548. Jordan Peterson Takes Your Call: Advice, Mental Health, Family Dynamics | Mikhaila Fuller

Hawaii starts with the same aloha we share with each other extended to you.

Hawaii starts with a cabin crew that takes care of you like ohana.

Hawaii starts here with Hawaiian Airlines.

Visit HawaiianAirlines.com to book your next vacation.

Mama, papa, mi cuerpo crece a unrino alarmante.

Y la roba que me comprenora, me que dera muy pe queña muy pronto.

Pero subilletera no tina que su fri por la moda con los precios vajos de la vuelta clas de Amazon.

Amazon, las tamenos son ríemas.

Remember summers in the 90s?

Instacart does.

Popping bagel bites into the microwave and then popping them into your mouth too quickly.

And then popping out to buy a juice box, all with the literal change in your pocket.

And thanks to Instacart, those summers are here again.

Get 47.2% off $10 orders of Select 90s faves.

So you can summer like it's $19.99 with prices from $19.99.

$4.72 maximum discount per $10 of eligible items.

Limit one offer per order.

Expires September 5th while supplies last.

Discount based on CPI comparison.

It's very distressing to see people whose families are fragmented because it just curdles your soul.

How far should I go for someone who I care about but who refuses to get professional help?

How do I know if I'm actually building or something?

There is a substantial.

Well, what are you doing when you're talking to someone?

You're thinking, why would you think?

To specify a problem and to solve it.

You know, it sounds to me like you're setting yourself up as someone who could be maybe an excellent husband and father.

You know, you've evaluated your life and you've come to some new conclusions and you've developed some new daring and you're becoming more educated.

It's like, share that with someone.

Do you like my Jordan Peterson bust?

I really don't know what to think of it.

It'd be weird if you owned it.

I think it's weird also that you own it.

Okay,

let's get this show on the road.

We thought it might be a fun idea or an interesting idea to take questions from your audience and have you do what you do best and try to help some people if they need help.

And maybe the questions will be applicable to a lot of people.

So I think it should be fun.

We're going to give this a shot.

I hope you guys enjoy it.

I'm Michaela, by the way, if people don't know who I am.

That would be, she's my daughter.

Oh, yeah.

And a perfectly fine person in her own right as well.

Well, thank you.

I think that was a compliment.

So I'll take it.

Are we ready?

Number one, should we just jump into it?

Let's go.

Okay.

What is your opinion or feedback about

what you've seen about relationships being successful

if there is a substantial age gap of, let's say, 10, 15 years.

What has been your understanding as to the overall satisfaction of those relationships and the ability for them to be able to be long-lasting and satisfying when compared to relationships with

less than a 10-year age gap or so?

First of all, that's generally a situation with a younger woman and an older man.

I'm not going to comment on the reverse situation because it's very rare.

Women live longer.

It technically makes a little bit more sense.

That's coming from me.

It violates the social norm again.

Like women cross-culturally prefer men who are about four years older.

And there's a variety of reasons for that.

The major reason is that

A wise woman isn't looking for another child.

She's looking for someone who she can rely on to be productive, generous, loving

when she's incapacitated or more incapacitated in pregnancy and with young children.

And so

women even the scoreboard card by looking for men who are

mature and no wonder.

And young men have to understand that.

A 17-year-old male is not a very marketable creature.

Now, there are exceptions to that.

You know, spectacularly attractive people who are outstanding in some manner can leapfrog the game, but basically, men gain advantage as they age.

There are women who I've met who

are

looking for

someone who's quite substantially more mature.

And there are advantages to that, I think, for a woman, because

as men establish themselves,

they know more, they have broader social connections, they're more competent, and they have more resources.

And

the other thing, you know, is

by the time you're 25,

You're about as old as everyone else until they're like 70.

You know, you hit that period of maturity

where

roughly people are the same age.

And so

if you're attracted and you're both willing, then I don't see that as a problem that's

any more insurmountable than personality differences or the other

idiosyncrasies that couples have to contend with.

Do you think it's weird?

So I think the difference between say 30 year old woman or 25 year old woman and 40 or 45 year old man,

that makes more, or if you go up, that kind of makes sense.

Do you think it's weird when we see like 35 year old men who refuse to date anybody who's above the age of 22?

I don't know if there are experiments of this sort, but they'd be easy enough to run.

If you're after a one-night stand, then

why not have a 22-year-old no that totally oh no but that's it that's the whole story but if it's a relationship yeah well then then then the problems that you just described leap forward madly for anyone who has any sense i would be concerned that i i was being taken advantage of just from being a 21 year old

if i meet other 35 year old guys i'm like if you only date young 20s is it because anybody who's 30 would see through you Oh, sure.

Yeah.

But once you get above like 25, I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

Yeah, well, the predatory tilt.

Look, Mick, we know

the personality characteristics of

men who tilt towards one-night stance.

That's already been delineated.

They tilt in the dark tetra direction.

And so

the the 35-year-old men who won't date anyone who's under

who's over 23, they're not dating.

They're looking for

sex with no strings attached.

And, you know, if there was such a thing as sex with no strings attached, then,

hey, have at her.

But the problem is, is that

that never happens.

I think the argument that they use is: oh, those are women's most fertile years, but you don't see the people doing that getting married and having babies.

They're actually more into polyamory, if anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well,

there is a relationship between youth and

there's a relationship between youth and casual sexual attractiveness, the same way there is between maybe overuse of makeup and casual sexual attractiveness.

Like if you're you're shallow,

I'm not exactly saying that attraction to youth and beauty is shallow, but,

you know,

there are 15, 16-year-old models.

They're not uncommon at all.

They're usually quite made up.

And that makeup gives them a sexual patina.

And it's very easy if you're male to

be

attracted sexually by surface.

It's a sign of lack of maturity and wisdom.

And I'm not trying to make a case against beauty, but

there are plenty of beautiful

women who are 30.

There are plenty of beautiful women who are 50.

It gets harder as you get older to maintain that.

Your mother has done that extraordinarily well.

They're not seeing the whole person.

Yeah.

And that's convenient if what you want to do is have responsibility-free sex, but there's no such thing as responsibility-free sex.

That's a complete lie.

And so then it's immature.

And so those men are immature.

It's as simple as that.

They're immature.

And they're not having a relationship.

They're not

tying themselves together with someone for the long run.

And that makes that cripples them because life is very hard.

It's not something

you should undertake alone.

You will become,

you can't be staying alone.

I think with regards to the age difference, maybe the one thing you want to ask if you're a young woman with an older man is, you know,

are there,

are you looking for a father?

But then

If you didn't have a father and you're a very young woman, like maybe you need that more mature guidance.

Maybe Maybe that's valuable to you.

Why wouldn't it be?

I think as long as you avoid the psychopathic types that are just after naivety, then

you're all kind of the same age after a certain point anyway, so it probably doesn't matter.

And maybe there are some benefits even, depending on the person.

That's a perfectly reasonable summation.

Dear Dr.

Peterson, largely thanks to discovering your lectures, as I was going through a very rough patch in 2017, I am now a former truck driver, turned part-time security guard and full-time law student.

You helped me rediscover meaning, culture, and rekindle the flame that drove me, and I am forever grateful to you.

I am, however, less and less optimistic about the future of Western civilization, as it seems that a lot of what gave it meaning is evaporating in front of our eyes, particularly with Wokeness working ever so hard to divide us all.

It seems to me unwise to reproduce things being this uncertain.

Do you have any words to rekindle my faith that we are still in fact able to create a world that is suitable for children to inherit?

Your story implies that

you made less of yourself for some substantial amount of time

because of doubt, and that you've shed that and that that's improved your life substantially.

Enough so that you expressed gratitude for that.

My first pass take on what you said is that the same problem is plaguing you in relationship to children.

It's always, there isn't a more uncertain thing you can do than to have children.

And so

it's always been the case throughout human history that

you are bringing children into an uncertain world.

You're coping with

the

uncertainty in life by

picking a challenging and responsibility-laden pathway forward in your private life.

Don't stop.

I would say the same with regards to marriage.

Find someone and take the risk.

And then the same with children.

And

figure it out as you move forward.

I think that

there's a diverse enough range of opportunity and risk in the future so that a generic notion like

things are too unstable

is

not

the right level of resolution to address the issue.

The question is,

would you take on the responsibility and the adventure of producing a microenvironment within your own family that enables you to marry and to have children and to produce something for the future in a way that best enables your children to move forward with security and daring into the future?

And you already know you can do this in principle because you've already taken radical steps in the last few years to put your life on a new course.

Because you could say the same thing about the judiciary becoming corrupt and law schools becoming woke and everything shaking to its foundations.

And you could use that as a justification for

your refusal to move forward in faith and with courage.

But you're not.

And you said yourself that things are way better because of your new attitude.

Well, so

continue with the risk.

You know, it sounds to me like you're setting yourself up as someone who could be

maybe an excellent husband and father.

And, you know, you've evaluated your life and you've come to some new conclusions and you've developed some new daring and you're becoming more educated.

It's like

share that with someone and

pass on the benefits to your children who will love you, which is a there's no better deal than that, by the way, too.

You know,

there's no better deal than a family

and people who love you.

And that's worth a risk, and it's worth a risk for them.

And

there's no better pathway forward than to maintain your faith in yourself and in the spirit of life itself.

And if you lose that or let it waver, then it makes even catastrophe worse.

So

consider it a moral obligation to

have faith in be fruitful and multiply.

It's a pro

existence stance.

And

if you're opposed to your own existence, then who can save you?

You can also create this, like you were talking about, this little microcosm in your home for your kids to grow up in.

And then you can help them become extremely competent.

Like this guy sounds competent.

He's in law school.

He's like, he's obviously gone through a number of jobs and become more and more successful and gotten over some personal stuff.

So he seems competent.

But if you raise your kids right and you build confidence in themselves, then they can go out into this chaotic world.

And find opportunity.

And find opportunity too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and there's not that much difference

between a problem and an opportunity.

Like a world full of problems is, well, you could solve those problems.

And if there's a problem and you solve it, then you have an opportunity.

And so

a world where everything was taken care of would actually be a world without opportunity.

So

don't underestimate the utility of your children's competence and your role in encouraging that development.

I like that.

And good luck.

And congratulations also.

Seriously.

I want to tell you all why my team and I founded Peterson Academy.

First, it's because the technology is there.

It's now possible to identify and gather the greatest lectures and thinkers alive today and to put them in a position where they can offer their best to all who are interested.

Second, advanced education is far more expensive than necessary.

Students who complete a four-year degree risk crippling themselves with debt just when they're starting their lives and their careers.

Third reason,

because of ideological and institutional corruption.

I watched that process painfully unfold for 40 years at McGill, at Harvard, at the University of Toronto.

What's the alternative at Peterson Academy?

Well, we have 40 stellar professors on board.

We have 34 eight-hour courses taught at the highest level of quality with maximum efficiency.

And there's much more to come.

Find your purpose, sharpen your wit, and bring to bear on your own life the knowledge being offered to you by the best in the world.

Go to PetersonAcademy.com for the details.

Enroll and change your life.

This episode is brought to you by Corona.

When you're on a beach with an ice-cold Corona in hand, how can you not feel centered?

But did you know you can get that vibe anywhere?

That's because whether after work, at barbecues, or at a bar, with just a squeeze of lime, Corona brings you La Playa mentality.

Because while we all want the beach life, paradise doesn't always have palm trees.

Corona, La Playa Playa, awaits.

Get yours at OrderCorona.com.

Relax responsibly, Corona Extra Beer, imported by Crown Import, Chicago, Illinois.

We have been a traditional family for 50 years, enjoying the usual family gatherings, birthdays, Christmas, etc.

We have two children, six grandchildren.

Our older son has been with his partner for 20 years, and they have four children, ages 9 to 17.

In the last two years, our son helped a woman who was in an abusive relationship, and she and her son became part of their family.

It became apparent last year they are now in a polyamorous relationship.

Also, our 17-year-old granddaughter is now a grandson.

My husband and I can work around the latter, but cannot bring ourselves to accept the polyamorous relationship as we have not, and as we have not accepted it completely, we are now estranged from them.

They have taken a different road, and we can't seem to find a middle road to gather with them.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Well, the first thing I would say is that

that might be useful for everybody listening is that

you deviate from the norm,

much less the ideal, at your extreme peril.

You know, when people came to see me who were unhappy and unfulfilled,

and often didn't know what to do with their lives, one of the

guidelines that I used to help me and them navigate was

you should do what everyone else does unless you have a really good reason not to.

Now,

polyamory.

Well, first of all, what the hell is that?

Just because some dim-witted leftist hedonists came up with a new word doesn't mean that anything like that exists.

It's already very, very difficult to negotiate a relationship over the long run, let's call it a marriage, if you stay

religiously within the normative parameters.

Now you want to

extend that beyond that.

That's your theory.

You think you're going to be sophisticated enough to negotiate the jealousies, the split of time, the

perilous risks of intimacy with

more than one person.

And you think you're going to do that well and that everyone else around you is going to know how to deal with that.

Well, every single bit of that's delusional.

Monogamy

is a universal norm and ideal.

Not because people don't have proclivities

in other directions, but because the human race

hasn't found a solution that's stable, all things considered,

balancing the needs of children, men and women, and society,

there's no solution to that problem other than monogamy.

And I would also say

you're doing something that's bad by

entering into a polyamorous relationship.

you're destabilizing the social norm.

And for what?

For your own benefit?

For your own hypothetical benefit.

First of all, that's a little on the selfish side, I might say.

The guardrails are there for a reason.

And you hope that your parents can somehow adapt to that.

And

that what?

They're supposed to just say it's all right.

That's what they're going to do if they love you.

They're not going to raise any objections to your strange experiment.

And it's not like they knew the rules.

Like, what are the rules?

Oh, my son has two wives.

Well, no one knows what to do with that.

And so what that generally means, if you're exceptional, is that

people aren't going to have much to do with you because you're too damn much trouble.

What would you do if I had been in that situation?

Like, is a bit of it dependent on how old they are?

Like, if these are people who are, I don't know, mid-20s, maybe, and they're like, I'm going to give this a shot.

I can do it.

I'm one of those people that can navigate basically an open relationship.

Like, what if I had it in my head that that was me?

Would it be?

Well, I think I would have fought with you until I knew what the hell was going on.

Like, that's my general proclivity.

The woman who asked this question, there's not a lot of detail in the question.

So I don't know exactly why they're alienated.

And it's a terrible thing to be alienated from your children.

Maybe they just said, we don't agree with your lifestyle and we need a boundary here.

But should the boundary be as far as we don't talk to you anymore?

Or should it be like,

we love you.

We don't think this lifestyle is good for you or the people around you or potential children you're going to have?

Kayla, my suspicions are,

look,

if you stay within the boundaries of the norm,

Everybody knows what to do.

There's a script.

You know how to have Thanksgiving dinner together.

You know how to have Christmas together.

You know how to treat

your son's wife's children.

Everyone knows that.

All right.

Now, if you throw a left curve into that, well, what are the rules exactly?

And the answer to that is, you have to negotiate them from scratch for everything.

Well, people are terrible at negotiating.

And so the probability that they're going to come up with a solution for that inside a family is

extremely low.

You're basically negotiating a whole new social contract.

And so

part of the advantage to marriage is like a serious reduction in complexity.

You know, you have someone that you can rely on for the long run.

You can make

practical and contractual relationships with them.

You can chart your course.

You don't have to manage the

cascading consequences of multiple relationships.

And what?

All of a sudden, people are not going to have sexual jealousy.

That's just going to disappear somehow.

And everyone's going to love each other equally.

That's going to happen.

That never happens.

That's never happened anywhere, ever, even once, to anyone.

It's preposterous.

Now, what would I do if that situation arose with my own kids?

I don't know if I'd be the one in our family that would put down the boundary.

That might be your mom.

You know, because she's probably more capable than me of saying,

I'm not going to stand by you while you walk off the edge of a cliff.

Now, I would like to think that I would fight it out.

Because I don't want to have anything between us.

And if you were doing something seriously ill-advised, I'd like to hope that the warning sides of that would have been there early and that we would have worked on it before it became

an unmanageable mess.

I think for the woman who asked this question, I think probably the problem is that the

issue is too vague.

You see,

now these people in this situation have to think through everything.

Okay, how many times a year are we going to meet?

Once, twice, three times, four times, five times?

How long are we going to meet?

Who's going to come?

What are the rules for engagement?

How should we treat everyone?

Like, I'd probably counsel them to try one dinner together and have a pretty decent discussion about one dinner beforehand.

Who's coming?

How long is it going to last?

How are we going to treat each other?

What would i recommend let's be

polite like we would be to strangers that we were um

trying not to offend right because nobody knows what the hell's going on everything at the table is anomalous and strange and so

maybe you meet for maybe you meet at a restaurant Because that's kind of neutral territory.

And maybe you meet for an hour or maybe half an hour or 45 minutes, something like that.

And you hope that it doesn't go horribly.

And then if that worked,

well, if that didn't work, then scale down.

If it did work, well, then maybe you could try something a little bit more

personal.

You know, the problem is, is that something terribly anomalous has occurred and no one knows what to do about it.

Without knowing family dynamics, like,

is the person who's in a polyamorous relationship,

why are they doing it?

Is it because of the person they're with that's encouraging them?

Is it something they want?

Or is it to see how their parents will react?

You know, like it could be one of those factors because maybe

they want boundaries, or maybe they want, hey, you know what?

We don't agree with this at all, but we love you anyway and have faith in you figuring it out.

Maybe that's the direction they need to go to.

Like, I feel like if I was in the situation where I was like, you know what, polyamory

is what I believe in.

It's what I want.

I can handle it.

It's better for me, which is a delusional way of thinking.

But if I had convinced myself that was the right thing and it was in response to my parents, what I would probably want is my parents to say, we don't think this is good for you.

You know, it's not about us.

We don't think this is good for you and your family.

And

we're here when you figure it out.

We're not going to encourage it.

And we don't like like it, but we're here.

Okay, I have one more thing to say about this.

People like false adventures.

Yeah.

And false adventures are excitement without responsibility.

And what you want to do

within the confines of your marriage is find adventure in the marriage.

responsibly.

I mean, there isn't anything better than a sexual relationship with someone you actually love.

There's nothing better than that, period, the end.

And so, if you're not getting that excitement and adventure within your relationship, that's what you should be working on.

And that's going to be hard.

Like, in order for that to happen,

there has to be nothing between you.

You won't trust each other.

You won't let each other go.

You won't let yourself go if there's anything between you and your wife, let's say.

And you're going to re-duplicate every single bloody problem that you had with your wife, with this new person, in all likelihood.

People are indefinitely complex.

And if you have put your wife in a pumpkin shell and she's not very exciting, then

so you have to find someone new.

Maybe you could try being a little more sophisticated and using a bit more encouragement, a little more daring, a little more dreaming, some lingerie,

you know,

clue in, seriously, all this nonsense.

The New Yorker does this all the time, the magazine.

Polyamory is the new in thing.

It's like

there's no punishment severe enough for people that stupid except the consequences of their own idiocy.

And this is what these parents are afraid of.

They're afraid of it

and their children involved.

This is not going to work out well.

It's never worked out well.

We're dealing with a pattern of misbehaviors that our son, our 13-year-old throws tantrums.

Her son turned to some substance abuse.

Rules consistently applied with minimal force and plenty of patience.

So my question is, how do I know if I'm actually building something important or just staying busy to feel productive?

Sometimes it it seems like I'm doing a lot, but I'm not sure whether the path is right for me.

That's my question.

And I also want to say thank you very much, Dr.

Jordan Peterson, for completely changing my life with his views, mental models, and the book 12 Rules of our Life.

Thank you very much.

There are all sorts of markers that you can use to determine whether you're on a productive path.

And one is that

the goals that you have envisioned for yourself are sufficiently motivating so that you're inclined to work voluntarily or even enthusiastic about it, that would be best.

And so that the direction that those goals provide protects you from undue directionless anxiety.

And so you have to negotiate with yourself to see if

what you're aiming at satisfies you and fills you with hope.

But then you don't have to do this alone.

You know,

corporations have boards so that people can discuss

vision and strategy.

And so

I would say

that it sounds to me like part of what you need is some people around around you to bounce your

ideas of the future and your strategies against

so that you can stress test them and

address your doubts.

So,

number one, negotiate with yourself to see if you believe that your plan

gives you direction and hope and constrains direction sufficiently so you're not too stressed.

And

test that against the world

and against the judgments of other people, understanding as well that even if you have a good plan, there's going to be some variability that's temperamentally determined in

whether you're still anxious.

You know, if you're higher in trait neuroticism, you're going to be

more variable in your response to your goals and more prone to doubt.

That's also partly why you bring other people on board to

further your

investigation.

I would also say

you could give some thought to doing the future authoring program at selfauthoring.com.

I was going to say that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just, why were you going to say that?

Well, I mean, how do you know if you're on the right path?

What's your path?

So if you have a goal, like maybe this job isn't fulfilling something, but it's making you money while you pursue a larger goal.

And maybe that's something you have to do for three or five years while you do something else.

Or maybe there's opportunity in the job that you're not seeing, but you need an aim.

Yeah.

You taught me that.

So where are you going?

And then see if what you're doing is leading to that.

Right, right.

Okay.

So, you know, is where you're going good?

Yeah.

Is it leading away from somewhere bad?

Those are two initial questions.

And that's how the future authoring is structured.

But then

this is a way of assessing your aim.

Well,

what should your aim encompass?

Well, we tried to break this down in the future authoring program.

You want a meaningful life.

Well, let's differentiate that.

Well,

do you have a plan for marriage?

Do you have a plan for children?

Do you have a plan to educate yourself?

Do you have some sense of how you would or could take care of yourself mentally and physically?

how you could be of service to your community.

You know, that could be

volunteering or it could be political at all the different levels of political involvement that exist.

What if your job is also good for the community?

Can you combine those?

Then good.

Okay.

Good.

It's just another place.

Where meaning can be derived, right?

And mentoring people is good for that, for example.

It's extremely fulfilling for people.

How are you going to protect yourself against temptation, drug and alcohol abuse, and sexual misbehavior?

Like the advantage to the future authoring program is that it

provides a differentiated vision.

And so

this is what I would recommend to the gentleman who asked the question.

It's like, go do that and do a bad job.

Just sketch it out.

Do a good first draft.

You know, because you're not going to get it perfect and you're going to learn along the way.

You can substitute a better plan if you come up with one.

All right.

Now, I wouldn't do that every week, you know, and that's the danger of someone who might be emotionally unstable, high in neuroticism, or really high in openness or worse, both, you know.

But

make the best plan you can,

discuss it with other people, implement it, then you'll learn.

Then you can take what you learn.

And, you know, maybe

every four months, every six months, every year, you can return to your plan and see if it needs some tweaking or some foundation work.

It's a very good idea to move forward with a bad plan.

It's a very good idea to do that compared to not moving forward and waiting.

The problem with waiting is you get disenchanted and discouraged and you don't learn anything.

If you implement a plan that isn't perfect, you'll learn exactly why it isn't perfect as you implement it, and then you'll be able to make a better plan and

that is how cybernetic self-correction works that's how complex systems that rely on feedback true their aim across time they start out with a fuzzy goal this is even how large language models are trained the aim is fuzzy to begin with and then it tightens as it iterates

That's the definition of learning.

And so

with regard to the plan you have now, if you're not fully confident in it, well, flesh it out more, as I said, talk to other people about it, but then also understand that

that's your plan, unless you have a better one.

And so, stick to it, right?

And if you stick to it and you learn as a consequence of your persistence, you will gather the information that will enable you to make a better plan for sure.

New opportunities will come your way.

And sometimes that'll mean a radical shift when it's time.

And that's fine.

but you're not going to do that without a bad plan, even.

And so, if you don't think your plan is perfect, well, that doesn't mean that you're making a mistake.

And then, if you're really fortunate and you watch, and this is sort of how you cooperate with your plan

and with the divine, so to speak, without becoming hide-bound and insistent that your way is the right way, is you have a plan and then you search to see if there's open doors on the way to the goal, right?

And if there's, if it's a good plan,

people will spontaneously line up to cooperate with you.

Yeah.

I'm pretty sure this is how, you know, all those, well, it's either a scam, but you know, people who talk about manifesting?

Yeah.

They're like, manifest, it'll work.

Those are either scam artists, which I think a good portion of them are,

or they make a plan and are amazed at all the doors that open when they have a plan.

That's exactly right.

That's exactly what manifesting is.

And there's,

and you got that right.

There's two parts to it.

There's the scam part and the other part, which is

doors.

You know, it's like you're standing somewhere and there's

30 hallways in front of you.

And down each of those hallways, there are sets of doors.

And so

you choose a hallway and then you test the doors.

And

if you stay at the beginning of that, if you stay on the landing, you go nowhere and no doors open.

If you pick a pathway, you forego the other ones, at least temporarily, but then you start to see the doors.

And then you can push and see, are they opening?

I would also say, generally, with the plan, generally,

the amount of your plan you're going to change should be proportionate to the magnitude of the opportunity, which means you can make a radical shift in your life now and then

if the benefits are clear and overwhelming, right?

Or the risk is worth taking in this adventurous way.

But other than that, you should tilt towards conservatism.

Don't change anything in your plan that you don't have to change.

It's a tight balance to manage because you need to be able to pivot when circumstances have genuinely changed, but you don't want to upset yourself too badly by becoming a new person every 15 minutes, which is the curse of someone who's very high in openness.

And not very high in conscientiousness.

Well, that's, yes, right, right, right.

Yep.

That was good.

I was, I've been super surprised.

Every year I've been doing, like, I like New Year's resolutions and things, but, so once a year, I'll make a plan for, and I shoot pretty high because you always taught me to shoot high, who knows what you're capable of.

So I shoot

way further than I think I can get.

I'm like, okay, this is my plan for 2025.

And then I don't really look at it.

So it's different than future authoring, which is really detailed and it's really helpful.

But I also grew up with you as a dad.

So I have that going for me.

But I've been so surprised because every year I'll look at my goals again.

I'll be like, you know what?

I got through like 80% of these way higher than I was expecting.

And it's because when you do make a plan, it's like your vision changes.

Well, it does.

You can see these open doors.

You look at where you're headed.

I mean, this is literally how perception works.

You look at where you're headed.

Okay.

You need to be headed somewhere.

That also works in abstraction.

Okay.

Now that you're headed somewhere, the world divides itself into pathways forward, right?

Things that help you along your way.

Things that get in your way.

and irrelevant things.

Most things are irrelevant once you've specified a pathway.

That also controls anxiety, right?

There's lots of things you don't have to look at when you're going that way.

Definitely.

Okay.

Things that help you, things that get in your way.

That works socially.

Friends and foes.

So pathways, tools, obstacles, friends, foes, and then agents of magical transformation.

And agents of magical transformation.

change your aim.

Right.

And that's the role they play in fiction, for example.

Wizards and magical beings change the game,

and that's the world.

It's really, that's how you see the world, that's how your vision works, that's how you hear things,

that's how the world presents itself to you.

So,

no goal, no doorways,

no goal, no pathway, right?

Yeah, or random, horrible doorways

that lead like upside down, yeah, right, yeah, right, right, Yeah.

That was helpful.

If you hear a baby screaming,

she's hungry.

But how does one distinguish between a relationship that requires personal growth and sacrifice to thrive and one that is fundamentally misaligned with one's deeper values and should be let go?

Yeah,

if that person is going through that and also just had a baby, I would say wait a little bit because you're in baby mode right now and it's pure chaos for at least a year.

Yeah, fair.

If that's the case,

it's very hard to deal with a partner that lies.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's

now if they're lying and that's improving.

I don't know.

Well, look, people don't start out 100% trustworthy, you know.

The more lies there are, the harder it is by a lot.

But you can see a trajectory of improvement.

That's really important.

If you're negotiating, can the person negotiate?

Do they negotiate in good faith?

Do they implement the consequences of the negotiation?

You know,

you can take a relationship that's got

quite a number of kinks in it and straighten it out across time if people will commit to the process and

tell you the truth.

If it's a downhill slope

continually,

no improvement whatsoever, then

you're playing a game that

you probably can't win.

I think that's a pretty good answer.

I think the lying part is key, too.

Like, that's,

I don't, there's nothing more important than that, right?

Otherwise, you can't sort out a problem.

You'd be like, can we fix it?

Sure, we could fix it.

If that's a lie, you know.

It also makes you question your own sanity.

That's, yes.

You know, if you're, if you're with someone who

insists that the way you see things when you're trying to see them as accurately as you can is a delusion or faulty.

It's insanity making.

How often do you think that happens in relationships?

A lot.

Isn't that pathological, though?

Like, isn't that a disorder of some sight, some sort, if somebody does that?

Or is it not pathological and lots of people experience it?

Well, I don't really think there is any difference

between

personality psychopathology

in its most disruptive guise and the proclivity lie.

You know, all of the psychotherapeutic schools

are predicated on the assumption that truth

redeems.

The collaborative empiricism I was talking about before, it's like

put it to the test, watch what happens.

That assumes truth in relationship to the analysis of the outcome and

iterate

psychoanalytic free association.

That's just truth.

Say whatever comes to your mind.

Well, that's what you do when you're telling the truth.

You just say, you can become a master at that.

Like, I try.

Am I a master at that?

I'm not perfect,

but I do say what comes to mind.

That's the manner in which I direct my words.

I'm not trying to,

well, I have an aim.

Hopefully, the aim is to make things better.

And no, it's more differentiated than that, but that's the overall aim.

Do I want to make things worse?

No, I'd rather make them better.

For how many people?

Well, for the people that I'm primarily responsible for, first and foremost, but then

everyone else that can be managed.

And then

I try to say what aids that.

I'm not manipulating towards some determined end.

Do you think there are some things that you should figure out early, though,

where they just don't work?

Like

if one person is extremely organized and extremely high in conscientiousness and the other person isn't,

like is extremely low.

Well, but those things you should figure out early.

We have this understand myself personality questionnaire.

Yeah.

Right.

And it has a couples component.

In business, every dollar counts.

So Comcast Business is giving you a year of mobile on us with your internet service.

Save hundreds with the fastest mobile service with 5G cellular and Wi-Fi hotspots.

Get mobile on us and get one year on us.

Comcast Business, powering possibilities.

Ends 9-22-25.

Restrictions apply.

New mobile customers only with internet standard service or above.

Limited to value of one unlimited interline apply via 12-month with internet film credits.

One discount per account.

Fastest mobile based on mobile, Wi-Fi, and cellular data and service areas.

UCLA Speed Test Intelligence 2H24.

Which is great, by the way, and everybody should do it.

Yeah.

That's like my favorite thing other than Peterson Academy.

that's my favorite thing that you've developed i've been using that since we had to score it on paper yeah like i was obsessed with that i was the one that said we should do a couples yeah version yeah was using it to screen people i don't know you know what it does it sorts through extroverts too because you meet an extrovert especially if you're an extroverted person you're like i like this person this person is great yeah and extroversion just coats every other part of their personality and you're like this person's super fun yeah I had that problem with hiring for a while.

Right.

Like, are they awesome or are they extroverted?

And a lot of the time, it was like, oh, they scored 94th in extroversion.

Who knows what they're really like?

Right.

Because it can hide low conscientiousness.

So they can be a total slob and not care about it.

Yeah.

But really, be really charming.

Yeah.

Like that can be hidden.

Or neurotic, like high neuroticism.

So they're extremely volatile, but also very charming.

Yeah.

So just figuring out your personality and your partner's personality and being like, okay, are there things here that we have to discuss to see if we can work through?

And one of those has got to be conscientious.

Oh, well,

all of the traits I would say is the wider you are apart on a given trait, the harder it is to bridge the gap.

Now, there can be some advantages, like if

your grandmother, your mom's mom, was pretty introverted.

Yeah.

And your grandfather was really extroverted.

And

she valued that in him.

And it helped her a lot because it opened up the social space.

So

that's on the extroverted side.

Conscientiousness, that's a rough one.

If there's a huge split in conscientiousness, I suppose it's all to the advantage of the unconscientious person.

Yeah.

You'll just end up, if you're the conscientious one, you'll just end up cleaning for the rest of your life.

Yeah.

And time management is a hard one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Openness is another tough one.

Yeah.

You know, if you, one of you is very, very open, interested in ideas, interested in aesthetic experience, and the other is very low in openness, it's like you're speaking different languages.

This also might be helpful if people do find themselves in a situation where they have dated a number of people and they're like, it's not working.

It's not working.

It's not working.

Am I a narcissistic, horrible person?

And is that the problem?

Or maybe you've got some extreme personality traits that are kind of rare

because I think

that's part of what happened to me with being

I just wasn't an extreme person,

and I was like, Is it me?

I'm the problem.

I mean, technically, that would make me the problem, but then I found another extreme person and was like, okay, now we can be lunatics together.

Yeah, well, I was fortunate with your mother, too, because she's a lot like me, but not quite so much so.

You know, your mom would be in the upper echelons of extroversion among 100 people, right?

She'd be more extroverted than, say, 75 of those people or 80 even.

But I'm like more extroverted than 10,000 people.

Yeah.

So

I've always been that way, right?

I talk

ever since I was could talk.

I never stopped.

Yeah.

That's pretty funny.

Got any concluding thoughts?

I can wrap up a little bit.

Yeah, you go for it.

That was fun.

We started by talking about

conservatism in this non-political sense.

If your life is a mess,

you should think hard about doing what other people have always done.

And

what does that mean?

Well, we kind of outlined that with the future authoring program.

You know,

get married.

Have some friends that you value.

And think about

what that means.

Sort your family out.

Get your career together.

Educate yourself.

Figure out how to resist temptation.

Serve your community.

Do all those things.

See what your life's like.

If it's not still what you want, well, maybe you're some open lunatic and you have to do something,

something, you know,

really different.

But even then,

binding that within the confines of all those other things,

that's a good idea.

Take a small step in the direction that you want things to go and build from that.

And

that's always a good exploratory technique.

Something minimal in the right direction, right?

Okay.

Well, that was fun.

Thanks for including me.

That was fun.

Well, thank you for setting it up and for agreeing to do it and for finding the questions and

paying attention.

Thanks for everybody who submitted questions.

Yeah, much for you.

Most people enjoyed it or found it helpful.

Yeah, yeah.

And I definitely enjoy this sort of thing,

which is why I'm a psychologist, not a politician.

Seriously,

it's the right level of analysis for me, and it's a more fundamental level, anyways, because the fundamental way people put the world together is by

putting themselves together and

and working to

fortify and improve the relationships they have at hand if everyone did that there'd be no reason to even have the political

agreed right

so for everybody who's watching and listening we're going to now go over to the daily wire side of things and do another half an hour take probably probably two more questions and so

give some consideration to joining us over there

much appreciated

these are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer during answer the call i take questions from people just like you about their problems opportunities challenges or when they simply need advice how do i balance all of this grief responsibility how do you repair this kind of damage?

My daughter, Michaela, guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives.

Everyone has their own destiny.

Everyone.