Jordan Peterson: Essential Rules
EPISODE 189
Jordan Peterson has crafted a modern understanding of how to pursue what is truly meaningful for you. We dive into our top 5 motivating and inspirational rules from Jordan Peterson, spanning both his books and popular global bestsellers Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life & 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Dr. Peterson has published more than a hundred scientific papers and authored books, advancing the modern understanding of antisocial behavior, play, emotion, creativity, competence, personality, and finding meaning in the chaos.
“Order is not enough. You can't just be stable, and secure, and unchanging, because there are still vital and important new things to be learned”. Jordan Peterson
INTRO
12 Rules for Life:
#4. "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today."
#7. "Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)."
#8. "Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street."
Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life:
#3. "Do not hide unwanted things in the fog."
#7. "Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.”
OUTRO
READING LIST
Jordan Peterson: 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote To Chaos
Jordan Peterson: Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
Prefer a snapshot of 12 Rules For Life. You can find it here on Blinkist. And Beyond Order: 12 More Rules here.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 189. I'm your co host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man with a plan. Mr. Mark Pearson Freeland. Good
[00:00:12] morning, mark. Hey, good morning, Mike. This is a pretty fun plan that we have planned for you. The moonshots team, our listeners, as well as our members today, isn't it.
[00:00:23] The chefs have been in the kitchen, and we've got a very timely show ahead of us today. Don't we
[00:00:30] that's right today, listeners and members, we are reviewing and revisiting and reflecting on the shows and the rules that we learned from Mr. Jordan Peterson.
[00:00:43] And he has been up to all sorts of mischief of late.
[00:00:47] He is all over the news. He's getting himself kicked off Twitter and it's funny, isn't it with guys like this? He reminds me a lot of Elon. They are both controversial newsworthy guys and with everything that's been going on with Jordan recently we just thought it would be a great idea to reflect on his work and ask ourselves what we can learn from such a figure.
[00:01:12] And we're not really gonna pass judgment on whether he should or should not be hanging out on the Twitterverse. That's for others, for us, it's all about learning out loud and he has a great body of work. And I'm sure mark, there's something we can learn from those two books that
[00:01:27] we've studied. That's right.
[00:01:29] We covered both books back in our library of moonshot shows. We did his first book, 12 rules for life and anti to chaos, as well as his follow up book beyond order 12 more rules for life. And I think it was pretty clear upon revisiting those shows as well as Peterson's body of work, that there is so much that we can learn.
[00:01:48] Like you say, Mike, we're not here to pass judgment. It doesn't really matter. That's for somebody else to comment on what we do here on the moonshot show and focus on what we can learn. I like this idea of learning out loud and proving that we can learn from so many individuals, authors, entrepreneurs, superstars, athletes, astronauts, politicians, and so on.
[00:02:11] We can learn a lot from these individuals and regardless of going deep into all the news stories and so on, taking a snapshot of these tips, these behaviors, these mindsets is what we do on the moonshot show. ISN.
[00:02:26] Yeah. And we had a, what over 20 different rules that he has captured in his two books.
[00:02:33] And we've just tried to pick four or five of them that we think they really have something to them that have really appeared a ton. One of the rules that's coming up will be all about, with whom you compare yourself. A really powerful thing. That's also something that Brene Brown talked a lot about, and there's this, there's so much wisdom about.
[00:02:56] Ancient wisdom about just not comparing ourselves to others and how it's a very slippery slope. So Jordan Peterson has some thoughts on that. What else? It wasn't easy to pick these five clips. Was it Mike? What else did you which one is sticking out for you coming up on the show that you think our listeners are gonna
[00:03:12] love?
[00:03:13] I think there's a good firm moonshots listener, favorite around growth mindset. So lots of. Evidence from Carol Dweck around the growth mindset concept. Yes. And we really have found that is a core theme or DNA or foundation of the moonshot show. Haven't we? So we've got that to look forward to.
[00:03:33] I think there's also something really specific around doing what is meaningful in your life with regard to work that was for you and I had a big aha moment when we did listen to those rules for the first time around. I think that one really stands out. What about you?
[00:03:50] Yeah, I like that one. We've also got some great moonshot models of gratitude and accountability.
[00:03:56] So I think we've pulled together five clips that not only give you the breadth of some of the work and the thinking of Jordan Peterson, but really do reflect some of the most important themes that you and I have discovered on the show together. So I think if you were to. To prepare yourself for this show.
[00:04:15] There's at least a couple here that should really land for you. We're gonna do an analysis of each of those clips and hopefully you can walk away, learning together with us and learning together with the work of Jordan Peterson and being on the path to being the best version of yourself.
[00:04:32] Mark, what do you think? Should we kick things off?
[00:04:34] Yeah, I think so. Mark. I feel ready for Jordan Peterson. So let's jump
[00:04:39] at this time. We have some thinking from the man himself about to whom we should compare ourselves.
[00:04:49] You really have to stop comparing yourself in some ways to other people. And the reason for that is that the particularities of your life are so idiosyncratic that there isn't anyone really, all that much like you, because the details of your life happen to matter.
[00:05:01] And so maybe you compare yourself to some rock star or something like that. And, the person's rich and famous and glamorous and all that, they're alcoholic and they use too much cocaine and they've had three divorces and it's like, how the hell do you make sense out of that? Is that someone that you should judge yourself harshly against or not?
[00:05:18] The answer is you don't know cuz you don't know all the details of their lives and who do you know that you can compare yourself to? That's easy for you, yes. Or you yesterday. So here's a good goal. It's something like aiming high. And I really mean that it's and we'll talk about that a little bit too.
[00:05:33] Aim high, but use it as your control. Yourself. It's so your goal is to make today some tiny increment better than yesterday, and you can use it better. You can define yourself better. This doesn't have to be some imposition of external morality, where you're weak and insufficient, where you could improve your thinking, okay this is what I'm like yesterday.
[00:05:52] If I did this little thing, things would be just an increment better. And that's a great thing because you get the ball rolling and incremental improvement is unstoppable. You can actually implement it. And it starts to generate burrito, distribution, and consequences. It starts to compound, and I've seen that happen in people's lives over and oh, and people write all the time and tell me that they're doing that, but I've seen that happen in people's lives.
[00:06:17] Continually. They make a goal that the goal should be, how could I conceive of my life so that if I had that life, it would clearly be worth living. So I wouldn't have to be bitter, resentful, deceitful, arrogant, and venge.
[00:06:32] Oh, geez. They were pretty . He was about to go dark then was
[00:06:36] he was getting into it there.
[00:06:37] But I think that's a good point to pause and reflect, cuz I think that's really what this clip and this rule number four is all about. Isn't it. Mike, it's reflecting on who you are. Who am I? Who's mark. And where was I perhaps yesterday or exactly after a significant event maybe today.
[00:06:57] Whenever it is. And instead of constantly thinking, oh, I'm not as influential as. As Peterson instead, remember that it's not a worthwhile comparison for me. Again, this is a bit of a penny drop moment because it's very easy to compare yourself, your successes, your career, your interests and hobbies, even to somebody else.
[00:07:19] But the truth is it's not a fair comparison because of how different your upbringing has been, your environment, your ecosystem, and so on. And I don't know for me, this is quite a big moment actually, as we go through these rules from Peterson, because like you were just saying that compound interest is significant as we look at our ways of being better each day, that's really what Peterson's calling out here.
[00:07:47] Stop trying to shoot towards the Elon Musks perhaps and instead think, okay what can I learn from them? And how can I make myself better? Just small. Little pieces each day in order to try and make myself get that a little bit better.
[00:08:03] Yeah. Two thoughts that come to mind here. Number one, it's such wasted energy comparing yourself to others because number one, if you are looking at others going, oh geez, this they're doing so much better than me.
[00:08:16] Here's the thing. There is no positive. Energy to be gained from that thought that is your ego speaking. Kar toll would be going bonkers right now. If you heard you doing that kind of stuff. So first of all, there's nothing to gain from that envy, that jealousy, that ego, there's nothing to gain.
[00:08:37] That's the first thing, second thing, I can't remember which show it was on, but one of the clips we've played in the last month or two mark, someone said the working class guy is looking at the rich guy, his money. And the rich guy is looking at the working class guy, eing the simplicity of his life.
[00:08:56] Yeah. And the reality is a lot of us are all looking at each other, each other's situation. So it tells you it's like this big circular kind of cluster. The reality is. That the best thing you can do is make commitments to yourself and work hard to reach them every single day. And if you can just be 1% better every day, this is huge because if you do it every single day after today, you will turn back maybe in a week and a month.
[00:09:35] Maybe it's a whole year. And then you go all of a sudden, wow, look at that. We started this show mark, and we would get a couple of hundred listeners each month. And two years later we get 25,000 listeners a month and it just is growing like crazy. But each show. We just turn up, do it a little bit better and we can do that in our lives.
[00:10:07] And here's the thing, because everyone makes mistakes. There is no, I, there is no this thing as perfect. What there is working hard learning and doing it a little bit better than next time, because that learning is so satisfying because even if you're not at your end goal, if you can love the process, if you can get addicted to the compounding the meaning in your day comes from knowing that, Hey, I did it better yesterday.
[00:10:35] Hey, and today I did it a little bit better again. And if you can just bring yourself into the moment and say, am I doing it better now? Then you can not be held hostage by all those comparisons that Jordan Peterson talks about. This I think a lot of people in the age of Instagram and social media struggle with a lot.
[00:10:56] I think everybody thinks everyone else is having a great life.
[00:10:59] Yeah. Don't you? Yeah, I think you're right. It's very easy to look at whether there's podcasts, social media, everybody's got a TV show nowadays. It's an unfair ecosystem to try and compare yourself to others. Isn't it? And what you've just said, it's wasted energy instead of looking at somebody else thinking, oh, I wish I heard what they heard.
[00:11:22] Channel that into something more. Productive. Yeah. What you
[00:11:25] do interest, take this example, mate. Have you seen like all the people or the Instagram models getting in trouble for Photoshopping the last few months? Yeah. Yeah. So why would you compare yourself if you're a woman looking at those women, why would you even compare yourself?
[00:11:40] Cause it's all photoshopped, anyone it's photoshopped and fake
[00:11:43] illusion. Yeah. It's their wasted energy. And Gary V that might be Mike, the episode that perhaps you were referencing. Cause I know the Gar V show that we did was very orientated around this idea of not comparing yourself to others and the imbalance between, a rich person wanting the simplicity or somebody else wanting the rich lifestyle.
[00:12:05] And, again, that. Show with Gary V he was calling this out. Wasn't it fake. Anyway, stop being distracted by where somebody else is because it's not the right thing to judge
[00:12:19] yourself. That's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. I think that your own success comes from setting your own goals and meeting them because you set something a goal that you control.
[00:12:34] And you're not worried about externalities. That was a huge part of what Ryan Holiday said in the STO system series, stop worrying about things you don't control, bring yourself into the present, focus on the things that you control. And that's where all the, what I would argue at least satisfaction and fulfillment comes from.
[00:12:52] Maybe you might even find some real meaning there as well. But I think this is great. Now, mark, we don't wanna draw any comparisons amongst other people, but there are some people that we do really wanna celebrate on
[00:13:06] this show. Isn't it? That's right. If we are comparing ourselves to who we are, I hope that all our members remember the same tips.
[00:13:15] So celebrating all of our Patreon members, please welcome Bob and Niles, John and Terry Nile Marlin, Ken Dimar Marja and Connor Rodrigo Yasmin Lisa Sid. Mr. Boner, Maria Paul Bergen, Kelman, David, Joe, crystal and Ivo Christian hurricane brain, Sam Kelly, Barbara and Bob, Andrea and Matthew, Eric and Abby ho Joshua, Chris and Kobe Damian and Deborah.
[00:13:45] Gavin and Lassie Tracy and Steve Craig, Lauren and Javier welcome all moonshots members.
[00:13:53] Yeah. Thank you so much for your support. Super grateful, because that helps us pay their bills and boy, all these hosting companies and production companies and software companies, and they're not cheap. And that's what it takes to get this show out into the four corners of the planet.
[00:14:10] So thank you so much as members for supporting us. It's literally one cup of coffee per month. That's all it costs depending on what currency you're in. It's a couple of bucks a month and that helps us produce a show, pay the bills. We're super grateful for it. And in return, we give you a whole new podcast, which is the moonshot master series, and we've done market, have we done 11 or 12 episodes of the
[00:14:38] master series?
[00:14:39] We've done 12. We covered topics such as opportunity costs, rapid prototyping management of people. And second order thinking that was a great one. Finding your purpose entrepreneurship, we've done all sorts of things, even back to the concept of motivation. And this is an additional podcast on top of the weekly show that we push out.
[00:15:00] So these are preserved and reserved, especially for you, our members. So to get access, go along to moonshots.io, click on the, become a member button. And you too can for the cost of a cup of coffee, have access to our moonshots master series.
[00:15:18] How good is that like you get to, value for value exchange to give a little, to help us to continue doing this show, but we throw in an extra podcast as well.
[00:15:29] So head over to moonshots.ao so you can get the moonshots master series and, hopefully, that will help you pursue some meaningful work. And that's exactly what we're gonna talk about
[00:15:41] next. And this first clip we got from Jordan Peterson is actually introducing two rules at the same time, rule seven, do what is meaningful as well as rule eight.
[00:15:50] Tell the truth. So let's hear from John Peterson, give us this one, two punch about the pursuit.
[00:15:56] Rule seven is do what is meaningful and not what is expedient. And I would say in some sense, that's the core ethos of the book. Not exactly because rule eight, which is tell the truth, or at least don't lie is a necessary conjunction to that or a necessary additional element, because I don't think that you can pursue what is meaningful without telling the truth.
[00:16:21] And the reason for that is if you don't tell the truth, or let's say if you lie, which is an easier way to think about. You corrupt the mechanisms, the instinctual mechanisms that manifest themselves as meaning, and then you can't trust them. And that's a very bad idea. So the fundamental reason to not lie is because you corrupt your own perceptions.
[00:16:42] If you lie. And when you corrupt your own perceptions, then you can't rely on yourself. And if you can't rely on yourself, then good luck to you because what are you going to rely on in the absence of your own judgment? You've got nothing. If you lose that rule, eight is, as I said, tell the truth or don't, or at least don't lie,
[00:17:03] mark.
[00:17:03] I think he's not talking about like, when you get caught stealing a cookie out of the cookie jar, did you steal a cookie? No, I have a feeling he's going for something bigger here. What do
[00:17:14] you think? Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I think he's calling us out. He's calling out the fact that if you lie to yourself, then you have a tendency to perhaps influence the way that you behave, the way that you interpret the actions of others and the way that you interact with the world.
[00:17:35] That's what I'm getting from these two
[00:17:37] rules. And I think to build on that, he goes to a place where he really reveals the core of the book, which is to do what is meaningful, not what is expedient. And I think Mark, this might be one of the biggest themes, not only of Peterson's work, but of the moonshots podcast itself because after 129 episodes, I can tell you this idea of doing what matters, doing things of impact, doing things where true value is created, right?
[00:18:13] Things that make you feel fulfilled. Satisfied maybe a bit happy, maybe that you feel like you've achieved your purpose. You are finding some meaning in life, which is truly the greatest pursuit versus what is expedient. And I think this is where we cheat ourselves, is that where we tell those lies is basically saying, don't take the Izzy path, take the hard path.
[00:18:39] And once you get this thought to there, what you can see is that this is so deeply related to the advice that we've had from so many people, authors, academics, even Joe Rogan, himself, Yako, Wilin, where they talk about embracing D discomfort problems as Yako would say are good.
[00:19:04] yeah I think you're right.
[00:19:05] This is the antidote to the chaos of life when we're surrounded by distractions. Individuals who might have what we think we want. And I wanna reemphasize that word. You think that you want something when the truth is it doesn't really matter. This is Jordan calling out to us to find what is that meaningful thing?
[00:19:29] Isn't it? The expedient idea and the expedient reference. I think he's going there. At least in my mind is, oh, something that's convenient. Maybe it's as you say, maybe less work is easy. Yeah. It's less work. And it's a means to an end. I'm running after a big payoff. I'm running after a success of some kind.
[00:19:51] But I'm not willing to put in that work and that's a pretty easy trap to fall into. Isn't it? If you've put in a lot of work into your career, sometimes you expect something to be. You expect that you've reached that end goal when perhaps that's maybe your ego talking.
[00:20:09] Yeah. Yeah. I think you're definitely going in the right direction here.
[00:20:13] I think that the truth or the place from which this advice comes from is that if you are doing something worthwhile or as Peterson would say meaningful you have to, you must accept that it will not be easy. And I think it is in this that you can go to another step and say, if it's starting to hurt, then you know, you're doing the right thing.
[00:20:42] And I'm not talking about putting yourself in jeopardy here to use a gym analogy if you're working out and you're like, oh, this is really hard. Then you know that you are truly doing the right thing. You really do know that. I think that the important thing here is once you say to yourself, okay, I am prepared to follow my purpose, to live my purpose, to be the best version of ourselves, which is everything.
[00:21:15] This show is about once you've established that the next thing you can say, it's going to be hard, ugly, uncomfortable. And I'm okay with that. And I think it's at this point where many of us struggle, because we're like, wow, I've been doing this for a couple of years and I'm not getting the results as Goggins would say, don't give up.
[00:21:38] Don't let go and take the expedient path that Peterson is talking about because it's really interesting how this comes back to. One of the clips we had on Joe Rogan and he was talking about who wants to win the lottery man? That's gonna feel good for a half a second.
[00:21:54] Right? And there's a lot of studies to, to suggest that winning the lottery is actually not like a great thing. I don't know if you've heard about all of the it causes chaos in people's life. They have all this money. They don't know how to manage it. People start trying to grab that money in some nefarious way.
[00:22:11] So you'd Rogan talk about God, earn it. How much better is it gonna feel? You might have a 10th of money, but you earn every single dollar. And that is doing what is meaningful, not what is expedient. And I mark, I would say the reason this is so hard to truly practice is we are presented with what I call the pollution of overnight success.
[00:22:33] We all think these amazing people came outta nowhere. But what we've discovered on this show is there's enormous sacrifice for people. I remember Jack Mar got rejected from 38 job applications before he got his first job. Wow. He went on to create Alibaba. Of course, like my point is this, I think so much happens when you say problems.
[00:22:59] Good. Uncomfortable. Yeah. It's almost the same thing I do when I'm running really fast when I'm jogging outside and it feels pretty uncomfortable. I know that I'm entering a stretch zone, a healthy push of my limits. And I think another thing that just to wrap this up is what we've also learned is that we have far more potential than we know.
[00:23:23] If only we can accept the pursuit of meaningful action. Is inviting challenge and hardship into your life. If you can just accept that and go through it. Think of the people that run 100 mile races, what will we have been thinking? Unheard of impossible. 50 years ago, people now run that, pushing the limits saying, Hey, I'm prepared to go through the discomfort.
[00:23:51] I think this is our, one of our greatest challenges societally now is to be prepared to do the hard work cause we're, our minds are polluted by social media, all these false overnight success stories, all these six pack abs all of these women that just look like they're from the planet, Venus, all of these manufactured propaganda that everyone's else is living the perfect life.
[00:24:21] The answer is no, it is hard. It's hard, but you gotta do it. If you wanna be the best version of yourself, embrace the hardship, right?
[00:24:32] Yeah. That is the antidote to chaos. The thing I'm reminded of is as you were talking, is that amazing story from Matthew McConaughy? Where he gets those offers for that romcom.
[00:24:44] Yeah. And gradually it goes up from, I think it was four or 5 million in eight, then 10 and 12. And I think it settles on 15 and he just keeps on saying no. And that, that would be the easy way out. Wasn't it? That would be the expedient way, but he knew in his heart that he wanted to find that more meaningful route, that more meaningful journey and what happens two years later, he doesn't work for two years.
[00:25:10] He's in that valley of darkness, wondering if he'll ever work again, but he stays true. He stays on the path towards meaning and he does. He comes out the other side and finds the journey that he was looking for these more meaningful roles, these more meaningful stories that he wanted to tell in, in, in Hollywood and on TV and film.
[00:25:30] I think that's a good, a great example, actually, Mike, of some of the other individuals that we've learned from. That brings to life this truth of meaning and this truth of, seeking that, that honesty in your life. I think that's really the anti chaos that you were just saying about the busyness of life and distraction, social media, and so on getting in our way.
[00:25:51] Yeah. It's so easy to fall into that.
[00:25:54] I have one last thought and I know listeners, you're probably thinking, geez, they're banging on about this one a lot. It was two rules in one. So give us a break. It was two rules, but I do think as Jordan Peterson suggested this might be the gist to the whole book.
[00:26:09] I think there is another way of expressing these thoughts from Peterson that we've been exploring about meaning and versus expediency. And I think this idea of being prepared to do the hard work today and defer results for a later point in time. And I think this deferring of instant gratification, I think if we get to a habit of where we are right now in how we live and work as a society, I think we have an enormous challenge with this because I think about this idea of, I love reading.
[00:26:51] And so if I think, oh, I'd really love to read something about this or someone recommends something. For example, Mark, I recommended a documentary to you yesterday and by yesterday evening, you'd already watched it. okay. I think about this idea of, I'd really like to read a particular book within a nanosecond.
[00:27:11] I jump on my Kindle zip. There it is. OK. There was no Def of gratification. Now go back to cracking a good old age. I used to have to go to the library to get a book or go into town to buy the book. And I would hear about a lot less books, of course. So my point is this. Whether it's books, movies, content, whether it's Uber eats, everything is at our door in a nanosecond.
[00:27:40] We are in a world of real time, instant gratification yet the greatest ironies that being the best version of yourself is a sacrifice. Now gain a later paradigm. It is deferred gratification, and this is why I think so many people get off track because they get so many things in a moment. It's even got to the point where when you have these, by now pay later services where they say, Hey, you can't afford it.
[00:28:09] Don't worry. Buy it now. And we'll sort out the payment later. That is living beyond your means. People don't like to do this. If you don't have the cash, don't buy it. And frankly, it's just another thing anyway. So I think mark. The reason is that we struggle so much to find meaning, satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
[00:28:34] Yes. There's a proxy here of happiness, and we've got like generations growing up now that are more clinically depressed than any other generation. And I believe it's because they're getting everything now yet the true meaning of life satisfaction and fulfillment lies in a lot of sacrifice now and for gains in the future.
[00:28:58] I think that is why it's so damn hard. Yeah,
[00:29:02] It's the instant, it's the expectation that I will get that result straight away. And I'm pretty guilty. Mike, I'll often think, okay I've put in all this hard work on a project or research or collaboration, whatever it might be.
[00:29:16] And I do as Jordan calls out in particular rule eight, tell the truth, or at least don't lie when he says to us, don't lie to ourselves because then you corrupt your perception. That's me corrupting my perception. Isn't it. That's me thinking I've earned it. I've put in that hard work.
[00:29:34] I, it, I'm not thinking about what the other person wants. I'm just focusing on me at that point.
[00:29:40] Yeah. Yeah. I totally hear you. I think that the last thought that I would love us to discuss before we go to the rest of the rules is. In true moonshot style. I think we have to ask ourselves, how might we, what could we do?
[00:29:59] Okay. So we finished recording the show. What would be something you would do if you said, look, I need to get myself on track to make sure I'm being the best version of myself. What could I do to make sure I'm not taking the shortcuts, but I'm really, sacrificing now and for enjoying the games later, what do we do, mark?
[00:30:18] I think something that comes to my mind as we reflect on the way that we work is collaboration or communication with another. So what we've discussed on the show before and to believe it was the Thelen series that we did on teamwork and collaboration as, as well as maybe Abby WOBA as well is you utilize those around you in order to be the best version of yourself.
[00:30:44] If you are playing in your own sport, if I'm by myself, if I'm working alone, I might have the tendency to then fall into the trap of saying, oh I've done it correctly, but only when you share it or communicate it with somebody else. Do you get that feedback? And I think that's perhaps how I keep myself on track.
[00:31:08] When I go out and seek that little bit of
[00:31:10] collaboration, I would say that a build on that is you can share your goals with people that care about you in a way for them to hold you accountable. yes. Hey, I wanna run that marathon. Okay. Hey mark. You've been doing that training.
[00:31:25] Isn't that marathon coming out? yeah, you've been doing that. I've been busy I would say also dare to ask yourself, who do I want to be right about. How do I wanna live my life right about it? Manifest it not only through writing, but take time to meditate on the vision you have of who you want to be.
[00:31:49] Don't just vaguely have this idea. I wanna be a good guy and I wanna help out a bit to define that. So put those two together, sharing those things and defining those things. So share it with others for a bit of mutual accountability and write it down, get it out. Don't make your dreams a secret, right?
[00:32:09] Try and close the gap between the dream you have of who you want to be and how you behave today. Try and close that gap. By manifesting it by writing it down, sharing it with others. I think that's very. Good way to have the courage to dream, but also make yourself a bit vulnerable and accountable to that.
[00:32:30] And I think a last thought here. Is when you build these habits, routines and practices, whether it's waking up early, getting into bed early. So you can wake up early, whether it's doing stretches, whether it's called showers, whether it's, whatever your habits are, build these habits. So they are like rocks.
[00:32:51] If for myself, I know I'm at my best in the mornings. You know what mission number one is, to get my ass into bed early, because I wake naturally at about 5 : 36 o'clock. Region. And so the beautiful thing is that I don't need to set an alarm if I'm getting into bed early, cuz I'll just naturally wake when my body's had sufficient sleep.
[00:33:15] Now that's how I'm trying to find meaning in my life. So ask yourself, do I have the right routines, habits and rituals that set me up for success and practice those every single day. Make sure they support your goals, your vision of yourself, and dare to share it with people around you so that they can hold you accountable.
[00:33:39] That's my humble shot at trying to find meaning in life. Mark. Does that make any sense at all?
[00:33:43] I think it does. I think the holding. Yourself accountable by telling others is one piece of advice from Steven Covey. I think, yeah. Yeah. And he's seven habits of highly effective people, I
[00:33:52] believe.
[00:33:53] Yeah. Sit back and enjoy this one. It's a bit longer than usual, but it is well worth it. Wait. So let's for the last time in this show, listen to Mr. Jordan Peterson,
[00:34:04] final rule. It's called Petta cat when you encounter one on the street. And it's a very, it's the most personal chapter in the book. It's a lot about my daughter and my daughter was very ill when she was well, when she was a kid.
[00:34:17] But particularly when she was a teenager, she had a very terrible time of it. She had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and when she was between the ages of 14 and 16, it first destroyed her hip, which had to be replaced. And then it destroyed the ankle on her. Leg, which had to be replaced. And she walked around for two years on broken legs and she was taking massive doses of opiates and could hardly stay awake.
[00:34:40] And she had this advanced autoimmune disease, which produced all sorts of other symptoms that were just as bad as the joint degeneration, but which are harder to describe. And so it was just bloody brutal, and as a test of your faith, there's almost nothing that's more direct than a serious illness inflicted upon an innocent child.
[00:35:00] And so the chapters of meditation on that, and also on. What to do in a situation like that, because everyone is going to have a situation like that in some sense, because you'll be faced with illness in the people that you love and in crisis. And so it's a practical guide to coping with those sorts of things.
[00:35:17] And one of the things you do when you're overwhelmed by a crisis is you shorten your timeframe. It's something you can't think about next month. Maybe you can't even bloody well, think about next week or maybe not even tomorrow, because now is just so overwhelming that's all there is.
[00:35:32] It's and that's what you do. You cut your timeframe back until you can cope with it. And if it's not the next week that you see how to get through, then it's the next day. And if it's not the next day, then it's the next hour. And if it's not the next hour, then it's the next minute. And people are very tough.
[00:35:50] And it turns out that if you face things. It turns out that if you face things that you can put up with a lot more than you think you can put up with and you can do it without becoming corrupted. And she did recover quite fully and much as a consequence of her own machinations, because she figured out what was wrong with her and then took the necessary steps to fix it, which is nothing short of a bloody miracle as far as I'm concerned.
[00:36:13] And anyways, part of the cat bit is that I actually start by talking about our dog who actually died about a year ago, but he's still alive in the book. I, I let people know, cuz dog lovers love dogs. And if you love cats, then they think you don't like dogs and then they, you don't, they don't like you.
[00:36:28] So I also point out at the beginning of the chapter that, if you want to pet a dog on the street, that's okay too. So you don't have to get up in arms about it. But the idea is that you have to be alert when you're suffering. You have to be alert to the beauty in life. The unexpected beauty in life.
[00:36:44] And that's what I was trying to get across with the idea of the cat. There's this cat that lives across the street from us called ginger and Ginger's Siese cat and cats really aren't domesticated. Technically speaking, they're still wild animals, but they kinda like people, God only knows why, but they do.
[00:36:58] And so ginger will come wandering over and our dog looks at her, but they're friends and she rolls over on his back and SICO, used to, knows her a bit. And then she MISS you over and let you pet her if she was feeling like it that day. And you have to look for those little bits of that little bit of sparkling crystal in the darkness, when things are bad, you have to look and see where things are still beautiful and where there's still something that's sustaining.
[00:37:24] And, you narrow your timeframe and you'd be grateful for what you have. That can get you through some very dark times and maybe even successfully, if you're lucky, but even if unsuccessfully, then maybe it's only tragic and not absolute hell. And maybe I think, and this is what I closed the book with, is this idea is that if we didn't all attempt to make terrible things even worse than they are, then maybe we could tolerate the terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist.
[00:37:54] And maybe we could make the world into a better place, and it's what we should be doing and what we could be doing, because we don't have anything better to do. And that's what the book is about. And. That's the end of 12 rules for life.
[00:38:09] Thank you.
[00:38:10] Find gratitude and motors, the beauty in life, because the journey's gonna be hard and don't make it harder on yourself by not looking around and petting the cats, smelling the
[00:38:21] flowers.
[00:38:22] Yeah. It's like, he was just, he'd just been hanging out with Eckhart Tolle and yes. Talking about being in the moment, the power of now, when in doubt you do have the now wasn't that something powerful from the Eckhart Tolle show. Yeah. Focus
[00:38:37] on the power of now. That's the only thing that matters.
[00:38:40] It doesn't matter where you were yesterday in the past or where you're gonna be in a minute or an hour's time. Just focus on right here. Right now,
[00:38:48] another one of his rules. And this is about this kind of idea of self accountability. And. It all is told through this idea of what's in the fog,
[00:39:01] do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
[00:39:06] Yeah. That's a good one. Imagine that you're wandering through the fog and there's pits that you could fall into and that there's knives that you could imp yourself on. There's sharp edges everywhere. It's terrible. The world's it's terrible that the world's full of pits and sharp edges and knives hidden in the fog.
[00:39:23] It's yeah, but what if you disperse the fog? Then the pits are still there. And so are the sharp edges in the knives, but you don't have to fall into them cuz you can just walk around them, and that's another reason why it's so useful to face things. It's if you become articulate about what it is that's disturbing you, then you sharpen up your representations of the catastrophe, let's say, and then you can.
[00:39:45] Then you can, it turns out that it's much more probable that you can deal with it, and you can't be sure because sometimes you're just screwed, and that's why you end up dying, right? I'm dead serious about this. I don't want to be, I don't wanna be stupidly optimistic.
[00:40:01] Sometimes you can be backed into a corner and there's no escape. But most of the time, it's not the case. Most of the time, if you're willing to make the situation clear, which is a matter of facing it and then clarifying it, it's a courageous thing to do. That's to beard the dragon in its den.
[00:40:19] If you do that, then you find that the situation resolves into a set of problems that are smaller than you originally assumed they would be. And. There's a much higher probability that you can decompose the problems and then start to address them. And it doesn't matter because it's your best bet.
[00:40:37] Like even if it doesn't work and it might not, it's like you don't have a better strategy. There is not a better strategy. There's not a better strategy than to seek out the dragon in it's dead, even though there's some possibility that you'll get burnt to a crisp and that you won't get the gold, it's much better than waiting at home in your bed quivering while the thing grows and comes in and eats you cuz then for sure you lose.
[00:40:59] And that's pretty much how life works.
[00:41:01] Oh it's one of Peterson's talents. Isn't it Mike, to tell such a VI, such a story with such vivid imagery. , connecting this rule to two different stories there. The knives in the fog, as well as the dragon and the den. I really and at the core of that, when I hear it.
[00:41:20] He's reminding me, Hey Mark, remember life's full of knives. And then maybe there's a dragon in the cave. And instead of being blind or insisting on that, maybe not being the case or instead bearing your head in the sand and not preparing for it, then you might get burnt to a crisp, or you might fall into the pit.
[00:41:43] Yeah. But instead, if you can, name the beast. And in fact, I 've spoken about this on the show before, if you name the beast, if you know what's coming, you're much more likely to be able to put up with it and maybe get out of it even stronger than you imagined. I like that final thing that he just actually referenced towards the end of the clip.
[00:42:01] When you name it, sometimes it's smaller than you think.
[00:42:05] Look, there are so many builds on this. Let's do this exercise of just showing how there is this magical intersection between what he's saying. And so many of the people, the superstars that we have studied, mark. Now, number one, Patrick Lindsay, you mentioned earlier on the show, he talks about the key thing that a team needs to be able to do is talk about the dragon, right?
[00:42:31] To talk about the challenge they have the hard conversations. In fact, Brene Brown wrote the book, braving the wilderness, which is all about boundaries and accountability. And this non-judgment right. And we know how popular the Brene brown series was. But what's interesting is you can go right to Joe Rogan.
[00:42:54] Do you remember? He said, pretend there's a documentary crew filming your life. That's right. That is to help you get to the dragons because you gotta clean your room when the crew is filming. You've got to, if you want to perform in a team, you've gotta be able to talk about hard things.
[00:43:15] You've gotta have, like Goggins talks about an accountability mirror. You gotta look at yourself and face. The dragons. We talk about the proverb of facing your demons. At some point, we must all come to terms with him. And I love this idea that he's basically saying, if you don't choose to go out and meet the Dragons, they're certainly gonna come get you.
[00:43:36] Yeah. , it's inevitable. Great. Isn't it amazing how this thought we could see in anyone from Brene brown, Joe Rogan, Patrick Lindsay, David Goggins, and far beyond it's. It's really, it's a fascinating theme that has come back so much on the Moonshot's podcast. Isn't it? I think
[00:43:57] it's for me the proactiveness that a lot of these, yes moonshots are demonstrating, they're all going.
[00:44:04] And putting their upfront foot forward, so to speak, seeking discomfort, they're seeking the discomfort and in doing so, they're getting stronger, they're getting better. They're getting where they are now they're becoming superstars. And, that's the call out here. Isn't it in these rules, as well as all the work that you've just mentioned, let's dig into rule number seven.
[00:44:27] So this is the second half of beyond order, 12 more rules for life. And in this rule that John Peterson's gonna introduce us is about stretching ourselves to find our limits.
[00:44:39] Yeah. And then rule three is analogous to that work as hard as you can, as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
[00:44:47] It is a corollary to that. It's one of the things you wanna 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 it is just how hard can you work on something? If you pick something, I don't care what it is.
[00:45:02] Again, you think, oh, I'm gonna 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. And you wanna 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.
[00:45:20] So you push yourself past the point of exhaustion and think, oh, that's good. There's the point of exhaustion? You can't stay there because if you stay at the point of exhaustion for any length of time then, you'll degenerate, right? Because that's just too much, but you can find that point and then you can pull back and you can think, okay I can't go farther than that.
[00:45:39] I know where my limit is. Now I can pull back and I can operate within that limit, but then at least, where your limit is and that's an unbelievably useful thing to do as well. And the other thing too is how are you ever gonna discover if you could possibly be successful at whatever you wanna be successful at, unless you push yourself in at least one direction, right?
[00:46:00] To your bloody limit. And it's another thing, it's another thing that we don't teach young people and it's quite striking to me because it seems obvious. It's who are you? You're 19, you're 20. Who are you? You don't bloody know how you know? It's six years ago, you were 13.
[00:46:16] You don't know anything so well, so what are you capable of? You don't know. How are you gonna find out you're gonna push yourself at something farther than you can go. And then you have some sense of where your limits are and, your limits are gonna be, they're not gonna be where you think they are and all probability 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.
[00:46:38] And so that's an unbelievably useful thing to do. And so that's you, and then maybe, 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 where are your contours? What exactly are the limitations of this form that you inhabit?
[00:46:57] and you get some sense of who you are and what you're good for, and that's a lot. This is part of the reason why I'm not happy with this continual injunction in our society to have more self-esteem or to be happy. First of all, good luck with being happy and it's just not gonna work out when you're not happy, and things are gonna come along that are gonna make you not happy.
[00:47:18] And then if the whole 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.
[00:47:26] Mark, there is so much in that clip. Let me just try and give you a quick selection of thoughts about painting. He talked about pushing your limits in order to have the ah-ha that you can go way further than you might imagine.
[00:47:43] 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 wanna play, the games you shouldn't play. There is so much in this. I always come back to this idea that there is a big difference between happiness and fulfillment.
[00:48:13] And I think he pointed out another thing there, which was, if you are naively in the search of utopia and happiness, then life is just gonna be tough because it's full of challenges. And we have a great rule at the end of this show that really brings this home. But mark, there was so much in that clip.
[00:48:33] I don't, I've just given you the three things that really jumped out at me. Where do we start breaking this down? I
[00:48:38] think start with what Jordan Peterson calls out. You don't learn this at school. You don't get taught to stretch yourself. Perhaps go and try lots of different things. So I wanna really dig into that and understand, okay how can we, and our listeners do that, perhaps we're not in school anymore, , but I'd say that we are still learning.
[00:49:00] 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, exposure to finding your limits is gonna be,
[00:49:16] I, talking about limits and so forth, I quite literally spent a vast majority of the first 20 years of my life.
[00:49:25] 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 stick at it. versus like giving up in the face of the first sign of adversity. This is such a powerful thought, isn't
[00:49:51] it?
[00:49:52] Yeah, 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 receive whatever you want, whether you wanted a coffee right now, or you wanted a drone or an iPad for a lot of people it's quite easy to go and source those.
[00:50:17] And it's, I think made us a little bit soft because we are no longer fighting for that receival, 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 or that role.
[00:50:38] And that sounds like what's motivating you. How do you feel? I think you're gonna find that they're feeling pretty unmotivated because they haven't received it yet. Yeah. So this inability to want to drive and 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.
[00:50:59] Yeah. I think here. What we can do to live this rule out is to set ourselves a healthy stretch goal. Yes. What do you think? So let's do this as a bit of an exercise. Is there a stretch goal that you could think about in any part of your life that would be really paying homage to this idea of working as hard as you possibly can and at least one thing and see what happened?
[00:51:27] What would be one thing you could push as hard as you could on? Ah, yeah. It's a great
[00:51:33] question. I think it's the reflection. It's self reflection, we're already learning out loud, digging into it every single week. And I'd say that I definitely do perhaps more than some, but what I could do is go even further.
[00:51:50] I could go much deeper. I'll do my best. 10 minutes of meditation every day. I'll do my journaling. I'll do my stretching. I'm sorry. Physical stretching, rolling and so on, but I could take all those to another level higher. And that could be quite interesting to see where my attention deviates, where my body deviates.
[00:52:13] It could be quite interesting to go and do that. How about you, Mike? Where would you work as hard as you possibly can?
[00:52:19] Yeah. So 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?
[00:52:30] I don't believe that now actually
[00:52:32] yeah.
[00:52:32] 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 dramatic counterbalance. So I got into beast mode and then just never really got out of it.
[00:52:58] I think that perhaps working as hard as you possibly can, was always there from a work perspective, 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 for example, running.
[00:53:26] So I'm doing a lot of running and I'm working really hard. So I have holidays coming. And I will attempt a 20 kilometer run on my holiday, which I've never done. So the longest distance I've ever gone is 16 kilometers. So I'm gonna put a 20 there and that will, it will absolutely amaze you if you had said to me a year and a half ago, oh Mike, you can smash out 16 kilometers once a week.
[00:53:53] I would've said you're crazy. But that's what I do now. So on the holidays, I will go for 20 kilometers. So I'm very excited about that. Oh, wow.
[00:54:04] Good work. Isn't it interesting? And that's a perfect demonstration of the power of Jordan Peterson's rules. Because you can interpret them.
[00:54:13] Physically emotionally or
[00:54:16] career driven. Yeah. Personal or personal professional. I think that's the power of a good parable or a good metaphor is it, has that wide application, right? Yeah.
[00:54:27] I totally agree. And we're gonna come on to talk about relationships, vices and so on in the rest of this show.
[00:54:33] And again, it just shows us how applicable they all are to us, Mike.
[00:54:38] I think one thing I wanna say before we move on to this next clip, is that what Jordan pointed out at the end, there is gonna be a theme that we come back to in this show, which is get ready to change your expectations of happiness.
[00:54:55] 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 show mark, 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, give up the falsehood of utopia and find that life is all about, going through the obstacle, not avoiding it, not judging it.
[00:55:50] Going through the obstacle. There you are. Mark. We have covered quite some ground five, very different thoughts and rules from Jordan Peterson, the news maker, the controversy man himself at the moment. We're here to learn. And my question for you is out of those five, when you think about comparing yourself with others and meaningful work and all of the other good ideas there, which one feels needs your attention right now, is there one of those that you're gonna put a little extra study on?
[00:56:23] What's funny, I think. Initial time of that. I was introduced to these books. I remember not hiding unwanted things in the fog as a massive aha moment. This idea of being accountable and admitting things and naming the beast. As we heard, I think that was really important, but actually what I'm starting to lean towards now is this idea of doing meaningful work.
[00:56:53] Rather than going for the, let's say the expedient or the fast way instead. And maybe sometimes the easy way instead, choosing that meaningful path, that meaningful work that then allows you to prioritize, but also just look back one day and say, Hey I did that. I'm pretty, pretty happy with that. What about you?
[00:57:13] I like that one too. And that's certainly a huge theme that we've discovered in the show. Look, just not comparing yourself with others, just compare yourself to who you were yesterday. What a big idea. So that's something for me to go and work on. Mark, thank you to you for joining me in this journey of reflection and review of the work of Jordan Peterson here on show 189.
[00:57:40] Jordan Peterson, the essential rules from us here at the Moonshot's podcast. And it started with an idea. Number one, compare yourself to who you were yesterday. Not to someone else. Today. Very good stuff. And then we go a little bit deeper to pursue what is meaningful? Not what is expedient, that's right. Just like JFK in 1962, going to the moon was not gonna be easy, but you do it because it's meaningful.
[00:58:08] We love that kind of stuff. And then we really turned into some really important themes such as G. And accountability, essential practices of any moonshot. And if there was an idea, this is the top of the pyramid for us here at the moonshots podcast, it's the growth mindset. And that's exactly what Jordan Peterson left us with the idea to work as hard as possible so that you can at least get one thing to that top.
[00:58:39] See one thing through and just see what happens, what a great rule to do the work. And that is a fundamental principle of us here at the moonshots podcast. This is how we can be the best version of ourselves. And it's such a pleasure to learn out loud together with you, our members and our listeners. All right, that's it for the moonshots podcast.
[00:59:02] That's a wrap.