Creating A Life Of Meaning & Wisdom - John Vervaeke - #294

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, friends. welcome back. My guest today is John Vervaeke. He's an assistant professor at the University Of Toronto, and we're talking about creating a life of meaning and wisdom. There is a meaning crisis upon us. People are revisiting Stoicism and Buddhism and mindfulness and psychedelics in an attempt to understand themselves and connect with the world around them. John joins me today to try and give us a route out of this trench. So, expect to learn the different types of learning, how John would construct a person who is ready to become wise and find meaning, the daily practices that John uses to continue to grow every day, what the relation is between being too cerebral and lacking wisdom, and much more. I mean, just the title of this episode should explain that it was one I was really looking forward to. And we get to go so super deep here.
The last half or the last third of this episode is some of the most impactful and profound lessons that I've had from a guest. John is a wonderful thinker. He has this fantastic YouTube series, which we talk about and you can find on his YouTube, which is linked in the show notes below. So listen to this episode if you enjoy his work, which I'm sure that you're going to go and check out the YouTube series. It's 51 hour long lectures. So there is an awful lot for you to get into, but I'm very happy to expose you to John Vervaeke's work because I recently was introduced to him by Tim Bishop and I'm very, very glad that he's in the world. So yes, get ready for this one. You might need a little bit of caffeine before. In other news, this episode is brought to you by The Hybrid Pillow. The Hybrid Pillow is the first pillow to combine traditional comfort with revolutionary memory foam. So it's memory foam on the outside. It's like 22 mil of high-end memory foam outside of it. And then in the middle, there's a 50-50 blend of duck feather and down. So if you're someone that likes a supportive pillow, but finds them too firm and uncomfortable, you can get the Hybrid Pillow and enjoy the comfort of a traditional feather pillow with all the support that you get from memory foam. Having a hybrid mix allows you to have that orthopedic support, which relieves the pressure buildup around the neck, keeps your head and spine aligned, while the feather and down core softens a pillow and makes sure that you stay cool and comfortable throughout the night. If you've tried other memory foam pillows, but found them too firm and uncomfortable, then this is for you. It will help reduce muscle soreness in the morning, keeps your spine properly aligned throughout the night, and it reduces how much you wake up from head movement. You have a guaranteed better night's sleep or your money back. Head to thehybridpillow.com and enter the code MW20 for 20% off everything. You can sleep with it, try it. If you don't have a better night's sleep, they will give you your money back. Simply head to thehybridpillow.com and enter the code MW20 for 20% off everything site-wide. That's thehybridpillow.com and the code MW20 for 20% off. But now it's time for the very wise and wonderful John Vervaeke.
John Vervaeke, welcome to the show.

**John Vervaeke** (3:36)
Thanks, Chris, it's a pleasure to be here.

**Chris Williamson** (3:38)
I'm really, really happy to have you here. I've heard you say that people often study what is most lacking in their lives. Is this true for you with regards to awakening from a meaning crisis?

**John Vervaeke** (3:50)
Yeah, yeah, it is. That was when I was in grad school, I had a friend, and he said that people went into psychology often to study what they were lacking. And so I study relevance and meaning.
And there's, yeah, there's definitely existential truth. I'm very much about trying to understand how we are connected to ourselves, to each other, to the world, in ways that really matter to us and to others. And yeah, that's because I very much suffered my own personal version of a meaning crisis. And this task of sifting through all of the available information to find the relevant information has been something that I've needed to get better at in my own life. So yeah, in some ways, I am the proverbial doctor trying to cure his own disease, yes.

**Chris Williamson** (4:47)
You professionalize the personal challenge. I mean, being honest from my side with this show as well very much, I took a big left turn just before I started it and I needed to find answers. I didn't even know what the questions were, but I just wanted some sort of answers and I think often you can actually end up bearing pretty good fruits from that. One of the things that I've been really interested in over the last couple of years has been evolutionary psychology, and I find there to be an interesting intersection between your work and that. Given that we're biological creatures, why do we need meaning structures?