Name: Fix Yourself
Uploaded: 2018-01-29T12:10:15.000Z
Duration: 5 min 25 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Blaming others for your problems is a complete
waste of time.

When you do that, you don't learn anything.

In my three decades as a professor and clinical
psychologist, I have learned that there are

two fundamental attitudes toward life and
its sorrows.

Those with the first attitude blame the world.

Those with the second ask what they could
do differently.

Imagine a couple on the brink of divorce.

The unhappy, bitter husband recalls the terrible
things his wife has done, and the reasons

The harried and disillusioned wife, in turn,
can describe all the ways her husband let her down.

Each has a long list of necessary changes—for
the other person.

Their prospects for reconciliation are grim.

You can't change other people, but you can
change yourself.

It takes courage to change, and it takes discipline.

It's much easier—and much more gratifying
to your basest desires—

Consider the youthful activist, making a “statement”
against the “corrupt” capitalist system

by smashing in the storefront of a local business.

What has he done, other than to bring harm
to people who have nothing to do with his

The guilt, doubt and shame he will inevitably
feel in consequence will have to be suppressed

And that suppression will do nothing but foster
his anger and alienation.

In the play “The Cocktail Party” by American-English
poet

T.S. Eliot, one of the characters is having a very
hard time of it.

She speaks of her profound unhappiness to
her psychiatrist.

She tells him that she hopes her suffering
is all her own fault.

Because, she tells him, if it's her fault,
she can do something about it.

If it's in the nature of the world, however,
she's doomed.

Now, there are people who seem to be consigned
to a terrible fate.

Most of us have a chance to make our lives
better.

Ask yourself a few questions: Have you taken
full advantage of the opportunities offered to you?

Are you working to your fullest capacity at
school or at work?

Have you, in other words, set your own house
in order?

If the answer is no, try this: stop doing
what you know to be wrong.

Don't waste time asking how you know that
what you're doing is wrong.

Inopportune questioning can confuse without
enlightening, and deflect you from action.

You can know something is right or wrong without
knowing why.

Start paying attention: Do you procrastinate,
show up late, spend money you don't have,

It's not a matter of accepting some externally
imposed morality.

It's a dialogue with your own conscience.

What are you doing that's wrong, from your
own perspective?

Make peace with your siblings and your parents.

Diligently utilize everything you already
have at hand.

If you do those things, your life will improve.

You'll become more peaceful, productive
and desirable.

After some days, or weeks, or months of attentive
effort, your mind will clear.

Your life will become less tragic, and you
will become more confident.

You'll start seeing right from wrong more
clearly.

The path in front of you will shine more brightly.

Instead of bringing trouble to yourself, your
family, and your society, you'll be a positive

But maybe you'll become strong enough to
accept that burden, and in that fashion

even come to act nobly, and with purpose.

The proper way to fix the world isn't to
fix the world.

There's no reason to assume that you're
even up to such a task.

And in that manner, at least, you will make
the world a better place.

I'm Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology
at the University of Toronto, for Prager University.