Pod Insights The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast 548. Jordan Peterson Takes Your Call: Advice, Mental Health, Family Dynamics | Mikhaila Fuller About this episode Dr. Jordan Peterson and his daughter Mikhaila sit down to tackle raw, unfiltered questions from the audience. This is a deeply honest, sometimes uncomfortable, often inspiring ride through the mess and meaning of modern life. From navigating fractured families and polyamory to rebuilding faith in a collapsing culture, Peterson offers his signature mix of sharp insight, hard truths, and fierce encouragement. Whether you're wondering about love, legacy, or just trying to build a life worth living—this is the conversation that dares to go there.
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There’s nothing more difficult—or more important—than raising a child. In this new 5-part series, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson brings decades of clinical insight to the questions every parent faces: discipline, identity, responsibility, and what it truly means to guide a child toward a meaningful life. Parenting premieres May 25, exclusively on DailyWire+ https://www.dailywire.com/episode/parenting-the-official-trailer
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Transcript 8,817 words · 12 speakers
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2:48 Speaker 04 It's very distressing to see people whose families are fragmented because it just hurtles your soul. How far should I go for someone who I care about, but who refuses to get professional help?
3:00 Speaker 05 How do I know if I'm actually building something? If there is a substantial age gap. It seems to me unwise to reproduce things being this uncertain.
3:08 Speaker 04 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.
3:55 Speaker 06 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 gonna give this a shot. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'm Michaela, by the way, if people don't know who I am.
4:22 Speaker 04 That would be, she's my daughter.
4:24 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah.
4:25 Speaker 04 And a perfectly fine person in her own right, as well.
4:28 Speaker 06 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?
4:34 Speaker 04 Let's go.
4:35 Speaker 06 Okay.
4:37 Speaker 07 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, you know, less than a 10-year age gap or so?
5:11 Speaker 04 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.
5:20 Speaker 06 Women live longer. It technically makes a little bit more sense. That's coming from me.
5:27 Speaker 04 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...
5:43 Speaker 04 A wise woman isn't looking for another child. She's looking for someone who Yeah. 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 seventeen 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,
6:28 Speaker 04 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 twenty-five,
7:10 Speaker 04 you're about as old as everyone else until they're like seventy. 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.
7:40 Speaker 04 Idiosyncrasies that couples have to contend with.
7:44 Speaker 06 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?
8:06 Speaker 04 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?
8:19 Speaker 06 No, that totally.
8:20 Speaker 04 Well, no, but that's it. That's the whole story.
8:22 Speaker 06 But if it's a relationship.
8:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, then, then, then the problems that you just described leap forward madly for anyone who has any sense.
8:32 Speaker 06 I would be concerned that I was being taken advantage of just from being a 21 year old.
8:38 Speaker 04 Highly likely.
8:39 Speaker 06 If I meet other 35 year old guys, I'm like, if you only date young twenties, is it because anybody who's 30 would see through you?
8:48 Speaker 04 Oh, sure. Yeah.
8:50 Speaker 06 But once you get above like 25, I don't think it makes that much of a difference.
8:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, the predatory tilt. Look, Mick, we know
9:02 Speaker 04 the personality characteristics of men who tilt towards one night stands, that's already been delineated. They're, they tilt in the dark tetra direction. And so the 35 year old men who won't date anyone who's under, who's over 23, they're not dating, they're, 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.
9:44 Speaker 04 That never happens.
9:46 Speaker 06 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.
9:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there is a relationship between youth and
10:05 Speaker 04 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 shallow,
10:21 Speaker 04 I'm not exactly saying that attraction to youth and beauty is shallow, but,
10:27 Speaker 04 you know, there are 15, 16-year-old models. They're not uncommon at all.
10:32 Speaker 06 Yeah.
10:32 Speaker 04 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
11:01 Speaker 04 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.
11:13 Speaker 04 They're not seeing the whole person.
11:16 Speaker 06 Yeah.
11:17 Speaker 04 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
11:39 Speaker 04 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 saying alone.
11:56 Speaker 04 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?
12:09 Speaker 04 But then,
12:12 Speaker 04 If you didn't have a father and you're a very young woman, like, maybe you need that more mature guidance. Maybe that's valuable to you. Why wouldn't it be?
12:21 Speaker 06 I think as long as you avoid the psychopathic types that are just after naivety, then 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.
12:38 Speaker 04 That's, that's a perfectly reasonable summation.
12:42 Speaker 05 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?
13:25 Speaker 04 Your story implies that you made less of yourself for some substantial amount of time because of doubt, and that you 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
14:09 Speaker 04 been the case throughout human history that you are bringing children into an uncertain world.
14:17 Speaker 04 You're coping with the uncertainty in life by picking a challenging and responsibility-laden pathway forward in your private life. Don't stop.
14:36 Speaker 04 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.
14:49 Speaker 04 I think that
14:52 Speaker 04 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
15:07 Speaker 04 the right level of resolution to address the issue. The question is,
15:14 Speaker 04 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
15:59 Speaker 04 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.
16:26 Speaker 04 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?
16:46 Speaker 04 There's no better deal than a family
16:51 Speaker 04 and people who love you.
16:54 Speaker 04 And that's worth a risk, and it's worth a risk for them.
16:59 Speaker 04 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
17:15 Speaker 04 consider it a moral obligation to have faith in be fruitful and multiply.
17:23 Speaker 04 It's a pro existence stance. And if you're opposed to your own existence, then who can save you?
17:33 Speaker 06 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 like, so he seems competent. But if you raise your kids right and you build confidence in themselves, then then they can go out into this chaotic world.
18:03 Speaker 04 And find opportunity.
18:04 Speaker 06 And find opportunity too.
18:06 Speaker 04 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
18:25 Speaker 04 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.
18:41 Speaker 06 I like that.
18:41 Speaker 04 And good luck and congratulations also. Seriously.
18:48 Speaker 04 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 lecturers 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.
19:31 Speaker 04 But we have 40 stellar professors onboard. 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.
19:55 Speaker 00 Share comfort and joy this holiday season at Tacovus. Our boots are handcrafted in over 200 meticulous steps and have a broken-in feel right out of the box with styles for everyone in the family. Our expert staff can help you pick the perfect gifts, and we have free in-store gift wrapping to help make the holiday season truly special. See you soon at your local Tacovus store or shop with us anytime at tacovus.com.
20:26 Speaker 08 We've been a traditional family for 50 years enjoying the usual family gatherings, birthdays, Christmas, etc. We have two children, six grandchildren. Our oldest 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 ladder, 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.
21:10 Speaker 08 Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
21:13 Speaker 04 Well, the first thing I would say is that... That might be useful for everybody listening is that you deviate from the norm,
21:26 Speaker 04 much less the ideal, at your extreme peril. You know, when people came to see me who were unhappy and unfulfilled,
21:37 Speaker 04 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,
21:50 Speaker 04 "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.
22:34 Speaker 04 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...
23:16 Speaker 04 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
24:02 Speaker 04 that what? They're supposed to just say it's all right? That's what they're gonna do if they love you. They're not gonna 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 gonna have much to do with you because you're too damn much trouble.
24:28 Speaker 06 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 twenties, maybe? And they're like, I'm gonna 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?
24:50 Speaker 04 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.
25:08 Speaker 06 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 gonna have.
25:28 Speaker 04 Well, you see, Michaela, 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 wife, 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
26:13 Speaker 04 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... They're not gonna have sexual jealousy. That's just gonna disappear somehow. And everyone's gonna love each other equally. That's gonna happen.
26:58 Speaker 04 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?
27:14 Speaker 04 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 signs of that would have been there early and that we would have worked on it before it became an unmanageable mess.
27:59 Speaker 04 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, they 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?
28:43 Speaker 04 Let's be polite like we would be to strangers that we were 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 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.
29:26 Speaker 04 Personal.
29:28 Speaker 04 You know, the problem is, is that something terribly anomalous has occurred and no one knows what to do about it.
29:35 Speaker 06 Without knowing family dynamics, like, is, 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, 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.
30:07 Speaker 04 Yeah.
30:07 Speaker 06 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
30:35 Speaker 06 we're here when you figure it out. We're not going to encourage it.
30:41 Speaker 06 And we don't like it, but we're here.
30:44 Speaker 04 Okay, I've, I've one more thing to say about this.
30:48 Speaker 04 People like false adventures.
30:51 Speaker 06 Yeah.
30:52 Speaker 04 And false adventures are excitement without responsibility. And what you want to do
31:00 Speaker 04 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. That's, 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.
31:34 Speaker 04 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 reduplicate 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.
32:19 Speaker 04 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.
32:47 Speaker 09 We're dealing with a pattern of misbehaviors with our son. Our 13-year-old throws tantrums. Our son turned to some substance abuse.
32:55 Speaker 04 Rules consistently applied with minimal force and plenty of patience.
33:03 Speaker 10 So my question is, how do I know if I'm actually building something important or just staying busy to feel productive? Sometimes 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.
33:31 Speaker 04 There are all sorts of markers that you can use to determine whether you're on a productive path.
33:38 Speaker 04 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.
34:06 Speaker 04 And so you have to negotiate with yourself to see if what you're aiming at satisfies you and fills you with hope.
34:19 Speaker 04 But then you don't have to do this alone. You know,
34:24 Speaker 04 corporations have boards so that people can discuss
34:31 Speaker 04 vision and strategy. And so I would say that it sounds to me like part of what you need is some people around you to bounce your
34:45 Speaker 04 ideas of the future and your strategies against so that you can stress test them and address your doubts. So
34:58 Speaker 04 number one, negotiate with yourself to see if you believe that your plan
35:06 Speaker 04 gives you direction and hope and constrains direction sufficiently so you're not too stressed. And
35:16 Speaker 04 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
35:48 Speaker 04 further your
35:51 Speaker 04 Your investigation, I would also say you could give some thought to doing the future authoring program at selfauthoring.com.
36:01 Speaker 06 I was gonna say that, yeah.
36:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, and just, why were you gonna say that?
36:04 Speaker 06 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.
36:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:26 Speaker 06 You taught me that. So where are you going? And then see if what you're doing is leading to that.
36:31 Speaker 04 Right, right, okay. So, you know, is where you're going good?
36:36 Speaker 06 Yeah.
36:36 Speaker 04 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
37:20 Speaker 04 levels of political involvement that exist.
37:23 Speaker 06 What if your job is also good for the community? Can you combine those?
37:27 Speaker 04 Then, good.
37:28 Speaker 06 Okay.
37:29 Speaker 04 Good, good.
37:29 Speaker 06 Two birds, one stone.
37:30 Speaker 04 It's just another place where meaning can be derived, right? And mentoring people is, 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.
38:12 Speaker 06 Hmm.
38:12 Speaker 04 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.
38:54 Speaker 04 It's a very good idea to do that compared to not moving forward and waiting. 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. And that's how, that's the definition of learning.
39:38 Speaker 04 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.
40:20 Speaker 04 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 hidebound 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.
40:51 Speaker 06 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, like manifest, it'll work. Those are other 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.
41:10 Speaker 04 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 at the, on the landing, you go nowhere and no doors open. If you pick a pathway, you forego the other ones, at least temporarily.
41:50 Speaker 04 But then you start to see the doors and then you can push and see, are they opening? And I would also say generally with the plan, generally.
42:02 Speaker 04 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, right? It's a tight, 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.
42:45 Speaker 06 And not very high in conscientiousness.
42:47 Speaker 04 Well, that's, yes, right, right, right. Yep.
42:51 Speaker 06 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. And 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,
43:32 Speaker 06 way higher than I was expecting. And it's because when you do make a plan, it's like your vision changes, and you can see these open doors.
43:40 Speaker 04 You look at where you're headed. This, 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.
44:02 Speaker 04 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.
44:16 Speaker 06 Definitely.
44:16 Speaker 04 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.
45:00 Speaker 04 No goal, no pathway. Right? Yep.
45:04 Speaker 06 Or random horrible doorways.
45:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, sure, sure.
45:08 Speaker 06 That lead like upside down.
45:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, right. Yeah, right, right.
45:12 Speaker 06 Yeah. That was helpful.
45:16 Speaker 11 If you hear a baby screaming, uh, 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?
45:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:36 Speaker 06 Well, if that, 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.
45:46 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:47 Speaker 06 If that's the case.
45:51 Speaker 04 It's very hard to deal with a partner that lies.
45:56 Speaker 06 Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
45:58 Speaker 04 That's. Now, if they're lying and that's improving.
46:04 Speaker 06 I don't know.
46:06 Speaker 04 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, that's really important.
46:28 Speaker 04 Can the person negotiate?
46:33 Speaker 04 Do they negotiate in good faith? And do they implement the consequences of the negotiation?
46:41 Speaker 04 You know, you can, you can take a relationship that's got quite a bit of, 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, if it's a downhill slope continually,
47:04 Speaker 04 no improvement whatsoever, then,
47:09 Speaker 04 then you're playing a game that you probably can't win.
47:15 Speaker 06 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.
47:32 Speaker 04 It also makes you question your own sanity.
47:35 Speaker 06 That's yes.
47:36 Speaker 04 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.
47:49 Speaker 06 How often do you think that happens in relationships?
47:51 Speaker 04 A lot.
47:54 Speaker 06 Isn't that pathological though? Like, isn't that a disorder of some site, some sort, if somebody does that? Or, or is it not pathological and lots of people experience it?
48:07 Speaker 04 Well, I don't really think there is any difference between personality, psychopathology, in its most disruptive guise and the proclivity lie.
48:24 Speaker 04 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.
48:44 Speaker 04 That assumes truth in relationship to the analysis of the outcome and iterate.
48:54 Speaker 04 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 get, become a master at that. Like, I try, am I a master at that?
49:14 Speaker 04 I'm not perfect.
49:17 Speaker 04 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. You know, 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
49:57 Speaker 04 I try to say what aids that.
50:03 Speaker 04 I'm not manipulating towards some determined end.
50:08 Speaker 06 You think there are some things that you should figure out early, though?
50:13 Speaker 06 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?
50:25 Speaker 04 Well.
50:27 Speaker 06 But those things you should figure out early.
50:28 Speaker 04 We have this understand myself personality questionnaire.
50:32 Speaker 06 Yeah.
50:32 Speaker 04 Right? And it has a couples component.
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50:59 Speaker 04 And
51:00 Speaker 06 Which is great, by the way, and everybody should do it.
51:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:03 Speaker 06 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.
51:12 Speaker 04 Yep.
51:13 Speaker 06 Like, I was obsessed with that. I was the one that said we should do a couples.
51:17 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:17 Speaker 06 Version.
51:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:18 Speaker 06 Was using it to screen people. I don't know, you know what it does? It sorts through extroverts, too. Cause you meet an extrovert, especially if you're an extroverted person, you're like, I like this person. This person's great.
51:29 Speaker 04 Yep.
51:30 Speaker 06 And extroversion just coats every other part of their personality. And you're like, this person's super fun.
51:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:36 Speaker 06 I had that problem with hiring for a while.
51:38 Speaker 04 Right.
51:39 Speaker 06 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?
51:48 Speaker 04 Right.
51:49 Speaker 06 Cause it can hide low conscientiousness. So they can be a total slob and not care about it.
51:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:54 Speaker 06 But really be really charming.
51:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:57 Speaker 06 That like, that can be in or neurotic, like high neuroticism. So they're extremely volatile, but also very charming.
52:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:05 Speaker 06 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?
52:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:16 Speaker 06 And one of those has got to be conscientiousness.
52:18 Speaker 04 All of the, all of the traits, I would say is the, 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 you're, your, your grandmother, your mom's mom was pretty introverted.
52:33 Speaker 06 Yeah.
52:34 Speaker 04 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
52:47 Speaker 04 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.
52:58 Speaker 06 Yeah. You just end up, if you're the conscientious one, you'll just end up cleaning for the rest of your life.
53:04 Speaker 04 Yeah.
53:04 Speaker 06 And time management is a hard one.
53:08 Speaker 04 Yep.
53:08 Speaker 06 Yeah.
53:09 Speaker 04 Openness is another tough one.
53:12 Speaker 06 Yeah.
53:13 Speaker 04 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.
53:23 Speaker 06 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 was just, I'm 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. It was like, okay, now we can be lunatics together.
54:02 Speaker 04 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.
54:24 Speaker 06 Yeah.
54:25 Speaker 04 So, I've always been that way, right? I talk, ever since I was, could talk, I never stopped.
54:32 Speaker 06 That's pretty funny.
54:35 Speaker 04 Got any concluding thoughts?
54:37 Speaker 06 Um, I don't know.
54:39 Speaker 04 I can wrap up a little bit.
54:41 Speaker 06 Yeah, you, you go for it. That was fun.
54:43 Speaker 04 We started by talking about conservatism in, 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.
55:10 Speaker 04 Have some friends that you value and think about what that's
55:16 Speaker 04 what that means. Sort your family out. Get your career together, educate yourself, figure out how to resist temptation, serve your community, right? 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, 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, that's always a good exploratory technique, something minimal in the right direction. Right?
56:03 Speaker 06 Okay. Well, that was fun. Thanks for including me.
56:05 Speaker 04 Well, thank you for setting it up and for agreeing to do it and for finding the questions and
56:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, and thanks for everybody who submitted questions.
56:17 Speaker 04 Yeah, much appreciated.
56:17 Speaker 06 Hopefully people enjoyed it or found it helpful.
56:20 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. And I definitely enjoy this sort of thing. And which is why I'm a psychologist, not a politician. Seriously, it's, 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
56:43 Speaker 04 and working to
56:46 Speaker 04 fortify and improve the relationships they have at hand. If everyone did that, there'd be no reason to even have the political.
56:56 Speaker 06 Agreed.
56:56 Speaker 04 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 two more questions. And so, um, give some consideration to joining us over there. Much appreciated.
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Previous 547. The Movie Hollywood Didn’t See Coming... | Jocko Willink Next Parental Roles Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated