Jordan Peterson: Beyond Order
12 More Rules for Life:
Rules 7-12
episode 131
SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 131. I’m your cohost Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by the man that creates order in the life. Yes. Mr. Mark Pearson. Freeland. Good morning, mark. Good morning, Mike. I hope you, and I can bring a bit of a less chaos and order to the lives of you and me as well as our listeners today.
Well, I don't know if we can do it, but I know someone who can and his name is Jordan Peterson. That's right. Today is part four of our Jordan Peterson series and Mike part two of (buy on Amazon). And it is. I got to tell you, mark, it is a big body of work, 24 rules, sort of these modern relevant, they're almost like little mini values or principles that you might choose to at least consider maybe adopt.
But I think they're spot on to some social trends and themes that I think affect us [00:01:00] all. And I think that's why. There's always room for some consideration of Jordan Peterson's rules. But my question for you is we've got the final six in this journey coming up today. How would you characterize the kind of rules that we're going to sort of digest and code today where you were right there?
They are very encompassing the 24 as a, as a group. And I'd say that this final six, this final part, so that we're digging into bring it all home. You know, we've learned about habits and reflection, awareness, and ownership, and I don't think these final six rules are anything. We're not going to miss out.
They're building on what we learned within his first book, or at least the first book of the week covered 12 rules for life and takes it that step further. As we encourage awareness and ownership in, in this kind of chaotic life. I, and what I would propose to you and to all of our listeners is that what we have in [00:02:00] front of us today is the chance to.
Really challenge ourselves. I mean, these are really our first principles on how are we going to live our lives. And I think we're going to cover everything from being resilient to being aware, kind of tackling the past and how to work forward in the future. So it's going to be a great show for anyone that wants to be the best version of themselves.
I E every single moonshot that is listening to this show right now, we are going to learn out loud together. We are going to dive into this body of work is really challenging. It, I walk away from every one of these shows feeling like I got something a little extra that I wasn't expecting, and I'm sure that's going to happen here.
So, mark, where do we start this adventure? Let's dig into rule number seven. So this is the second half of beyond order 12 morals for life. And in [00:03:00] this rule that Jordan Peterson is going to introduce us is about stretching ourselves to find our limits. Yeah. And then rule three is now it gets to that work as hard as you can, as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
But it is a corollary to that. It's like, well, one of the things you want to discover when you're young or one of the things you want to discover. At some point in your life, it's better to discover it when you're in your twenties, I think is, well, just how hard can you work on something? You know, like if you pick something, I don't care what it is.
Again, you think I'm going to go flat out on this and see what happens. And that's also useful too, because there's no other way of really discovering your limits. Right. And you kind of want to know what your limits are. I think one of the things you need to do in your life at some point is push yourself farther than you can go, you know?
So you kind of push yourself past the point of exhaustion, like, oh, that's good. There's the point of exhaustion? Well, you can't stay [00:04:00] there because if you stay at the point of exhaustion for any length of time, well then, you know, you'll, you'll degenerate, right? Cause that that's just too much, but you can find that point and then you can pull back and you can think, okay, well, I can't go farther than that.
I kind of know where my limit is. Now I can pull back and I can operate within that limit. But then at least, you know where your limit is and that's an unbelievably useful thing to do as well. And the other thing too is it's like, well, how are you ever going to discover if you could possibly be successful at whatever you want to be successful at, unless you push yourself in at least one direction, right.
To your bloody limit. And it's another thing, you know, it's another thing that we don't teach young people and it's quite striking to me because it seems kind of obvious. It's like, well, who are you? You're 19, you're 20. Who are you? Well, you don't bloody know how do you know? It's like six years ago you were 13.
You don't know anything. So. Well, so what are you capable of? What you don't know? Well, how are you gonna find out, well, you're gonna push [00:05:00] yourself at something farther than you can go. When then you have some sense of where your limits are and, you know, your limits are going to be, they're not going to be where you think they are in all probability, or some of them will be a little closer than you want them to be.
But a lot of them you'll be able to push yourself way farther than you think. And so that's, that's an unbelievably useful thing to do. And so that's, and then maybe, you know, if you really wanted to get ambitious about it, you could push yourself as far as you could go in five or six different directions and just find out like, well, where are your contours?
You know, what, what, what exactly are the limitations of this form that you're inhabiting? And you get some sense of who you are and what you're good for now, that's a lot, it's part of the reason why I'm, I'm not happy with this continual injunction in our society to, well, to have more self-esteem or to be happy.
It's like, well, first of all, good luck with being happy and well, it's just not going to work out. When you're not happy, you know, and things are gonna come along that are going to make you not happy. And then if the whole [00:06:00] purpose of being is to be happy and you're not happy, then as soon as you're suffering, you're done because you got nothing.
There is so much let me just try and give you a quick selection of thoughts that came to me. He talked about pushing your limits in order to have the aha that you can go way further than you might imagine. That is great. The other interesting thing that you see in this story of pushing yourself is that it also sets boundaries for your circle of competence.
It helps you understand the games you want to play. The games you shouldn't play. There is so much in this and. I always come back to this idea that there is a big difference between happiness and fulfillment. And I think he pointed on another thing that, which was, you know, if [00:07:00] you're sort of naively in the search of utopia and happiness, then life is just going to be tough because it's full of challenge of hardship.
And we have a great rule at the end of this show that really brings this home. But my, there was so much in that clip. I don't, I mean, I'm just giving you the three things that really jumped out to me. Where, where do we start breaking this down? Well, I think start with what Jordan Peterson calls out. You don't learn this at school.
You don't get taught to stretch yourself or. Perhaps go and try lots of different things. So I want to really dig into that and understand, okay, well, how can we, and our listeners do that, you know, perhaps we're not in school anymore, but I'd say that we're still learning. We can still learn out loud together with our listeners.
We can learn each day that we wake up and I wonder what the best way to practice this stretching and practice this, you know, [00:08:00] exposure to finding your limits is, is going to be well, I, you know, talking about limits and so forth, you know, I quite literally spent a vast majority of the first 20 years of my life.
Never going close to my limits. And then I've spent the second half of my life pushing my limits. And. Really seeing things through and the reward and satisfaction that you get when you bloody well stick at it versus like giving up in the face of the first sign of adversity. I mean, this is such a powerful thought, isn't it?
It's, it's huge because it, again, I think it's pretty. Relatable. It's pretty common. I think it's very, especially nowadays where we have lots of gratification, it's quite easy to go and find or buy or [00:09:00] receive whatever you want. You know, whether you wanted a coffee right now, or you wanted a a drone or an iPad for a lot of people, it's, it's quite easy to go and source those.
And it's, I think made us a little bit soft because we're no longer fighting for that receivable. I think we can still fight for perhaps achievements at work. But if you were to ask somebody who's maybe starting out in their career, Hey, you haven't achieved. Such and such you haven't achieved that title of that role.
And that sounds like what's motivating you. How do you feel? I think you're going to find that they're feeling pretty unmotivated because they haven't received it yet. So this, this inability to want to drive work hard to achieve that next level is possibly because they're not ready to go out and give it a go and work as hard as they can.
Yeah. I think here it's like, what we can do to kind of live this rollout is to set [00:10:00] ourselves a healthy stretch goal. Yes. What do you think? So, so give it let's, let's do this as a bit of an exercise. Is there a stretch goal that you can think about in any part of your life that would be really kind of paying homage to this idea of work as hard as you possibly can and at least one thing and see what happens?
What, what would be one thing you could. Push as hard as you could on, ah, yeah. It's, it's it's a great question. It's I think it's the reflect. It's the self reflection, you know, we're already learning out loud, digging into it every single week. And I'd say that I definitely do perhaps more than more than some, but what I could do is go even further.
I can go much deeper. I'll do my 10 minutes of meditation every day. I'll do my journaling. I'll do my stretching. I, I, sorry. I mean, [00:11:00] physical stretching, rolling and so on, but I can take all those another level higher. And that could be quite interesting to see where my attention deviates, where my body deviates.
It could be quite interesting to go and do that. How about you, Mike? Where, where would you work as hard as you possibly can? Yeah. So, so I, I would say that to come back to what I said earlier, because I was shall we say a little on the lazy side for the first half of my life? And I believe that now, actually.
Yeah. Well, I sort of probably, I mean, I probably need to go and sit on the couch and talk to Jordan Peterson about this, but my sort of when I had my aha moment at the age of 20 and I was like, dang, I think I might want to apply myself right now. I think I had a very [00:12:00]dramatic counterbalance. So I kind of got into base mode and then just never really got out of it.
I think that perhaps the working hard as you possibly can, was always there from a work perspective, you know, doing my job. But I think that has now been put into a much bigger picture of working on my health and wellness and working on things outside of work and putting my, like, for example, running.
So I'm doing a lot of running and I'm working really hard. So I have holidays coming up. And I will attempt a 20 kilometer run on my holiday, which I've never done. So the largest, longest distance I've ever gone is 16 kilometers. So I'm going to put a 20 there and that will, it will absolutely amaze you.
If [00:13:00] you had said to me a year and a half ago Mike, you can smash out 16 kilometers once a week. I would have said you're crazy. But as what I do now so on the, on the holidays, I will go for 20 kilometers. So I'm very excited about, oh, wow, good work. I mean, isn't it interesting. It's a perfect demonstration of the power of Jordan Peterson's rules because you can interpret them.
Physically emotionally or career-driven. Yeah. And listen, a little personal professional. I think that's the power of a good parable or a good metaphor is it has that, that way wide application, right? Yeah. I totally agree. And we're going to come on to talk about you know, relation yeah. Ships, vices, and so on in the rest of this show.
And again, it just shows us how, how applicable they all are to us, Mike. I th I th I think one thing I want to say [00:14:00] before we, before we move on to this next clip, is that what Jordan pointed at, at the end there is going to be a theme that we come back to, which is get ready to change your expectations of happiness.
I think that and this was incredibly powerful in my own personal case. Once I figured out. That hard work was part of feeling much more than just happy, but feeling satisfied, fulfilled that I am living up to my purpose in life. And that equation, that the choice that we always talk about in the Showmax to be the best version of yourself, the thing that I discovered and the thing I work on every single day is being prepared to do the work, to encounter the hardship, to embrace the discomfort, [00:15:00] give up the false hood of utopia and find that life is all about, you know, going through the obstacle, not avoiding it, not judging it, going through the obstacle.
I think that really sets us up for this show. And I think if you, and I pause for a moment. Once you have that. One of the most fundamental things that you need to do is to embrace the moment and to be in the here and now, right? Yeah, you're totally right. And that is gonna bring us nicely into this, this next clip, which is rule eight, Jordan Peterson's beyond order 12 morals for life, which is exactly that this next rule is all about noticing what's right in front of you.
I've, I've been telling people online in various ways and in lectures that they should start fixing up the world by cleaning up the room. And I wanted to just elaborate on that a little bit before I get [00:16:00] back to the lecture itself. So as say, it's become this internet weird internet meme, you know, and, and.
And it's a joke and good. It's a joke. I really happy about the fact that so much of this has got like the leaving of humor in it. It's really important because that's what stops things from degenerating into, into conflict humor. And I was thinking about this idea of cleaning up your room in relationship to the mustard seed idea.
And you see the thing about cleaning up your room. This is also something I learned from Carl Young and his studies on alchemy because for young, when the Alchemist was attempting to make the philosopher's stone, he was not only engaged in the transformation of the material world, but he was engaged in a process of self transformation that occurred.
At the same time as the, as the chemical Trent, as the chemical transformation. So it was a psychological work. In some sense, let's say you want to S sort out your room and beautified, cause the beauty is also important. And let's say that all you have is just a little room. Like you're [00:17:00] not rich, you're poor and you don't have any power.
That's another thing, but you've got your damn room and you've got this space right in front of you. You know, that, that, that's a part of the cosmos that you can come to grips with and you might think, well, what's there in front of you, right in front of you. And the answer to that is it depends on how open your eyes are.
That's the proper answer, because you could say William like said this, for example, eldest Huxley made comments that were very similar, that in a transcendent state, you can see infinity in the finite and you might say, well, you can say, and you can see infinity in what you have within your grasp. If you look, and you could say, maybe that's the case with your room.
And so you want to clean up your room. Well, okay. How do you do that? Exactly. Well, the room is a room is a place to sleep. And so if you set your room up properly, then you figure out how to sleep and when you should sleep and how you should sleep. And then you figure out when you should wake up and then you figure out, well, what clothes you should wear because they have to be arranged properly in your dresser.
And then you have to have some place to put your clothes. And if you're going to have [00:18:00] some clothes, you have to figure out what you're going to wear those clothes to do, right? And then that means you have to figure out what you're going to do. And then your room has to serve that purpose because otherwise it isn't set up properly.
And if it doesn't set up, if it doesn't serve your purposes, you will be unhappy and not happy in the room. Because the way that we perceive the world is as a place to move from point a to point B in. And then if the place that we're in facilitates that movement, then we're happy to be there. And if the place that we're in.
Serves as an obstacle to that movement, then we're unhappy to be there. And so what it means to set up your room is that you have to have somewhere to go that's worthwhile, or you can't set up your room and then your room has to be set up to facilitate that you'll learn by doing that. And then maybe you'll learn enough by doing that so that you can fix up your family a little bit.
And then having done that you'll have enough characters so that when you try to operate in the world at your job, or maybe in the broader social spheres, that you'll be a force for good instead of harm, because you'll have [00:19:00] learned some humility by noting just how difficult it was to put your damn room together well and yourself for that matter.
And so you'll proceed cautiously with your eyes open towards the good. Mark. This visceral operates on so many levels. It could be completely abstract or insanely practical. I'm just at a loss, which way do we want to take it? Yeah, it's funny. Isn't it work as hard as you possibly can. One, we can relate easily to relationships live career.
And so this one is that a little bit more cerebral, isn't it? Because we can go in different directions again. So let me see if I can break it down for you, Mike, and you can help me by building on top of it. Okay. So I'm hearing two distinct thoughts within this rule. The first one is about open your eyes awareness and noticing that the, that you even have a room to prepare.
And in [00:20:00] this case, I mean a room I'm in your life, your situation around you, as well as maybe even your consciousness. Once you have the, your eyes open enough to notice that and think, okay, I have control over it, this room, whether it's physical or metaphorical, I can then facilitate and design a safe space to utilize and use when things get a little bit uncomfortable.
So, okay. So if I and then physical space and because you're right, we could go one of two ways. You could quite literally design your house. You could create this beauty for room and you could use that as a safe space where I think Jordan's taking it. Yeah. Do that in your own mindset as well. Spend the time to design, prepare yourself.
So yeah, when things get a little bit tough, maybe anxiety, stresses, depression. Yeah. Whatever it might be, build that room in your mind [00:21:00] so that you can go and utilize it when needed. Gotcha. So, so he's, he's like create a space where you can be present. Now, how on earth do you do that? Might like, where do we look to for some guidance on that?
Well, look, I mean, our listeners the further side a few times, but I believe it starts with taking ownership straight away to know nobody else around me can influence the way that I feel. I'm actually in control of my reaction, my emotions to things. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say that If you've taken that responsibility look no further than the show we did on Eckhart Tolle, the power of now, like how you can get through some of the suffering, the anxiety, the monkey [00:22:00] mind.
That's a great place to start, right? I would say breath, meditation, journaling. These are all the things to create one beautiful room. It's true. And my, yeah, what's funny actually is when I was digging into Jordan's rules before today's recording. And when we were digging into the, into the clips and doing our, doing our homework, as our listeners will hopefully be pleased to hear.
I actually interpreted in a slide in a different way. And it's interesting. For me to go through listening to these rules again with you and our listeners, and actually interpreting things in a slightly different way. And again, I think that's the power of Peterson's rules here. They do something perhaps different to a lot of people and you can interpret them in different ways.
I just wanted to share that with you because that's Xing moment. My brain just went through. Yeah. So, [00:23:00] so I would say like a super practical way to create that that room is I like to think about the mornings as the one beautiful room of my day life, house metaphor. So for me, you know, if I spend the first hour of the morning, wake up almost always without an alarm cold shower stretch, breathe, journal, meditate.
I looked to get all of that done in the, in the first hour of the day. And I feel that is you might call that an anchor or just getting things off to a damn good start. Like the funny thing is I'll even I'll even do breath work and meditate and journal. Before I go for a run on the weekend, like actually don't change this routine.
The only time I change it is if I have [00:24:00] to get up insane the early to take my son to a big sports match that th just might physically just need this sleep and I'll pass them. But for the most part that to me is this one beautiful room concept for me. What is it for you? Well, I I'll try not to.
Say the same answer because actually the truth is I think my morning, it's a bit of a, a ritual for me as well. I'll certainly follow a semi similar routine. So let me see if I can instead reflect on my weekends. So my safe room will be my Sunday evenings, where I have gone through the process of maybe reflecting on the week.
I've probably spent the weekend doing exercise, trying to get out and about having some fresh air, maybe seeing my, my wife or my friends, whoever it might be. Then in the evening, I make time within my day or let's call it my room to [00:25:00] speak to friends and family in different countries. So during the week, I'll collaborate with, with colleagues and customers and so on, but on the weekend, it's mostly reserved for family, for friends.
And I now have a habit and routine of spending a couple of hours every single Sunday evening to really make time to go and do that. And by doing that, I'm very, very, I'm very happy. I'm comfortable with family relationships. I feel as though I've done what I can, even though in a crazy world where we can't travel as much, that's something that I feel has, has been a benefit to come up from it.
That's great. And I, and I think what you can see is we all have these rituals and habits that create this beautiful room in your house. And I think Just knowing that you need to do those and then find out what your recipe is. I mean, that is the best, the very best advice that you know, that I can give [00:26:00] when I think about working through this.
So once you kind of got those those habits and those routines that do indeed make one of those rooms as beautiful as possible, you know, the other thing you have to realize, and this is why I called it out as an opening theme is our capacity to work through the challenges of life. And once you've accepted that, you know, happiness doesn't fall off the back of a truck.
And in fact, it's not even you know, it's a naive. Notion to think that you'll be perfectly happy all of your life, but once you're prepared to like, you know, put in the work to overcome challenge and obstacle, I think one of the interesting things that this next rule from Peterson deals with is tackling things that horn tasks from the past.
And, you know, look, let's be honest, all families have a level of [00:27:00] dysfunction or childhoods have some drama and suffering and we carry those things. And what's so fantastic about this clip I'm about to play is Jordan has got a tip for us on how we can deal with those memories of old. No, because people think that the purpose of memory is to remember the past.
And that's not the purpose of memory. The purpose of memory is to extract out from the past lessons to structure the future. And that that's the purpose of personal memory. And so you're done with a memory when you've extracted out the information that you can use to guide yourself properly in the future.
So if you have a traumatic memory, for example, that's really obsessing you. If you analyze that memory to the point where you figured out how you put yourself at risk, and you can determine how you might avoid that in the future, then the emotion associated with that goes away. So memories has a very pragmatic function and cultural memory is the same thing is that we need to [00:28:00] extract out stories from our past that structure, our future.
And we need that because first of all, if you don't have a purpose, let's say it isn't that your life becomes neutral in a meaningless sense it's that your life becomes characterized by unbearable suffering because the baseline condition of life is something like unbearable suffering. And what you have to set against that is a noble and worthwhile purpose.
And hopefully, hopefully you're done termination of that purpose is buttress to some degree by the wisdom of the past, because you can't conjure something like that up on your own. And if you provide people with nobility of purpose, then they can tolerate the suffering of existence without becoming entirely corrupted by it and cultures that don't do that.
It isn't even so much that they die. It's that cultures that don't do that are dead. They're done. They don't have a story anymore and they don't have a call to adventure. And then, well then everyone suffers stupidly as a consequence. It's a very bad thing. So [00:29:00] Churchill made the same observation that many of the great psychologists and philosophers made in the early part of the 20th century.
It's like, bring the story forward and propagate it and make it the most noble possible story. And then you motivate people to do, to transcend themselves, which they need to do. Pragmatic use of history in order to heal or to, to find direction. I mean, for my, this rule from Peterson is kind of like a map to me.
It's it's showing the journey on where you want to go, but in order to get where you want to go, you need to know where you've been previously. It, again, it feels to me as though this act of reflection and awareness seems to be a recurring theme in Peterson's experience, which remember he's gone through hundreds of hours of, of, [00:30:00] of education and therapy with, with patients.
Hasn't he as, and it sounds like he's been hanging out with Matthew McConaughey, right? Yes, exactly. Because we had that great story from McConnell. Hey, how he. Just not only did he journal, but he re-read his journal, which was, that was a new idea. Like going back to your journal to see how you're thinking, he talked about journaling when things are good, not only when they're bad, right.
Finding out what is it that you were doing when it was good is as equally powerful as, as reflecting on challenge. And isn't this crazy that whether it's Peterson McConaughey, we're seeing the ability to purge yourself of past memories, challenges, obstacles. Drama whatever it is, you gotta get it out of the system.
And that's why writing the literally the act of writing is so cathartic. You just is like the squeezing of the pimple. [00:31:00] This is like, get it out. Right. Just get it out. I think though, what's really interesting here is that it's also the term he's putting on this, as he explained this idea. He's not just saying, just write it, but it should be the fuel to being a better see you tomorrow.
Don't let it be a shackle of, of, of guilt, of emotion, of whatever kind of hardship is associated with it. You simply. Don't let yourself become a big suffering blob. Did you have the choice to say it sucked? Here's what it was in all its color and gory. It was terrible, but I'm better for it. Yes. And I'm going to make this a lesson that I.
Carrie with myself, I share with others, help others overcome. Like, that's the turn that he's [00:32:00] really saying here. It's, it's really about using old memories using past dramas to fuel a better you and that's very Zaha had did it's very much what we have seen. Brenae brown discuss. So if you're interested in either of those two ladies, just go into our back catalog at moonshot study, you will find the archives and you can dig into the shows there.
But to me, the, the turn here is it's not just simply writing it down, it's turning it into a fuel, letting it be something that positively affects the future. I think that's very important, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And when you use it as a fuel, you can then help others. So if, if that wasn't, if finding peace within yourself, wasn't enough of a motivation for people.
I think. If you can reflect on where you've been, what you've learned, how you can get better, that'll [00:33:00] improve your ability to be a leader or a partner or a father or a mother, whatever it might be by doing that hard work and understanding yourself and reflecting on where you've been and where you want to go, you can then help inspire or drive others.
I think. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, listen, look, we're halfway through. We've already dug into some pretty heavy duty stuff like picking something and just going as hard as you possibly can making one room in the metaphorical house as beautiful as possible. Write out those old memories, purchase off, turn them into a good thing.
Well, it's pretty chunky stuff. I mean, this is an entree main meal dessert, and we're only halfway through. Yeah. We've still got quite a long way to go with regards to you know, reflecting on relationships, taking ownership or allowing yourself to become too. [00:34:00] Well, I don't want to give it away. And also gratefulness Mike, you know, three huge, more rules that we're going to be bringing out and learning out loud together.
I'll tell you what else we're doing together. And that is we are building our membership community for. Moonshots and I am so fired up to say that we can welcome another member. Another patron of the moonshots podcast. I am so excited that we will be launching our first members only show, which is a master series, where we go in sanely deep into the themes that we are learning.
Mark. I mean, how exciting is this what our team Mike has essentially Grown by almost 50%. Doesn't it? You guys so great to, to welcome Bob [00:35:00] and rafaelle who are our first members and they will be some of the first people to hear our completely new show, which is in addition to this show, we ain't changing anything about the moonshots podcast, but if you become a member of moonshots, you will be able to get access to our very special, exclusive moonshots master series.
And boy mark, in this master series, we go deeper. Yeah. Deep is exactly what we do. It's going to be a comprehensive reflection, Mike, on, on a lot of the collection of ideas that we've uncovered through doing 131 shows. Along with an additional layer of practical frameworks and templates that you and I can utilize during the show, as well as provide to our listeners.
Yeah. And I would put a call out right now to all of our listeners. We would [00:36:00] really love your membership support because we put a huge amount of effort into this show. We take on the costs of doing this show, all of the hosting and services, but most importantly, we spend a lot of time. We have a researcher that works with us.
There's a lot of people and effort going into the production of this show. We'd love your support because we don't pump cheesy ads into the show. We just want you to be part of it. And if you join as a member you'll be able to nominate shows, give us feedback, doing all sorts of fun working sessions.
There will be so much for you to enjoy and we would appreciate it because it would give us the means to continue doing the show. And we want you guys to be part of it. We want to hear from you. We want your support, your participation. So go on, become a member, just go to moonshots.io, click on the member button.
[00:37:00] Join up because in just a few weeks, we will be launching the first episode for the moonshot master series and markets on motivation. And it is a huge piece of work. Isn't it? Yeah. It's, it's fun pulling together thinking about those lessons and those, those matrixes of ideas that we've uncovered within 131 shows and connecting them to people that we haven't even covered.
Mike individuals throughout history, as well as contemporary that connect to these themes that we've started to understand and uncover all the way through to practical application. Yeah. It's like in the, in the upcoming, if you become a member, you can get access to this new show and which will include everything from Henry before Gaga, Goggins, author, Daniel pink.
I mean, it is such a, an amazing deep show. You get lots of worksheets, so you can really work on it. I mean, we are taking things. Another level, all you gotta do is go to [00:38:00] moonshot. Study, become a member. It is like mark. Let's be honest. What is it? A dollar a week. Yeah. Yeah. It's a dollar a week. In Australia, the best version of yourself to get the inspiration, the tips.
I mean, what a small investment. Small investment. In fact, Mike, if we're going to be keeping the moonshot show going just as all of our listeners have been listening to for 131, maybe we should call the master series. This solar, the solar powered shot, because it's going to be stratospheric. Isn't it. It's going to be, oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh, whatever we call it is going to be just another level of becoming the best version of yourself. So head over to moonshots.io, become a member. We would deeply appreciate that small contribution to help us do the show had to help us invest in the show and to help you become the best version of yourself.
[00:39:00] Mark. Good stuff. We are ready to go to the final three thoughts from Mr. Jordan Davison. And you know what, we're going to take a twist. I don't believe that we have really talked about relationships of the more intimate sense on this show. So get ready, get out your glass of red wine, get your red roses ready because Jordan Peterson even has advice for us on how we can nurture romance in our lives.
You're dating when you're establishing a relationship, while you put some effort into it, you know, you, you decide that you're going to go out for dinner and you dress up to some degree. And you know, you try to present yourself to each other in some halfways, mutually acceptable manner. And you hope that there's going to be a positive consequence of that, that you're going to find each other attractive.
But then as people somehow think that once they're married, that the same amount of [00:40:00] effort isn't necessary and that's wrong, I would say. More effort is necessary on the same front and you have to think it through. It's like, you know, if you don't want to be bitter about the intimate element of your relationship, how much time do you have to spend together each week?
And my, my rule of thumb sort of derived from clinical observations is that you need to spend 90 minutes a week with your partner talking. And that means you're telling each other about your life and staying in touch, you know, so that you each know what the other is up to. And you're discussing what needs to be done to keep the household running smoothly.
And you're laying out some mutually acceptable vision of how the next week or the next months are going to go together. Right? So that, that keeps your narratives locked together. Like a, like the strands in a rope. You need that for 90 minutes or you drift apart, right. Let's dig into this mic because what I would propose to you is this is not [00:41:00] just.
Relevant and applicable to relationships that you might have romantically, but to your communication and collaboration with other people, such as your, your career, your friendships, those people out in the world, I would say that anyone with whom you have a deep partnership, whether it's, if the romantic or professional sense you need to work on the relationship.
And I think we often forget to do so. Like my, my personal experience is I was, I was in fact talking with my wife the other day and it made me realize how much is going on in our lives that we need to. Discuss to get aligned on whether it's from, you know, we, we have a teenage son who's traveling, forming, so we're constantly readjusting our style of parenting because there's no use parenting a [00:42:00] 15 year old, like a 12 year old.
So that's just one thing. Then there is your house, then there's all your affairs. There is all your estate. There's everything from life insurance. Then there's taking care of the parents and the family members. Then there's like nurturing the friendships. I mean, it is, there is so much going on. Who's doing the groceries.
What? Who's sorting this out. Yeah. Like there's so much need to, with your relationships to work on the relationship and not just work in the relationship. And I think that is the big problem. People get stuck working in a relationship. Whether it's of the romantic nature, just enjoying the company of the person or whether it's at work, just being co-founders together or whatever, but you need to create moments where you work on the [00:43:00] relationship.
So it's less about what you're doing. It's more about how and why you're doing it. Hm. So, Mike, what is the secret sauce do you think to work on the relationship? Well, let's, let's take professional relationships. I would say what is really critical is don't keep talking with a peer or a manager about the status of current work.
I think we become overly preoccupied with what I'm working on right now. In these relationships. So let's just say for our listeners, they're thinking about the conversation they have with their boss. Okay. Now chances are, that is often informed by what they're working on now. Today's project. Well, you should have [00:44:00] time to perhaps talk about where you are going as a professional, what and what might be the perfect next project.
What might be a good stretch goal in the next project or the level of responsibility that they have, perhaps they want to talk about what's their vision for themselves in the next five or 10 years? What sort of personal development do they need to work on? They might want to go and do 16 personalities.com or they might want to do Myers Briggs to reflect on strengths and weaknesses, and then have a conversation with their manager, perhaps do that conversation in a different setting.
Than what they normally do, their daily or weekly thinker. What I'm doing here is that is a means between you and one other person to kind of work on the relationship, not just in it, because if you say, Hey, I got a project [00:45:00] and I'm stuck at a stage three because so-and-so from the other department hasn't given me X, Y, and Z.
This is often the majority of the conversation between a manager and someone that they report and someone that reports to them. What I would do is think about yourself. Having a board of advisors, think about yourself as having a mentor and coaching conversations. Don't just talk about run of business standard, operating procedures, statuses, and updates.
That's when you're stuck in the relationship and you're not working on the relationship. That's a great set of tips, Mike. I think you're totally right. Have the, the create the means to both, both parties engage, brings something to the table metaphorically, and rather than spend all your time, you know, just catching up on that sort of status what's going on again and have those big conversations.
Yeah. Yeah. So a [00:46:00] great example would be if you are having, let's flip it into personal, let's say your working on things with your partner. Now, if you're a young professional, or maybe you have a family, there's going to be a lot of topics that take up a conversation and invariably, you will talk about what.
You are doing, but what I would suggest, and this is so cheesy, but this is why, and couples with kids have structured regular date nights because they're making time to work on the relationship. And one of the things you can do on your date night with your partner is ban all conversation about work.
Yes. Yeah. That's a really handy one to stay present, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And to give you an idea. So, so think about it [00:47:00] like this. So I just giving you more examples of how you work. So the thinking here is the difference between working in system and onsite. So if you just say our relationship as a system think about in my role as a CEO of a company with over 200 people.
So what's really important is with clients. With staff and advisors. I have all these structured relationships. I have a board, I have a chairman and all of these have a variety of in system and on system or in relationship and on relationship. Interactions. So I have calls with clients where we will talk about big strategic long-term things that are keeping them up at night, or like I did yesterday.
I had a conversation with a large client supporting the product owner and the kind of executive [00:48:00] sponsor thinking about how we manage the workload of the second stage of the project. Even though we haven't actually finished the first stage of the project. So we didn't get into one of the things that's really important.
We've had like lots of technical integrations on the project. It's a big topic in a project, but we actually didn't discuss it at all. Yesterday. We talked about workload management and not overwhelming the team on the client side, that's working on the relationship. It's got nothing to do. Directly with the priorities of now, but these are important.
Long-term things just like I seek out a chairman and advisors to challenge me on the system that I'm building in the company. And at other moments, I have operational meetings, which helped me understand where we are in the system. So we're all the CEO of our own lives. And we need to make sure [00:49:00] that we're not in the fog.
You're right. We're not just going through the motions. There have to be moments where you actually work on the system as well. And the great learning that we get from Jordan Peterson here is that whether it's a relationship with your partner, with your colleagues at work, take a moment to make sure you're working on the system.
That's why companies have a way days or out of office days or. They'll take the whole team away for a weekend. That's working on the relationship, not in it yet. Right. And I think you've very nicely summarized the importance of all of them. Because if you get the time you plan it out, you work diligently to make those conversations worthwhile.
I mean, everybody's going to be so much more aligned, comfortable. I might not use the word happy because Peterson might slap my hand, [00:50:00] but it's so true, isn't it? It is. And you know what, if you have those little moments where you're working on the relationship, they often give you the inspiration, the motivation to keep going.
So you might not need to tackle the what's going on, but it reminds you of, oh, okay. Because you know, like if I take my wife, for example, we'll have a conversation and we'll remind ourselves of the kind of parents we want to be to our son and why that's so important to us and how we want to challenge him to think only think for himself to make good decisions.
We don't want to make his decisions. We want to help him make better decisions, give him the system and the criteria. And we have that conversation. I'm like, yes, that's the kind of parent that I want to be. And that gives you the motivation to grind through when you get a grumpy teenager in the house.
So you could see how you might. As, as [00:51:00] two founders working on the system, you might remind yourself of why you started the company in the first place. Maybe having some hard times. And when you remind yourself, yeah, that's right. We had that vision. And I still believe in that, that might just give you that extra boost to keep going.
That's great. And actually it might bring us on to a rule number 11 from Peterson's beyond order which I think is sharing a similar insight to the one you've just shared at the end there. But before I go too far, let's just jump straight into it. Let's hear Jordan Peterson telling us how to not be a victim who wants to dig down into the depths of pain and grief and guilt until the tears emerge and voluntary refusal to take notice of our emotional states is not the only impediment to dealing with them.
If your wife or husband or whomever else you were tangled up with unhappily at the moment, says something that comes too close [00:52:00] to the painful truth. For example, then a sharp and insulting remark will often shut them up and is therefore very likely to be offered. This is partly a test. Does the person being insulted care enough about you and your suffering to dig past a few obstacles and to unearth the bitter truth?
It is also partly and more obviously defensive. If you can chase someone away from something you yourself do not want to discover that makes your life easier in the present. Sadly, it is also very disappointing if that defense succeeds and is typically accompanied by a sense of abandonment, loneliness, and self betrayal.
You must nonetheless still live among other people and they with you and you have desires wants needs, and however, unstated and unclear, [00:53:00] and you are still motivated to pursue them. Not least because it is impossible to live without desire, want and need your strategy under such conditions. Show your disappointment.
When someone close to you makes you unhappy, allow yourself the luxury and pleasure of resentment when something does not go your way, ensure that the person who is transgressed against you is frozen out by your disapproval, forced them to discover with as much difficulty as possible. Exactly what they have done to disappoint you.
And finally. Let them grow up around blindly in the fog that you've generated around yourself until they stumble into and injure themselves on the sharp, hidden edges of your unrevealed preferences and dreams. And maybe these responses are tests. Two tests deeply associated with the lack of courage to trust the [00:54:00] courage.
To trust is sort of the antidote to being a victim. Isn't it. And it's to give the benefit of the doubt and to avoid yourself, right? Venting, being arrogant, being dizzy, deceitful, letting that ego run wild and judging everybody else rather than yourself. I mean, we are getting into some pretty powerful thinking.
I would say this is a great intersection between the stoic thinking of Ryan and holiday between the presence that you get from Eckhart toll and the power of now. But don't be a victim. I mean, We're all a little bit guilty of falling into the victim track, right? Yeah. It's, it gets pretty addictive.
Doesn't it? If you allow yourself to wallow for a little bit in, you know, feeling sorry for yourself or even resenting somebody, it can be a little bit, I, I dare say [00:55:00] addictive too, to try and get out of it can be quite challenging. And yeah, what I think this role is doing is building on Peterson, a rule from the 12 rules for life, where you want to tell the truth, or at least don't lie.
So don't become resentful and use lying or cheating or deceit to get ahead in life because ultimately you become a victim to your own behavior. You become a bad guy and it spirals because you're, you're in a well of negativity and who wants to hang out with someone who's a well of negativity, absolutely.
Zero. And nobody wants no one's hanging out with you are one lonely person and then guess what? You become more of a victim. Don't you it's it's borrowing circle. Isn't it? Isn't it. So that rule is again, just a really practical, but [00:56:00] also it's a call to action for me. It's reminding me. Yeah, life can be chaotic, but don't fall into the trap of either wanting to feel sorry for yourself or taking it out on others and becoming a tyrant that then makes other people be a victim to you.
Yeah. I think there's like a very cerebral way to talk about this, which is quite an emotional topic. It's all driven by ego is. Once you start resenting becoming arrogant, judging all that kind of stuff. You become a victim because there is nothing productive to come of those behaviors, nothing, nothing at all.
In fact, you're allowing things out of your control to come and affect that things that are within your control. You have a choice. You either choose to be a victim or you choose to be a survivor. That's the choice. If you look at it from a different perspective, I'm thinking of all the kind of [00:57:00] intellectual ways to process this another way is don't spend energy on a path, on an attitude or a mindset that will guaranteed delivery zero, rather wouldn't you rather say, okay, I'm not going to get upset and resentful.
I'm going to become judgmental. I'm not going to be a victim because I can take so much energy. Rather, what I'll do is I'm going to turn this into okay. What did I learn? What can I do better? How might I choose to respond to this in a way that benefits me? I love that. Yeah. There's just, no, there's nothing.
Why would you spend like a molecule of energy on being a victim? Because it is dead effort wasted. Yes. Nothing's going to come of it. Now. These are also ways in which I try to reinforce [00:58:00] to myself. When I catch myself falling into that victim trap is you have to catch yourself. There is nothing good to come of this line of thinking.
It must stop.
No to say, yeah. You just, just have to catch it and say, it's you being the most stupid person in the world. You are spending energy with a guaranteed no result. Yes. You're right. And I think it reminds me of the, the Dan Millman episode that we did actually. Yeah. Because there was an element that spoke to me within that show around noticing what does or doesn't make you inverted commas happy or have gratitude.
And there was the Jim Carey quote, the we that we've heard before from Daniel give everybody what they want and they'll realize that's not actually what they want, which is so great. It's this wasted energy by desiring or feeling sorry for [00:59:00] yourself, for something that you don't have, or maybe you've had to deal with.
It is you could be using that proactively and productively to go and get to the top of that mountain. Yeah. And, and the, the, the breakthrough here is one, you catch us thinking like a victim and then. You can put a stop to it. And then there is the next and final step, which is the last rule of beyond order by Jordan Peterson.
It is to be grateful in spite of your suffering. So let's have a listen to the man himself, Jordan Peterson, for the last time, this show and this series to share his rules for life. Everything you do matters, that's the definition of a meaningful life, but everything you do matters, you're going to have to carry that with you.
Or do you want to just forget about the [01:00:00] whole meaning thing? And then you don't have any responsibility because who the hell cares. You can wander through life, doing whatever you want, gratifying impulsive desires for how will useful that's going to be. And you're stuck in meaninglessness, but you don't have any responsibility.
Which one do you want? Well, ask yourself. Which one are you pursuing? And you'll find very rapidly that it isn't the majority of your soul. That's pursuing the whole meaning thing, because we'll look what you have to do to do that. You have to take on the fact that life is suffering F put yourself together in the face of that.
Well, that's hard Christ. It's amazing. People can even do it. I'm stunned every day when I go outside and it isn't a re a riot with everything burning, it can really, God, you talk to people. It's like, I knew this guy he'd been in a motorcycle accident and it really ruined him. And he was like a linesman, you know, working on the power.
And he was working with someone who had Parkinson's disease and they had [01:01:00] complimentary. Inadequacies. And so two of them could do the job of one person. And so they're out there fixing power lines in the freezing cold. Despite the fact that one was three quarters wrecked with a motorcycle accident and the other one had Parkinson's, it's like, that's how our civilization works.
It's like, there's all these rude people out there. They've got problems. Like you can't believe off. They go to work and do things. They don't even like, can look, the lights are on my God. It's unbelievable. It's, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. And we're so ungrateful college students, the postmodern types, they're so ungrateful, you know, they don't know that they're surrounded by it just a bloody miracle.
It's a miracle that all this stuff works, that all you crazy chimpanzees that don't know each other can sit in the same room for two hours, sweltering away without tearing each other apart because that's what chimps do. So.
Anyways. So what happened while I made some videos and I [01:02:00] got to the bottom of some things, at least as far as I can tell. So I told you what the bottom is, and then I got this idea about what you might do about it, which isn't my idea. It's like, it's not my idea. It's an old, old, old, old idea. It's far older than Christianity.
It's old. It's the oldest story of mankind. Get yourself together, transcend your suffering. See if you can be some kind of hero, make the suffering in the world less. Well, that's the way forward. As far as I can tell if there is any way forward. Oh, Jordan Peterson bringing it home at the end of part four of our series Dean into his work.
I mean, my, that final clip. If I, if I'm not inspired by Jordan's passion and enthusiasm, I don't know what it is. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's not only inspiring, but it is at the heart of what we're doing on the show. [01:03:00] If you want to be the very best version of yourself, you are choosing for road, that will be hard.
And we've talked about all the mindfulness and things that you can do and the journaling and all of that, but at the highest form of this practice of achieving the best version of yourself for going for a moonshot, then you need to not only cope. With challenge, but you need to be grateful in spite of your suffering.
You need to not only cope, it's not just about the coping mechanism, right? To trudge on to grind it out. When you know, it feels like you've chosen a mission impossible, but it's actually to say, thank you. It's [01:04:00] actually the ability to be grateful to revel, not only in fulfilling, no purpose, but the suffering that you encounter along the way.
If you can unlock your gratitude for hardship, then you are really, really setting yourself up for success. It is when athletes. Are capable of enjoying the pain of training because it, they have worked out. This is where their strength and performance comes from. Floyd Mayweather loves to train in the dead of night for the third time in the day because he knows none of these competitors do right.
He is grateful for that suffering. [01:05:00] And if you truly go into this, it is all about getting through that fight or flight response, get through the ego and to say hardship. Thank you very much. This is making me better and stronger. This is giving me the edge. And I think this is really a beautiful way to bring together all of these thoughts of Jordan Peterson.
Don't you think that yeah, as, as Jaco Willink would say it's, it's hard. You're suffering good. Yeah, totally good. Yeah, because now, now you're in, you're stretching the muscles. You're growing the muscles. You're becoming stronger, leaner faster. But this is a hard place to get to because you've got to work through a lot of things to get there.
You got to say, what do I want to be? You gotta be prepared to say, I'm going to work hard. I'm going to make a room beautiful. I'm going to get [01:06:00] over all my hangups. I'm gonna like work in and on the relationship I'm going to avoid being a victim. And I'm just going to say problems. Good. It feels like a great conclusion to the four-part series that we've done on Jordan, because I think that is the combination of what both books that we've delved into really ladder up towards isn't it go out and find the, the order or the beyond order in the chaos of that world and, and enjoy it, have be grateful for it.
Yeah. Yeah. And you can start to see and feel like all of these rules will enable you the chance, the shot at fulfilling that, that last role. So as we get to the end of this series, mark, I mean, I have to, to ask you from what we've discussed today, which one is getting your attention tomorrow? Well, [01:07:00] yeah, I think that today's six rules.
One that stands out to me the most. And to remember each day is actually going to be trying to make one room in your home as beautiful as possible. Hmm. That's awesome. Because I believe that the I'm not playing down any of the other rules, but that one for me was it was one of those aha moments. I think.
What about you? Wow. Well, I mean, I can relate to so many of these it's, it's hard to, to, to pick a winner. I would, I would probably say that learning to get comfortable. In the discomfort that last thought about being grateful. I think that one really got, I mean, you [01:08:00] could tell, I got a bit fired up on that one.
So, so I'm going to say, yeah, that one, that one was for me. Good. What about it, mark? And, and where do, where are we going to go next week? I mean, and this epic Jordan Peterson series, what's next on the moonshots agenda. Well, we love digging into what our listeners like Mike. So beginning next week and over the course of three episodes, we're going to do our second series.
As our listeners will be excited to hear our second series of the rising star series, where we go back and revisit some of our most popular shows now We have got some absolute crackers coming up, who we got coming up. So I'm so excited. We've got Nicolas tar lab. Boom, big hitter. We got Abby Wamback.
Boom. Goalscorer. I mean, talk about being grateful in spite of your suffering. Oh my [01:09:00] gosh. She's she is on-point yep. Else is good. And the man who reminds us that we've got a commentary and narrative production crew following us around each day, Mr. Joe Rogan. Embrace the discomfort. What a cracking series.
I mean, this series has been great. It's great to know. We've got so many goodies coming up and together, you and I mark, we'll listen out loud. We'll bring all of our listeners along for the journey too. So mark, I want to say, thank you. Thank you so much for helping me get to terms with 24 big rules from the man himself, Jordan Peterson, and thank you to you.
Our listeners, our moonshot is I hope that you too are enjoying this adventure where we go out. Listen, we learn and we do it all out loud so we can be the best version of ourselves. And today it was all about the next, the final installment of [01:10:00] Jordan Peterson beyond order 12 more rules for life. And these final rules started with a theme of resilience and grind work as hard as you possibly can, or at least one thing and see what happens and in order to do so you need a foundation.
So try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible. And naturally we're all humans. We need to do a bit of journaling on the lessons learned. So if old memories still upset, you write them down carefully and completely. And then we come on the build. We need to work on relationships because life is a team sport.
Don't just work in the relationships, work on the relationships too. And you might be tempted and all the interactions and collaborations to be a victim, not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, arrogant, because there is nothing good to come of that. And lastly, because everything matters in a life of meaning.
You need to [01:11:00] find an attitude of gratefulness in spite of your suffering. So there you have it. Moonshot is if we embrace these rules, I am absolutely confident that we can make things just a little bit better tomorrow and we can be on track for being the very best version of ourselves. All right. That's it for the moonshots podcast.