Welcome to the October version of the Q and A.

Um, hopefully all my technology will work.

It's amazing that it ever does.

He wouldn't, um, okay.

Oh, my.

Apparently it is good.

So let me catch you up to date on some news first.

That would be fun as far as I'm concerned.

So the first thing I want to do is share something with you, and that's this.

So I got this in the mail yesterday from Penguin UK from an editor, Nick Skidmore, who have been working with for several months.

And so this is the 50th anniversary version of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago in its abridged form one volume abridged form, which he approved.

Um, it's also published on the scent in the Centenary of his birth, and I was invited to write a Forward to It, which I completed and which seemed to meet with the satisfaction of the editors and also Soldier Knit.

Since family.

It's about 500 pages long, which is much shorter than the original book, which was about 1800 pages, and ah, soldier, it's an approved the abridgment.

I think I might have said that.

So it's a remarkable piece of literature and history and arguably the most influential historical document of the 20th century.

You could make that case, and so it was really unbelievably.

It was an unbelievable privileged to be asked to write the forward, and I hope that I did a credible job.

We'll see about that.

It's on sale as of November 1st.

Now, I've also prepared a YouTube video for it, where I've read the forward and some of the content of the book to provide people with an introduction.

And I'm hoping that this will be something approximating literary event.

So I invite you to pick up the book if you'd like to And, uh, and prepare to be shock to your core.

I suppose, is the proper way of thinking about it.

So there you go.

So that's that.

Next thing I was in New York the other day, um, yesterday literally finalizing what I hope is a deal for my second book and perhaps books after that.

But certainly for the second book, which is tentatively entitled 12 More Rules for Life.

There you go.

Um, originally, there were 42 rules, and I haven't used them all up, so there's plenty of reason for continuing as far as I'm concerned, and I've written a fair bit of it, and it seems to be going well.

And I'm hoping that I could do a better job of the second book.

That's the goal.

And that's what I discussed with the editorial team is that I want the next book to be substantially better than the last one was.

Hopefully, I can manage that.

So that's well and good as well.

I'm hoping that I'd have that book done by, um, next September, something approximating that maybe for publication the following January.

Now I've got a year after that if I need it, depending on what happens this year.

But that's the plan.

And then I'm going to tell you a little bit about what's happening with me over the next.

I suppose year.

Really, I I might as well tell you that maybe your be interested in knowing So the first thing is is that tonight I'm going with Tammy, my wife, who's been traveling me with me this whole time.

We've finished 85 cities in the tour so far, and they've gone really well.

I would say so we spoken to about 250,000 people.

I've been traveling with Dave Rubin of the Reuben Report, and that's been entertaining.

He's very comical and has beena good adjunct to add a bit of levity and also a certain degree of seriousness.

So that's good.

So on Sunday, I'm speaking in Dublin and on the 23rd that's Tuesday on Oslo.

I'll just go through the cities.

You could look up the dates at Jordan.

Be Peterson dot com forward slash events If you want Manchester, Oxford, Glass, go Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Cambridge, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Birmingham, Oslo, Stockholm and Helsinki.

So that ends November 11th.

Then I'm off with Tammy to Spain and Portugal to talk to book publishers there.

And then I'm going to speak to the Trilateral Commission in Slovenia in Lubyanka, and then we're going to Hawaii.

I have a talk in Hawaii, and that's that the end of November, then to New York.

Maybe I'm going to talk to Dr Oz again.

That's not finalized, but it seems probable that I'm going to Washington to talk to some people there and then to Florida for a bit of a break from Canadian winter, even though I won't have experienced any of that so far this year, and I have a speaking engagement there as well.

And then in January, possibly I'll be in California.

We've applied for a tech incubator in California to further the development of our educational software, which is already at the prototype stage.

I don't know for sure that will be accepted into the incubator, and I don't know for sure if we are accepted.

If that that's the route we're going to take because there are other options.

Were also working with a private school consortium to test the software, Um, as we develop it, because when you're developing a product, this is a good thing to know.

If you ever do build something, you want to build a product, test it with your potential customers, build it again because you've made all sorts of mistakes, test it with your customers and so on.

So and then after that, I'm going to Australia and New Zealand, probably to talking about a dozen places there and then back to Europe in March and April, and then I'm going to write nonstop, I hope, from May to September And then, with any luck, I'm going to start the biblical Siri's again with Exodus.

And so that's that.

That's the plan.

So, um, it's exciting and daunting and all of those things.

So now you're up to date and hopefully that was interesting.

I really am thrilled about this.

This is really something, man.

It's really something.

So and I'm the soldier knits and family was happy with the forward, so that was really positive.

And hopefully it'll bring a whole new audience to the book.

That would be a good thing.

This is not something that we should ever forget.

Ever.

Okay, so let's say Let's go to some questions here.

Any advice for a young counselor soon to finish his degree?

What do you wish you knew as a young therapist?

Well, let's start with advice.

Um, well, one thing I would say is you could go to my book list and read the books that are there.

There's at on my website.

There is a list of recommended books fiction, nonfiction, and the non fiction is categorized in different ways.

There's a psychotherapy section, I would say Read those books, that's that would be helpful.

Those people.

Young Freud, Rogers.

I think there's something by Adler Laundry Ellen Berget Some of the existentialists from the 19 fifties Um, lot of neuroscientists types very, very smart people very, very useful to know what they had to say.

So, um, then the next thing I would suggest you've heard this from me before, perhaps, is that it's almost impossible to overestimate the degree to which merely listening is helpful.

If you're a counselor, lots of people have no one to listen to.

I have no one that will listen to them, And that's a real problem because people actually think by talking.

And so for many people who are isolated, they have no one to talk to you.

So that means they don't think.

And that means that their their thoughts aren't straight and organized.

And you might think, Well, why does that matter?

But the reason it matters is because the best analogy, I would say to two thoughts is the best way of conceptualizing.

The structure of your thoughts is to consider it in the same manner that you might consider a map and your maps should be organized and things should be in the right place because otherwise, when you use the map to navigate in the world, you don't end up where you want to be, and you run into things that you don't want to encounter.

And so it's actually extraordinarily necessary to get your thoughts in order, since they help you simulate the world before you act in it.

And so don't underestimate how important it is just to listen and then you think, Let's think about listening to So someone comes to you and they and they come to you because they have a problem now you don't know what their problem is.

Neither do they.

All you know is that they have enough of a problem to come and talk to you.

So then they might have a problem because really terrible things have happened to them, and anyone with any sense would have a problem.

And so then they have problems in lives in life, say, or they have existential problems don't really psychological problems, even though it might be psychologically demanding to adapt to the real problems.

You wanna listen and you want to find out Well, what exactly is the problem space and how much of that is practical and how much of it is psychological.

So the first issue is you don't know what the problem is, and you want to ask a lot of questions to find out what it is and and also what it isn't because often people will come in and they're upset and they don't exactly know why they're upset and they might be upset about a whole bunch of things.

And it isn't until after they talk through all the things they might be upset about, that they find out what they're upset about and what they're not.

So another reason to listen, especially at the stage of problem formulation, is to help people decide what their problems aren't.

Well, then, the next thing you have to do the listing is like, OK, well, now we know what the problem is.

Well, what would your client view as a potential solution?

So, assuming that this could be made better in some manner, what would better look like?

So you need to develop co develop ah, philosophy of what's better, and so that's a goal or name, and it's almost like a personalized definition of mental health.

But it might be better to think about it as a personalized definition of, um, have a good life.

And so that's the next thing you have to listen about.

And then the last thing you have to listen about and negotiate as well is Okay, well, now we know what your problem is, and we know hypothetically what the destination is with regards to solving that problem is what are the strategies that are necessary to implement in order to make that positive outcome occur?

And then that's something that you negotiate by listening every week.

It's like, Okay, well, here's the goal.

What steps could we take that you would implement that would move you towards that goal?

Can you take those steps in the world?

Will you do that this week and then watch whether or not you do it and come back and report and also tell me and yourself whether or not implementing that actually work.

And then we can come back and we can have a discussion about whether you did it or not.

And if you didn't then how we could modify that and if you did, how we could continue and expanded, and if you did do it, whether it worked and if it if it and what unexpected things occurred and what, if any, implications there are for understanding your problem and for your goal.

And so you know you you need It's a map.

You have a starting point.

You have to figure out what that is.

You have a destination point, the desired future.

You have to figure out what that is.

You have to implement and design strategies that will move the person forward.

And then you have to test all those strategies.

Very strategic thinking, very practical thinking.

And so, um, that's That's an outline of how to do effective psychotherapy.

I would say effective careful psychotherapy.

Another bit of advice is people often who are young counselors are afraid and don't know how they can not take their client's problems home.

And I've got a couple of things to say about that.

The first is there not your problems, and it's very important to remember that it's partly you don't want to steal your clients problems.

I mean, you might think Well, if I could take my client's problems on myself and lift the burden from the mold, wouldn't that be better.

And the answer is, Well, no, because someone's problems are not that distinguishable from their life.

And what you're there to do is facilitate their ability to learn to grapple successfully with the existentially vagaries of their own existence.

And you don't wantto leap in there and steal it like, let's say you give a spectacular piece of advice and you're going to give advice now and then, but it's it's not that advisable.

Then let's say you advise someone to solve a problem in a certain way, and they go do it, and the problem solved.

It's like while the problems disappeared, but they didn't learn how to generate the solution to the problem.

And so they're in worse shape with future problems, and it's your victory in some sense instead of theirs.

And so you don't wantto you don't want to steal from your client's destiny.

And so and that also frees you up to some degree because it also means that you're not morally obligated to take on those problems and carry them home.

And the other thing is, is that it doesn't do your client any good for their problems to sink you.

You have a moral obligation and ethical obligation of professional obligation to remain sufficiently detached from the situation so that your head is clear and you remain healthy and and your practice remains viable for the long run.

And so don't forget to protect yourself.

It's very, very important.

Let let your clients sort out their lives.

You're there to help you there.

As a sounding board, you're there is a strategic.

And, uh, you're there to offer strategic advice.

You're there to shed light on the symptom mythology and to lay out potential strategies for treatment.

All of that.

And so.

And that's good enough.

You don't take on any more than that.

So Okay, procrastination and instant gratification rule me.

Nothing seems to motivate me.

Nothing seems to motivate me.

What do I do?

Well, I'm gonna give you some practical advice.

Um, I would say you need a plan like you need a plan and not just a plan.

You need a reason to implement the plant.

You need both of those.

So something motivates you.

You already said instant gratification motivates you, so you'll do things for instant gratification.