Over the past few days, I've watched this part of Peterson's lecture until 1:34:30 several times. The amount of relate-able material in here to what we learn here is enormous and compact. And I would suggest going through it multiple times, each time viewing from the perspective of 1) How did our frame get broken, how did we break our old ideas to get here 2) How have we remade our frame based on what we've read from posts, sidebar, and what we see in life 3) How other people respond to our breaking their frames and 4) How we can most effectively lead them to build a frame that follows our vision.

 

Very early on Peterson states succinctly that when you get what you want, you feel good, and the frame (your frame) is validated. Not in a yay-look-mommy-validate-me way, but a reinforcing, positive feedback loop that the way you are acting is getting you what you want, so you're happy way. Likewise, when you don't get what you want, your frame (that is, the substructure of if-I-do-this-this-outcome-happens) starts to crumble. And we all live in a world where we fool ourselves into believing we know what's going on. But as Peterson says elsewhere in the lecture, all we've done is develop frames based on learned ideas that work most of the time. And when it doesn't, the chaos of the world rears it's ugly head and we hate that because it shows us we really don't know anything after all.

 

"How deeply should you unlearn something when you make a mistake?" (and likewise read: How deeply should you dive to rearrange someone else's frame when you want to lead them?) When we examine the substructure of frame of both ourselves and those we want to influence, Peterson shows that there are multiple multiple pieces we can break a frame into. And in our heads we can all speculate how the life of an ideal man runs. But we somehow find it difficult initially to know how to live that life because we're looking at the abstracted view. And just like when we read countless PUA books on how to pickup women, the number one piece of advice we get is ultimately to put down the book and go out there and do it. Because, as Peterson states, the abstraction of the ideal man is grounded in micro-activity. You need to act, not speak, not think, to ground those thoughts about who you want to be in action. The actual act of something is what gives that dopamine kick and reinforces your frame. And I've stated multiple times that when I'm feeling down or lacking, the best way to get out of that is to stop thinking of how to get out of it, and simply go do something, anything.

 

We build ourselves into the new idea of our ideal man from the bottom up, with all these micro-actions. Just as a child would coming into the world...which was our problem in the first place. We were all children who developed a frame of the world, and as I commented in a recent post, with a lot of the problems we encounter, the WHY behind our problem is that we are still using that frame we developed as a child and haven't put anything better in place yet. As we build our frame up rigidly with new rules based on our wants, after awhile, we can start to play with the rules like a game. And you'll encounter many men on here who refer to shit tests, or playing with their wive's emotions, or other actions in the world as games. They really are that. We are playing with the rules in order to bend them most to our advantage and learn their nuances.

 

Last thing and I'll let you view the rest of the video with these thoughts in mind. Again, "how upset should you get and how do you calculate it?" So if you are attempting to change yourself, or you are attempting to change your wife. If she doesn't comply, how upset should you get? You need to have that introspection to realize where on the substructure of your frame and hers you are operating. If she is an ass to you when you get home from work, doesn't help out with the kids, and then hard no's you early on in your unplugging and you jump off the bed, throw pants on, and slam the door on the way out, you are pushing back at a very top level of her frame. You're effectively saying: "You're a bad partner." And she is, you're not lying. You know all the sub-sub-reasons that she's a bad partner. But she also knows all the other sub-sub-reasons she isn't a bad partner (and or you are), and that's what she'll use in her hamster defense. When you respond globally to many micro-problems, you're not attempting to influence at that sub-level, you're going to a broad, top-level view and attempting to shake her entire frame. That's being rambo. And she's going to punch back. You're not leading on the level that influences her being an ass, or her not helping with the kids. When she backtalks you when you get home, you have to go all the way down to the level of: "You see that teddy bear right there? I need you to pick up that teddy bear." Sometimes this will happen with a boundary. But more often than that you will positively and negatively reinforce with your actions. Build that global frame from micro-changes in an action based way.