Moment 51 - Jordan Peterson: How Struggle Makes Us Stronger

00:01I' really contended with this idea of struggle and chaos in my life and the role it plays and once upon a time, I thought I was trying to rid my life of chaos and struggle. I thought that's why I was trying to get rich and get the Ferrari and the blonde. I thought that would create a life um free of free of struggle. But then I looked at some studies, and I heard about this thing called gold medal depression when olympians come back from the Olympics and they've lost orientation, and then the day when someone offered to buy my company for a. 899 figure number and it filled me with this emptiness and this dread and I and I and I tried to understand the role that struggle would, would, would have to play for me to be a fulfilled human being for the rest of my life. Yeah.

00:42well that the observation with regard to your company, that's a, that's a great observation. I mean we're built to walk uphill. And when you. Reach the pinnacle of the hill. You want to stop and appreciate the vision, but the next thing you want is a higher hill in the distance because it's the uphill climb that it's, it's from the uphill climb that we derive our value and I mean this technically. So almost all the positive emotion we feel, especially the, the, the, the emotion that fills us with enthusiasm and that's to be filled with the spirit of god by the way, because that's what enthusiasm means, that's. Experienced in relationship to a goal and so in some sense, and this is part of the religious enterprise, you want a goal that you can never attain.

01:29Right. So you can always move closer to the goal that recedes as you move towards it. You think, well that's frustrating, it's like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill but it's not because as you pursue that goal, you put yourself together and your life does get better and richer and more abundant. And that's why the highest levels of virtue and goal or in some sense transcendent, you want them to be above everything you're doing. So you can continually move towards something that's more sublime and better. That's what you are' you're here to live, not to.

02:01Not to sleep. And the problem with the vision of Mai tais on the beach is that well first of all that's an invision, that's a vision of of drug induced unconsciousness. Second, it's only going to work for about a week. Third, you're going to be a laughingstock in a month and depressed and aimless and and goalless. It's no that's not it's it's you want a horizon of ever expanding possibility. And so it does happen to people as they cause they've staked their soul on the attainment of an instrumental goal and it can be a pretty high order goal, it was in your case, but then you think. Well I've now I'm there. Now what? Well, the answer can't be. Well, I'm going to live in the lap of luxury and never have to leave the f, what do you want to be a giant infant with a gold with a gold bottle?

02:49You never have to do anything but lay in your back and suck it's like, well you see the problem with that as a as a. As a conceptualization, it's no you want to be. Like an active warrior moving uphill with your sword in hand and that's, that's dynamic, that's exciting.