In this video, join Dr. Oz as he speaks with Jordan Peterson who goes in-depth on how to regain control of your destiny by following three steps:
1) Compare yourself to the person you were yesterday, not to somebody else.
2) Treat yourself that you are worthy.
3) Open your eyes and your ears and listen to the direction you want to go in.
1) Compare yourself to the person you were yesterday, not to somebody else.
2) Treat yourself that you are worthy.
3) Open your eyes and your ears and listen to the direction you want to go in.
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LearningTranscript
00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 - What I love about the way you think of psychology
00:05 is you give us specific action steps.
00:07 So in order to regain control of your destiny,
00:10 I want you to walk me through three
00:11 that you've mentioned in the past.
00:12 One is to compare yourself to the person you were yesterday,
00:17 not to somebody else.
00:18 How does that help you regain a vision for yourself?
00:23 - Well, if you compare yourself to someone else,
00:25 you're almost always comparing yourself to someone
00:28 that you're jealous of, I would say, in some sense.
00:31 And I mean, if you're psychologically healthy,
00:33 maybe it's just someone you admire
00:34 and you're trying to follow in their footsteps,
00:36 but you have to be pretty pure of spirit to manage that.
00:39 Generally, you're resentfully inclined
00:42 to view someone else as more fortunate than you
00:45 in some unjust manner.
00:47 And it's not helpful because, first of all,
00:49 it makes you resentful, and that's a cancer of the spirit
00:52 of the highest order, resentment.
00:54 And second, what do you know about them?
00:57 You really want their lives?
00:58 You really want their problems?
01:00 They're not you at all.
01:03 And you can be sure that no matter how successful
01:05 they appear on the outside and how privileged, let's say,
01:08 that they have no shortage of terrible problems.
01:10 And you have your own problems,
01:12 and that's your destiny in some sense
01:14 to solve those problems.
01:15 And then if you compare yourself to who you were yesterday,
01:19 well, then that's the right control group, so to speak.
01:22 It's the right comparison
01:23 because you could be slightly better than that.
01:26 And I don't mean that in some insulting manner.
01:30 I mean it in some genuine manner.
01:31 You could be 1% or half of 1% better this week
01:35 than you were last week.
01:36 And if you do that for two years,
01:39 you're a completely different person, and everyone benefits.
01:43 And you'll be like the person you admire
01:46 and are resentful of,
01:48 except you'll be that for yourself in your own way.
01:51 And then you'll be able to bring whatever it is
01:54 that's unique about you into the world,
01:56 and everyone will benefit.
01:58 And so that tendency to look at others and say,
02:02 "Well, aren't you privileged and aren't you special?"
02:04 And well, maybe some people are,
02:06 and thank God that at least some people are that,
02:08 but probably not because maybe it's easier for you
02:14 to think that things are unjust
02:16 than it is to compare yourself to who you were yesterday
02:19 and be humble enough to accept the fact
02:21 that a half a percent improvement,
02:24 if that is more than enough,
02:26 and be thankful that that might be more than enough,
02:28 'cause it could be.
02:30 I've almost met no one in my clinical practice,
02:33 say, or privately,
02:34 who couldn't instantly generate a list
02:37 of stupid things they are doing
02:38 that they could hypothetically stop doing.
02:41 That's not the totality of stupid things,
02:43 because you may be doing some stupid things
02:45 that you couldn't quit doing.
02:47 And so those aren't solvable at the moment,
02:49 but there's some things you could stop,
02:51 stop and see what happens.
02:53 It'll be a little better,
02:55 and then maybe you'll be a little more able
02:57 to tackle the stupid things that you couldn't solve
02:59 if you're lucky and you have time.
03:02 And so, and you should be grateful for the opportunity,
03:04 and you shouldn't be dismissive
03:06 of what you have right in front of you.
03:08 You know, I've become infamous
03:11 for suggesting that people clean up their rooms,
03:13 and since I've been suggesting that,
03:15 my office hasn't been particularly clean
03:18 for a variety of reasons.
03:19 But I said that because almost all of us
03:22 have some bit of reality in front of us
03:25 that we have control over
03:26 that we could put in perfect order.
03:29 And it's great practice, and it's not easy.
03:31 It's not easy to set up your room, let's say,
03:33 to pick the right clothes,
03:35 to figure out what you're going to do in those clothes,
03:36 what you should do with them, where they should go,
03:38 so that the decision you make
03:40 at the beginning of each day is straightforward,
03:42 and to make it a place that you want to inhabit,
03:46 and to fight with your family if they live in shambles
03:49 because you have the gall to try to make
03:51 what you're doing proper and beautiful.
03:53 These are hard things,
03:54 and so it's a little bit of the cosmos
03:57 that's right in front of you, you know?
03:59 It's not trivial.
04:00 Maybe your attitude towards it is, but it's not trivial.
04:03 - A lot of that revolves around self-esteem,
04:07 and this is step two, I'll say,
04:09 is to treat yourself like you're worth helping,
04:13 like you're worthy of investing some effort.
04:16 And I think some of this goes--
04:17 - What a dubious proposition.
04:18 - It is scary.
04:19 And I guess from the original sin
04:22 of Adam failing in the Garden of Eden,
04:25 we've often belittled ourselves.
04:27 The most dangerous place we live is in our own head.
04:29 So how do you make sure
04:31 that you're treating yourself like you're worth it?
04:34 - No, it's an act of faith in some sense, you know?
04:36 And faith is often parodied as the stupid belief
04:40 in things that aren't provable, something like that,
04:43 but that it's not that, not when it's not in its proper form.
04:47 I mean, you think about how difficult it is
04:49 to treat yourself properly is, well, why wouldn't you?
04:53 Well, you're not as smart as you could be.
04:58 You're not as wise as you could be.
05:01 You are a recipient of unearned privileges
05:03 because you're part of this remarkable civilization
05:06 that's built in no small part on the blood of other people.
05:10 And you're going to die,
05:11 and everyone that you know is going to die,
05:13 and you're going to lose everything.
05:15 All of that is part of being human,
05:17 that confrontation with the catastrophe
05:20 of history and biology.
05:22 So to say in the face of all of that
05:25 that perhaps you're worthy of investment nonetheless
05:29 is quite the achievement,
05:31 but it's something to practice, right?
05:35 And you know, you know, your conscience tells you
05:37 that you should treat other people fairly and justly.
05:40 You torture yourself if you don't,
05:41 and there are people like you,
05:43 and so you have to be included in that.
05:45 And so you try to make the difficult decision
05:50 that in some sense flies in the face of your rationality
05:53 that you're worthy of investment,
05:56 and you start to treat yourself
05:57 like you're someone who matters,
05:59 your pain and your possibility.
06:02 And that's not to baby yourself, far from it,
06:05 but it's to treat yourself
06:07 like you would like to treat other people
06:10 if you were doing that properly.
06:12 And that's a good thing to conceptualize and to practice.
06:15 - To do it right, you also have to be,
06:17 and this sounds harsh,
06:19 and some of the things you say do sound harsh,
06:21 but as a surgeon, I respect the fact that they're helpful.
06:23 Many of the things that I say to my patients,
06:26 taken abstractly, would seem very difficult to comprehend.
06:29 You have cancer, you're going to die,
06:30 I think you're gonna live this long.
06:32 These are very difficult things to share with people,
06:34 but they're helpful, life-saving, in fact,
06:36 if I've said correctly.
06:37 You've argued, and this is step three,
06:39 is to befriend people worthy of you,
06:42 people who want what's in your best interest.
06:44 - You know, that's the crucial issue there.
06:46 - And to accept that third step,
06:48 you also have to acknowledge that there's some people
06:50 who are beyond help, that aren't gonna help you,
06:53 they'll enable you, they may not want what's best for you.
06:56 And also, you can't just wait for people
06:58 to dig you out of the crisis that you're in.
07:00 You need to actually proactively go out
07:02 and find the people who can support your vision,
07:04 your view, your dreams.
07:06 - Yeah, you want people around you
07:07 that will be happy if something good happens to you,
07:09 and not happy if something bad happens to you.
07:12 And that does require discrimination
07:15 in your choice of friends,
07:16 and it doesn't mean abandoning people
07:18 in their hour of distress, or anything like that,
07:20 certainly not, but if you've decided
07:23 that you're going to treat yourself like you matter
07:26 in some crucial way to yourself and to other people,
07:30 then you don't wanna be surrounded by people
07:33 who are going to do what they can
07:35 to put obstacles in your path
07:36 when you're trying to make those incremental improvements.
07:38 You want them on board.
07:40 And maybe that means you have to have a fight
07:41 with some of the people you love and be friends,
07:43 so that that is possible.
07:45 But it also means that that's what you should be looking for
07:49 when you're looking for some new people, say,
07:52 to have around you,
07:53 because then you're collectively doing it,
07:55 and that's better.
07:57 And it's also a message in some sense,
08:00 and this isn't moralizing,
08:03 to people who are erecting unnecessary impediments
08:07 to your difficult progress,
08:08 that that's not actually acceptable.
08:10 And maybe it's in their best interests
08:12 to receive that message, too.
08:14 You don't know.
08:16 - How do you actually say that to somebody?
08:18 There's probably someone that you've talked to
08:20 in your personal life where you've advised to a client
08:22 who's having a devil of a time with a relative
08:25 or a close friend that just does not seem
08:28 to be cheering them on.
08:29 - Well, you, first of all,
08:31 realize that you might be wrong about your interpretation.
08:34 So when you say what you have to say,
08:37 you don't say it so much as an accusation, as a question.
08:42 It's like, here's what I'm trying to do to,
08:44 I'm trying to quit drinking
08:46 because drinking is destroying my life,
08:48 and I do stupid things when I drink too much.
08:50 And so I'm thinking maybe I'll stop.
08:53 And I've been drinking a lot with you,
08:56 but I want to stop doing that.
08:57 And I notice that because I'm doing that,
08:59 but you keep tempting me and getting in my way.
09:03 - Triggering me.
09:04 - You know why I don't want you to do that.
09:07 That's what I see you're doing.
09:09 Is it what you're doing?
09:10 Have I got that wrong?
09:11 And that has to be a real question
09:12 'cause you're stupid and what do you know?
09:14 And so maybe you should ask some questions,
09:16 especially when you're dealing with something important
09:18 and listen to the answer.
09:20 And so you outline the situation
09:22 and you put forward what you see is happening
09:24 and then you open your eyes and your ears
09:26 and you listen to the response
09:28 and you hope that you both get through it
09:30 and it's better instead of worse.
09:33 And you have some understanding of worse
09:35 and you really hope things don't go in that direction,
09:37 assuming you've decided that you don't want them
09:40 to go in that direction because sometimes,
09:42 often people do because they're angry and resentful
09:45 and they want things to be worse.
09:48 They're mad and so they want things to be worse.
09:51 So that's a hard thing to overcome,
09:53 very hard thing to overcome.
09:54 Let it all burn.
09:56 It's like, yeah, we're like that, all of us.
09:59 - I love that you laid a path
10:02 so we can at least know where we're going.
10:04 Thanks, Jordan Peterson.
10:06 - My pleasure.