Jordan Peterson on Marriage, Resentment & Healing the Past (Part 1) EP 1093

“Conflict delayed is conflict multiplied.”Today's guest is Jordan Peterson. He’s known for teaching mythology to lawyers, doctors and business people, helping his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia. His lectures have been viewed by millions of people online. Jordan has published over a hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality. This interview ended up going over an hour longer than we planned for, so we’ve decided to split this episode up into 2 parts! Part 2 of this interview will come out on Wednesday of this week! In this episode Lewis and Jordan discuss the keys to Jordan’s 50 year relationship, how to start opening up and admitting what you want in life, how feeling resentful can actually be useful, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1093Check out his website: www.selfauthoring.comCheck out his book: Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for LifeThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,093 with Jordan Peterson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:29Lewis Howes?

  Abraham Lincoln said, "I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have." And Viktor Frankl said, "Everything can be taken from a man, but the last of the human freedoms, to choose one attitudes in any given set of circumstances." My guest today is Jordan Peterson. He is known for teaching mythology to lawyers, doctors, and business people, helping his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia. His lectures have been viewed by tens and millions and hundreds of millions of people online, and Jordan has published over 100 scientific papers transforming the modern understanding of personality.

• 1:11Lewis Howes?

  His previous book, 12 Rules for Life, was a New York Times bestseller and mega hit around the world. He's now back with a new book titled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. This interview ended up going over an hour longer than we planned, almost two and a half hours in total. I couldn't stop interviewing Jordan. I didn't want to stop because it was captivating me the entire time. So this is part one, and part two will come next. But in this episode, we discuss the keys to Jordan's 50-year relationship, and it was great hearing him really open up about marriage and relationships. How to start opening up and admitting what you want in life. How Jordan thinks about discipline. How feeling resentful can actually be useful to you.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  And how to heal the memories of our past. I'm telling you, this will open you up and inspire you in a new way. If you're a big fan of Jordan and you've watched or listened to some of his stuff before, he shares things here that I've never heard him share before. For and it's pretty inspiring in this episode and also what you're going to hear in the next episode. Whew, man, it gets deep and it gets really inspiring. So make sure to listen to this episode and then come back for part two after this one. And if you're inspired, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired as well. And I want to let you know, if this is your first time here, welcome to the School of Greatness. Please click the subscribe button right now on Apple Podcasts as well as let us know what you thought about this episode

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  or the part that you enjoyed the most in the ratings and review section over on Apple Podcasts. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Jordan Peterson.

• 2:49Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness. I am very excited. We have Jordan Peterson in the house who has become one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. And his last book, 12 Rules for Life, An Anecdote to Chaos, has sold over 5 million copies internationally. He's got a new book, Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life. It is going to change the game for you. I highly recommend you check it out. Jordan, welcome to the show. Good to see you.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Thanks, Lewis. I appreciate the invitation.

• 3:19Lewis Howes?

  Very excited. Our last interview, we were just talking, did millions of views and we had a, we had a clip that did over 30 million views on Facebook that people were really inspired by. And I think the thing that we did that was cool in the last interview is we talked about some stuff that you normally don't talk about. And so I want to ask you a question that I'm not sure if you talk about it frequently, at least the stuff that I've seen you put out, you haven't. And I know how important your wife is to you, and it's actually the first thing you write about is the importance of the 50 years you've been in love with your wife. I'm curious, what is the thing you love most about your wife? That's my first question.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  I think it's very difficult to say exactly why you're attracted to someone. It's, there's lots of factors and many of them aren't known to you, really.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  She's very, she's provocative. She's witty and sharp. And so there's always an element of game playing. Like, it's not dishonest game playing, but there's a teasy, flirtatious provocativeness that characterizes her quite deeply. She's no pushover by any stretch of the imagination. And I find that constantly interesting and intriguing. It's particularly, it's, it's can be somewhat hard on me when I'm not feeling well. But when I'm up and functioning properly, then that works out extremely well.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What would you say would be the, the keys to your success of 50 years of loving each other and being in a, what seems to be a healthy, functional relationship when in society today, there doesn't seem like many of those?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Well, we, we really do our best not to lie to each other about anything. And we also have fights when they're necessary. We don't let things, we don't hide things in the fog. That's the title of chapter three of my new book, Don't Hide Things in the Fog. We work through our issues. If we're, if we have a dispute, we do our level best to get to the bottom of it, to find out what in the world's causing it, whose needs to change and why and how and when, and then how we can progress forward into the future without having that issue

• 5:53Speaker 01

  dog us or drag behind us or interfere with us at all. And that means a fair bit of confrontation, I would say. But less so over the years as we've settled more and more things, but.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Everything's out in the open. Everything that we can get is out of, out in the open. You can't have a relationship without trust. And you trust your partner courageously if you're not naive, knowing that you can be hurt and that you can be deceived and that you can also do both of those things. So you offer your partner your trust as an invitation to them to be honest and forthcoming and, and while and then issues come up and you delve into them and straighten them out. And we also attend to the relationship. In, I'm not going to refer back to this new book continually, but it's relevant in this context.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  It's chapter 10, Plan and Work Diligently to Maintain the Romance in Your Relationship. And we do that as well. And it is effortful. I mean, we, we try to have, throughout our relationship, we've tried to have romantic dates, one to three times a week. And they require preparation and cooperation and the will to do it and the will to put yourself on the line. And the desire to make that a priority, even when other things are more pressing.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  We both want it to work. That's another thing. We're committed to it.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  And not interested in finding another relationship. And so far, we've been fortunate and that's worked.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  We have fun together. We love our kids. We have had joint projects of all sorts together, renovating houses, traveling, raising our children, now our grandchildren. But all of that is, the, the most important thing as far as I'm concerned is to, not to lie to your partner.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned you don't have a relationship if you don't have trust or if there's not trust in the relationship. How does someone, if someone is not trusting the other partner?

• 8:16Lewis Howes?

  How do you cultivate trust? If you're 100% honest with that person? If you are transparent about every action you make in your life? If you're, you know, they have access to whatever they want to see? And you're, you're constantly creating trust? But for whatever reason, they still might be jealous or insecure or not believing you? How does someone get someone to trust them? Or is it not about them at that stage? And it's about the other person and their insecurities?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Well, it depends very much on the particulars of the situation. You know, so I don't know if there's a generic answer to that. I think that you can establish the ground rules explicitly. You know, and have a discussion about it. Are we going to lie to each other or not? Are we going to tell each other the truth to the degree that we can to make that an actual goal? And to talk through the consequences of doing that and not doing it? And then I would also say, whenever a hiccup occurs in the relationship? Maybe you don't call it out at each hiccup, you know? Because you have to have a certain amount of silent tolerance in any relationship?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  To let small infractions go? But if they repeat, my rule is three times. And it's the rule that I share with my wife. If something happens three times that is causing emotional upset, anger, jealousy, disappointment, resentment, frustration, any of those things? Anything that you don't want to experience? And that you especially don't want to experience repeatedly? Then you can call it out. And, and if you, if you have three examples? Your case is much better made than if you just have one. And I would also say that when you call it out, you know, you could say, look, we were at a party the other night and you were, it looked to me, I felt as if you were paying.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Too much intense intention to Dave. There was some flirting going on there. That's what it looked like to me. There was some flirting going on there. And you know, that made me uncomfortable. Well, you don't say, "Well, you were flirting. Stop doing it." You say, "Well, this is how it looked. This is what it looked like to me, and here was my response." And then you want to think, "And maybe I'm a damn fool and blind and jealous and stupid, and I'm misinterpreting, or maybe it was a harmless flirtation of the sort that people will engage in because it adds a little bit of spice to a social interaction." You want to find out. Like, it's really convenient if it's the other person's fault,

• 11:03Speaker 01

  except then you're laden with living with that person, so it really doesn't help you anyways. But it's convenient because then they have to change. But you've got to think about this over the long run. You're gonna be interacting with this person on a minute-by-minute basis for decades. If you're the idiot and that's causing trouble, then you should find out. So you want to say, "Well, look, this is what I saw." What's your explanation of what's going on? And then they'll offer you their viewpoint, and hopefully they'll do the same thing. They'll think, "Well, this is my intent." And maybe they have to go think about it, "But this is my intent, and this is what I saw,

• 11:45Speaker 01

  and I think you're being oversensitive in that situation." And you peel back the explanations layer by layer until you both agree on what happened, and more importantly, on what you're going to do about it in the future. And that's really hard, and especially if there is something going on that's not straight. Because that will require quite a bit of digging. It'll probably result in anger and tears and a fight, and that's very unpleasant. It's easier in the short term to avoid that. But hopefully, the consequence of that is you don't have to have that fight again.

• 12:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  You have to come to a negotiated agreement about that situation, and you have to pay attention to your own uncomfortable, negative emotions in order to manage that, and not pretend that everything's all right, or that you're nicer than you are, or that you're less jealous than you are, or less blind, or...

• 12:49Speaker 01

  See, one of the things I learned from Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst, about marriage, was that there is a reason marriage was a vow. The vow is that you stick together. Okay, so now imagine that's a vow, okay? You do not get to leave, period. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, on the upside, it means that you don't have to be alone. It means that your family will have continuity over decades. It means that the narrative of your life won't be fragmented and broken by divorce or sequential divorce. It means that your children can grow up and maybe have their children within a continuing family.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  It means that your children will be able to maintain relationships with the grandparents on both sides and the cousins. Like, it's a big deal to maintain that. There's huge advantages in it. It means that you'll have someone there when you're not well, and so will your partner. And it'll mean that you have someone to share all of the positive things of life with. So, there's huge advantages to it. Okay, so why does it have to be a vow? Well, I don't think you can tell the truth to someone who can run away. Because if you tell the truth to someone, and they can run away, then they'll run away.

• 14:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Right? Because you're a mess, man. And not just because of your own inadequacies, but because human beings are so complicated and have such dark corners and have had, you know, unresolved problems in their life, sometimes that stem back generations, and are twisted and bent in all sorts of ways. And you can't re... It's very, very difficult to reveal that, except to someone who can't run away. Now, that, you know, I'm not saying that people should never separate.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  I am saying though that it's better not to, if you can manage it. But then, the other thing too is if you can't run away, then you're motivated in a different way. It's like, I'm stuck with this woman, and she's stuck with me. And unless we want to have this same goddamn fight, over and over and over for the next, who knows how long? Why don't we straighten it out? And then we can put it behind us. See, the vow gives you a kind of desperation. That is another motivation to actually solve the problems. And if you've got a way out, you can always stay hidden, you can guard yourself, you can protect yourself, and even protect that part of yourself

• 15:35Speaker 01

  that thinks that it can leave if things get too bad. Now, the problem with that, in my estimation, is that you're gonna drag your stupidity into the next relationship.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, always do, right?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Well, generally speaking, right? And so, now, you can get very, you can, you can...

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Under unfortunate circumstances, you can get tangled up with someone who's not playing a straight game with you and won't, and it's just impossible, but...

• 16:08Speaker 01

  I'm not talking about the limit cases, you know? I'm talking about the average case, the average amount of unhappiness and trouble. It's still plenty.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And then, the other, sorry, just one more thing I'd add to that. You also have to, in some sense, shake the illusion that the other person is somehow not you.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  You're so tied up with them that

• 16:36Speaker 01

  there's no difference between you and them in some sense, is that what's good for her is gonna be good for you and vice versa. One of the things we try to do too, the two of us, is we try to say yes to each other. Now, there's rules that go along with that, which is, well, I'm gonna say yes to you, but that sort of means that you shouldn't ask me unreasonable, you shouldn't make unreasonable demands. I'll say yes, as much as I possibly can, and then you'll do that in return, and then we get yes out of the deal, instead of no. That's also a huge plus.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  So that's, that's, is there anything else about?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  You, you want, you want to, you want, you have to want the best for the other person and you and for the relationship. And in, within that confined, you want to tell each other the truth.

• 17:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the truth is, is huge. And I heard you mention jealousy and insecurity at, at some point that, that message. Is there room for jealousy and insecurity in a relationship? Is there a healthy amount of jealousy that people should have in a relationship? Or does jealousy and insecurity only cause more suffering and pain in a relationship?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's a reasonable amount of proprietary interest, let's say. I mean,

• 18:08Speaker 01

  in a, in a classic monogamous relationship, a marriage, there's sexual fidelity is a crucial element of that. Um, and maybe you'll make an arrangement that differs from that, but it's not easy to chart uncharted territory like that. I mean, if you want to have an adventure like that with a partner, a monogamous adventure that also includes sexual exploration. Well, maybe you can pull it off, but I doubt it. It's really complicated.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  Let's say you're not having sexual exploration with other people and you're telling each other the truth and you're being honest.

• 18:48Lewis Howes?

  Is there room to be jealous or insecure?

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  In that relationship? Or it does? Does jealousy typically cause more harm than it does, you know, spice and good, I guess?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I think jealousy probably causes more trouble than good, but that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the proprietary interest. Should you care if your partner pays undue attention to someone of the opposite sex they find attractive? Well, probably you should care. You might even say something about it. They might even be happy about that. Right? Because it indicates that you noticed. And that it matters to you. Now, I think it shades into jealousy when it's harmless interactions. It's interactions that would be regarded as harmless by a third party observer, let's say. I know that's a very difficult line to draw. That are being magnified.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  As a consequence of insecurity on the part of the observer, or there's envy where your partner is attracting attention. Status, success, any of those things. And you're jealous of that. That's not helpful. You should be pleased. The optimal situation is for you to be pleased when your partner is successful.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I don't think competitive couples.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  I don't think competition between people who are in a monogamous relationship is useful, particularly. It's not zero sum competition. I mean, you can compete in a game like sense.

• 20:30Lewis Howes?

  Right, fun, playful competition, but not.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not existential competition. You're on the same team, that's the point.

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  You know, and if one of you is feeling left behind for one reason or another, it's it's time to throw that out on the table and say, look, I'm I'm playing second fiddle here far too often. What can we do about that? Well, it looks like you need it. And like, I've got an adventure, it looks like you need one too. Well, how can we rearrange the situation so I have my adventure? And then it's up to that person too, to figure out what obstacles they might be putting up.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  In their own pathway. Right, that's stopping them and then they have, you know, they're angry at you for getting in the way, but it's actually a consequence of them using you as a convenient excuse for not doing something difficult. Those things all have to be sorted through. It's very hard.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  These conversations are extremely difficult. It's no wonder people avoid them. I also think people are not taught to negotiate.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  At all. They, they, and that's, that's a real shame. First of all, you figure out what you want. This is what I want. Then you tell the person, then you strategize with them so that you can get what you want and they can get what they want and you both know what that is and away you go together. And that, that usually comes out.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  It's usually obscured and hidden and, and comes out awkwardly and difficulty and, and with difficulty if it comes out at all. And people fool themselves into thinking that it's okay what they're doing. I'm sacrificing myself for the children and that's okay. I'm sacrificing myself for um, my husband's career and that's okay. I'm working at a job I can't stand because I need to support my wife and children and that's okay. I mean, sometimes that is okay, but it has to be out, clear, in the open, talked about, negotiated, discussed. You know, I think there's, you can be a slave or a tyrant or you can negotiate. Those are your options. And we default to slavery and tyranny because that doesn't require any cognitive effort.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  And then we pretend that everything's all right and then it blows up in our faces and we end up divorced.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Right. So we gotta learn how to negotiate. Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and then you have to notice that there are things that you want, right? And you have to tell yourself what those are. And then you have to let the other person know and then they can deprive you of them because they actually know who you are. And so that's a big risk.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  But if you, if, well, if you, if you do lay, lay, lay it out and negotiate, then you have two people working in the same direction and they each bring their different viewpoints to bear on the problem and sometimes that'll save you, you know, that additional cognitive complexity you have because there's two of you instead of one.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  It can make you much more effective.

• 23:28Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we feel like our partner is depriving us of what we want? If it's not, you know, uh, infidelity or something of the, the likes of being with other people, but something else that we want in our life, a, a, a goal, a dream.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Well, sexually, that happens all the time.

• 23:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Because people, generally speaking, men would like to have sex more frequently than women. So that's a, that's a sticking point in many relationships. Um, but

• 24:01Speaker 01

  forget that for the moment, we, we might just as well say that the probability that one partner and the other partner are going to have exactly the same level of sexual interest, say with regards to frequency is quite low. So there's going to be friction there. So what do you do? Well, you, you, you negotiate about it. It's like, well, I'd like to have sex 15 times a week. Well, I'd like to have sex once a week.

• 24:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, you know,

• 24:34Speaker 01

  the logical, the logical, uh, meeting point there would be in the middle.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  But then that has to be planned out and you also have to say exactly what you mean. Well, exactly what do you mean by sex? Do you, because there's all sorts of variations of sex include, include from ranging from just intimate closeness to full-fledged sexual activity of various sorts. And the various sorts matter too. And these are painful discussions often. It's very funny in some sense that people will do and desire things that they won't talk about.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Right? They're, they're, they'll, they'll engage in the act, but they won't engage in the negotiation and they won't admit what they want.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so hard for us to admit what we want?

• 25:29Speaker 01

  We're ashamed of it? That's easy with sex. Sex and shame regulates sex. You know, people say, "Well, you shouldn't be ashamed of sex." It's like, "Well, really? Really? No, that's a stupid theory." We arrest people who expose themselves in public. Why? Well, because we don't want people masturbating in public. We assume they should be ashamed enough not to do that. Shame regulates sexual behavior. So, we're embarrassed about our desires. And, you know, naively, you'd think, "Well, you can just shed that." Well, first of all, no, you can't. And second of all, it isn't obvious at all that you should.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  What you might be able to do is to determine how to play out your sexual life in the confines of your relationship in a manner that neither of you do find shameful. But that's, that's, just think how hard that is. Like, you know, you think, "Well, that's what I want." It's like, but then you think about how unlikely that is and how difficult it would be to attain it. You know, you could say that if that ever happens to you in your life once, you're lucky. You know, that it's perfect. Now, I, I think that's pessimistic because I, I believe that solutions to that problem can be negotiated. But it's not. It's what everyone wants.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  But it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to bring about. You know, so let's say you want the ideal romantic evening. Well, okay, what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna put yourself in reasonable physical shape? Are, so you're attractive? Are you going to, um, you gonna make a playlist? Put some time into it? Are you gonna buy some candles? Are you going to buy something nice to wear? Are you going to wear it? Are you going to dare to wear it? That might be true for you and, and for your, and for your partner. Are they going to dare to wear it? Are you gonna be smart enough if they do wear it? To respond in a way that makes them feel confident? And increases the probability that they'll do it again?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Are you going to um do whatever is necessary to make yourself physically attractive in that moment? Are you going to have the kids put away? Have you got the day-to-day aggravations with each other that are dragging you down and making you resentful? Under control so that you actually do want to give your partner some pleasure? Like, these things are very hard.

• 28:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  But they're not impossible. And they're worth it.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  But it's not surprising that people don't do it. And then, then the next, well, then there's the shame part too, is well, okay, just exactly what is permissible? Or desirable? And when? And when should you, when are your um kinks? Counterproductive? Exactly.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  You know, we can't, we certainly can't have that discussion as a culture. You know, on the one hand, we think, we're so split on this. On the one hand, we think any sexual misbehavior should be subject to the harshest of punishments. And everything goes and is acceptable. It's like, well, good luck having both of those ideas.

• 28:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  You know, it's so interesting to me to watch this, you know, there's just outrage, constant outrage about sexual misbehavior. And, and fair enough, like, that doesn't surprise me.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  When you mean sexual misbehavior, you mean someone cheating or someone having an affair or what sexual misbehavior?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yes, or unwanted sexual attention or sexual harassment. And I'm not saying these things don't happen or that they're not nefarious and, and uh, and, and awful. Obviously, they are. It's no wonder that happens, but at the same time, we also are obsessed with the notion that any sexual interest of any sort whatsoever, with the possible exception of sexual interest in children, is absolutely laudable. Well, sorry.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  You can't have both of those things.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  So, and because we want both of them, insist upon both of them, then we can't even have a discussion. We can't have a discussion about pornography. It doesn't look to me like pornography is really a very good idea. I don't think it's helping anyone. Now, you know, there might be codicils to that. Freedom of expression.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Some potential educational utility.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  The pleasure that's a consequence of sexual utilization of pornographic material. But I would still say, seeing all that,

• 30:33Speaker 01

  that it's not a net social good. It doesn't do the people who produce it or who consume it any good. And I don't believe that anyone feels like a better human being after utilizing pornography for sexual gratification.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Now, you might say, "Well, that's because they've been shamed about sex since they're born, and you know, and that's a consequence of our crooked culture. And, you know, in a utopian world, we wouldn't have that shame." And yeah, no.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  It's way more complicated than that. And I read something in one of the YouTube comments in my video the other day. I was talking to Abigail Schreier about the apparent fact that today's teenagers are having much less sex.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  One person commented that

• 31:28Speaker 01

  there's the shame that men feel when sex is a spectator sport rather than a participatory act. And then you think, "Well, you know, the mere fact that you're watching two other people, one of whom isn't you, having sex instead of having sex, really implies something either about your... It implies something about your desirability."

• 31:57Speaker 01

  It's pretty hard to shake that, isn't it? Or your courage. Why is it that you're sitting there alone at night with your laptop on your lap? What the hell's wrong with you? Well, nothing. It's just we should dispense with sexual shame. It's like, no, probably not. That's probably not the answer.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Well, so that was all, you know, why do people have a hard time negotiating about sex? Or talking about it? Well, it's no bloody wonder. Sex is such dynamite.

• 32:27Lewis Howes?

  What's the, I agree. This could be a four hour conversation on that. I'm curious.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that would be a good conversation. We need to have about a 50 hour conversation about that.

• 32:36Lewis Howes?

  You should do a series on your YouTube channel about that. Uh, I'm curious about the biggest challenge you've had to overcome personally in your marriage that you're really proud of that you overcame? In the last, I don't know if you've been married for 50 years, but I know you wrote that you've loved your wife for 50 years. But what's the hardest thing that you had to overcome as a man or a human being? In this relationship that you're extremely proud of that you did in fact overcome it? Or you've improved upon it in a major way?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm proud about it, proud of it. Um, like the, the success at these things seem so unlikely and so dependent on

• 33:19Speaker 01

  good luck in some sense that, you know, mostly I'm gen, if things go well for me, I'm generally grateful that I escaped from the acts, you know, rather than being proud of it. Um,

• 33:34Speaker 01

  we did a good job of working through our, our

• 33:39Speaker 01

  attitude towards how we're going to treat our children. So we're on the same page all the time, pretty much all the time. And so the kids couldn't, we didn't let the kids appeal to one of us or the other. We really participated in their upbringing. And we talked all that through and that, that's, that's good. We have good relationships with our kids, both of us and, and that was really necessary too, because my daughter got unbelievably sick for massive amounts of time. And, and my son, we had to ignore him a lot because he just wasn't dying. So it was like, kid, sorry.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Like we got a problem here and you, and, and he was great, man. He, uh, he just rode through that like a, like a master. But, um, if we hadn't sorted out our

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Child rearing philosophy, let's say, we would have sunk us for sure. Well, because it was so close to the edge that, you know, few marriages survive the death of a child, and no wonder, you know. But the serious illness of a child is also an unbelievable stressor. And, um, you know, we sailed through that

• 34:58Speaker 01

  as well as could be hoped. You kind of know that because you look back and you think, well, do we regret? Right? And of course, there's the odd regret. You know, one thing, when you have a sick child, you have this terrible conundrum all the time of, well, how hard do you push them? When do you allow the illness to be a reason that they aren't doing something?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  When do you allow them to use the illness as a reason that they're not doing something? Well, it's really, it's really, really hard to get that right. And sometimes we pushed harder than we should have and misunderstood too. And, but at least we did that together. And my, my wife, you know, she, I've seen many, many women protect their children from the father. They don't trust him. And so every time he interacts with the child, they'll do something disapproving. A look, they'll, they'll put him down. Now, it's not like men don't do that to their wives. There's all sorts of tricks that men have for their wives. Men are very good at turning their wives into drudges, for example,

• 36:08Speaker 01

  for a variety of reasons which we can go into. But

• 36:13Speaker 01

  if you don't trust men, you won't let them have a hand in the children, the discipline of the children. You know, and when you think of discipline, you think of punishment and threat and dad saying no. That isn't discipline. Discipline is Discipline, if you discipline someone properly, they become disciplined. Right? That means they're competent.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  They're organized, they have structure, they have, yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  They can control themselves. So I'll give you an example. My son is quite a disagreeable person by nature. So he's very masculine. He's very high in emotional stability. So he doesn't have much negative emotion. And he's very, and he's relatively low in agreeableness. He's, um, he's, and that's, that's typical masculine pattern. The two big personality differences between men and women are agreeableness, women are higher, and neuroticism, tendency to feel negative emotion, women are higher. So, so what that meant was that when he was a kid, he was a stubborn little pup. It was hard to get him to do what he didn't want to do. And, you know, that's the mark of a character that is hard to stop. So there's

• 37:18Speaker 01

  real advantages to it. But it, kids who are disagreeable are a handful because they think, I'm not doing that. And you can't make me.

• 37:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  And he was really quite good at that.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  And isn't one of your rules from the first book, like, don't let your kids do anything that would make you not like them?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Dislike them.

• 37:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yes. And the re, uh, we should talk about that because that's such a good rule, I think. But then I used to, the rule for him was, you know, he'd push the limits in a variety of ways. And he was really good at that. And quite persistent at it. And I'd talk to my wife and say, look, Julian's getting a little too pushy here. Um, we have to crack down on him and stop him. And, and this is what I see. And she'd say, this is what I see. And we'd think, well, this is what we're going, for a week, he isn't going to get away with anything. It's like the line, man. It's like, kid, he'd be three or three and a half at this time, sit on the steps. Sit on the steps. And if he wouldn't, because he was stubborn, well, I'd bring him over and put him on the steps. Like it was, you're

• 38:20Speaker 01

  going, if I say, you're going to sit on the steps, you are absolutely going to sit on the steps. So it was so interesting to watch him because he'd be angry, you know, because he got interfered with. He didn't get to do what he wanted to do. And, um, he'd be, and he would go and sit on the steps, but he'd be like mad as hell on the way there, arms pumping up and down and just, errr. He'd go sit on the steps like, you know, like this, just overcome with anger. And the rule was, as soon as you get yourself under control, and you can act like a civilized human being, and you want to have a good day. Then you come and tell me and all, that's it, you're done.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  But it had to be real and look, my, my, uh, my criteria for accepting his statement was whether or not I liked him when he said it. You know, if he was still being, uh, if he was still misbehaving and, and bending the rules, he, he wouldn't be genuine when he talked to me. But if he came and said, okay dad, like I've had enough, I'm, I'm, I've got myself under control, I'd rather have a good day. And as soon as he said that I liked him, it was like, hey man, you're back in the party.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  Do what you want to do, yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't want him to sit on the steps anymore. I liked having him around, so.

• 39:41Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  So, but our, you know, we, we were on board with that. And so the discipline, so the thing is, see what was the discipline aspect, which is what I was talking about, is he learned how to integrate it into his personality and I could see him doing that, sitting on the steps. He was, it was just this aggression circuit, which is unbelievably powerful, was just dominating him and he'd just force it, get it under control, get it under control, calm down, bring yourself back into the social world. And it was a victory for his developing ego, you see, because he wasn't defeated by his own impulses. And that's discipline, you see, then you're not defeated by your own impulses.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  And so, discipline has the wrong connotation. I was encouraging him, you can master this, man. And, and it worked and it was so useful to us later because when Michaela got so sick, um, he was together.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  We could rely on him.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  So it was necessary. And it hasn't stopped being necessary. And he's a very reliable person.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Who does what he wants. It's a great combination.

• 41:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's beautiful.

• 41:04Lewis Howes?

  When do you feel the most loved, Jordan? When what's, when what's happening around you or when you're creating something or when you're with people? What, when do you feel personally the most loved?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  It's when I'm with my family, when I'm with my kids, with when I'm with my family, friends too. And that's even been more the case over the last couple of years because my family and friends have been so unbelievably loyal and helpful to me and my family as we've had our troubles. Terrible, terrible troubles over the last couple of years. They've been so unbelievably reliable and helpful, amazing. Certainly people have gone out of my way for me in a way that I, I don't believe I would have done for them.

• 41:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Well, look, I saw my father-in-law when, when, and I write about this in, in Beyond Order. No, I read about it in 12 Rules more, I think, but it doesn't matter. He's a, like, he's a really extroverted guy, disagreeable guy too, masculine guy, extroverted, assertive. Everybody in the little town I grew up in knew who he was. He was a performer, you know, the life of the party. Um, and a good businessman, but a real character. And, uh,

• 42:22Speaker 01

  he, he did his own thing, but then his wife got, uh, prefrontal dementia when she was quite young, 55. And man, he took care of her for 15 years.

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  It was unbelievable. And it was so interesting too, because if we offered to help him, he would accept it right away and anything that we could do that would, like, I suggested one time, for example, that he buy a digital readout sign so that if he went out, he could type in where he was going on the sign and it would just repeat over and over.

• 42:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  And some recordings in the bathroom to help his wife remember what to do and he would just. Implement those, accept and implement them right away. But he, this guy who was, who lived his own life, who, who was a, a, a very extroverted social person, not someone who you would have regarded as soft and caring. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just that, that wasn't him. He wasn't Mother Teresa, you know? Um, he just, he cared for her in a way that was absolutely astonishing. And I saw that also in my friends and my family, in the care that they've offered to Tammy and I over the last two years. Mind boggling.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  I, mind boggling. But I would say the, like, the place I like to be the most is in a family situation. When everyone's, when there's no elephants under the rug. And everyone's playing. If you ever have that, you should consider yourself fortunate.

• 44:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Beyond belief. Because it's unlikely and you can lose it at any moment.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  I've been in, I was in the hospital more or less for a year and then another year with Tammy. And I thought I'd lost all of that. Never get it back. It was very dreadful. And so now when it happens, I mean, I've always been grateful for it when it happens. Strive for that. You know, the animal experimentalists have demonstrated that. The ones who study play, this is Jaak Panksepp in particular, but there's a variety of them who study play. Brilliant, brilliant scientists. Play is a circuit. It's a mammalian circuit. It's a specialized circuit. And it's very important developmentally for, for that circuit to be given free rein to play. It's how children.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Play out roles in the world that they're eventually going to adopt. They play mother, they play father, they play, they play all these different roles. And that's how they learn to, to be those things.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  The role of the father is to put up security. So that play can occur. So the security is there, that's the walls, say, fortify the walls. Man the walls, guard the walls. But within the walls, then that's where play can, can take place. And play is very easily disrupted. Hunger, thirst, any emotional state, any motivational state can supersede it, even though it's very, very important. So you have to have the walled garden in place.

• 46:10Lewis Howes?

  Remove the fear, remove the fears, yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Hmm, hmm, to make it safe so that experimentation can take place within. That's paradise, right? That's, it's a walled garden. And that's what paradise means is a walled garden where structure and nature, the walls and the garden are harmoniously interacting and where eternal play can occur. That's paradise. And so

• 46:38Speaker 01

  you get a glimpse of that

• 46:41Speaker 01

  when everyone's together, often at the table.

• 46:46Lewis Howes?

  Not fighting.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And, and, and, and also not, not fighting.

• 46:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Right?

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Play, yeah, yeah. Fighting but not like.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  It's when everyone's at each other's throats, but no one's saying anything. Well, we're not going to talk about, we're not going to bring that up. We're not going to discuss that.

• 47:03Lewis Howes?

  Cause that's not paradise either, yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  No, that's pretense.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  And, and you see that, that negotiation is the eradication of the need for that pretense. It's like, you've got a problem with me? Let's sort it out.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Because we're going to carry it with us. You want to do that? So people wonder why I engage in conflict. I hate conflict.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  It's, and I find it very stressful. But conflict delayed is conflict multiplied.

• 47:35Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's so true. It's worse to have lingering conflict for months, years, decades than the pain of direct conflict that can hopefully resolve and move on.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Well, and as the conflict is delayed, it's the reasons multiply. And the persons who are involved, because they're avoiding, demean themselves and get weaker and less confident. And so it's a vicious circle. It's better to notice.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  There's this, there's a line in the New Testament, Christ talks about prayer.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  And so you imagine that as communion with God. So you could imagine that as an attempt to,

• 48:25Speaker 01

  to confer with the ideal, or maybe to even occupy that space for a while. Well, he says, Christ says, if you have a problem with your brother, fix that first.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Go pray later.

• 48:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's, that's, that's, that's wise. And, and that's a good thing, you know, if you're, if you're angry with your, the people who are close to you, if you're resentful, I read a lot about that in chapter 11, resentment is so useful, it's so useful, it's so horrible, so toxic, it's so destructive, but it's so informative.

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  If you're resentful, you're either being oppressed and not standing up for yourself, or you're whiny and should grow up. And both of those things are really useful to realize. And all you have to do is notice that you're resentful and want to do something about it. Okay, I'm resentful. Okay. Am I immature? You know, are people picking on me or I am immature? Are, if people are picking on me, do I have something to say or something to do? I should do it. It's a, it's a gateway to improvement, resentment, or you can let it.

• 49:40Lewis Howes?

  Fester.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Foster it, let it devour you and take you places that no one with a clear mind would ever want to go. Hell, that's resentment, man, that's the pathway to hell.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  And if you don't believe in hell, you don't have any imagination. That's my sense of things.

• 50:02Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned paradise being a safe space where we can play and have fun and feel protected. But a lot of times, at least in the last year, I'm seeing more and more in the world that the anxiety, stress, depression, challenges of the mind or the heart and the body have seemed to come to the surface for a lot of people even more. And it sounds to me, and it looks to me like when I'm connecting with people, that a lot of things from the past, past memories, past pains, hurts, traumas, are being brought to the forefront for a lot of people with the chaos of the now.

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  How do we start to heal the memories of the past, the traumas of the past, so that they don't keep hurting us in the present?

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing I would say is,

• 51:01Speaker 01

  you know, sometimes there's a crisis and well-meaning mental health professionals rush in to discuss the trauma

• 51:12Speaker 01

  while it's still happening. That's a really bad idea.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  People are generally traumatized because something actually horrible happened.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  And dwelling on it in the moment just makes it worse. It's not like anybody has a solution. Here's how you should understand this, you know, someone's just shot up your kid's school. Here's how you should understand this, that'll make it all better. It's like, no, it won't.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  If you have old

• 51:44Speaker 01

  baggage,

• 51:49Speaker 01

  that often comes up if you're having an argument with someone, doesn't it? You know how it is, this is partly why people don't like to have dispute within a relationship, because it's a thread and you pull on that thread and just, God. Well, that, we had another rule. Do not agree with something you don't agree with.

• 52:06Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Like if we're gonna, if we decide, you and me, that we're doing this,

• 52:13Speaker 01

  we don't go back and say, well, I didn't really mean it. We don't get to play revisionist with our history. So if you, if you don't agree, don't agree. Fight. Object.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Or hold your peace. Because you see what happens with couples is there's a little fight. And then one says to the other, yeah, but you did this. And then that person says, yeah, I know I did that. But then that was because you did this. And each this gets bigger until what's on the table is why the hell should we stay together at all?

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  And so every fight becomes, why the hell should we stay together at all? So that's another thing you want to do is you want to have the fight about this thing.

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  Not about everything.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  About the past, not everything. It's like, okay, you were flirting. I think you were flirting more than you should have been. Okay, so I go away and I think, well, okay, maybe I was. Okay, um, well, then we have to have a discussion about why. And maybe we can solve that. But mostly what we have to do is figure out how to not have that happen again. Okay, so we're going to go see the same couple again. What is it that you want me to do? So I'm the flirtatious one, let's say, what do you want me to do? Well, you have to figure that out. It's like, no, I'm stupid. Like you, we're equally stupid. I need to know what would satisfy you.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  And you need to figure out what would satisfy you so I know. And that like, that's also extremely useful is let your establish your conditions of satisfaction, make them explicit, let the other person know.

• 53:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you can't read someone's mind.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  We're very bad at that. We're bad at reading our own minds for that matter.

• 54:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  So if we, if I have a fight with, with Tammy, let's say, sometimes I remember to say, okay, what, what do you want me to do? Right now, what can I do? What, what should I say and mean? You know, and you think, well, you shouldn't let the other person put words in your mouth. Well, fair enough, you know, I'm not act, I'm not asking for something false. I'm saying, I'd like to not have this happen. Can you see a way out? Is there something I could do to increase the probability that that's the route we could take? And you know, sometimes that works.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  But the other person has to let you know what they would find satisfying.

• 54:44Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned, you mentioned sexual shame.

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  And it triggered something in me about just the shames of the past that people tend to hold on to. I think I might have mentioned this to you the last time we talked. I'm not sure if you know, but I was, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man that I didn't know. And for 25 years, I held on to the secret, the shame. And if anyone ever knew about this, then I would never be loved. I, you know.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Right, because you feel contaminated permanently.

• 55:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I would, you know, I wouldn't have any guy friends, no girls would find me attractive. My parents would disown me, you know, I went down the rabbit hole of these stories of, you know, I'm the only one this has ever happened to. I'd never saw any examples of this happening to. And about eight years ago, I, I started to really heal that and start sharing that shame in, in many different therapeutic experiences that allowed me to start the healing process.

• 55:40Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious from your perspective, with all the work that you've done, what is the best approach for someone to really heal their shame? If, whether it's around sexual abuse or trauma or just anything, whether it be small or big or any type of shame that they might have. How does someone release shame in a healthy manner so that it doesn't make them a prisoner of these emotions of the past that hold them back?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Well, you hinted at a few things when you just described what, what happened to you is you said, well, first of all, you know, I thought I was the only person this had ever happened to.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  It's like, no, it's a universal human experience to one degree or another. Now, you know, I'm not saying everyone was sexually abused and I'm certainly not saying that some people.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Aren't sexually abused to a degree that's so extreme, it's unimaginable where there are others, you know, get off relatively lightly, but it's still, it's, it's well within the realm of normative human experience that sexual, that sex goes wrong in some way. At least you regret something that's happened, something you've done or something that was done to you. So putting it in to, when, when you're the only person that something has happened to, that's really not good. Right? Because it alienates you even from yourself. You have no idea what to do with that. And so that's sometimes why people find it such a relief to have their illness diagnosed.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, there is, this is known. There's a category, other people have had this experience, maybe there's a pathway through it. So just knowing that you're not the only person like that can be very helpful. Updating, it's like, how, you were how old? Five. Okay. Well, one thing to realize when you're 25 and you were abused when you're five is that you're not five anymore. Right. Right? That the person to whom that happened is no longer there. You're there, but so, you know, you might feel afraid of relationships, you might feel afraid of all sorts of things, but a lot of that was, you're sort of feeling that like that residual five-year-old.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  I tell a story about one client I had, she was abused by her older brother and she told me this story and I drew a picture in my head while she was, you know, I kind of pictured her of at five and this teenage, hulking teenager, you know, taking advantage of her. But as she told the story, I realized that her older brother was only a year, two years older than her. Well, he was seven. It was like, okay, well, they were, she wasn't the victim of a tyrannical male in some sense. She, they were too badly supervised children. Now, that doesn't mean that what he did was right, but she was still the five-year-old in the memory, but she was 27 when, or so, when she came to see me.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  And so the first thing I did was just point that out. It's like, think about the seven-year-olds you know.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Right? For a five-year-old, a seven-year-old is an adult. But for an adult, a seven and a five-year-old are clearly both children. Well, that just changed things somewhat. It made her feel less vulnerable in the moment. What your brain wants from you in relationship to a traumatic memory is indication that you're no longer vulnerable to the same problem. That's what memory is for, right? You remember something bad and you process it so that you change your interpretation or your behavior or the situation or whatever you can change so that it isn't going to happen in the future. And that'll, if you do that thoroughly, you'll generally let yourself rest.

• 59:33Lewis Howes?

  You have the memory to protect yourself from it happening again.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Well, that's the purpose of memory in general. You make sense of your past behavior so that the good things that happened to you can be duplicated and the bad things can be avoided. It's not to make an objective record of the world. It's to make a functional map of the world that you can apply to the future. And so...

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  So how do we, yeah, how do we let that go? How do we disassociate something that happened a year ago, 10, 20 years ago, that is no longer happening, but is, seems to be triggering us?

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Oh, it's very, it's very difficult. Well, I would say, you know, one of the things you need to develop, if you've had an experience like the one you had, perhaps, because I don't know the details, you probably need a theory of malevolence. You need an explanation. It's like, how could a person do that? Well, you have to have an...

• 1:00:27Lewis Howes?

  What if the explanation isn't good? They were just a bad person. They just...

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Well, then you need a philosophy of bad. You need a philosophy of evil. You have to understand it so that you're no longer a victim of it. You have, because otherwise you can't put the event in a context.

• 1:00:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  You know, and sometimes that means the development of real, a real philosophical sophistication. And that can help because then, you know, then you can start to separate out malevolence from benevolence because maybe you're afraid of any intimate relationship now because it's been contaminated with that. And everything's fuzzy and foggy. And so you need to understand the person who did that, at least to some degree, so that you can separate that person out from all the other people around you who...

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  That you encounter in situations that might be reminiscent of it. You know, so you you felt vulnerable for perhaps you felt ashamed. All those things have to be gone through. What do you think? When you're ashamed, when does what elicits that? What are the eliciting cues? What do you think when that happens? All of that has to be taken apart. I said in this Beyond Order book that, you know, if you have a memory older than about 18 months, that still bothers you, right? It's still got emotional resonance.

• 1:01:50Lewis Howes?

  Older than 18 months? Older than 18 months ago or before you're 18 months old?

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  No, older than 18 months ago or more.

• 1:01:56Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Otherwise, it's not really in the past. Right, it's still happening. That that whether you should delve into something, how you should delve into something traumatic that's currently happening is a whole different issue. But if it's an old memory and it still bothers you, it means that you haven't decomposed that experience sufficiently to detach it from the emotion. So imagine when something terrible happens to you, you don't understand it.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  So then you might say, well, if you don't understand something that's happening to you, how can it be terrible? Because doesn't terrible mean that you understand it? And the the answer is, well, you understand things in stages. And the first way you understand a terrible thing is by freezing in terror or running. That's the understanding. It's not conceptual. It's embodied and emotional. And so event terror, that's the first category. Okay, now, the next question is, how do you get it out? How do you get out of the terror? Well.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  You realize that nothing truly dangerous is happening. Well, what if something truly dangerous did happen? Then you elaborate your view of the world to the point where you're no longer vulnerable to that terrible thing. And that's extremely difficult. So the memory of something terrible stays terrible until you effortlessly process it and decompose it into, well, often into a much more sophisticated map of the world. And it's really hard to do that.

• 1:03:47Lewis Howes?

  What's the thing in your life that was the hardest to do? To deconstruct after the event? So that it didn't consume you emotionally from the initial terror?

• 1:04:03Lewis Howes?

  Because you study this, you practice this, you teach this stuff, but when, you know, as a practitioner, teaching it, is there, was there a time where you're like, man, this is really hard for me to understand?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. It's chronic. I mean, that state is chronic for me at the moment, I would say. Partly because I've become so insanely famous. And I have difficulty with that, for sure. It's very difficult to understand. I'm, I'm, and so, and I wouldn't say I've managed it. I'm managing it, I suppose. And then

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  health trouble that has hit my family and me has been so devastating that I'm, I'm, I haven't managed that either. Like, you know, that's the thing. I, I suggest to people, no, that isn't even that. It's that, what have I found that you do about terrible things? Generally, you don't run from them. Especially if they're not avoidable in the future. Generally, you stand, confront, decompose, understand, adapt. But just because you generally do that, and it's the best bet, doesn't mean it's definitely going to work.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  It's just the best shot you have at it. You know, it'd be lovely if something always worked, but if something always worked, people would never get sick and die. Right? And we do all the time. So

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  we do our best, but that doesn't mean that that always works, but it's still the best that can be done.

• 1:05:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  It's still better than all of the alternatives.

• 1:05:44Lewis Howes?

  How do you, how do you, how do you cultivate your own personal inner peace amongst the different changes that have come up, whether, you know, the fame, the health challenges, personally, maybe challenges with family or friends? How do you personally keep a level of inner peace amongst the chaos?

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  I walk a lot. I exercise a lot, a lot. Like I'm walking about seven miles a day now and working out as well. And so, and that's necessary.

• 1:06:22Lewis Howes?

  If you didn't, if you didn't walk and work out, where do you think you would be? In a level of, really?

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:06:35Lewis Howes?

  Is that physically because you wouldn't be physically taking care of your body? Or because mentally and emotionally, your peace would be chaotic and it would drive you to die?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  That.

• 1:06:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Lewis Howes?

  So that you're saying, sorry, I was interrupting you. Solace, you said?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Peace, that comes to you if you're fortunate. And sometimes it doesn't come.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  I try to do things that I think are worthwhile.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  That it seem worthwhile and that gives me.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Solace, I suppose.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  So I'm writing, I'm talking to people who I find interesting about things that I think are crucially important. I'm trying to learn and to communicate as a consequence of talking to these people. I'm trying to do what I can for my family and my friends and to do what I can beyond that as well, in a variety of different ways.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Those are all useful endeavors and they keep me going.

• 1:07:57Lewis Howes?

  What have you found to be the best practices of managing mass attention? Whether you want to call it fame, mass attention, mass audience, people being fanatical about your message, your work, you as an individual?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Well luckily, that hasn't happened too much, the fanatical side of things. You know, I've had the odd brush with people who were a little more persistent than was probably good. And, you know, I could see lurking signs of mental health issues behind that. But fortunately, very little of that has happened. And that's certainly all for the good.

• 1:08:40Lewis Howes?

  It's because you're not living in LA, that's probably why.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Well, could be, could be. But for whatever reason, I've been pretty fortunate about that. I talk over what I'm doing with the people around me all the time and try to keep it on the proper pathway to the degree that I'm able to do that. And to see if what I'm doing is justifiable and ethical. And we're all terrified of this, you know, to a degree that is very difficult to communicate, you know. We live in a time where if you make a mistake, you can be shredded. And I would say, to some degree, the more visible you are, the more thorough the shredding.

• 1:09:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  And so the cost of an error, an ethical error, is unbelievably high. The cost of the appearance of an ethical error is extremely high, much less the cost of an actual ethical error. And so...

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  We're very careful to try to act ethically in every manner possible. Appearance and reality.

• 1:09:51Lewis Howes?

  Cause everything is being watched. Yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Well, and I, I mean, I can, I, I have no idea how any of this looks from the outside, but

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  my reputation has been on the line publicly many, many times. And partly sometimes outright accusations, sometimes

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  as a consequence of things I hypothetically said, um, sometimes as a consequence of newspaper articles that, you know, have taken a particular twist. And God only knows how many times a consequence of my own inadequacies and errors. But every time that rises up as an issue,

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  there's a two week period where no one in my family knows if this is the time that it's just going to go to hell.

• 1:10:46Lewis Howes?

  Really? Where it's all crumbles?

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. How, how, look at how many people it happens to.

• 1:10:51Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Look how people respond, Ben. You know, it doesn't take a very big Twitter mob to chase

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  anyone back into their hole.

• 1:11:00Lewis Howes?

  How do we?

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Chase a company for that matter.

• 1:11:03Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Back into its, on its heels. I mean,

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  isn't that, doesn't, does that, is that how it looks to you? I mean, what, what do you think about this?

• 1:11:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm just curious, you know, as people, individuals, whether it be me, you, or anyone, wants to build something, wants to have a goal and aim, as you talk about, and go after this thing that they care about and share their opinion, share their voice, have good intentions. Maybe someone doesn't like those intentions, but have good intentions. Is how do we as human beings think about reputation? And does reputation even matter anymore? If anyone can try to tear your reputation down? Should we be focused on having a good reputation?

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:49Lewis Howes?

  And how do we protect our reputation when you're being ethical?

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  You should be more focused on deserving a good reputation.

• 1:11:55Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Don't, don't do things you know to be wrong.

• 1:12:00Lewis Howes?

  And even if you do-

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Don't lie.

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Don't lie. Don't be careless.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  You, I mean, especially if you're...

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  See, I'm fortunate, I suppose.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  I put all my lectures online. So virtually everything I've ever said to a student is, I mean, obviously not, but a non-biased sample of everything that I've ever said to students is available.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  Well, it hasn't come back to bite me.

• 1:12:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And that's hundreds of hours. Why? Well, because I've been fortunate enough not to have said anything fatal.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  And, you know,

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  maybe that's because I'm careful with my words. I don't want to attribute too much virtue to myself in, in, in relationship to that. I know that good fortune plays an immense role in how things turn out for people and that you can get unlucky.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  But,

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  you know, one rule I didn't write down is,

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  act so that you can speak of what you do.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  So there's two domains of lying, right? So one lie is a statement, the other lie is an action. You know it's wrong. You do it anyway. It looks to me like that's becoming riskier and riskier.

• 1:13:42Lewis Howes?

  Right, people aren't doing that anymore because they're getting caught.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Yes, and the consequences are dire. Well, but then you think about this, you tell me what you think about this. One of the things that Carl Jung taught me again was that, you know, as we become more technologically powerful, the quality of our individual morality becomes an increasingly pressing social concern. Because each of us are far more powerful than we once were, for good and for evil. And so with this technological prowess comes an associated ethical demand. And I don't see a flaw in that argument. I don't see how that can be anything other than true. If technology multiplies your power,

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  then it multiplies the cataclysmic consequences of your own immorality.

• 1:14:34Lewis Howes?

  Right, and if you did one thing 10 years ago and someone finds it, it could haunt you, it seems like, is what's happening for a lot of people.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  There's no doubt about that. Not only could it, it will.

• 1:14:44Lewis Howes?

  It will.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  In all likelihood. You know, and that's a problem too, because of course, people do make mistakes. You know, and I'm perfectly pleased that my teenage years aren't stored on YouTube, for example.

• 1:14:59Lewis Howes?

  You've been gone a long time ago.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Well, it must be terrifying to be a teenager now, knowing that your drunken foolishness at a party could become the next viral YouTube video.

• 1:15:11Lewis Howes?

  I mean, yeah, I was lucky enough never to, I've never been drunk in my life. And that was a conscious decision because my brother actually went to prison for drugs when I was a kid. And I was in a prison visiting room many weekends for many years, and witnessing the consequences of doing certain things. So for me, I was like, I don't want to touch any of this stuff. I don't even care if it's like, I'm not going to sell it, but I'm never going to take anything. And... But it doesn't mean that I didn't do bad things like, you know, I cheated, I lied, I stole. You know, I did all these things that I'm not proud of when I was 10 to 13 until I

• 1:15:53Lewis Howes?

  got caught and I was like, oh, my actions actually affect a lot of people. And I remember the shame.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Well, it's normative behavior. If you look at adolescents, imagine there are adolescents who break rules all the time, including criminal, including legal rules. Okay, well, they tend to become criminal. It's too much. But then at the opposite end of the distribution are adolescents who don't break any rules. And they tend to develop internalizing disorders, depression, anxiety disorders, that sort of thing. So they're too constrained. So there is a certain amount of exploration of rule breaking. It's a normative part of healthy development. But now, you know, you could take a chunk of that, a video of it, a record of it, and it's permanent. Can you imagine not being able to forget your past?

• 1:16:49Lewis Howes?

  Painful.

• 1:16:52Lewis Howes?

  So painful. Not even you forgetting it, but the world knowing your past, seeing it or witnessing it.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yes, and sort of unexpectedly and at any moment.

• 1:17:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:07Lewis Howes?

  What's your, what's your greatest fear with the fame and the acknowledgement that you have at the level of you have it? What's the greatest fear you have moving forward or insecurity?

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Oh, that I'll do something to,

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  you know, that I'll betray the people that, that, that I've been speaking to with.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  You know, that I'll be insufficient to the challenge in some manner.

• 1:17:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Ethically particularly, but more than that even, just physiologically, let's say.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  So that's, that's definitely it.

• 1:17:48Lewis Howes?

  Did you ever have a, a, a goal to impact as many people? Was that part of your life's mission that I want to reach more people than outside of the classroom? And, you know, sell five million copies of my books and be so well-known that you are? Was that ever a mission or was it always just, I want to learn and teach? And if 10 people watch, great. If 10 million people watch, great.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  I probably knew.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  I, I knew when I was working on my Maps of Meaning book that I was, look, I, I tried to, I tried to write about the most serious problem I could find, in the most serious way I could manage, manage. And I thought, well, if this is a serious problem and I'm addressing it seriously, it's probably a serious endeavor and will have the consequences of that, that, whatever those might be. And when I started to lecture about what I had been thinking about and learning about,

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  the impact was obvious and, and, and unique in some sense. I mean, there are, my lectures, the most typical response I got from students in my classes was, especially in the class on my first book, Maps of Meaning, was this course changed how I looked at everything.

• 1:19:18Lewis Howes?

  My, my life, the world, the universe, God, everything.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, or they'd say, well, I've learned all these things and I don't know how to talk about them with anyone else. Which was the same sort of thing. And, and a lot of the public commentary on my work is, it's similar to that. But, you know, in some sense, that wasn't a surprise because what I learned changed the way I looked at things completely too. Absolutely completely, one hundred, like completely, in a revolutionary way. And so, and I, I.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  I had a sense of that from, I don't know how old, very young.

• 1:19:58Lewis Howes?

  You had a sense that

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Four, five.

• 1:19:59Lewis Howes?

  You had a sense, you had a sense that your

• 1:20:04Lewis Howes?

  uh, life would impact millions of people?

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:12Lewis Howes?

  Was it kind of like an inner

• 1:20:15Lewis Howes?

  dialogue or an inner calling or something that was?

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  It was like a dream.

• 1:20:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Sort of, or the remem- memory of a dream.

• 1:20:22Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Look, I talked to Jocko Willink the other day. I'm, I'm looking forward to releasing that. It was such a good conversation. Such a good conversation with him. He made such this immensely tough person, tough guy.

• 1:20:36Lewis Howes?

  Very.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  He knew, he knew he wanted to be a soldier from the time he was like three.

• 1:20:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  And he said, and don't be thinking that it was for any high noble reasons. I like, I mean, he's quite funny.

• 1:20:47Lewis Howes?

  I just wanted to

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  He, he just

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  Destroy.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  He states, it's like, this is my character. This is who I am. It's, it's, it's me. And you know, with my kids, I could see who they were. They were the same person right from the time they were born. Like they developed and unfolded and all of that, but it was the unfolding of something that was there. It was the bringing of something there to light. It's, it's shocking and surprising to me constantly and exactly what I expected at the same time.

• 1:21:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  And that seems completely paradoxical. It's sort of like one part of me knew and accepts it. And the other part is

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  too old and too much the way that I was to adapt to it.

• 1:21:39Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. And this is just part one. It's gonna continue to get better for part two. Just you wait. I can't wait to see what you think about what Jordan talks about, especially towards the end of part two. Woo, it's gonna get hot in here. If this is your first time here, then welcome and please click Subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now as we interview the world's greatest minds, athletes, authors, scientists, researchers, spiritual thought leaders to help you unlock your inner greatness and bring that gift that you have to the world. Again, leave us a rating and review. I'd love to hear what you thought specifically of this episode over on the rating and review section on Apple Podcasts within School of Greatness.

• 1:22:22Lewis Howes?

  So let us know over there and click that subscribe button right now. And if you want inspirational messages sent to your phone every single week from me, then text the word PODCAST right now to 614-350-3960 to get on my secret and special texting community list. And I want to leave you with this quote from Lao Tzu who said, "Be content with what you have. Rejoice in how things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." Ooh, again, I can't wait for you to listen to part two of this episode with Jordan. Make sure you come back here in a couple of days and listen to this when it's out. Subscribe to the podcast here. And I would remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for

• 1:23:07Lewis Howes?

  you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.