https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Wf4c_o-PI4Q
I can’t tell you, and I know you’ve experienced this too, whether it’s a single mom with three kids just trying to figure out what day it is, or it’s a multi-multi-millionaire who’s got resources that far exceed anything I could imagine. I’ve rarely, rarely sat down across from somebody and had them be able to articulate, what do you actually want? They cannot answer that question, and they fill it with addictions, they fill it with hobbies, they fill it with dopamine chase, they fill it with so much stuff, and nobody can answer that question, what do you want? Because we just don’t have a culture that has a shared vision of where we’re headed. We have a culture of you’re hurting in somebody else’s fault, and let’s start pointing fingers, and man, we’ve got to circle the wagons on a shared vision moving forward. Because what do you want? Nope, that’s not a question anybody asks. It’s what do I don’t want, and why am I feeling just uncomfortable? It’s because of them, it’s because of him, it’s because of her. Well then if it’s what you don’t want, you’re driven by negative emotion. That’s right, if you’re running from, not you. If you’re driven by a vision, that’s positive emotion, because approaching something positive in a visionary manner generates positive emotion. If you’re only fleeing from things you don’t want, then you’re constantly in a state of anxiety and depression. That’s how it works, because the free emotion. Where did that go? Where did we lose a shared vision? Why can’t somebody put a flag in the ground and say this is where we’re headed? That seems to be gone. Yeah, well that’s a complicated question. I mean, I would say that’s the consequence in the most fundamental sense of the death of God in the most fundamental way. It’s the death of a sense of higher order unity. Now it’s also a very complicated question. If you ask someone, what do you want? If you could ask your wife that, what do you want? You’ll probably freeze her into immobility, because it’s really like asking, how do you want all of your life to go? Please summarize. And one of the things, yeah, well it’s a lot. And one of the ways that you can deal with that, which you undoubtedly know as someone who’s conversant with cognitive behavioral techniques, is you can ask people more micro questions too about what they want. So you might say, well, we did that on the dating front already, right? We talked about that. We talked about how you might think about how you want your meal times to go. We only talked about dinner time, but you could talk about breakfast and lunch as well. And then there are other micro domains that are very crucial that you can also consider. So you could ask yourself, well, if you could have the education you wanted, what would that look like? If you had the job or career track that would motivate you, just hypothetically, what might that look like? Sketch out a bad plan. If you had some friends, well, first, do you want some friends? And if so, how many? And if you had friends and the right number, how much time per week would you like to spend with them? And if you had some time outside of work and familial responsibilities, what might you like to do with your time that you would really like to do? And the thing about these questions is that they’re real questions. There’s this gospel statement that if you knock, the door will open, and that if you ask, you will receive, and if you search, you’ll find, if you seek, you’ll find. And people who are faithless in some sense think about it as kind of a hallmark greeting card approach to the world. It’s just, well, you just ask for things and they appear. It’s like, no, that isn’t what any of that means. It means nothing that you want will manifest itself unless you aim for it. And you won’t aim for it unless you know what it is, and you won’t know what it is unless you ask yourself. And then you might say, well, why don’t you ask yourself? And the answer is, well, maybe no one ever explained to you that you needed to, which is a crucial issue, and then maybe you don’t also trust yourself, because you might think, well, if I let myself know what I wanted, given my bloody track record, I would do everything I could to screw it up. So I’ll just keep myself opaque to myself so that I don’t fail at something that’s truly important. And then I can always regale with myself with the idea that, well, I didn’t succeed, but I didn’t really try. Had I really tried, I might’ve succeeded. Whereas if you let yourself know what you want and then you try, you also set the preconditions for failure. So it’s risky. But the alternative is, well, you don’t know what you want. So it is a meditative practice. Like, okay, if I could have what I wanted, imagine the world was constituted so that the entire planet wouldn’t explode in an apocalypse if I got what I needed and wanted. Yeah, right. It’s like, what would that be? You know, what kind of- Okay, so is this a cognitive, well, I don’t wanna use jargon. Is this a thought exercise or is this a feeling exercise? Because here’s what I’m seeing across the country. I thought it would feel different when I finally got that associate vice president job. I thought I would feel a certain way when I got a car. I thought if I could just get to her to date me, I would feel a certain way. And people are realizing in rapid fashion, I thought if my politician won, I would suddenly feel a certain way. I testified in a court case against somebody years ago. A former student of mine got into some significant, did some really terrible things, and he got a long jail sentence. And the next morning I woke up and I read what the judge had written in the sentencing. And the judge used some of my words, and I remember feeling sick to my stomach. And I called a mentor of mine, a psychology professor of mine, and asked her, I said, man, I feel gross. And she said, John, nobody wins here. And I had this perception that I was gonna feel a certain way when justice was done and the right thing happened. And I realized, man, I had thought this through cognitively, but I had not managed, how are you gonna actually feel? Because nobody wins, somebody’s life is ruined over here, somebody’s life is still ruined over here. I think we have to, I don’t know, you’re infinitely, you’ve got infinitely more wisdom than I do on this, but I find that a cognitive exercise is helpful, but it really is important to sit down and say, okay, how are you gonna feel five days after you’ve bought this car that you think you have to have? Will the lack of a red wave during the midterms lead to more reckless spending by a more emboldened administration, higher taxes, deeper inflation? 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Well, the reason for that is that isn’t what positive emotion is for. Positive emotion is to indicate that you’re making progress towards a valued goal. Yes. Now that’s- It’s the driver, right? Not the finish line. Exactly. Well, and that’s actually pharmacologically separate, right? Because a satiation reward, which would be the accomplishment of something, calms you and stops that program from running. So for example, once you’ve become vice president, if that was your goal, then the whole pursuing vice president program comes to a halt. Now the problem with that is it leaves you without a goal and it also leaves empty space, which you immediately have to fill. And so often people feel disquiet because now they don’t know what to do and they miss that rush because they’re no longer pursuing something. And so it’s very important to know that positive emotion is experienced in relationship to a valued goal. And then the question becomes, well, what’s the most valuable goal to pursue? And that’s really a metaphysical and a theological question. In terms of the mechanics of feeling, so imagine that you’re negotiating the structure of a date with your wife and you’re developing a shared vision. And so you say, well, on Wednesday nights, once a week, we’re gonna go for dinner and maybe you specify the restaurant and you’re gonna make the arrangements and I’m gonna get dressed up and then we’re gonna go see a movie and you’re gonna pick the movie and then we’re gonna have a romantic interlude afterwards. And we’ll run that and see how it goes. And then what you wanna do is you wanna picture that and you wanna watch how your body reacts on the emotional level. And that’s a bit of honesty, it’s right. And you can see, well, if we went to this restaurant, oh, I don’t really like that restaurant, I think it’s kind of expensive. I had a bad time with the waiters. I don’t think I’d be happy there. Then you say those things to your partner. You say, well, I’m thinking this through, I’m imagining it and here’s the objections that are coming up. Maybe they’re wrong, maybe I’ve got this wrong, but I’d like to hear your input because we wanna get this right. Should we reevaluate my feelings about the restaurant or should we think about a different restaurant? And that should be a question because you don’t know. Maybe you’re just stupid about the restaurant or you’re cheap or you’re afraid to go there because you don’t have the right clothes. I mean, you don’t know, right? But if you wanna get your feelings in line, you develop the vision and then you apprehend the vision with your feelings. It’s kind of what you do when you go to a movie and you fall into the fantasy of the character. You embody all the emotions and you evaluate it that way. And so, and the other problem with that more goal-directed approach that you described is, I think people should plan and they should develop a vision. You have to develop the vision and then be somewhat detached from it because it needs to be updated and modified. Hold it loosely, yeah. Yeah, you hold it loosely. Yeah, that’s right, because you’re fallible and maybe you can come up with a better plan. Not every minute because you’ll drive yourself mad that way, but now and then. Or I was obsessed as a young higher education professional with becoming a college president until I sat down at the senior leadership table and I realized, I don’t want that life. I don’t want that life. I don’t want 24-7, 365 and the politics. I don’t want asking for money. I don’t want that life. And I didn’t have a backup plan. I didn’t know what to do. I was like, you nailed it. I was completely rudderless because I’d made the finish line, the goal. Going all the way back full circle to how you open the conversation, I think that becomes really important to lay out an identity and reverse engineer. Who do I want to be? Who do I want to become? And the goals end up, it’s like the old days. When you went to grad school, a PhD was simply, it was a high five on a journey of continued learning. I’m gonna continue going down this rabbit hole. And now it’s become a destination and people walk out and announce themselves as educated because I’ve crossed this finish line. Just because you get across, you run a marathon or walk a marathon, doesn’t mean you’re fit, right? Doesn’t mean you’re healthy. Well, and we talked about the necessity of goals. And so there’s higher order goals. And you need the higher order goals because they integrate you. And a goal of becoming a college president is a higher order goal than no goal at all and just sitting in your bed and eating Cheetos, right? So it’s a better plan than no plan at all. And this is where things become profound and serious. And I would say even in a religious sense, because what’s religious is about what’s profound and serious in some sense by definition. So you might say, well, who should I be? And you might think, well, I should be the college president. I should have this car. I should have this house. Those are all very particularized versions of yourself. And the problem with them is that they’re concrete and final actualities and not processes. And so here’s a good vision. That’s a high order vision. And I think it’s the vision that our whole culture is founded on. I should be the person who genuinely confronts the problems and challenges that confront me in my life. So that’s an attitude of active and voluntary engagement, right? I’m gonna do my- That’s an identity, yes. Yeah, and yeah, that’s an identity of process as well. It’s like, I’m gonna be someone who doesn’t shy away from the challenges of life. Okay, and then- I’m the guy who confronts it, yes. Right, right, and so that’s St. George and the dragon. And that’s a precondition for therapeutic transformation because in order for you to improve, you have to identify the problem, the dragon, and you have to be willing to face it voluntarily. And so you say to yourself, I’m going to do what I can to develop the courage to confront the problems in my life voluntarily. That’s who I wanna be. And then another element of that is, I can’t do that without telling the truth. I have to be willing to see what’s in front of me, and I have to be willing to admit to myself what I think and feel, and I have to be willing to communicate that. And so you could say, well, that makes you, that makes your goal something like to think about it archetypically. You talked about Jungian approaches earlier, is that that makes you into a truth-telling hero. And then maybe underneath that, could I become college president? Could I be successful in my business? Could I be successful in my marriage? It’s like, that’s all well and good, and those are more concretized goals. But the highest order goal has to be something like an approach rather than a final state.