https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=LYbeAWzCGcY
treat yourself with dignity and respect. Because I believe you can’t give away what you don’t have. So if somebody doesn’t treat themself with dignity and respect, if they don’t heal that damaged personal truth, and however that damage came about, maybe it’s a woman that has been sexually abused growing up by an uncle or whatever, and we know 95% of molestation is by someone they know to the family. It’s not the predator in the raincoat at the schoolyard saying, you want to see some pictures and candy? I mean, it’s somebody we know and trust usually in these situations. But let’s say it’s a woman that has been molested and raped in her childhood, and that’s never been healed in her. Well, if she doesn’t deal with that trauma, if she doesn’t heal that trauma, then her children are not going to get 100% of their mother. They’re not gonna get 100% of the woman that is that mother, or if it happened to the father, they’re not gonna get 100% of who he could be, who they could bring to the table, the mother or the father bring to the parenting table, unless they heal that damaged personal truth. And for me in my situation, growing up with that, I had to heal that personal truth. My father died when I was 42 years old. And by that time, I had graduated number one in my class with a double core of PhD programs, one medical psychology and one clinical psychology. And I had a very successful business, I had a very successful marriage and children. And I’d gone to school on two athletic scholarships. I’m not saying I was the greatest son in the history of the world, but I had had some achievement. But by the time he passed away in 42, when I was 42, not one time ever did he speak the words I’m proud of you. I never heard that from my father. And so I learned early on, sometimes you have to give yourself what you wish you could get from somebody else. Sometimes you gotta step in front of the mirror and say, I’m proud of you, maybe he can’t say that, but you can. And so you have to go through whatever’s necessary to heal yourself and your personal truth, where you say, I’m into, this success over here, this peace, this happiness, this tranquility is not just for other people. That can be for me too. I deserve that as much as anybody else does. And unless and until you can do that, you’re cheating everybody around you that loves you, cares about you or interfaces with you out of all of who you are. And I think right now, what I’m seeing in this country is in this society is intimidation. People are not necessarily yet willing to step up and say, I deserve for my values to be considered. I deserve for my voice to be heard. I deserve to be considered. And I think they are intimidated because we’ve got these fringe factions that have weaponized certain ideals and turn them into attack strategies. And I think we have to fortify these people and then treat others with dignity and respect. But as I say, you can’t give away what you don’t have. So it all starts with yourself. Now, if you do that, if you look at number one, which is be who you are on purpose, be who you are on purpose, live with intention. It drives me crazy to see people that get up and just go with the flow, whatever comes their way. What are we gonna do tomorrow? Well, we’ll see. No, we won’t see. You need to decide what you’re gonna do tomorrow. Live with intention and own it. I mean, people criticize me sometimes. And I own what I say, I own what I do. You wanna criticize me, criticize. Somebody’s gonna criticize you no matter what you do. So you might as well do what you’re passionate about, what you believe in. And if they come for you, then I’m easy to find. I realize that, so I’m an easy target, just as are you. But we have to decide we’re gonna be who we are on purpose, we’re gonna live with intention. And then you jump to number 10, treat yourself and others with dignity and respect. And that’s a jump from one to 10. But to me, they’re very highly related. And no matter what walk of life you come from, whether you’re well-educated or you’re not, whether you’re black, whether you’re white, whether you’re male, whether you’re female, whatever, you may come at that from a different point of view, but those principles to me are important to how you live your life. And I think they fit everybody from a different point of view. Okay, so I’m gonna talk about your principle 10 to begin with here. Well, to elaborate on what you said. The first thing you said was that you could be criticized for putting forward truths that are so obvious they don’t need to be put forward. And my books have received that criticism too. And my response to that generally is, sometimes what was formerly self-evident now needs to be buttressed and explained. And so, but I’d like to make some counter proposals to your principle 10, just so people know what’s even more self-evident, right? So here’s some things you could do instead of abiding by your principle number 10. Treat other people as if they are the short-term means to whatever end you’re pursuing in the moment. Okay, so that’s what you do if you’re an immature hedonist, is you look at other people and you think, not only what can I get from this person, but what can I get for this person to satisfy the whim that I’ve allowed to possess me this moment, right? And the ultimate expression of that, as you know clinically, is something like narcissistic psychopathy, right? Where every single other person is nothing but a landscape of opportunity for pleasurable and immediate self-gratification. And that’s the core of truly antisocial criminal and predatory behavior. Or you can take another perspective that would be other than treating people with dignity and respect, and you could say, well, treat other people as if they’re your pawns if you can exercise power over them. Now, both of those principles are in some ways equally self-evident, like if I can get what I want from you right now, why the hell shouldn’t I do it? And if you’re weak and stupid and I can force you into things, why shouldn’t I do it? And I mean, and I picked hedonism and power for a particular reason. Like one of the things I’ve figured out, Dr. Phil, recently was that when the uniting principle dissolves, so when God is dead, let’s say, in the Nietzschean terms, that what comes up immediately to supplant him is hedonism on the one side, and so that’s the pull of instinctual whim and the drive to power on the other. And those two have a dance. And so your principle 10 is you aim at, you don’t treat other people like their means to your own short-term ends, and you don’t worship power. Does that seem reasonable to you? And then you’ve aligned it with rule one, or with principle one, and I’ll get to that in a sec, but what do you think of that take on your 10th principle? I think it’s a good take, but it’s also not, it’s also not challenging everybody to be totally altruistic if there is such a thing. Right, right, right. And we can talk about that probably until the cows come home, but my point is, I can go make a deal, you and I could make a deal. We could open a business and we could say, okay, Jordan, you’re gonna show up every day at eight o’clock and you’re gonna close every night at eight p.m., and we’re gonna be 50-50 partners. And you can be so excited about it that you say, well, yeah, okay, well, that’s not a good deal for me, because you’re not gonna sit still for that for very long. It may look like I made a great deal, but I didn’t make a great deal, because you’re gonna rebel against that in a really short period of time, because you’re gonna be thinking, that was stupid, I’m doing all the work, and he’s getting half of the profits out of this, so it really doesn’t work out if you exploit, manipulate. The thing is, narcissists just don’t learn. You can’t argue with them, and they only see things from their point of view, so they don’t learn, and they can’t generalize from one situation to another, but I think most people can, and this isn’t really asking for altruism, it’s asking for people to say, look, do what works, and it really works if you treat yourself and other people with dignity and respect, because now you get collaboration, and together we’re better than we are separately. [“The Star-Spangled Banner”]