Have you asked yourself lately why you are here? I mean, what is your purpose? That may be an easy question for me to ask, but a challenging one for you to answer.
During these times of questioning your purpose, it’s common to replay events in your life where you felt out of control or like everything was going wrong. That reaction comes from a lack of responsibility for yourself. You’re lacking the goals you need to feel complete.
Instead, start making a road map for your life: the things you want to achieve, the family you want to have, and how you want to feel every day. It doesn’t have to be a perfect map — no one has that — but some direction is better than no direction. Without a start and an aim, you are going to stand there watching the world pass you by.
In this episode, I sat down with clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson. We discuss the relationship between meaning and responsibility, the significance of spontaneous admiration, and how any aim (even a bad one) is crucial for you to feel fulfilled. Let’s get started!
Who Is Dr. Jordan Peterson?
Dr. Jordan Peterson is a Canadian professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, and the author of the million-plus selling, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos which has been a number one bestseller across the world and is translated into 40 languages.
This year, Dr. Peterson published his third book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. The lectures and debates he shares on YouTube have also become popular, garnering millions of views. His popularity began to really take off in the late 2010s for his view on cultural and political issues.
Finding True Meaning in Life
One of the things Dr. Peterson often talks to his audience about is the relationship between responsibility and meaning. He also tries to make theoretical and abstract constructs more concrete so that they are implementable for those in his audience. He believes these philosophical frameworks can actually help structure your aim in life. And “aim” is a big theme we discuss in this episode.
“If you start with the presumption that there’s a baseline of suffering in life and that can be exaggerated by as a consequence of human failure as a consequence of malevolence and betrayal and self-betrayal and deceit and all those things that we do to each other and ourselves that we know that aren’t good, that amplifies the suffering. That’s sort of the baseline against which you have to work. And its contemplation of that is often what makes people hopeless and depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and all of that.” – Dr. Jordan Peterson
I like what Dr. Peterson has to say because of his message of hope. The hope we have in all our suffering is that we can be stronger than we think we are, and that our meaning is linked to the overcoming of that suffering. It’s really very encouraging to think of it that way. It’s why I do this show — to help people find greatness in their purpose.
“And what you put up against that [suffering] is meaning. Meaning is actually the instinct that helps you guide yourself through that catastrophe. And most of that meaning is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.” – Dr. Jordan Peterson
Dr. Peterson goes on to say that if we take personal responsibility for ourselves — the way we would think of taking care of a loved one — that we will find a key to happiness and meaning. How ironic that we often care for others more than we really care for ourselves.
Spontaneous Admiration
He also mentions that if you look at the people that you spontaneously admire, the act of admiring someone is the manifestation of the instinct for meaning. This is partly why people are so enamored with sports figures because the sports figures are playing out the drama of attaining psychological and physical perfection in pursuit of the goal. We use these figures as models, and then their process of overcoming hardships can be transcribed into something applicable in life.
“In an athletic performance, you really like to see someone who’s extremely disciplined and in shape do something physically remarkable and to stretch themselves even beyond their previous exploits because you really like to see a brilliant move in an athletic match.” – Dr. Jordan Peterson
I definitely can relate to this. As a former professional football player, I was constantly pushing my body beyond the limits of what I thought it could do because I was inspired by the legends I admired. I had a picture in my mind of doing the things they were able to do.
“You also like to see that person [whom you admire] ensconced in a broader moral framework so that not only are they trying to win and disciplining themselves in pursuit of that victory, but they are also stretching themselves. So they’re continually getting better, but they’re doing it in a way that helps develop their whole team and that’s good for the sport in general. And that reflects well on the broader culture.” – Dr. Jordan Peterson
Dr. Peterson says that sports are a great analogy for life because life is like a game. Similar to sports, you are setting forth an aim and then arranging your perceptions and actions in pursuit of that.
In life, Dr. Peterson says it’s more beneficial to have an aim than to not have any aim, even if that aim is wrong or you fail. It’s better to fail than to not try at all.
“… you can’t suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and you can’t become bitter without becoming cruel. So you need an aim. The question then is, what should your aim be?” – Dr. Jordan Peterson
Before we know where we are going, we need to understand where we have been. That’s where our story comes into play.
