is something about you that would be usefully brought forward into the world because

whole societies predicated on the notion the sovereign, individual or even of the divine individual and we wouldn't have exceeded. Political power to each and every one of us if and in that wouldn't work. Unless there is actually something to the proposition that each visual is in fact something a proxy Having a divine locus value, despite our insufficiency so allowing yourself, the benefit of the doubt, seems like philosophically appropriate thing to do. Takes a certain amount of love and it takes a certain amount of courage, and so we asked people to think. Ok, why here. Here is a game you can But if you aim at it it's a possibility. We made a properly and MILAN makes sense, because if you aim at something improperly you're not gonna hit it. So you can have what

here? Were you a mad? If you ain't properly, the question would be. How would you improperly answer might be well mansion? You decided to take care of yourself like you or something worth taking care of. So then you could say well have you gotta have what you wanted three to five years down the road? What would it be it needed. Assuming you were taken care of yourself. What, if you, you can think about it, like you might take care of a child if you're gonna take. Hair of a child, you wouldn't just grant him or her his or her every whim. That's not care, so that is you would treat yourself. You did it. You have been more sensible than had, but we could say well you get to have what you need three or five years down their own. What do you want from your family if you could your family. Together that we wanted it to be put together. She had what you wanted. I'm your father in your mother, in your siblings, your kids just pipe pathetically. What would that look like? Probably

look like the situation where you're all around Thanksgiving dinner with your hands around each other's next, squeezing slowly, which the condition that many families are in dinner. You pro wouldn't wish for that, and it would probably not be for the best and then you might ask what would you want from here from your intimate partner if you could have what you needed and what would you want from your career? And how would you educate yourself if you could do that? The way that an optimal way. You know or these better than your managing. Now, how would you take it? your mental and physical health, what would you outside of work. That would be meaningful and engaging in productive. What do you want from your friends? That's that's rule three in into our rules for life, make friends with the people who want the best for you. That's a hell of a thing.

Who had be useful in because it's not that easy to do what's best, even though its best to do its best, by definition it be useful, perhaps to be surrounded by for who are happy when something good happens to genuinely pleased because they know. Life is bitter and short and tragic, and that the probability that good things will happen. The people is somewhat low and that, as a consequence, when they do. Something to celebrate and who would also prefer, speed. Not so happy if something bad happened around you and necessarily entice you into such situations. So that would be a good thing to consider with regards to your friends and so There are seven things that you can think about how to put your life in the kind of order that would make actually want to have your life and not be bitter about it, and and and and and did

generate because of that bitterness, and then we asked people to write for fifteen minutes and say: ok, you get to have what you want. What does your life look like, and so that would be a life that you'd find maximally accept let's, but realistically you know, and so then you have some aim at and then we added this after we worked on the programme for a while, and then we have people right for fifteen minutes, a counter vision which was ok, that's where you're headed, that's where your aiming but you're aiming at, and you kind of flesh it out. But here's another useful thing to think about so You have bad habits and and your resentful about things and you're not trying as hard as you might in some dimensions, and you have weaknesses that might take you apart and pretty much every

He knows what those weaknesses are. You know some people would smoke too much pot and some people would drink too much and some people would be unfaithful and have counterproductive affairs and some people would end up on the street because They would t generate with regards to their different everybody kind of knows how they'd fall apart if they fell apart in their own, idiosyncratic and spectacular manner. It was the sorts of things that keep you awake at night. If you, if you, if you, if you contemplate them, deeply Where would you be in three to five years? If you let everything go directly to Hell, that's useful man, that's useful, because then see it's one thing to motivate yourself, because you see that You're doing is moving you ahead to something that you want, but that's hope, is a powerful emotion but terror. It's even more powerful emotion and so

one of the things I have to do with my clinical clients. There, maybe I don't have a job. They really like. You know, and its grinding away at their sole and it's not liking leap out of your job into another job. That's actually really complicated problem right. If you dont like your job, it's not just a psychological problem. You have to have a job. Die, and so it's so I just psychological problem and so changing jobs in the matter of just adjusting yourselves psychologically, you might have to do a lot of planning to change your job. You have two options, you're CV, and maybe after update your skills- and maybe you gotta figure it to be a little bit more the boy in an interview, and you have to overcome your fear Jackson like there may be all sorts of things that you have to do to actually set yourself up to move, laterally or or up. Let's say too, to a different position when that's more engaging- and you know you might be- you might be lost, do that and so you're afraid of doing that and you think, while if I may,

eight about? Why should I do it? People ask themselves the same question when they have a difficult conversation to have with their wives. Their children and their parents in oak is a lot of us are very conflict diverse, and so there are difficult conversations. Have probably won't have them and the reason is because their awkward and they make us afraid so think what why the hell border, if it makes you afraid why not just not do it, which is one of the ideas that keeps people in jobs they hate and in relationships that and and and stop some from repairing their relationships, which so very difficult thing to do, and the answer is well. Let's imagine that you just keep doing the thing that you don't like. You don't change it because you're afraid to well. Are you afraid of what have if you don't change it and if you lay out this little hell that I described really blunt way, so you know where you would degenerate you were going to degenerate and then

look at your life and you think what hears it wants to things that I'm not doing, because I'm afraid! That's you know keeping me secure like. No, it's not it's just taking you place that you laid out that's an absolute catastrophe. And so sometimes the answer to why should I do this that I've been putting off is, well otherwise they end up in this particular hell, but I already know it already know the parameters of it, and so I hope, can help you move out of that. It would be better. If I did this by fear of not doing it, and the consequences is way better and it's better yet is to have both of them working in tandem. So so just figure this out when they were looking at fear years ago, because you're trying to figure out how motivate animals to do things like run Dona amaze too, to obtain a reward. Turns out, that a hungry rat hungry rabble run down a little maize quite rapidly to get a piece of cheese, but if that rat is

if you, if you have the hungry rat and you walk, in some cat, odor congrats really are terrified of cats. They really don't like them, even if they ve never met a cat and if they ve never smell They knew what can smell like and they don't like it, and so on. Take your hungry rat and throwing cat odor he'll zip down that way like mad much faster than let's just hungry so running, away from something that you're terrified of a vote. It something that your property, terrified of and running towards, something you want is a good way. Being maximally motivated, and so in this second part of that programme. We have people lay out a very detailed plan about their vision. You know about, maybe you could break it into eight goals and you can prioritize the goals and you can figure out. Why would you your life be better if you attained the first goal and how would you found

life be better also, and maybe how would you be of more benefit to the community? A few attain that go because it be nice if you could sort yourself out in a way that also sorted out your family and that Sorted out your community and since Making a plan well why the hell not aim for all three it's more. Sustainable anyway, it's right. So this approach, the famous psychologist, shown p o J, called that an equilibrating state. He said that it's like a game that everyone wants to play. It's better. If you in play a game to play a game that everyone wants to play and that's a good It's good indication that it's a good game, and so, if you can figure out how to fix yourself up in a way that would

Malta Annesley, fix up your family and your community. It's like hey everybody wins, and maybe it would be good to play a game that everybody went. So we don't think of games that way very often, but it certainly possible that games like that exist and so back to courage and back to free speech. One of the things that I do recommend to pay, who try these programmes is that they do them badly, because a bad plan is better than no plan at all and you're gonna come up with a bad plan. Because what the hell do you know? And so, Neither a bad plan or no plan and no place is way worse than a bad plan. When you implement about plan- and you start walking towards what the plan lays out you'll, see specifically where it is that you are in error like specifically and you'll, learn from that, and then you can is, what you learn well you're making, mistakes, stakes, implementing you're bad plan to make up

new plan and if you doing that eventually, like you'll, be a lot of failure a long way. That's the adventure of your life by the way You do that and you keep laying out a plan and earning painfully from your failures and then correcting the plan. What'll happen. Is that you get on target as you move through life, and even though you're hitting a moving target, because life is complicated, and so we have found because we studied this scientifically because we weren't convinced that our theories were necessarily accurate. We found, for example, this was that more how college in you terrio people who did the future authoring programme before they went to call were the young men in particular, especially the aimless young man weeks. We sort of categories them into people who were pursuing something that was career, oriented or something that was just sort of vaguely defined,

then the young man who had vaguely defined goals if they did the future authoring programme. There are fifty percent less likely to drop out of college in the first semester it was quite staggering, so So it's useful aim at something: that's the moral of that story and so back to courage, which is where I started so originally when psychologists Studying fear, they assume that fear was something that you learned and you might think that Because there you are sitting down in Europe, calm, you not afraid of anything. So you might believe that the norm state of a human being is calm and that we have to learn to be afraid in psychology could teach animals how to be afraid. So one way you can teach an animal how to be afraid. This was done with rats as have the around in its in his cage and it's like com wrath, and then you turn on the light and then you electrify the floor a little bit right

Because you want to have the right around for a while, and so just enough to shock em you know and that shark that causes pain, that's a punishment, turning the light, shock. The rat you do that a few times and when the light goes on the rat freezes the rat has learned that the lights signifies shock and what the rat experiencing when the light goes on is fear or anxiety, and so psychologists did that with rats, and they thought. Aha, Animals learn to be afraid, that's actually not true, but I'll talk about that. While and so then they generalised out to human beings, and so maybe you have a phobia of mouse or something like that or maybe you're afraid of something the idea was. While you learn to be afraid and we teach you how to not be afraid, and so what this colleges did the behaviorist was let's say you were afraid of balloons. Some people are

It balloons, as it turns out, it's kind of an absurd fear, but that's ok You know, maybe they were little and a balloon was pop too close to their face, and they learn to be afraid of it, and so was condition that we learnt, and so what you do is you sit person down You have them, do relaxation exercise, and so they take deep breaths and they pay attention to different parts of their body, their feet. Their ankles knees so forth all the way up the body and really all the muscles you put them in a state of relaxation their breathing deeply Have them think about balloons, or maybe show them some balloons or maybe you feel the whole damn room with balloons. Hats called flooded, by the way, and that can be effectively You have to get someone over their fear of balloons like right now, but little drastic raise. The point here is that you entered them to the thing they're afraid of well, there relaxed new ideas, its counter conditioning the ideas that are you

be relaxed and afraid at the same time, and so if you can learn to relax in the face of the thing, you're afraid of, then you won't be afraid anymore. But then someone. So that's pretty good theory, but it's wrong. It's a good theory like the theory that animals learned to be afraid. Actually, the theories. Actually wrong, because you don't learn to be afraid you bloody well know how to be afraid what you learn, how to be calm, and it turns out that's even true for four rat because the psychologist gerrymandered the experiences experiment a little bit today as windy. Have your normal rat Think what here's rat he's an occasion he's kind of at home there so he's com, then can teach them how to be afraid of a light. So you their comrade the normal rout, the rat, it's like you, then you Jim, how to be afraid, but an arbitrary when you decide that the rat is normal because of take a rat picking up by the tail. It say

you drop in a new cage when he goes that new cage. He is not a comrade he's sort of rat. Now you guys have probably had cats, some Eu House infested with care Anyway, you have cats and some of you have probably moved York, to a new house cats like that, like? your cat at home is a calm cat by cat standards which isn't all that com, but human? It's one of the delay, four things about cats that you can scare them half to death by just making noise it see, though they puffed up, which is really a lovely. You know what a cat hair stand on end. Like that, you know the same experience you have when you feel do you know that hair stand on end when you feel, ah it's the same rules is that an animal has to a predator imagine you're like a mouse, and you see a child one. That's the euro. So, it's easier six feet high to scale up the Kyoto that cows like

Seventy feet. High few saw seventy four high kiote We you'd feel law near here. We stand on end. So that's what and the reason your hair stands on India. So you look big. I mean a mouse pops up and doesn't really by the required. But if a cat paths Up it does look, that's where they stand sideways too and danced backwards with all puffed up. It's like look how big I am almost it cat with a tale. This big so. So, anyway, you put around in a new cage, and it's like this. It's frozen that's a normal rat as far as I'm concerned frozen rat the thing, it's absolutely terrified out of its mind, because it doesn't know what the hell it's doing or where it's going or what's going to eat it next day normal. That's the fear, circuit on completely that's, standard condition of existence. As far as I'm concerned, because existence is care,

rise by terror and death and the idea that the normal condition is calm. That's insane, true at all, and so he put a rat in a cage and its frozen man because it thinks guy. Only knows what's here and there what it does. Is it so it's frozen, sniff submit and if nothing kills it when it sniffs It's a little bit more and so sniffing and seeing, if there's anything in there like a cat, and there were, really drive a rat, you know to drink and and You can get terrified animals to become alcoholic by the way so big psychologists. Do it's like let's terrifies of animals and see if we can turn them into alcoholics like air. We can always interesting so So the ethics committees are pretty much putting a stop to that, though. So despite the

we learned almost everything we know about how the brain works from doing such things like. Well, the rat so drive them to drink anyway, so the rat as as may have seen and nothing kills them. He gets a little braver and you start move around and then he just explores the whole damn cage knocking cranny, if there's nothing there, that we'll kill a rat video, calm down, and then you think that's the normal rat, it's like well, no, it isn't. The terrified rat was the normal rout, the com, is the rat? That's explored everything now, it is really useful thing to know its unbelievably useful thing to know now. Stone, generally live by themselves in cages. They live in a hurry. Our key of other rats in a social group, and so there sort of like people and so. The reason that you're not terrified out of your skull right now, and even though you could be is that.

You're, in a hierarchy with other people who basically share your culture, which means they share. Goals. They share your aims and you can predict them. You don't know, He's primates that you're surrounded with an there's, probably there's three thousand when here, there's least thirty. You who are seriously deranged, at least thirty, probably more since you came to this talk so so, but but everybody's behaving property in everybody's pointed in the same direction. Like if someone was turned round completely at their sea under seed and looking at you right here like others. I would make you uncomfortable because you think what the hell is pray made up to not what all these other primates are up to and we have an agreement here. The agreement is everybody, sits in your chair and everybody faces the front and no It's too much noise and you know wave your elbows around like there's a lot of rules here and every

and you wear clothes, that's a rule to and you keep them on. That's another. There's lots of rules, and you don't talk a lot to your part, Let's say well the lectures on, and you don't talk to yourself while the damn lectures- and you certainly don't matter to yourself and hit your forehead right. So there Lots of rules that are keeping your anxiety, circuitry under control in this circumstance and everybody around you is being polite enough to act out the rules, and so your fear stays off, and one of the reasons this is something that was see. It was really ordinary when I finally figured out that the com rap wasn't the normal rout, the terrified was the normal out and then the tear Margaret had to learn how to be calm and the way it learned how to become was to exports territory and body, but it didn't now troll environment, to organise a hierarchy in that territory, so that every rat knew exactly what every rat was every other rat was doing at all times to come,

nice rat agreement, that's the hierarchy, and the explore the environment, and then they keep their terror circuits off and the reason People don't like to have their belief systems disrupted is because it turns the terror circuits back on and no one likes that not even a bit, it's absolutely horrified, and so that partly, why people are so invested in their belief systems so back to how you treat someone if they're afraid so you flood them with balloons, while their relaxed and then are not afraid of balloons anymore. Actually works. If you do at five or six times then they'll be here, alright balloons are mice or needles with a needle phobia. He had a needle phobia that was so severe that he would undergoes dental surgery with no anesthetic right right. So.

That's something right. I mean you ve, had a dentist drill in your tooth. It's like trailer way, man but no needles and so I treated him behaviorally for his needle phobia, so what I did was, first of all, he D trust me- and I have rules in my therapy session like I am not to do anything that we do not agree on period ever. Ok, so that's a crucial issue. If you're going to treat help someone with a fear, so I said what you really need to get over. There needle phobia, because the whole gentles vague, seems little much and he needed to get blood tests and other things, because you need to get a needle down there. So I said Let's see if we can get rid of this needle phobia New said: ok, we'll give it ok well, the first thing I'm going to do now such is I'm gonna bringing hypodermic needle I'm just gonna, on the shelf, and I showed him exactly where on the shelf, I was gonna put it. So just look at that place on the shelf, and I said that If you're afraid of something you don't like to look at it, so you'll avoid it

so one way of not being afraid of thing is to not avoid it. So I said well just look on the shelf and get familiar with it. So he said okay and I said well: ok, Next, the next time he came in, I said, look that you have a seat. Make yourself comfortable, see that spot? I told about last time. If you look there, you see a needle in scottish sheath on it's got a little orange capsule, and so I want you just look at the needle just look at said. Okay, I said how is that going to settle? I'm kind of nervousness about just look at it to your board because Bore, is a form of learning. If Afraid of something what you to do is become bored by it and so and if Look at me long enough, you'll get bored by because it doesn't do anything, just sits there and not very exciting, and so so He got. He said. Ok, I'm I'm I'm com. I said: ok, look! I'm going to pick up the needle, I'm not gonna, bring it towards you. I'm just gonna pick it up lifted. Four inches off the shelf, because I wanted him to what the hell is going on. So I left it

up and that made a kind of nervous so I am just gonna hold this needle and we're do the same thing. He just watch it until you're. Ok, he said okay Well then we did the next thing. I know I'm gonna move it then, allowing me to move closer to you and you know eating increments and you can start me whenever you want, but I'm just move an inch at a time, and about me, and he said well. I think we can do that. Ways by the end of the session I had the needle with this, She's touching his arm and hate believe man, he would run out of the room screaming if that would have happened. You know the session before that was enough. I didn't want to push him too far, curiously enough, I didn't have relax now it turned out when the behaviorist did. Experiments they found out that you'd actually didn't have to have the person relax in order for the balloons. To put four voluntary exposure to the blues to have the effect or you do

have involuntarily expose themselves to what they were afraid of like mad. That was a major league discovery and it turns out that pretty every school of clinical psychology has come to agree on that. How do you help someone with what they're afraid of- and this is important because we are afraid of life right. So if you figure out how you help someone overcome their fear gets a big deal. Because you're afraid of life- and you should be because life will kill you and so It's no wonder you're afraid of it, and so what are you gonna do about? Tat has not people have phobias and so far there aren't afraid of things that are harmful. There, often afraid of things that are harmful and them three is often why other people aren't afraid not. They are so well how you'd help someone become less afraid. Are you actually don't you actually help them become? More courageous, that's a cool thing, that's not the same thing

so because life actually is dangerous and if your ability to pay, in life is dependent on you not being afraid of life. It's like well that's kind of a non starter because there's lots of things I have to be afraid of, and so, if you too, successful you had to be not afraid of life. It's like well forget about that, because you know if you're someone's death bed. Then there's going to be some emotion associated with that were actually afraid of death and we're afraid of insanity and we're afraid of betrayal, we're afraid of pain and No bloody wonder that's for sure, and so, if not being afraid was necessary? What then we're lost, but that is what's necessary what's necessary is to be courageous and that's very, very more because it turns out that you could be more courageous than you think, and also turns out that, if you put yourself in a situation where you face the things, you are afraid of, you find out that there's way more to you, then you thought and what's also cool about that is? It doesn't seem to be any upper limit to that

because it is obvious that there is anything that you can't face with learning how to face it, and I mean anything then do you think of right people work at emergency words right to think about that what what they do is have emergencies all the time. Think on emergency is something you can tolerate. Almost by definition it would be an emergency otherwise, but people- specialise in that, so obviously they get used to it. People work in peace it of care wards, that's rough, everybody. There is suffering and is going to die soon and then they do die. So not only are you dealing without you deal with loss, just endless laws, people work and funeral partners, so there dealing with death all the time, so people are bloody, tough. So my client, he was pretty happy about that and so the next session I told him I was gonna, take sheath off the needle. You know, and he was all right without and then I waved it around, but not to monopoly you don't and and

and then I did the same thing and I got to the point where I could hold the needle half an inch away from his arm without him. Without with him, watching without him, flinching without turning way without with him watching, because that's the thing we actually have to face the thing you're afraid of, and so that was that session and then the next session part of was rusty, because he had a bad experience with dentists when he was a kid, and that was partly what produced We, and so I didn't really trust people in authority deeply like a scared, animal and that's what he said. He like was scared. Anemone, that's was really about right, and so the other thing I had improve This was telling me to stop and and leaving I said, look we're going. You tell me to stop what I'm doing and then leave, and I, stop you and now can tell him that he would believe, but that's not the same thing- is actually practices. Watching. It happened, so he'd say are moved the needle into an end, did he say, stop doing that and I'd stop

he'd say I'm leaving, and then you get up and leave it. I just let him leave, so we did that five or six times. You would do a pretend plaything with a kid you know, and so then that God, idea deep in him that he could just get the hell out of here, there are no one would bug em. If you wanted to do was part of increasing the trusted he had with me. And so by the end of that session, I was able to cover the needle with a piece of paper. So he couldn't see it and touches sky with the sharp edge, and so I was damn good, because that was both a needle like a needle, you can see is one thing and a needle that you can see the tell by someone you can trust is another thing, but a needle that you can't see that's being moved by someone that you sort of trust that are all different thing and he could manage that. Anyone to the doktor and he had his needles and so hooray for him and the more of that story is you don't have

relax in order to face the things that you are afraid of. You just have to bloody will face them and that's so cool. So ok, now let me tell you different story: So that's partly rule one for its rule? One like. Rule. One is you know right: One is stand up straight with your shoulders back and people have criticised that chapter, Miss read it or not, read it just assumed it that's more like it, and they assume that what I am talking about, because I'm What hierarchies is power? You know that to stand up straight, your shoulders, Bacchus to somehow be dominant and powerful, and that's complete rubbish that isn't what that chapters about at all. It's about some else. It's about the idea that what, if gonna be successful in your hierarchy, because most things are hark to arrange. The best thing that you can be is courageous, and because people admire courage and they and they promote

and they and they admire, and they end they and they they mimic it and and if you're a courageous person, then people are happy with you and then you can lead them and so forth, and to stand up straight with your shoulders, Bacchus to Maxim, expose yourself to the world, that's actually stance of courage, and so that's that's. Why that's that's. Why that's a useful thing and it turns out that. Our hierarchies don't so much reward power, for example, as they reward all right. Things, competence and so forth, but you develop, Confidence as a consequence of courage, because you develop your competence by facing things that you dont haven't yet mastered, overcoming your fear and learning to master them. And then you become competent that moves you up the hierarchy and functional hierarchies are predicated on competence in competence is predicated in part on courage, and so we we should facilitate that courage, because too good way, it's a very good way.

In the world now, so what is courage do for you. Why? You think, there's not a lot of you in this lot of the world and the world are pretty dangerous place. Maybe what you should do is go hide that doesn't really help tide, which is why your parents and all they do is encourage you to hide. Then you have bad parents and they just make you weak and then you're and maybe you're hiding. But it doesn't matter because, no matter where you hide you're never going to be able to hide from what you're afraid of. Because wherever you are, you matter. Much. You hide the thing that you're afraid of will find you. And even if it doesnt find you in the world it in the near future, will find you in your nightmares. It doesn't there is no hiding from it at all and so on. As a parent, you don't try to protect children. You try to make them strong and you do that exposing them to the world, and that's why you don't buy their children when their skateboarding and that's rule- that's rule. I remember correctly rule eleven thrill eleven, because

skateboarding is dangerous but doing it involves austrian. You want your child to master the world, not to be protected from the world, there's no protection from the world and if you try to hard to protect your child from the world, then you are the thing they should be protected from, so you encourage people now what happens when you were in the world a new test yourself against it This thing is you learn something, and so psychologist Piaget, that I that I told you about before he watched tell children learned and healer. He noticed that child would try who things an experiment with the new things and you know, my daughter was young. For example, I saw do two things that I thought were quite cool. This little Box cardboard box and was full of books, cardboard box that we're solid only about this big. They were Disney books, and about for them would fit into the little book box and they fit very tightly and what We would do shake them out of the box and then put them in and was hard.

And what she was doing was learning how to use your hands, which is actually quite useful. You may notice use your hands quite a bit and so learning how to use them is a good thing, and so she would sit. There are literally for an hour dumping out the books, I'm putting the minutes. She can get three out of four in no problem, but that fourth, one man, that was a paint- and she just worried at where you at where you at where you at and eventually would go in and then thanks. You do shake it out again and she could read they concentrate on that. So she was She was mastering that technique and that was candy coordination, which is very useful lets you want to stumble into things and be awkward. So that's what she was tat trying I watched her on the monkey bars in our backyard this very little. She was only maybe eighty months old and these monkey bars were too high for her but she wanted to try the many ways and we would watch her with apprehension, but we didn't run out we didn't waiting till. She was three runs out up and then Roundel

my God be careful so that she would fall and learn to never do that again, which is what you do if you're a bad parent and bad parent definite and then they say see, I told you so right side. You care can't do those things you think you can do your fall. Just like I said, specify scare you exactly time show me that I'm right so she'd beyond the first wrong, and then she do this each each time she lifted perform she lifted like an entire right she's. Just playing right on that edge of disaster, which is the best place to play. Everyone knows that you play on disaster, because that's where you learn. That's what exciting and the reason it s exciting, is because that's where you're learning and your brain is why to make you excited when you're learning so she was on the ragged edge of disaster, but being com about it. She get her to put up and get to the next rung

up, she'd go and then she do the same thing with the next. What very very carefully so we just after long and she managed to go across the top of the monkey bars, and that was a good day for her the day for us and and hopefully that major work ages and more competent and she would be so. She learned something from doing that. No, when you could say what she absorbed information from the world and built herself out of it, that's a way of thinking about it. You know the more things you do the more go around the world and you do things and you being yourself up against other people and other situations, and you learn what shouldn't. Do you learn what you should do and you make yourself sharper and more informed right information? what information means you put yourself in formation with the world by for operating the information of the world and you do that by posing yourself to things that you haven't yet mastered and you spanned your mastery and that's deeply meaningful, in fact the insight of meaning is eggs I that instinct, that tells you when you're

optimizing the rate at which your competence is developing and that's our really lovely thing to know, because you know you you'll find sometimes that you're engaged in what you're doing that's that That's a meaningful thing that you're doing and you might think while there isn't any meaning in life, but actually there you just have to look around and see when it manifests itself and when it office itself is when you're expanding you're zone of competence, what meaning is there to signify, and so it's actually very reliable instinct and really real it telling you that you are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. So that's that's a great thing to know so So you inform yourself, here's, a here's, a cool thing so in the short cathedral, a cathedral is across. And across his assemble a symbol and acts and you're at the point of the ex thats, the Ex marks, the bought and the spot is you and if it's a cross, at least in the christian world. It's also a place of suffering, and that makes sense because the

that marks the spot. That's? U is characterized by suffering, so that's the idea there and then the question is: will what should you do about that suffering because you're stuck with it, there's no, avoiding it. That's what so that its not only that there's no avoiding it and that it exists. It's that, if you do know how to deal with it and it grinds you up, which it certainly will. If you don't know how to deal with it, then that will make it bitter and resentful, and that will make you cruel once you're, better unresentful and cruel, will then you'll start to become destructive and then you're for even more in your spread that everywhere so yeah need to know how to deal with this, and so in the shower cathedral there's this very cool thing, which is a big labyrinth, its amaze. It's a circle is divided into four parts, and it's a symbolic pilgrimage. Ok. So what if you're a mediaeval type and you go in and pilgrimage it sort of what you do when you go to Europe in or whatever, Southeast Asia, real common for kids to go to now to sort of they grow up.

Leave their parents and they go out on this pilgrimage and they go where they haven't been and what when they go where they haven't Venus hypothetically, they grow up. They have some adventures. They do some stupid things you know, but they have adventures and they, take care of themselves, and so, when they come back, there there more than they were because they went somewhere, they hadn't been. So there is a thing you want to be more than you are, then you should go somewhere. You haven't been and that's the idea on a pilgrimage to go to the centre of the world. You have it adventure on the way there and then we back and then, not the same when you come back here more than you were so that everyone should go in a pilgrimage once in your life and while, if the pilgrimages should properly. Then you go to the centre of things and that's the idea of a wholly pilgrimage. Let's say that's something that people would act out. But not everybody can afford to go on a pilgrimage, and maybe you can do it symbolically. So in short cathedral, which is across, there's a maze too big maize about forty feet across and its assert

divided into four parts. So it's too old, north, west, east and south and east, get to the centre of the labyrinth, but the way you get to the centre as you enter the labyrinth and then you have to walk and these pathways de market. All of the quadrants and- you get to the centre. You have to go everywhere. What that's an idea to get to the centre. You have to go everywhere and that's exactly right and so and why, while if you go everywhere and that takes courage, obviously to go everywhere, because you have to confront what you're afraid of to go everywhere. Then you get the centre of things, but why here's one reason. You, you got a lot of information when you go places, hats pretty straightforward. You know what I'm sure, if you think bout. It maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think so, but I just in my life is that

the time I try to do something that I actually try to do that works It doesn't necessarily give me where I was planning to go without plan, but I've. Never, we read it picking up a skill. You know I pick up, they'll for reason, and maybe that reason doesn't work out. But then I've got the skill, and inevitably that skill comes in useful for something along the way and so my senses things that I've actually attempted to do. You don't put some spam into it have paid off. No, they didn't necessarily pay off the way that I expected they would, but that's ok. Now that does that doesn't matter. So much is whether or not they paid off that matters. So The more things you bang yourself up against voluntarily, the more courageous you become them skilled, you become the more you are able to deal with your own suffering and

That means the less corrupt you're going to be because suffering that you can manage makes you corrupt and suffering that you can bear. Maybe even bear nobly and honourably. Well then, but that's the deaf mission of a well lived life, but here's something else. That's cool this idea that, if you did, you can confront the abyss and then in the abyss. There's a monster and in the valley of the monster is your father. Your father is laying their asleep or dead. You see that in the story, Pinocchio. It's a very, very old idea, very, very, very old, at least five thousand years old in in recorded which means its way older than that, but it's really old idea. You look into the abyss that's. What terrifies, even in the abyss, there's a terrible monster in the monster. There's your father in his half dead and or asleep You see them. Pinocchio, Pinocchio, Puppet Marian someone else's pulling astray

If you remember in the Pinocchio movie, you may remember this when penance, he goes to rescue us farther from the depths normally. Is he a marionette but he's also jackass hats? combination, so not only a something else, pulling strings. He still wouldn't headed puppet, but brays nonsense, because he's he's he's pathway join his capacity for four. For truth, speech, so he's really rough shape. But it goes down to the depths to the bottom to see the thing that everything is most afraid of hats, the whale monster when we We in our forty finds inside the whale even though there is no explanation in this story at all about how to peddle got. There is his father, many rescues his father from the belly of the whale and they go back up to the surface and Pinocchio becomes a real boy. So that's a very interesting and it's really interesting as you go see that movie right all of you pretty much of sea, that movie, it's like what the hell are you doing going to see that movie? you're watching drawings, of a puppet led by a cricket,

go to the ocean to fight. A whale to rescue his father and somehow that makes him real and Europe Ok with that I guess that makes perfect sense is like does if any sense at all, but none ass your grip via your engaged by it, and it's because it's actually true. So here's how it's true, this something geneticists have discovered recently so first of all, there is the thing is that if you face what you're afraid of the Abyss I find all sorts of information right, you're, gonna gather all some information in a map that information into you and that's going to make you informed, and so that's part of as part of becoming who you are. Then some of that information you're going to gather from other people and those people, because you're interacted with all I'm not telling you all the time, but how to behave and how not to behave how to be an option. Person and how not to be an optimal person and the more you reflect that. The more you take on the characterised

that are demanded of you in some sense. In the way that an ideal is demanded of someone. Do you think about it? the paternal ideal. At least in part. You should be the great Father, that's who you should be. You should grow up. That's what you should do in everyone's telling you that all the time putting you And so the more you hate yourself against the world. More of that information. You can incorporate in the more of that you're going to become an that's something Ike rescuing your father from the abyss, but here this thing, that's even cooler and its associated with this idea of the labyrinth as well. So the labyrinth, which is the pilgrimage You have to go everywhere to get to the middle so here's what happens? If I take you out of your mind, suitable environment, for something new put you somewhere new or even better. You pull yourself somewhere new and that's the one thing that really works by the way? So if I presume deal with the challenge and its involuntary your producer. Stress hormones and it'll paralyze, you buddy

You take on the same challenge voluntarily. You have an entirely different cycle physiological response to it. It's a completely different thing. Do it voluntarily case. We have to confront the abyss voluntarily. What happened. You put yourself in a radically new situation. Your genes turn on new proteins and manufacture different structures in your brain. You turn yourself on, and we don't know the limit to that, and so you, you have Potential in the potential is part what you could learn as a consequence of being informed but also a potential genuinely theirs. Potential locked inside of you at the molecular level and the waves that potential on by strip by stressing yourself by by challenging yourself right by adopting a stance of courage in the world and by pushing yourself beyond where you are into new domains and the consequent that is, is that

genes in your neural structures, code for new probe, proteins they make new a new thing out of you have no idea what the limit of that isn't. So you think what? What's that thing, that's being turned on Obviously you know you ve been around for three and a half billion years you're not stupid, even though you may act stupid from time to time. You: have this limitless biological potential in some sense, that's ready to manifest itself, but it's not going to manifest itself without being pushed. It needs a reason to turn on you go somewhere new voluntarily and things that would help you cope with that new thing turn on, and then you might think what, what happens if you just got at all turned on an answer then might be well, then you would be who you should be, and that would be equivalent to rescuing your father from the Valley of the beast rate, be that this thing is taking on that that ARCA tipple. What would you call that?

could table and desirable structure of authority and incorporating that it's something like that, one, what you need in order to do that his courage and faith to faith that if you manifest courage that the consequences of that will be positive and the only way you ever find out. If you try, because no one else can tell you they can hint at it, but you can't do This is something they existentialist of nineteen fifty realises the torn you, the only person that can find out if this is actually true. Is you because you're the one that has to face two things that Europe particularly afraid of and you're the one there an story. King Arthur and the Knights of the round table there off to look for the holy rail, which is the container of what everyone needs whatever that is they don't know where the hell did, go, look for the holy GRAIL. Who knows where you go, look for the holy GRAIL and so

they move away from the round table and they all enter the forest in each of the mentors. The forest at the place that looks darkest to him and that's where you start the search for the Holy GRAIL and so that's very much worth knowing as well so courage. But why do you need courage? Because life is terrible. Suffering and its malevolence, and so we have every reason to be terrified. There's no real way out of that, because that's the ground of existence, but it turns out about some k because there's more to you than you think and the way you find out if there's more and what that more is, is vital. Seeing that thing, that's terrifying and maybe facing nothing, that's malevolent as well, because that could be your fundamental moral obligation right to face the suffering of the world into constrain the malevolence within it.

And it turns out that, even though that's an overwhelming task by definition that you're probably up to it and if you took on the responsibility of doing that voluntarily. Then what would happen is that you would discover tat. You were up to it and the one consequence of that would be at least part is not so much that the suffering in life would disappear. Although God only knows how much we could constrain it if we all seriously tried, but that in attempts to face it and constraints Find a meaning that so engaging in so overwhelming that that itself will serve as a medication against the suffering and mount and malevolence that exist and all of that appears to be just simply true. Thank you all right.

So someone named Zachary Henderson said in your Opinion who the handsomest man in the front row tonight well, obviously that Zachary Henderson, ok, neurons. So Anonymous says do you believe in aliens the answer that is no, but exist. Whether I believe in them are not right So someone said: how do you reconcile the very strong interest in your work? My work, I presume with what is otherwise a generally apathetic and disengaged approach to life. So someone That's a nihilism question right because you know there's gonna too broad

categories of existential catastrophe and one would be the escape into a rigid totalitarianism, that sort of crushes with its structures and the other is to let everything fall apart to become an idealistic and the nihilistic attitude is Jim predicated on the presumption that. Life is fundamentally meaning lesson, so there's no super ordinance, meaning and because that life is short and painful, and so what's the point and

I think the answer to that is well a process of discovery, because you, you can discover the point, but you have to first of all assume that you're too ignorant to begin with to know what it is and also to question your doubt itself. No because if you believe that life is pointless, then you believe that what believe is correct, means you believe, your beliefs It seems to me that you're, probably not smart enough to unquestionably believe your beliefs, and you might start with questioning your doubt Why do you doubt that life has meaning- or you might say, work it's just self evident, given its suffering infinitude like while now

that's not so self evident, maybe you're, just useless and irresponsible and you're justifying that by me, king the case that life is meaningless so that you don't have to do anything and you don't have to bear any responsibility. That's all we quite hopeful if you discover that, because you think that everything pointless and horrible, and it's just that you are useless and that's way better, because if you're just useless, you could forget, you could fix that. But if life is pointless and horrible than your basically doomed, so you can substitute nihilism for humility, you conception humility for nihilism. That would be a good start and then the Stu asked this question of Italy has a generally apathetic disengaged approach to life, but fines. They are very strongly interested in my work. Ok, so then the first thing to do, about. That is to notice that, while you're not completely pathetic and disengaged Europe it can disengaged, but there's sums

mark in the darkness, and you know Oh, why, but it's there at least, and this is a useful thing- if you're feeling hopeless and that means reasons why someone might be feeding hopeless and sometimes people are feeling hopeless, because their physically in one manner or another. So I'm not thinking about this. Universal panacea. I know there's lots of reasons for being depressed and in that, that's not that easy to distinguish from being realistic, but if you notice that there are some things that grip you that's a useful place to start like. Oh look, I'm interested in something that's a mystery right can make yourself interest. Something you can notice that you're interested in something and then- and pursue it. Interest is sort of like it's like a beacon that glimmers in the darkness and if you follow what you're into today in specially, if you do it honestly, which is apt actually crucial, which is why wrote rule eight eight tell the truth,

Please don't lie if you're going to follow what you're interested in then you better not lie, because if you lie your pathologies, the mechanism of interest and then it will lead you off a cliff If you're going to follow what you're interested in then you better be honest because otherwise you're following someone dishonest, that's a very bad idea so, but case. If you don't notice that you're interested in something, even if you're interested in something like music, I don't care what it is. If your interested in something, then that thing that you're interested in can guide, you and then there in the Harry Potter movies out of that which the game you know that's funny game, because there's the normal game to sort of like basketball, Scipio played on brooms, and then there is, game that rises out of that, which is the game that the seekers play. There's two seekers and they chased this little golden ball with wings on it: That's actually an ancient symbol, the El Chemical os and it's it's the contain,

of the unrevealed world? That's what the chemical chaos is. That's what that's niches interesting now I don't know how the hell J K Rolling ever figured that out, because its unbelievably obscure knowledge, but she did figure it out and the. Chase that and now think fit round right. It goes every it's like mercury, the winged messenger of the gods. It's the same idea and this curse, follow this thing that fits around that's golden and glitters in gleams. Meaning itself and the idea that expressed in the game of quitting is that the person who pursues meaning and finds it is when something of such colossal magnitude that the entire game is that that everyone, whose playing what would you say tat, something of such colossal magnitude that he is declared victorious right at that moment, that's What that is symbolizing in in the structure of the movie, which is so cool that she managed that such as such a stroke of genius, but you

do that in your own life. You know, they'll be things that glimmer and glitter for you in the darkness- and you said Andrew this. The person who asked this question that you is, you have a strong interest in my work and well, then, I would say be a little more precise about that right, exactly what is it that you are interested in? precisely what is it that gathering your attention, because that's a marker to the that's a d, that's the doorway through which you must pass into your life. That's what that is, and that's what meaning marks out for people come know, it's like. We we we're see in front of us is a set of doors. That's the that's the world in front of us. Is it. An infinite set of doorways and and we can open, always and all sorts of things will come out, we dont face and we're not deter divide the material reality around us. Although we are to some degree that isn't the word that confronts us the world that confronts us is a vast expanse,

potential impossibility? You all know that you wake up in the morning and you think things to do there there ways that I can behave that will produce certain consequences, some negative in some positive. It this expanse of potential and that's really what you confront as a human being? Is you confront the expanse potential with your consciousness and you all know that too, because you know that you can make bad decisions and make things worse than you and your moral, and your moral. And your morality determines whether who transform that potential into a good. Old or a bad world and you all know that too, because you know that you can make bad decisions and make things worse and you can make good decisions and make things better, and so that's echo, to that's an echo of happens in Genesis when God creates the world out of chaos, is it's a decision to to speak the truth and to interact with the chaotic potential and

produce habitable order out of it in its in that image that were made. That's the story and too hurry and we all believe it cause. We treat each other like that and we predicate our inter political sense. One the idea that that's, what we are and might say. Well, you have all those do doorways in front of you, which one should I an answer as well. How about you open the one that glitters and it attracts your attention and that's it the manifestation of the instinct for meaning in so something beckoned to you and then you can open it, then something comes out of it. Changes everything and then what beckons will change and that's what happens when you follow your instinct for meaning, but you have to be humble too, that you have to be willing to see what it is that glitters in the darkness, and you have to lower yourself so that you're willing to pursue it because it will play something high and mighty to begin with, because where the hell should it be, if you don't know what you're doing and you don't know who you are and you're envelop, in chaos and ensure and you're. What would

say hopeless and undisciplined and useless. Why would something magnificent manifest itself for you to begin with? It's going to be something small enough, so someone like you would have to get on their hands and knees to to approach. Maybe you have to clean up your room. Maybe you have scrape the dust bunnies underneath your bid. You know- maybe you have Do those things that you know you should do that you ve been putting off because their beneath its no they're, not not in the least, not if you have to do them their exactly what you have if you have to do that, no matter how small they are, and so you adopt your responsibility and you follow what beckons is meaningful and and you do that in humility. Knowing that you're, not in a position to judge the world- and you say. I have a generally apathetic and disengaged approach to life. It's like well, what may you think you're, reliable judge of the structure of being. Why, too, question man so

before you dismiss the cosmos as insignificant. You might want to make sure that you put yourself together to the degree that you can't, because you may be missing something you never know so. Well, we, if everything you believe makes you hopeless. Then maybe could question the utility of what you believe. That's humility, look, this story that I read in a book called the cocktail hour by Ts Elliot and in the cocktail hour, women talks to a psychiatrist. I believe that a party, hence the cocktail hour and

she's kind, asking them for professional advice, and she says: look I'm having a pretty rough time of it. My life is not what it should be and I'm suffering unbearably. And I really hope there's something wrong with me and the psychologist to sort of taken aback, and he says what why I hope that there's something wrong with you and she says well, this I can tell there's only two possibilities:. Either there's something wrong with me and that's why I'm suffering insupportably Or there's something wrong with the structure of existence and that's why I'm suffering unacceptable? and if there is something wrong with the structure of existence. Well then I'm! What am I going to do about that? Nothing? I'm just do, But if there is something wrong with me, then I can fix it, and so that's chapter six right. It's, which is the dark chapter in into our rules for life, gets to meditation on the motivation of people who do such things as shoot up elementary schools and the rule is put your house in.

Take to order before you criticize the world and if everything is around, you is meaningless because of your beliefs. The first thing you might think as well, maybe it's your beliefs and not the world, and so that's that's an unbelievably helpful thing to to realize you can doubt your own doubt Who designed your logo as seen on your website and passes? And what do you do it? Well, I designed it I'd. I drew it. It's a six foot piece of art, so that's about six feet in its square, its maiden four pieces, like the labyrinth that I described and its layered it's about a foot thick and made up

Quarter inch, layers of foam core and foam core is a is it's a layer of styrofoam with two a layer of paper on each side and is often used to as backing for four prince and so forth, her or framed artworks. But I decided back in the nineteen eighties that I was going to make phone calls sculptures that were half sculpture and half paintings and I made a path a dozen of them before I ended up doing other things and one of the things that I made back then was this sculpture that I called the meaning of music, and I was really interested in music at that point, partly because I was trying to sort out the phenomenology of meaning, which is what is meaning and and is it something real, and if it's something real way,

does it represent or what is it all of that and one of the things I had noticed. I was that people found me music intrinsically meaningful, and that was very interesting to me because even nihilistic people couldn't help but find music meaningful, and so it was one thousand nine hundred and eighty three or one thousand nine hundred and eighty four punk rock movement was still pretty powerful. Still a going concern, the sex pistols quite a bit, and I noticed that even the nihilistic pencroft types found their nihilistic, punk rock extremely meaningful, which I thought was extremely comical, because at the same time they were celebrating there and nihilism, they were really into their music, and so you can and and amused

it is because it's an art form it. It goes underneath thinking, it's also a good antidote to to rational scepticism, which is why music has become such a pop, powerful force in our culture. People, love music and I think, without music peep many people would just die and and its because music speaks of meaning directly like when you listen to music, when you're into it when you are enjoying it, we do not really enjoying your finding the experience meaningful and in its funding watch people play music because they in train themselves. It's really good to watch people improvise. You know because they're all train together doing this novel thing they're out on the edge where they should be and are doing it beautifully and So I thought a lot about what music represented and and- and I spent about four months making this this painting. And I thought- but I would try to do- is to make a piece of art that reference.

And visually what music represented in the auditory realm. And so, if you look at that logo You'll see that it's like a Necker cube in a cube has one of those reversing cubes, and I made the I made the painting so that you couldn't resolve it visually so that if you look at it, if you got a gaze at it, without focusing too much you'll, just see that it moves and moves and move Moves as your brain tries to resolve what it is, what it actually is a cube said on end, without with with a tunnel down the middle of a broken into four fragments of another thing that it is it's a it's a three dimensional representation of a two dimensional representation of afore dimensional object. That's actually, because music is afore. Dimensional object right because it has three dimensions: Spatial, those of spatial dimensions cause. You know, music, is a raid in space. That's what happens when you listened stereo. You can see, feel or hear how its arrayed in space.

And then it just unfolds across time. So it's got four dimensions and the reason music is meaningful and this to be an awfully long time to figure out is because the thing, that you see in the world that you think our objects aren't objects there actually patterns and their patterns that you interact with in a manner that makes them into tools, and so often into so you're a pattern, because you maintain your structure across time. So that's a pattern. Pattern is something that maintains its structure across time and so all the things that we perceive our patterns and patterns all the patterns of the world in their meant, I mean you think about all the patterns you're made out of right. You go down to the subatomic left, And there's an array of patterns and then above that at the atomic level there's another array of patterns and then at the molecular level, there's another array of patterns and then you're organ. Or patterns and then there's you that's a pattern and then there's you move

through space with all these other people and that's a pattern, and then there is the political system or the let's say that the town that you're it and announced a pattern in the political system, nazi pattern and then the ecological system and that's a pattern and then there's the cosmos itself. And that's a pattern and that's the harmony of the spheres and all patterns are interacting in a harmonious way and that's what music represents. It represents the harmonious interaction of the patterns of the world and then you go out to a barn, you dance than what you're doing is your arraying, your body, along with pattern and you find that deeply meaningful, like you should, because you should re your body in alignment with the patterns of the world and then, when you dance with someone else, and maybe that some you love, then you mutually do so pattern and and you're improvising with each other to produce that pattern and you're Hamilton used aligning the pattern that you're both producing with awe the pattern reality of the music and so your

acting out the action you're acting out the act of engaging in a dialogue, dialogue which is dire logos, right, so you're engaging in a dialogue that produces a pattern that Adele see to the structure of the patterns of the world and that's what you're doing when you're dancing and so I figured all that out with regards to music and tried to portray that in that logo in that symbol, and then since then, I ve experimenting with that symbol, trying to see how many different forms I can get it to manifested. I can get it to manifest in the world, and so it's propagating like mad, and that was part of what I wanted to do when I made it thirty five years ago. I thought or make this thing and see how many different ways it will manifest itself in the world, and so that's

Story of that logo, Ok, I from that respect for somebody pursuing

the pursuit of happiness while you're not going to be happy around someone's death bed. So we have to be extremely careful with our terminology know when people say that they want to be happy first of all mean that when you say you want to be happy, that's not actually what you mean, there's the plenty of psychological evidence for that, because if you take measures of well being and you analyze them statistically, what you find is that what people really don't want is to be anxious and in pain, So happiness is a positive emotion over and above that. But if you, if you force people to make a trade off they'll pick absence of of three and anxiety: that's that's the fundamental, that's the fundamental motivation, and so and then, while with regards to happiness its.

Happiness, is something that comes upon you. If you're fortunate- and it comes it's me- likely to come upon you! If you're pursuing something that's worthwhile and meaningful, and also responsible and the pro with assuming that the emotional state is actually the goal is that when you're in situations where that emotional state can possibly be the goal- and so that would be when you're dealing with the tragic realities of life and your ethos is pursuit of happiness than your bereft You know. Let's say you have a sick child for three or four years or more say. Ah, good luck with your happiness hypothesis, because that's not gonna get you through it, not in the law

EAST, not that and I'm not saying that you should be cynical about happiness or that you should despise it if it comes your way, but it's just not the proper pursuit, it's not a noble pursuit and it will. It will leave you bereft in its in situations of dire necessity. You need something much more profound worry yourself in the world and that's why more about suffering and malevolence, because those things are undeniable realities and they cause an undue amount of trouble and at minimum you can orient yourself properly in the world if you, if you take aim against both of those and attempt to constrain them and that something you can do even in the most dire of circumstances, and so, if you're dealing with someone who's in pain or if you're dealing with someone who is dying,

Are you dealing with the catastrophes of your own life? You still have the meaningful option of trying to reduce the suffering to them to the maximum possible degree, and then that's a worthwhile endeavour and you'll find meaning in that, and so it's a much more adult way of oriental yourself in the world and of happiness happens to come. Your way. Well then, good for you and is not wonderful and that something to me thankful for but it's a side effect and not a pursuit. Damien says doing what you do must be stressful. How do you unwind unwind? That's a good one right, some people think I'm already completely unwound. Well,

its stressful. I suppose in some ways I mean these. I don't find these these talks particularly stressful, because they're so positive. You know I like to come out and and talk about the things that I've learned and and to see all of you people here and to have a serious discussion about things that would help oriented in the world and to push what I no farther ahead. And so that's. It's so positive that I dont really think about this. Certainly this part of it s, stressful facing journalists, is stressful, so not always usually and often, and so

I don't know how I on wine from that are usually goes sleep afterwards. I guess what I do that hell. That's helpful. What I do to increase my ability to tolerate the activities that I'm engaged I travel with my wife and she's extremely helpful, because she's very level headed and I have an extra brain along, which is a useful thing and we swim and sometimes we worked out and sometimes we go for a drive when we can do that and we go for a walk and I spend time with my family and those are all good things. But I dont life is stressful, so and at this time in a position where, whatever I'm doing that stressful is counterbalanced by exactly what I talk to all of you tonight about its deep. What I'm doing what I

gauged in is deeply meaningful, and so it's a pleasure to be able to share that with other people and to see that sense of meaningful engagement, envelop more people and that it, I can't think of anything better to do than that, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing tonight, for example, because I can't think of anything better than sitting here, and talking to all of you about these things that are necessary to understand and to lay out in the world. And so what do I do to unwind? I think I do what you should do if you want to why I'm I'm trying my best to make things better. Because it seems to me that it would be better if they were better simple, and I have some sense of how bad things can be, because I've studied how bad things can be

I've experienced some of it in my own personal life and some of it with my clients, because I've been in very dark places with my clients and in my own life from time to time, and certainly in my studies- and I would rather that everything didn't go to Hell in hand basket like it could, and it would I would like it if everyone got on board and we all decided to make things better, each of us, starting with our own lives, facilitating that is the antidote to the catastrophe of life so that's a continual unwinding innocence so and it a privilege to be able to take part in it. To also see this amazing thing, I've been enveloped in for a long time now. You know I started doing these lectures.

While public lectures really last year, I did a series on the Bible, which I thought was really quite comical that that worked because well think about it is to do a series of lecture. So I rented a theater, and I decided that I would do lectures on genesis lectures about responsibility, starting with Genesis, and that I would do that public and then a whole bunch of people came and also that was pretty weird. A lot of them are young men who are exactly the not the people who had ever come and do that and so, but did and then lots of people have about two million two and a half million people have watched the first of those lectures and it's on the first sentence of genesis. So too Two and a half billion people have watched a three hour lecture. Think it's three hours, long on one sentence from the on the first story in the Bible. It's completely ridiculous and then, when I my book launched, the publicists in

in London, rented a theatre so that I can talk bought and sold out right away. So then they and another one, stay in its old out right away, and so they rented when the next week and it sold out too and then same thing happened in Amsterdam and then I thought well, that's interesting, sold out. Fifteen theatres in fifteen, theatrical performance is in Toronto and then for in Europe. I can probably go everyone in the world and book. A theatre go talk about what I want to talk about a whole bunch. People will come so I thought why Muslim try, that that seems absurd, Muzzle try that. And so then I've been in my wife and I Tammy have been in. I think this is the fifty Eightth City in four months and so in here here you all are and we're having a very serious conversation about how to orient ourselves properly in the world, and so

it's not stressful man, that's great, so it compared do. There's so much horror and catastrophe in the world to be involved in a continual conversation with thousands of people about how each of our into Your lives might be better and how that could spread into our families and the broader community SEC. That's not dreadful. That's the opposite of stressful, it's great, wonderful, it's so pause. If I can't believe it, you know, was talking to my son the other day this morning, I think and it was this morning and he came to it, came to the UK with with Tammy and I and we had a hell of a trip man. We went from New York to Dublin and then to London, and so in Dublin I talk to SAM Harrison Douglas Murray and

Eighty five hundred people showed up we're in this big stadium. It was like the biggest philosophical discussion. Thing was the biggest for public Phyllis ethical discussion, not like those com, and it's not like this. It's like there's an Olympics of philosophical discussions. If there was that would have been the biggest event in there is like all these people showed up Cavernous arena to hate, to hear of a very difficult discussion about the relationship between facts and values in religion and science and they are like right into it. You know what we were going to to queue and after an hour of discussion, but the audio. Voted overwhelmingly with you know by clapping too, to continue the conversation

So we talk for two and a half hours. Every one was like right on board, and so it turns out that people are lot smarter than we thought that there's a huge, huge. Well, I think tv they ve narrow bandwidth of tv made. We made us think we were stupid and we're actually not, and so there is massive public hunger for detailed and and and reasonably deep Phyllis circle discussion. It's like well, that's hell of an amazing thing, so that was just beyond belief and then so you're in Dublin, and we did that and that was crazily, exciting and ridiculously adventurous, and the talk when really well and we taped it and hopefully, like I said, that'll, be held in August and then people can see what the and, when it was a discussion about the relative merits of an atheist materialist viewpoint. Tenor, let's call it a religious traditionalist, religious viewpoint and we had a good discussion because through some there's things to be said-

on both sides of the argument, and then you know with any luck, a couple of million people watch those videos and they can have a discussion about it. Maybe we can sort ourselves out properly and then we went to London and did the same thing again in and along with a variety of of of other activities, and, like I said I was talking to my son about it. This and he's a pretty tough kid and and and pretty level headed and when he was talking about it. It made him Ebro, down in the him cry, and you know, and the reason for that is because it's absolutely overwhelming to watch this happen. I can't believe it. So it's not stressful. It's it's it's a privilege to be doing this. It's an absolute bloody privilege,

to be doing this, and I am so pleased that you're all here. How do you move forward in life after having made and regretted a huge mistake? Well, you know this is one of the reasons that I did. I think that the miracle lectures I did last year or so helpful to me and I think the other people one of the things it's quite interesting about those stories they abrahamic or is in particular is that those bloody people they just made mistakes all the time Absolute Lee, you know so Abraham, for example. No, he was chosen by God. I pathetically, like all the people in in those narrative, were- and I mean he just made one absolutely catastrophic mistake after another, and so that's life. Man.

Making in regretting huge mistakes. No, it doesn't mean that you should just go and propagating the mistakes right, so you have take responsibility for it, but the people that I've watched in my life, who who lived properly. Let's say they learn from their mistakes, but they didn't beat themselves to death because of them. You know when you think well so they said where this was regretted infidelity, it's like what we don't take adulterers out in the public square in stone them, and so you probably shouldn't do that to yourself in only if you regret it. Well, then, what you have to do, is you have to repent and you have to a tone, and so what is repent mean? It means well, it means you have to go over what you did and you have to figure out now that you know it was a mistake you have to. Why you are so damn clueless and so damn stupid and exactly what you did wrong

with each little decision point like you know, when you first met the person that you had the affair with you probably flirted with them a little bit more than youth. Then then you, you probably flirted with them to a degree that you regard Did as risky and excessive, but you did it anyways and snow, you figure out. Well, ok. Why in the world did I think that was a good idea and you have to know exactly if you're, if you're walking down a path and you get lost in any wander off the path and you get lost you have to figure out how it is that you wandered off the path, because the purpose of of repenting. Let's say is so that when you are back on the path, first of all, you can find your way back. That would be the first the second is, so you don't wander off again. And if you wandered off once then you're prone to wandering off in that manner, and so then you have to figure out why your prone to wandering off in that manner right down to the most

painful level of detail. To figure out how not to do it again, and then, as soon as you figure out, how not to do it again, then you should stop beating yourself up. You know because you ve learned your lesson. That sort of the principal like outlined some principles of discipline for children in chapter five and one of the best principles is used no more force than is necessary. Minimal necessary force. It's a great. It's a great rule of law And you use that on yourself when you make mistakes you know, maybe you so. You have to figure out exact What you did wrong by your own criteria, Like you said you did something wrong. You said he regretted it. Ok, you did something wrong. Otherwise, you wouldn't regret it, or this maybe you're, just regretting the fact that mocked up your life

and you actually, no one. That's that's feeling, sorry for yourself, that's not regretting it, so you don't have to sort those things out, because you don't get to feel sorry for yourself. You just get to regret it and if you re regret, it you did something wrong and then you have Figaro you did wrong exactly right down to the detail levels and what was wrong your perception and your beliefs that lead you in that direction and what you have to do to put that right and then you have to put it right. And then maybe you have to go around, make amends to all the people that you hurt and then you have to be back and then perhaps you ll find yourself back on the path and then you have to stay on. The path is best. You can and and and that's ok in some sense, because if we all had to pay the ultimate price for our sins, every single one of us would be dead. So you are. This is partly why the Khan

of original sin is so useful and everyone feels it because everyone's guilt, and everyone's ashamed of themselves. So we have in built sense of something. Wrong and if we can't name it then torrents us and that's why the The original sin is so useful, even though it has perhaps some conceptual problems associated with it, and perhaps it's not all good, but in this particular situation you know you're a bad person, but so as everyone else so mark you out as particularly horrible. That doesn't mean the horrible. This isn't real, but not just you and then what you do about it. If you try to be better and that's what you do about what's wrong with you to begin with every every of us, we ve all got things to learn man and plenty of them. The world isn't what it could be, an that's our fault, and so we ve got lots

learn and so do you and you try to learn it and you you treat yourself with A firm enough hand so that you learn and not a harsh, hand so that you die while you're learning. So that's that and I have to stop because the clock has hit zero and that's the end of the night.

Thank you very much. Thank you. All very much for coming out was a pleasure to be here and Hamilton tonight. If you sound this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's lux maps of meaning the architecture of belief or his new or best seller, twelve rules for life in antidote to chaos. Both these works dolls. Much deeper into the topics covered in the joint, be Petersen POD, see, Jordan, be Petersen, dot com for audio e book in text links or pick up the books at your favorite bookseller. Next, week were releasing conversation between Milo, you, nautilus and dad The conversation was recorded April. Eleventh, twenty nineteen

for. Those of you who don't know em Milo is a journalist, performance artist, comedian. Amongst other, more provocative thanks. You know you ve been less in the public eye, I've been a child, you ve, been retired work, I sort of forty million books. I made millions of dollars. I have more nice. Not to do it, and I am deeply in love with, I could die happy tomorrow. I helped to get a present office on one of the seven people Trump and office, and that's not egotism. That's right! I'm one of the seven people to put some trouble in office. I can die having you might be new Jude Burger Jerry for you. As a consequence, we made it clear what happens after I die for that particular crime who knows, but but activists like I have accomplished more than the vast majority of people working. This has caused more of an uproar than most people Couple weeks after this conversation took place, Milo was kicked off of Instagram and Facebook. Dad wanted to have a conversation to get us back story how he came to be. Who is now and

Next week's episode doves into that so touchy dies, then hope you ve enjoyed this week's episode by follow me on my? U to channel Jordan, be Petersen on Twitter at Jordan, be Petersen on Facebook at Doktor, Jordan be Petersen and against a grandma Jordan Dog be DOT Petersen. Details on this show access to my blog information about the tour dates and other events, and my list of recommended books can be found on my website. Jordan be Petersen dot com. My online writing programmes designed to help people straightened out their past understand themselves in the present and develop a sophisticated vision and strategy for the future can be found itself authoring. Dot com that self authoring dot com from the west. Would one podcast network.