Jordan Peterson's Ultimate Advice for Students and College Grads - STOP WASTING TIME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsNzAuYDgy0

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 My experience is with people that we're probably running at about 51% of our capacity. 

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 Something - I mean you can think about this yourselves. I often ask undergraduates: 

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 How many hours a day you waste, or how many hours a week you waste? 

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 And the classic answer is something like 4 to 6 hours a day, you know inefficient studying, 

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 watching things on YouTube that not only do you not want to watch - 

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 That you don't even care about, that make you feel horrible about watching after you're done. That's probably four hours right there. 

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 Now, and you think - That's 20-25 hours a week. 

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 It's a hundred hours a month. That's two and a half full work weeks. 

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 It's half a year of work weeks per year and if your time is worth, 

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 $20 an hour, which is a radical underestimate, 

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 it's probably more like $50 if you think about it in terms of deferred wages. 

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 If you're wasting 20 hours a week... 

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 you're wasting $50,000 a year, and you are doing that right now, and because you're young wasting $50,000 

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 is a way bigger catastrophe 

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 than it would be for me to waste it because I'm not gonna last nearly as long, and so if your life isn't everything it 

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 could be, you could ask yourself. Well, what would happen if you just stopped wasting the opportunities that are in front of you? 

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 You'd be who knows how much more efficient? Ten times more efficient? 20 times more efficient? 

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 That's the Pareto distribution. You have no idea how efficient efficient people get. It's off the charts! 

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 Best thing you can do is teach people to write, because there's no difference between that and thinking and 

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 one of the things that just blows me away about universities is that 

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 No one ever tells students why they should write something 

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 It's like well you have to do this assignment well, why are you writing? Well, you need the grade it's like no 

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 You need to learn to think 

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 Because thinking makes you act effectively in the world, thinking makes you win the battles you undertake and those could be battles for good things 

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 If you can think and speak and write you are 

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 Absolutely deadly 

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 Nothing can get in your way 

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 so that's why you learn to write, it's like 

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 when I can't believe that people aren't just told that it's- it's- it's like 

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 It's the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with and I mean 

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 I know lots of people who have been staggeringly successful and watched them throughout my life 

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 I mean those people you don't want to have an argument with them. 

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 They'll just slash you into pieces and then not in the malevolent way. 

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 It's like if you're gonna make your point and they're gonna make their point you better have your points 

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 Organized because otherwise you're gonna look like and be an absolute idiot 

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 you are not going to get anywhere and if you can formulate your arguments coherently and make a 

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 presentation, if you can speak to people, if you can lay out a proposal, god, people give you money, they give 

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 you opportunities, you have influence 

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 Make a schedule and stick to it. Okay. So what's the rule with the schedule? It's not a bloody prison 

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 That's the first thing that people do wrong they say well, I don't like to have to follow a schedule 

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 It's like well, what kind of schedule are you setting up. 

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 Well, I should- I have to do this, then I have to do this, then I have to do this, you know 

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 And then I just go play video games because who wants to do all these things that I have to do. It's like wrong 

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 Set the schedule up 

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 So that you have the day you want. That's the trick. It's like okay 

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 I've got tomorrow, if I was gonna set it up so it was the best possible day I could have 

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 Practically speaking, what would it look like? 

 03:44 

 well, then you schedule that and obviously there's a bit of responsibility that's good to go along with that because if you have any sense 

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 One of the things that you're gonna insist upon is that at the end of the day 

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 You're not in worse shape than you were then- then at the beginning of the day, right? Because that's a stupid day 

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 If you have a bunch of those in a row, you just dig, you know 

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 You dig yourself a hole and then you bury yourself and it's like sorry, that's just not a good strategy. It's a bad strategy 

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 so maybe 

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 20% of your day has to be responsibility and obligation 

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 Or maybe it's more than that depending on how far behind you are. But even that you can- you can ask yourself, okay? 

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 Well, I've got these responsibilities. 

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 I have to schedule these things in, what's the right ratio of 

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 responsibility to reward. And you can ask yourself that just like you'd negotiate with someone who is working for you 

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 It's like okay, you gotta work tomorrow 

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 Okay, so I want you to work tomorrow and you might say okay. Well, what are you gonna do for me 

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 That makes it likely that I'll work for you? Well, you could ask yourself that you know, maybe you do an hour of 

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 responsibility and then you play a video game for 15 minutes. 

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 I don't know, whatever turns your crank man, but you know 

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 You have to negotiate with yourself and not tyrannize yourself 

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 Like you're negotiating with someone that you care for, that you would like to be productive and have a good life 

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 And- and that's how you make the schedule 

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 It's like and then you look at the day and you think well if I had that day, that would be good 

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 Great, you know and you- you're useless and horrible, so you'll probably only hit it with about seventy percent accuracy 

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 But that beats the hell out of zero. 

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 Right and if you hit it 

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 Even with fifty percent accuracy another rule is well aim for fifty one percent the next week or 50 and a half 

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 percent for God's sake or because 

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 you're gonna hit that position where things start to loop back 

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 positively and spiral you upward. 

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 Well, and if we all got our act together collectively and stop making things worse because that's another thing people do all the time not 

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 Only do they not do what they should to make things better 

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 they actively attempt to make things worse because they're spiteful or resentful or arrogant or deceitful or 

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 or homicidal or genocidal, or all of those things all 

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 Bundled together in an absolutely pathological package. If people stopped really really trying just to make things worse 

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 We have no idea how much better they would get just because of that 

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 So there's this weird dynamic that's part of the existential system of ideas between human vulnerability 

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 social judgment both of which are 

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 are major causes of suffering and the failure of individuals to adopt the 

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 Responsibility that they know they should adopt. It 

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 Isn't merely that your fate depends on whether or not you get your act together and to what degree you decide that you're going to 

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 Live out your own genuine being, it isn't only your fate. It's the fate of everyone that you're networked with 

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 And so, you know you think well 

 06:39 

 There's nine billion, seven billion people in the world 

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 We're going to peak at about nine billion, by the way 

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 And then it'll decline rapidly but seven billion people in the world and who are you you're just one little dust mite 

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 Among that seven billion and so it really doesn't matter what you do or don't do but that's simply not the case 

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 It's the wrong model because you're at the center of a network. You're a node in a network 

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 Of course, that's even more true 

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 Now that we have social media you'll- you'll know 

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 you'll know a 

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 thousand people, at least, over the course of your life and they'll know a thousand people each and that puts you one person away from 

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 a million and two persons away from a billion and 

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 So that's how you're connected and the things you do they're like dropping a stone in a pond 

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 The ripples move outward and they affect things in ways that you can't fully 

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 comprehend and it means that the things that you do and that you don't do are far more important than you think and 

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 So if you act that way 

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 of course the terror of realizing that is that it actually starts to matter what you do and you might say well that's better than 

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 living a meaningless existence. It's better for it to matter 

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 But I mean if you really asked yourself would you be so sure? If you had the choice I can live with no 

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 responsibility whatsoever, the price I pay is that nothing matters 

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 Or I can reverse it and everything matters 

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 But I have to take the responsibility that's associated with that. It's not so obvious to me that people would take the meaningful path 

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 Now when you say well nihilists suffer dreadfully because there's no meaning in their life and they still suffer 

 08:09 

 Yeah, but the advantage is they have no responsibility 

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 So that's the payoff and I actually think that's the motivation. To say well, I can't help being nihilistic all my belief systems have collapsed 

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 It's like yeah, maybe 

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 maybe you've just allowed them to collapse because it's a hell of a lot easier than acting them out and 

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 The price you pay is a meaningless suffering but 

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 You can always whine about that and people will feel sorry for you and you have the option of taking the pathway of the martyr 

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 So that's a pretty good deal all things considered especially when they are, when the alternative is to 

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 bear your burden properly and to live 

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 Forthrightly in the world. Well what Solzhenitsyn figured out and so many people in the twentieth century 

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 it's not just him even though he's the best example is that if you live a pathological life you 

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 Pathologize your society and if enough people do that, then it's hell 

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 Really 

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 really and 

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 You can read the Gulag Archipelago 

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 if you have the forti- fortitude to do that and you'll see exactly what hell is like and then you can decide if that's 

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 a place you'd like to visit or even more importantly if it's a life, if it's a place you'd like to visit and 

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 Take all your family and friends because that's what happened in the 20th century. 

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 No one can live without a routine 

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 You just, forget that, if you guys don't have a routine 

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 I would recommend like you get one going because you cannot be mentally healthy without a routine 

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 You need to pick a time to get up. Whatever time you want 

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 But pick one and stick to it because otherwise you dysregulate your circadian rhythms, and they regulate your mood 

 09:48 

 Plan a life you'd like to have and and you do that partly by 

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 Referring to social norms, that's more or less 

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 Rescuing your father from the belly of the whale but the way, other way you do that is by having a little conversation with yourself 

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 About, as if you don't really know who you are because you know what 

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 You're like, you won't do what you're told. You won't do what you tell yourself to do, you must have noticed that 

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 It's like you're a bad employee and a worse boss and both of those work, you know, for you 

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 You don't know what you want to do 

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 And then when you tell yourself what to do, you don't do it anyway 

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 So you should fire yourself and find someone else to beat but- but you know what 

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 My point is, is that you have to understand that you're not your own servant 

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 so to speak. You're someone that you have to negotiate with and that's- and 

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 You're someone that you want to present the opportunity of having a good life to and 

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 That's hard for people because they don't like themselves very much 

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 So, you know, they're always like cracking the whip and then 

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 Procrastinating and cracking the whip and then procrastinating. It's like god, it's so boring and such a pathetic way of spending your time. I 

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 Think what you have to do and this is part of humility is you have to look around you within your sphere of influence 

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 like the direct sphere of influence and fix the things that announce themselves as in need of repair, but 

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 one of the main reasons that people don't get what they want is because they don't actually figure out what it is and 

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 The probability that you're going to get what would be good for you 

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 Let's say, which would even be better than what you want, right? 

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 Because you know, you might be what- wrong about what you want, easily, but maybe you could get what would really be good for you 

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 Well, why don't you? Well, because you don't try. You don't think, okay 

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 here's what I would like if I could have it and- and I don't mean- I 

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 Don't mean in a way that you manipulate the world to force it, to deliver you goods for status or something like that 

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 That isn't what I mean. I mean something like 

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 Imagine that you were taking care of yourself like you were someone you actually cared for and then you thought okay 

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 I'm caring for this person. I would like things to go as well for them as possible 

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 What would their life have to be like in order for that to be the case? 

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 Well people don't do that. They don't sit down and think alright, you know, let's- let's figure it out. You've got a life, it's hard 

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 obviously, it's like 

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 Three years from now you can have what you need 

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 You've got to be careful about it. You can't have everything, you can have what would be good for you 

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 But you have to figure out what it is and then you have to aim at it 

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 Well my experience with people has been is if they figure out what it is that would be good for them 

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 And then they aim at it, then they get it and it's strange because they don't necess- it's a strange thing, it's not 

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 quite that simple because, you know, you may 

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 formulate an idea about what would be good for you 

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 And then you take ten steps towards that and you find out that your formulation was a bit off and so you have to reformulate 

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 Your goal, you know, so you're kind of going like this as 

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 You move towards the goal 

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 But a huge part of the reason that people fail is because they don't ever 

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 set up the criteria for success and 

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 so since success is a very narrow line and very unlikely, the probability that you're going to stumble on it randomly is zero and 

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 So there's a proposition here and the proposition is if you actually want something 

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 You can have it. Now 

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 the question then would be well, what do you mean by actually want and 

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 The answer is that you reorient your life in every possible way 

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 To make the probability that that will occur as certain as possible and that's a sacrificial idea, right? 

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 It's like you don't get everything, obviously you 

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 Obviously, but maybe you can have what you need and maybe all you have to do to get it is ask 

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 but asking isn't a 

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 Whim or- or today's wish it's like you have to be deadly serious about it. You have to think 

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 Okay, like I'm taking stock of myself and if I was going to live properly in the world 

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 And I was going to set myself up 

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 Such that being would justify itself in my estimation and I don't mean as a harsh judge 

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 Exactly what is it that I would aim at? Sit on your bed one day and ask yourself 

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 What's- what remarkably stupid things am I doing on a regular basis to absolutely screw up my life and 

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 If you actually ask that question 

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 But you have to want to know the answer right because that's actually what asking the question means 

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 It doesn't mean just mouthing the words. It means you have to decide that you want to know 

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 You'll figure that out so fast it'll make your hair curl.