Modern man and women

do you want the horror of failure or the

certainty of failure

the horror of potential failure or the

certainty of failure because if you

don't do this you will fail

now it'll be put off but it will

absolutely happen and so that fear i

understand why that stops people

it's no joke to be rejected

and it's going to happen while you

practice

and it's a real fear

but

you're deluding yourself by thinking

that there's a no fear option there's

just a delayed fear option right because

if you don't get this right well you're

going to fail for sure and then you're

going to be miserable and vindictive and

bitter and anxiety ridden and you're

going to cause trouble for yourself and

you're going to take it out on women and

other men and like that's an ugly path

man and so i see why you're afraid but

you should be way more afraid of that

[Music]

yo what's good everybody this is office

and welcome back

welcome back

i i can't even say to another episode

because this

is not

just another episode this is not just

another conversation this

in my opinion i've talked to a lot of

amazing people but this is the most

anticipated episode in conversation of

my entire life and before

i introduce

the guest i got to tell you guys a brief

story

growing up my favorite holiday was

christmas i love christmas more than

anybody i could not sleep the night

before christmas because i was so

excited about what could come and every

single year

i would write the one and only santa

claus a letter giving him a list of all

the things that i desired and i wanted

for christmas

every in the next year i mean the next

day i wake up in the morning i go

downstairs and i i look under the tree

and

not say my parents weren't good parents

but

the letter that i got wrote santa claus

was always accompanied with another

letter

from santa claus telling me that this

year some of the things that i wanted i

wasn't going to be able to get and maybe

i will be able to get it next year

nevertheless regardless of the

opposition regardless of what i didn't

get i kept on writing letters year in

year and i kept on getting letters back

from santa claus saying what i wanted

more than anything in the world i would

unfortunately not be getting it that

year but

what that experience taught me was that

when you want something in life you you

got to be persistent when you want

something in life you have to write it

down and it was about maybe five years

ago

and i was sitting down

and i turned on youtube and then all of

a sudden i see this thumbnail

of this distinguished gentleman on joe

rogan's podcast and i said this seems

like an interesting conversation

i clicked on that thumbnail and and

watched the video and it absolutely

changed my life though the wisdom the

knowledge the information that this man

was sharing the things that he was

talking about the way he could construct

his ideas it was so

absolutely powerful to me and for the

pat for the next couple years every time

this man put out a video i would watch

and consume

every piece of content and i went ahead

and i wrote down on a piece of paper i

said you know what

if anything can happen what would be an

absolute honor is for me to be able to

sit down

and have a conversation with this man so

i made it my one of my life goals i said

without a shadow of adele i would sit

down and have a conversation with this

man and i would always write it down and

i always pray to god god give me this

opportunity

i'm glad to say over four years later

you know

my prayers were answered and i got the

opportunity right now to sit down with

one of my favorite human beings of all

time this individual is all my mount

rushmore of people right besides my

father and obviously garyvee as well and

i am beyond ecstatic to introduce the

audience to this man and hopefully the

words that he shares today has will

bless you as much as it has blessed me

so without further ado please guys

welcome to the show the one and only dr

jordan b peterson jordan dr jordan

peterson welcome to the show

hi herpes i don't think i've had a nicer

introduction than that so much

appreciated and i'm looking very much

over proud too

that's a pleasure i told myself i'm not

to cry but you know

i probably will

this means a lot to me and i'm super

grateful so dr peterson for those who

don't know you can you give a bit of an

elevator pitch synopsis about who you

are what you doing all that good stuff

well

i'm a psychologist

i had a long research career

about 20 years publishing scientific

papers i'm a clinical psychologist i

practiced for about 20 years as well i

haven't been practicing specifically for

the last five years i'm an author i

wrote a book called maps of meaning

which was published in 1999 and it was

an investigation into the relationship

between

belief and emotional regulation had

religious thinking i was trying to

account for the human tendency to well

to be so allied with what we believe and

why that's so important to us and also

for the proclivity for us to do

atrocious things and that was a very

serious and difficult book

and then in

i published two books for more popular

audiences

uh much later than that i think

12 rules for life

antidote to chaos came out in 2016 and

then the new book beyond order came out

last year so i'm an author

and a speaker i suppose and i have a

youtube podcast and

it seems to be quite successful and

people are positively inclined towards

it i'm very very fortunate because i can

now talk to anybody i want on this

podcast pretty much and so that's

unbelievably exciting

and so i i

this is the end of my little speech i

suppose i

was very much

interested

obsessed by

the idea of ideological possession and

also by human malevolence and the sorts

of things that happened in nazi germany

and in the soviet union and well in many

places many many places and

what i concluded from all that i suppose

is that the best way to

protect us from such things

as we move forward is

to help build better individuals and

that was allied with my extreme interest

in clinical psychology which is an

individual on individual pursuit and

so

i tried to bring that in my university

experience as a lecturer speaker to as

wide an audience as possible and

and here we are

no that's awesome no i definitely i i

love i love um 12 rules for life and

beyond order this is exceptional reason

and i think it's just so powerful that

the messages that you give can impact so

many people so dr peterson what i what i

want to do is i want to take a trip

into the delorean and i want to go back

in time because we i know dr peterson

the the amazing man that stands before

me today but i i want to know who

jordan was at at 16 years old so so if

you were to go back in time to you know

fairview and alberta who was jordan

peterson at 16 years old what was that

guy like

well

um i didn't care much for school i

wouldn't say

although

younger than that i was younger than

that when i took my first university

course i was just remembering that this

year there was a professor named dennis

wheeler who taught at this local college

it was about 90 miles away

and he was interested in distance

education he came up north to our little

town

and taught a course on political science

which i took when i was 14. and i really

liked that so there was some

aspects of academic pursuit that i loved

and i read a lot i pretty much read a

book a day from the time i was about 10

until

well

till i started reading really serious

books and couldn't read one of those in

a day

so for years you know and

i had a it was a working-class place and

all my friends pretty much were working

class kids most of them dropped out of

school in grade 9 or grade 10

and then went off to work on the oil

rigs that

where they could make a fortune

especially for someone that young

i worked from the time i was 14 onward i

worked in restaurants

and i liked that a lot i worked first as

a dishwasher which was an impossible job

for me to begin with until the german

chef took pity on me and showed me how

to do it after i struggled away for

about three weeks like swamped by dishes

but i liked that because i was treated

like an adult and i really appreciated

that and i worked i had a bit of a

political

interest

well more than a bit at that point i i

worked for a local

our local member of the legislative

assembly at the provincial level so

that's the state level for you american

types and i was interested in socialist

ideas at that point and

that lasted that

that political interest of that precise

sort lasted till i was about

17 i would say when i realized that i

just didn't know anything and that a

political career at that point which was

something that was open to me in a

strange way

uh that would have that was radically

premature

so

that was me at 16 i would say

i do that i was in grade 12 then i went

i went to college when i was 17. left

home when i was 17.

oh wow

so um

so you went to college when you were 17

years old so 16 years old

you were it was very annoying because i

couldn't get in the bar

it was very annoying because all my

friends would go to the bar and

sometimes even classes were held there

and i couldn't go and i looked like i

was like 13 so

there was no way i was sneaking in

so

and and what did you do undergraduate um

dr peterson

i did two years at this local college

grand prairie regional college and it

was in a beautiful building designed by

a native canadian architect named

douglas cardinal it was his first major

commission it was an outstanding

building absolutely beautiful curved

brick on the outside

no no square corners beautiful white

rounded interior

and um

i had great professors there i had i

it's so interesting as i was just

writing about that this week i had six

professors there

that were outstanding one in biology

political science

english literature history

art um who else was there i didn't name

all six but that's close and they were

all men as it turned out

and they were really deeply committed to

teaching the english profession

professor robin burke um

he i think he gave me like a three out

of nine on my first essay which just

shocked the hell out of me yeah it was

quite the shock because i thought i

could write i got good grades in high

school despite not doing any work and

i'd never really run into someone who

could actually write

and he could write and i couldn't at all

and so he taught me he was a tough guy

and and you know a strict guy but

my friends and i loved him and i was so

fortunate because i i got together with

a good group of friends some couple of

them came with me from fairview and we

all sat together in in these classes and

so i had a really good social life there

um our whole little cadre took over the

student union the second year i was at

this little college and

we ran a huge surplus which was the

first time that ever happened i we

couldn't figure out how you could

possibly run a deficit at a student

government when you could

hold dances and sell beer to

undergraduates it was like how can you

not make a profit doing that

anyways it was a blast and i got a

really good education there for two

years and then i went to the university

of alberta

for a year and finished my bachelor's

degree and that was political science

with a minor in english

and you could get a three-year degree at

that point and then i worked for no i

yeah i worked on road crews for six

months and then went to europe for four

months and then i went to

university again for a year because i

decided that i was going to study

psychology so i took nothing but

psychology courses for a whole year and

got a second ba

you know not exactly but that's how it

worked and then i worked for another

year and then i went to graduate school

so that was that was that was all that

so would you say majority of your

friends um were working in the oil rigs

or would you say majority of your

friends went on to college with you oh

no no no hardly anyone from my

graduating class went on to college

there was me and a handful of other

people virtually everyone stayed in in

this town

and most you know i had different

friends somewhat different friends in

high school than i did in junior high

because junior high was grade seven to

nine because so many of my previous

friends had dropped out of school and so

and then a new crowd came in these were

kids that were

they lived in even more remote place

called bear canyon which was literally

on the edge of the prairie frontier like

and and

there was no high school there so they

came to

as residents they they had to live with

families and they were they stayed in

school though those three characters i'm

still in touch with all three of them

they were great friends of mine and

one of them came to college with me and

was a roommate for a while and but i

but that was it most people didn't go

no yeah

so do you feel as though

you were

a um

a individual who was moving to the beat

of your own drum

and had more of a leader disposition

because it would appear that if you're

in an environment where all your other

peers are not interested in going to

school there could be easy proclivity

for an individual to not desire to go to

school as well and to you know chase the

money during the oil rig so what was it

inside of you that made you be able to

you know still desire to pass higher

education though everybody else is

moving in a different direction

well my parents were both university

educated and so my dad was a teacher

he's still alive

um and my mom was a nurse they had both

left the small town they were from in

saskatchewan it was an even smaller town

and and gone to university

and it was just expected in our house i

never questioned it i knew

i knew from the time i was 11

10 that i was going to leave fairview

and and and pursue my education i didn't

know how far and at that point i didn't

understand the tiers of higher education

you know bachelor masters phd

but i knew and you know it was

interesting because

virtually everyone i knew that did leave

that little town

knew that they were going to leave when

they were that young

and so it's hard to tell why these

things happen i wouldn't say that it was

precisely i wouldn't say that it was

because i was a leader exactly because

my friends weren't followers

none of them including the kids who

went off to work on the oil rigs those

kids were tough man and part of the

reason they quit school is because they

got sick and tired of putting up their

hands to ask to go to the bathroom when

they were you know pretty much men and

they were men enough to go work on the

rigs so so no i wasn't leading them i

was small and

because i had skipped a grade

so i was younger than everyone else in

my class and i was rather small for my

age anyways and so

i was surrounded by guys generally who

had a lot more physical prowess than me

i didn't really participate in

team sports until i went to graduate

school

partly because of that reason although i

went skiing with my my father and

cross-country skiing and trapping and

that and

hunting and that sort of thing

so

um

but i was much more academically

inclined than most of my friends and

i wasn't exactly from the same kind of

working-class background that they were

from so most of my friends their parents

had

finished high school or not um

i had one friend who whose parents were

university educated and he did go to

college but he never he never continued

he had he had some pretty severe mental

health problems unfortunately

um so um how many siblings did you have

two i had a i have a younger sister

she's a year and a half younger than me

bonnie and i have a

brother who's four and a half years

younger than me jewel

and they both went off to college and

and okay

pursued their so how would you

go ahead how would you describe your

father

um

he wasn't someone you trifled with

i can tell you that i can give you a

story about that so he is a teacher for

a lot of his life and he taught grade

six uh he wasn't my homeroom teacher in

grade six because he because there was

another grade six teacher and i was his

son so they put me in the other

grade six teachers home room but he

taught math

and taught arithmetic slash math and i

remember

the first time my class had him as a

teacher and we were 12 and kind of rowdy

you know like 12 year olds are by 13 we

were way too much of a handful for most

of our teachers you know we drove them

really crazy it was horrible

but so they were already pretty rowdy i

would say and i swear that for 10

minutes before he walked into the room

no one said a thing

and it wasn't because he was mean he

wasn't mean but you didn't mess with him

and that was what it was like at home

you know like dad was an intimidating

figure and

and now having said that i should also

say that

he was he he was and he is unbelievably

good with little kids who he has a real

soft spot for little kids a little

harder on teenagers probably and per you

know they're not as trustworthy

teenagers and

and uh but he was and he paid a

tremendous amount of attention to me

when i was young and taught me to read

and

the memories that are like i hold dear

and that really shaped me all that

attention i got from him when i was

well before i went to school was

unbelievably beneficial to me i mean

one thing my dad did for me and my mom

played a role in this but it's harder to

say exactly what it was

my relationship with my mother was much

easier she's a she's a she's an easy

person to get along with an easy person

to love she also has a great sense of

humor so i could always make her laugh

and that was wonderful

and but my dad had extremely high

standards and it was difficult to please

and so

i had this strange sense from him that i

could do that he was confident that i

could do anything but that nothing i did

was ever quite good enough

and so there's a roughness to that you

know but there's there's also an

advantage and it's a tough one because

when you love your kids

there's two things you do for them one's

more maternal i would say and one's more

paternal

although either parent could play the

role

the maternal is love you know it's like

i love you just the way you are i think

you're great and that's what you have

for babies and

and you know and that's the kind of love

that makes you always welcome at home in

some sense no matter what you've done

but the paternal love is sort of like i

love you but there could be more to you

and so it's in its best form it's

encouragement

and to know someone has your back and

i've always known that my parents had my

back and it's a big deal and

you know part of what i see that affects

me so profoundly emotionally when i go

lecture for example is i see so many

young people who don't have that you

know who've never really heard a word of

encouragement and god that's such a lack

it's and that's so i was so fortunate in

that a lot of my friends

the majority of them

certainly didn't have that from their

father in particular

so

yeah and they still have my back my

parents you know

so that's

often when i was when i went on my book

tour so i went a book tour in 2019

no 18

went to about 150 cities so it was

extensive all over the world

often before the tour i would phone them

and

so which kind of strange in some ways i

was damn near 60. you know and they're

in their ages it was a ritual that was

it was partly a ritual and i needed that

ritual before i went and talked to you

know the crowds were usually you know

several thousand people or

some up to ten thousand people

it was just a way of touching something

familiar i suppose before i wandered out

into the unknown

so

now that makes that no thank you for

sharing that no and the reason why i

asked that is because i had a feeling

that was so you know

my father's

next to you on the mount rushmore

and my father is somebody who's

extremely powerful um individual as well

extremely

fantastic with children i actually was

an educator for a couple years as well

and i did preschool and all the you know

the the women i was i was at this

private school and you know the first

day of school you had this black guy you

know like this football player black guy

like the teacher the classroom and all

the women were like oh what's going on

here but they all then fell in love with

me they're like you're so good with

children i tell them well it's because

my dad my dad was just he had a

supernatural gifting with just with just

young children and so i've always found

the impact that my dad showed me because

i know a lot of men you've experienced

before

they've never heard their father tell

them i love you or their father put

their arm around them or give them

play with them you know like i had a

friend

who didn't have a father and he was over

at our house a lot until i was about 12

or 13 and we sort of separated paths

after that but my dad sort of took him

on as a second son for a number of years

and

i used to wrestle with this

friend of mine and he was so awkward you

you couldn't wrestle with him without

him sticking his thumb in your eye or

some damn thing

on on later recollection i realized

because i studied rough and tumble play

when i was a research psychologist at

mcgill and at and at the university of

toronto and he didn't have that

opportunity to engage in that play and

one of the things that a father does i

think technically speaking is is help

set up a secure environment right a safe

environment