https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=tOz5h2f5i6E
Dr. Peterson, what professional advice would you give someone currently working in HR other than get out? I don’t know, you know, generic advice tends not to be that useful. I would say the way the question is formulated indicates some dissatisfaction with the role and some desire to get out. And so I can tell you what you need to do in a situation like that, and this happens all the time in your life. Imagine you’re in a place and you’re being asked to do things that you find unmotivating and repugnant, perhaps, and maybe that’s not merely because you’re in undisciplined and useless, because that’s the first question you ask yourself, right? Am I objecting morally or am I just incapable of disciplining myself? And you want to know the answer to that because otherwise you’re not going to be able to put your best foot forward in a complex situation. But let’s say you are in a corrupt enterprise and you don’t know what to do, and that’s a very difficult problem to solve. And the first thing I would say is strive to put yourself in a position where you can actually make choices. And that’s actually a good guiding principle throughout your life, you know. Maybe you’re being oppressed at work, certainly possible. And I know that there are people who are in such dire situations that in some sense they’re trapped. I’ve had lots of clients like that, right? So I make allowances for the fact that now and then you get into a situation you just can’t get out of, and that’s really, that’s real hell. Forget about that for the time being. If someone is pushing you around, you need to be able to say no. Well, so let’s think that through. You need to know what no means. And no means if you keep doing this, something you do not like will certainly happen to you. That’s what no means. No, I’m not trying to make that into a threat, but it is a threat. No means no implies, it implies a border. Well, in order to say no, you have to be able to put up the border. And let’s say you have a job and you need the money and maybe you have a family and you have no other options, your no isn’t very useful because what have you got to back it up? And maybe you think, well, I’ll stand on moral principles and I’ll quit my jobs. Well, great, but what are you going to do for money and how about your family? Right, that’s a big problem. And so when I had clients in that situation, that was usually a two-year campaign, something like that. It’s like, well, how’s your resume look? And that’s usually a dismal question for people because it’s full of holes and they haven’t updated it for five years and they’re embarrassed about two-thirds of it, it’s badly written and they’ve hidden it in some corner of their computer where they don’t even want to look. And so haul it up, let’s go through it. Can you fill in the gaps? Is there some way that you can make yourself more marketable so that you have options and we could lay out a plan to see how that might be possible. Maybe you’re afraid of applying for a new job because you have to send out 50 resumes to get one bloody interview and that’s annoying and time-consuming and then maybe you don’t have any real confidence in your interview abilities, well, time to fix all that up. Or you stay under the thumb of the tyranny, those are your options and that’s not a good option because if you are under the thumb of an emerging tyranny and you don’t set yourself up to withstand it and push back or leave for somewhere better, then it will definitely get bigger and you will definitely get smaller and no matter how bad it is now it’s going to be way worse in five years. And that’s also really useful to think through because imagine you have to do something like make a lateral shift in your job and that’s not nothing. And you think, well, I’m afraid of doing that. No one wants me, I can’t get another job, I’m gonna throw, you know, I’m gonna throw my life up into chaos, etc. That’s very frightening and fair enough and no wonder that stops you but you’re probably not frightened enough about not doing it. And one of the things I did continually in my clinical practice was fair enough, I get why you’re afraid. Let’s figure out the cost of you just staying there because things change and they degenerate, right? And so that’s frightening but let’s think about who you’re gonna be in five years, right? You’re ten times as bitter and you’re in an even worse situation economically. You absolutely hate your job but now instead of one manager who’s ideologically corrupt and tyrannical, you have five and all the good people have left your company. It’s like, well, how afraid are you of that? Well, then once you have that, this is a really useful thing to do, period. You know, when you’re trying to deal with your stupidities and your ignorance and your malevolence, you think, well, should I do something about this? That’s hard. What if I just let it play out? And then you need a fantasy that goes along with that, you know, so you take all your bad habits and your failure to aim at the mark and you think, all right, I’m gonna wander down that road diligently. What does it look like in five years? And that’s usually, that’s hell, man. And there’s motivation in that because moving to somewhere good, that’s a good thing, but getting the hell away from something terrible, that’s also motivating. And so if you put that hell behind you and, you know, the promised land in front of you, you’re kind of maximally motivated to move forward through obstacles. And so, you know, we can’t do any of this casually. It’s not easy to stand up for what you believe to be right in the marketplace. And the way to do that is to mold yourself into someone who can do that. And there’s nothing but good in that. It’s difficult, but there’s nothing but good in that. And almost all my clients, when we went through that process, it often took two years, sometimes longer. The invariable outcome was that they, not invariable. There was a time or two it didn’t work exactly that well. Most of the time people went on to far better jobs at far better salaries in a much more motivating position and were better for themselves and for their family. But it takes work, you know, like it’s not just a matter of a casual objection. It’s not good enough. It’s not sophisticated enough.