How to Escape Mediocrity and Mental Illness - The Road Less Traveled

“Since ultimately people heal themselves with or without the tool of psychotherapy,  

0:16

why is it that so few do and so many do not? Since the path of spiritual growth,  

0:22

albeit difficult, is open to all, why do so few choose to travel it? It was to this question that  

0:29

Christ was addressing himself when he said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.””  

0:36

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled No matter the current state of our life  

0:38

or the problems we face, we all have the capacity for self-transformation,  

0:43

the ability to overcome our problems, and to move towards the ideal of peak psychological health.  

0:49

Yet most of us do not exercise this capacity; rather, we leave our personal problems unsolved  

0:55

and stay stuck in a mediocrity that situates us far below our potential and places us at risk of  

1:01

mental illness. Why is this limiting life-path the norm? In this video, drawing from the insights of  

1:09

the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, we examine this question and explore how we can be one of the few  

1:16

who proceeds upon the path of personal growth - which Peck called “the road less traveled”.  

1:23

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths....Most do not fully see  

1:32

this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly,  

1:39

about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life  

1:44

were generally easy, as if life should be easy…Life is a series of problems. Do we  

1:51

want to moan about them or solve them?” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

1:55

One of the primary marks of wisdom is the capacity to accept that life is difficult,  

2:00

problems inevitable, and suffering inescapable. A second mark of wisdom is the understanding that  

2:07

if we confront our problems and work to solve them, we will suffer, but it will be the type  

2:12

of suffering that is meaningful and promotive of personal growth. Many of us do not possess these  

2:19

marks of wisdom. Rather, we cling to the illusory hope that if only we can make enough money,  

2:24

meet the right person, or get the right job, then life will be easy. Many of us also try to  

2:31

evade our problems via a variety of avoidance tactics. We blame our problems on other people  

2:37

or social circumstances. We procrastinate, hoping our problems will disappear. We engage  

2:43

in self-deception and deny that we have problems, or we turn to alcohol, drugs,  

2:49

or compulsive technology use to escape awareness of our problems and to numb the suffering that  

2:54

accompanies them. And as Peck observed: “Some of us will go to quite extraordinary  

3:00

lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that  

3:06

is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most  

3:12

elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality...We attempt  

3:19

to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of  

3:24

them rather than suffer through them.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

3:28

This attempt to avoid our problems and find an easy way out of suffering is doomed to fail.  

3:34

Not only does it lead us into fantasies and delusions, but it exacerbates our problems and  

3:40

makes us susceptible to a meaningless and neurotic type of suffering that is central to many forms of  

3:45

mental illness. Or as M. Scott Peck explained: “This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional  

3:53

suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness…In the succinctly  

4:00

elegant words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” But the  

4:07

substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it  

4:12

was designed to avoid. The neurosis itself becomes the biggest problem. True to form,  

4:19

many will then attempt to avoid this pain and this problem in turn, building layer upon  

4:25

layer of neurosis…when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems,  

4:32

we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental  

4:39

illness we stop growing, we become stuck.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

4:43

There is only one way out of the neurotic suffering of mental illness, and this is to  

4:48

endure the legitimate suffering that is part and parcel of accepting our problems and then actively  

4:54

working to solve them. To heighten our capacity to endure suffering, it is beneficial to remember  

5:00

that suffering is not our enemy, but the greatest of teachers. “Those things that hurt, instruct.”,  

5:08

as Benjamin Franklin put it. Or as the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus observed 2500 years ago:  

5:15

The gods have ordained a solemn decree that from suffering alone comes wisdom.” When we  

5:22

stop fleeing from and numbing ourselves to our suffering, then suffering shows us where we are  

5:27

going wrong in life and opens our eyes to the full extent of our problems and the necessity  

5:32

of change. This is why M. Scott Peck labeled depression as a healthy symptom which only  

5:39

becomes pathological when we try to suppress it and evade the life changes that its presence  

5:44

is calling for. Or as Peck explained: “...depressive symptoms are a sign to the  

5:50

suffering individual that all is not right with him or her and major adjustments need  

5:55

to be made...depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon.”  

5:59

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled A further benefit of enduring suffering,  

6:03

instead of avoiding or masking it, is that eventually there comes a time when we grow sick of  

6:09

suffering and are struck by an intense motivation to resolve, once and for all, the problems  

6:15

underlying it. Once we cross this “threshold of suffering”, it typically becomes easy to leave  

6:22

behind bad habits and self-sabotaging behaviors, and to cultivate the discipline needed to move in  

6:27

a life-promoting direction. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used this threshold of  

6:33

suffering as a catalyst to eradicate some of his most harmful habits, and as he wrote:  

6:39

“Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am gratefully disposed to all my misery  

6:44

and sickness…because such things leave me a hundred back-doors through which I can escape  

6:50

from permanent [bad] habits.” Nietzsche, The Gay Science

6:53

If suffering motivates us to confront our bad habits and problems, we will then have  

6:58

to struggle and suffer in order to overcome them. But in contrast to neurotic suffering  

7:04

which breeds stagnation and a wasted life, this type of suffering is constructive as it leads  

7:10

to personal growth. Or as Peck observed: “It is through the pain of confronting and  

7:16

resolving problems that we learn...it is in this whole process of meeting and solving  

7:21

problems that life has its meaning....Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed,  

7:28

they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of the pain of problems  

7:34

that we grow mentally and spiritually.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

7:37

It is because legitimate suffering is a great teacher and a spur to personal growth that M.  

7:42

Scott Peck observed that: “…wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and  

7:49

actually to welcome the pain of problems.” Two of the wisest figures in history, Buddha and Jesus,  

7:56

harnessed the pain inherent in their problems to ascend to an elevated level of consciousness that  

8:02

was marked not only by a profound capacity to endure suffering, but also to experience  

8:08

overflowing joy. Or as Peck explained: “One measure—and perhaps the best measure—of  

8:15

a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the great are also joyful. This,  

8:22

then, is the paradox. Buddhists tend to ignore the Buddha’s suffering and  

8:27

Christians forget Christ’s joy. Buddha and Christ were not different men. The suffering  

8:33

of Christ letting go on the cross and the joy of Buddha letting go under the bo tree are one.”  

8:40

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled But it is not just the tendency to avoid  

8:43

the pain of our problems that locks us in a mediocre and mentally ill life. It is also our  

8:49

laziness - for as the psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz wrote:  

8:54

“When people try to evade problems you first have to ask if it is not just laziness. Jung once said,  

9:01

"Laziness is the greatest passion of mankind, even greater than power or sex or anything."”

9:07

Marie Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream M. Scott Peck defined laziness as “the force of  

9:11

entropy as it manifests in the lives of us all.”  In the external world entropy is the tendency of  

9:18

systems to degenerate into a disordered and stagnant state; while in the inner world of  

9:23

the psyche it is the force of laziness that breeds disorder and stagnation. Laziness is  

9:29

so common and pervasive that Peck called it the one and only original sin, or as he wrote:  

9:36

“For many years I found the notion of original sin meaningless, even objectionable…Gradually,  

9:42

however, I became increasingly aware of the ubiquitous nature of laziness…original  

9:47

sin does exist; it is our laziness. It is very real...Some of us may be less lazy than others,  

9:55

but we are all lazy to some extent. No matter how energetic, ambitious or even wise we may be,  

10:01

if we truly look into ourselves we will find laziness lurking at some level. It is the force  

10:07

of entropy within us, pushing us down and holding us all back from our spiritual evolution.”  

10:14

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled Many will protest that they are not lazy as  

10:17

they work long hours and devote their limited free time to doing chores, spending time with friends  

10:23

and family, and resting. But as Peck notes, “laziness takes forms other than that related  

10:29

to the bare number of hours spent on the job or devoted to one’s responsibilities to ‘others.’…A  

10:35

major form that laziness takes is fear.” (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled) Although  

10:40

many of us give lip service to wanting to change, grow, succeed, and perhaps even attain greatness,  

10:47

we often fear personal development more than we desire it, simply because of the immense amount  

10:52

of work and effort that is required. This intimate connection between fear  

10:57

and laziness is why the mind unconsciously devises ingenious ways to justify laziness;  

11:04

as but one example, we tell ourselves that our laziness is not really laziness,  

11:09

but merely the drive to relax and enjoy life - a type of refined hedonism. Or as Peck writes:  

11:17

“In the earlier stages of spiritual growth, individuals are mostly unaware of their own  

11:22

laziness...This is because the lazy part of the self, like the devil that it may actually be,  

11:29

is unscrupulous and specializes in treacherous disguise. It cloaks its own laziness in all  

11:35

manner of rationalizations, which the more growing part of the self is still too weak  

11:40

to see through easily or to combat.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

11:43

Friedrich Nietzsche also identified laziness as an entropic psychological force which exhibits  

11:49

devil-like qualities, and he recommended a joyful approach to overcoming it. When we see  

11:56

through our rationalizations and become aware of our laziness, instead of feeling guilty,  

12:01

we should laugh at it in the recognition that it is an innate part of human nature. And then  

12:07

we should remind ourselves that true happiness is not found in maximizing time spent in passive  

12:12

leisure activities, rather, it is a byproduct of voluntary effort in the service of personal growth  

12:19

and meaningful goals. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche called the entropic force of laziness  

12:26

“the spirit of gravity”, and as he wrote: “And when I saw my devil, I found him serious,  

12:33

thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity - through him all things are ruined. Not  

12:41

by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk;  

12:49

since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to  

12:55

move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”  

13:06

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Enduring the legitimate suffering that  

13:09

accompanies confronting and solving personal problems and exerting a joyful self-willed  

13:14

effort in the quest to override the original sin of laziness, is the road less traveled and the  

13:21

way to escape the mediocrity and mental illness that is so rampant in our age. Some may find  

13:27

this advice to be too general and desire a more specific and personalized plan for overcoming  

13:33

their problems, but as Peck cautions: “There are many who, by virtue of their passivity,  

13:40

dependency, fear and laziness, seek to be shown every inch of the way and have it demonstrated to  

13:47

them that each step will be safe and worth their while. This cannot be done. For the journey of  

13:53

spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the  

14:00

words of the prophets…are available, the journey must still be traveled alone. No teacher can carry  

14:06

you there. There are no preset formulas.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

English

AllFrom Academy of IdeasArtWatched

0:11

“Since ultimately people heal themselves with or without the tool of psychotherapy,  

0:16

why is it that so few do and so many do not? Since the path of spiritual growth,  

0:22

albeit difficult, is open to all, why do so few choose to travel it? It was to this question that  

0:29

Christ was addressing himself when he said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.””  

0:36

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled No matter the current state of our life  

0:38

or the problems we face, we all have the capacity for self-transformation,  

0:43

the ability to overcome our problems, and to move towards the ideal of peak psychological health.  

0:49

Yet most of us do not exercise this capacity; rather, we leave our personal problems unsolved  

0:55

and stay stuck in a mediocrity that situates us far below our potential and places us at risk of  

1:01

mental illness. Why is this limiting life-path the norm? In this video, drawing from the insights of  

1:09

the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, we examine this question and explore how we can be one of the few  

1:16

who proceeds upon the path of personal growth - which Peck called “the road less traveled”.  

1:23

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths....Most do not fully see  

1:32

this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly,  

1:39

about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life  

1:44

were generally easy, as if life should be easy…Life is a series of problems. Do we  

1:51

want to moan about them or solve them?” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

1:55

One of the primary marks of wisdom is the capacity to accept that life is difficult,  

2:00

problems inevitable, and suffering inescapable. A second mark of wisdom is the understanding that  

2:07

if we confront our problems and work to solve them, we will suffer, but it will be the type  

2:12

of suffering that is meaningful and promotive of personal growth. Many of us do not possess these  

2:19

marks of wisdom. Rather, we cling to the illusory hope that if only we can make enough money,  

2:24

meet the right person, or get the right job, then life will be easy. Many of us also try to  

2:31

evade our problems via a variety of avoidance tactics. We blame our problems on other people  

2:37

or social circumstances. We procrastinate, hoping our problems will disappear. We engage  

2:43

in self-deception and deny that we have problems, or we turn to alcohol, drugs,  

2:49

or compulsive technology use to escape awareness of our problems and to numb the suffering that  

2:54

accompanies them. And as Peck observed: “Some of us will go to quite extraordinary  

3:00

lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that  

3:06

is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most  

3:12

elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality...We attempt  

3:19

to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of  

3:24

them rather than suffer through them.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

3:28

This attempt to avoid our problems and find an easy way out of suffering is doomed to fail.  

3:34

Not only does it lead us into fantasies and delusions, but it exacerbates our problems and  

3:40

makes us susceptible to a meaningless and neurotic type of suffering that is central to many forms of  

3:45

mental illness. Or as M. Scott Peck explained: “This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional  

3:53

suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness…In the succinctly  

4:00

elegant words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” But the  

4:07

substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it  

4:12

was designed to avoid. The neurosis itself becomes the biggest problem. True to form,  

4:19

many will then attempt to avoid this pain and this problem in turn, building layer upon  

4:25

layer of neurosis…when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems,  

4:32

we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental  

4:39

illness we stop growing, we become stuck.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

4:43

There is only one way out of the neurotic suffering of mental illness, and this is to  

4:48

endure the legitimate suffering that is part and parcel of accepting our problems and then actively  

4:54

working to solve them. To heighten our capacity to endure suffering, it is beneficial to remember  

5:00

that suffering is not our enemy, but the greatest of teachers. “Those things that hurt, instruct.”,  

5:08

as Benjamin Franklin put it. Or as the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus observed 2500 years ago:  

5:15

The gods have ordained a solemn decree that from suffering alone comes wisdom.” When we  

5:22

stop fleeing from and numbing ourselves to our suffering, then suffering shows us where we are  

5:27

going wrong in life and opens our eyes to the full extent of our problems and the necessity  

5:32

of change. This is why M. Scott Peck labeled depression as a healthy symptom which only  

5:39

becomes pathological when we try to suppress it and evade the life changes that its presence  

5:44

is calling for. Or as Peck explained: “...depressive symptoms are a sign to the  

5:50

suffering individual that all is not right with him or her and major adjustments need  

5:55

to be made...depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon.”  

5:59

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled A further benefit of enduring suffering,  

6:03

instead of avoiding or masking it, is that eventually there comes a time when we grow sick of  

6:09

suffering and are struck by an intense motivation to resolve, once and for all, the problems  

6:15

underlying it. Once we cross this “threshold of suffering”, it typically becomes easy to leave  

6:22

behind bad habits and self-sabotaging behaviors, and to cultivate the discipline needed to move in  

6:27

a life-promoting direction. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used this threshold of  

6:33

suffering as a catalyst to eradicate some of his most harmful habits, and as he wrote:  

6:39

“Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am gratefully disposed to all my misery  

6:44

and sickness…because such things leave me a hundred back-doors through which I can escape  

6:50

from permanent [bad] habits.” Nietzsche, The Gay Science

6:53

If suffering motivates us to confront our bad habits and problems, we will then have  

6:58

to struggle and suffer in order to overcome them. But in contrast to neurotic suffering  

7:04

which breeds stagnation and a wasted life, this type of suffering is constructive as it leads  

7:10

to personal growth. Or as Peck observed: “It is through the pain of confronting and  

7:16

resolving problems that we learn...it is in this whole process of meeting and solving  

7:21

problems that life has its meaning....Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed,  

7:28

they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of the pain of problems  

7:34

that we grow mentally and spiritually.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

7:37

It is because legitimate suffering is a great teacher and a spur to personal growth that M.  

7:42

Scott Peck observed that: “…wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and  

7:49

actually to welcome the pain of problems.” Two of the wisest figures in history, Buddha and Jesus,  

7:56

harnessed the pain inherent in their problems to ascend to an elevated level of consciousness that  

8:02

was marked not only by a profound capacity to endure suffering, but also to experience  

8:08

overflowing joy. Or as Peck explained: “One measure—and perhaps the best measure—of  

8:15

a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the great are also joyful. This,  

8:22

then, is the paradox. Buddhists tend to ignore the Buddha’s suffering and  

8:27

Christians forget Christ’s joy. Buddha and Christ were not different men. The suffering  

8:33

of Christ letting go on the cross and the joy of Buddha letting go under the bo tree are one.”  

8:40

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled But it is not just the tendency to avoid  

8:43

the pain of our problems that locks us in a mediocre and mentally ill life. It is also our  

8:49

laziness - for as the psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz wrote:  

8:54

“When people try to evade problems you first have to ask if it is not just laziness. Jung once said,  

9:01

"Laziness is the greatest passion of mankind, even greater than power or sex or anything."”

9:07

Marie Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream M. Scott Peck defined laziness as “the force of  

9:11

entropy as it manifests in the lives of us all.”  In the external world entropy is the tendency of  

9:18

systems to degenerate into a disordered and stagnant state; while in the inner world of  

9:23

the psyche it is the force of laziness that breeds disorder and stagnation. Laziness is  

9:29

so common and pervasive that Peck called it the one and only original sin, or as he wrote:  

9:36

“For many years I found the notion of original sin meaningless, even objectionable…Gradually,  

9:42

however, I became increasingly aware of the ubiquitous nature of laziness…original  

9:47

sin does exist; it is our laziness. It is very real...Some of us may be less lazy than others,  

9:55

but we are all lazy to some extent. No matter how energetic, ambitious or even wise we may be,  

10:01

if we truly look into ourselves we will find laziness lurking at some level. It is the force  

10:07

of entropy within us, pushing us down and holding us all back from our spiritual evolution.”  

10:14

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled Many will protest that they are not lazy as  

10:17

they work long hours and devote their limited free time to doing chores, spending time with friends  

10:23

and family, and resting. But as Peck notes, “laziness takes forms other than that related  

10:29

to the bare number of hours spent on the job or devoted to one’s responsibilities to ‘others.’…A  

10:35

major form that laziness takes is fear.” (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled) Although  

10:40

many of us give lip service to wanting to change, grow, succeed, and perhaps even attain greatness,  

10:47

we often fear personal development more than we desire it, simply because of the immense amount  

10:52

of work and effort that is required. This intimate connection between fear  

10:57

and laziness is why the mind unconsciously devises ingenious ways to justify laziness;  

11:04

as but one example, we tell ourselves that our laziness is not really laziness,  

11:09

but merely the drive to relax and enjoy life - a type of refined hedonism. Or as Peck writes:  

11:17

“In the earlier stages of spiritual growth, individuals are mostly unaware of their own  

11:22

laziness...This is because the lazy part of the self, like the devil that it may actually be,  

11:29

is unscrupulous and specializes in treacherous disguise. It cloaks its own laziness in all  

11:35

manner of rationalizations, which the more growing part of the self is still too weak  

11:40

to see through easily or to combat.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

11:43

Friedrich Nietzsche also identified laziness as an entropic psychological force which exhibits  

11:49

devil-like qualities, and he recommended a joyful approach to overcoming it. When we see  

11:56

through our rationalizations and become aware of our laziness, instead of feeling guilty,  

12:01

we should laugh at it in the recognition that it is an innate part of human nature. And then  

12:07

we should remind ourselves that true happiness is not found in maximizing time spent in passive  

12:12

leisure activities, rather, it is a byproduct of voluntary effort in the service of personal growth  

12:19

and meaningful goals. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche called the entropic force of laziness  

12:26

“the spirit of gravity”, and as he wrote: “And when I saw my devil, I found him serious,  

12:33

thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity - through him all things are ruined. Not  

12:41

by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk;  

12:49

since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to  

12:55

move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”  

13:06

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Enduring the legitimate suffering that  

13:09

accompanies confronting and solving personal problems and exerting a joyful self-willed  

13:14

effort in the quest to override the original sin of laziness, is the road less traveled and the  

13:21

way to escape the mediocrity and mental illness that is so rampant in our age. Some may find  

13:27

this advice to be too general and desire a more specific and personalized plan for overcoming  

13:33

their problems, but as Peck cautions: “There are many who, by virtue of their passivity,  

13:40

dependency, fear and laziness, seek to be shown every inch of the way and have it demonstrated to  

13:47

them that each step will be safe and worth their while. This cannot be done. For the journey of  

13:53

spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the  

14:00

words of the prophets…are available, the journey must still be traveled alone. No teacher can carry  

14:06

you there. There are no preset formulas.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

English

AllFrom Academy of IdeasArtWatche“Since ultimately people heal themselves with or without the tool of psychotherapy,  

0:16

why is it that so few do and so many do not? Since the path of spiritual growth,  

0:22

albeit difficult, is open to all, why do so few choose to travel it? It was to this question that  

0:29

Christ was addressing himself when he said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.””  

0:36

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled No matter the current state of our life  

0:38

or the problems we face, we all have the capacity for self-transformation,  

0:43

the ability to overcome our problems, and to move towards the ideal of peak psychological health.  

0:49

Yet most of us do not exercise this capacity; rather, we leave our personal problems unsolved  

0:55

and stay stuck in a mediocrity that situates us far below our potential and places us at risk of  

1:01

mental illness. Why is this limiting life-path the norm? In this video, drawing from the insights of  

1:09

the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, we examine this question and explore how we can be one of the few  

1:16

who proceeds upon the path of personal growth - which Peck called “the road less traveled”.  

1:23

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths....Most do not fully see  

1:32

this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly,  

1:39

about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life  

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were generally easy, as if life should be easy…Life is a series of problems. Do we  

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want to moan about them or solve them?” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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One of the primary marks of wisdom is the capacity to accept that life is difficult,  

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problems inevitable, and suffering inescapable. A second mark of wisdom is the understanding that  

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if we confront our problems and work to solve them, we will suffer, but it will be the type  

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of suffering that is meaningful and promotive of personal growth. Many of us do not possess these  

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marks of wisdom. Rather, we cling to the illusory hope that if only we can make enough money,  

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meet the right person, or get the right job, then life will be easy. Many of us also try to  

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evade our problems via a variety of avoidance tactics. We blame our problems on other people  

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or social circumstances. We procrastinate, hoping our problems will disappear. We engage  

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in self-deception and deny that we have problems, or we turn to alcohol, drugs,  

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or compulsive technology use to escape awareness of our problems and to numb the suffering that  

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accompanies them. And as Peck observed: “Some of us will go to quite extraordinary  

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lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that  

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is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most  

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elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality...We attempt  

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to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of  

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them rather than suffer through them.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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This attempt to avoid our problems and find an easy way out of suffering is doomed to fail.  

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Not only does it lead us into fantasies and delusions, but it exacerbates our problems and  

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makes us susceptible to a meaningless and neurotic type of suffering that is central to many forms of  

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mental illness. Or as M. Scott Peck explained: “This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional  

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suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness…In the succinctly  

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elegant words of Carl Jung, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” But the  

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substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it  

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was designed to avoid. The neurosis itself becomes the biggest problem. True to form,  

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many will then attempt to avoid this pain and this problem in turn, building layer upon  

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layer of neurosis…when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems,  

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we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental  

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illness we stop growing, we become stuck.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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There is only one way out of the neurotic suffering of mental illness, and this is to  

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endure the legitimate suffering that is part and parcel of accepting our problems and then actively  

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working to solve them. To heighten our capacity to endure suffering, it is beneficial to remember  

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that suffering is not our enemy, but the greatest of teachers. “Those things that hurt, instruct.”,  

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as Benjamin Franklin put it. Or as the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus observed 2500 years ago:  

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The gods have ordained a solemn decree that from suffering alone comes wisdom.” When we  

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stop fleeing from and numbing ourselves to our suffering, then suffering shows us where we are  

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going wrong in life and opens our eyes to the full extent of our problems and the necessity  

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of change. This is why M. Scott Peck labeled depression as a healthy symptom which only  

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becomes pathological when we try to suppress it and evade the life changes that its presence  

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is calling for. Or as Peck explained: “...depressive symptoms are a sign to the  

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suffering individual that all is not right with him or her and major adjustments need  

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to be made...depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon.”  

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M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled A further benefit of enduring suffering,  

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instead of avoiding or masking it, is that eventually there comes a time when we grow sick of  

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suffering and are struck by an intense motivation to resolve, once and for all, the problems  

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underlying it. Once we cross this “threshold of suffering”, it typically becomes easy to leave  

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behind bad habits and self-sabotaging behaviors, and to cultivate the discipline needed to move in  

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a life-promoting direction. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used this threshold of  

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suffering as a catalyst to eradicate some of his most harmful habits, and as he wrote:  

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“Indeed, from the bottom of my soul I am gratefully disposed to all my misery  

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and sickness…because such things leave me a hundred back-doors through which I can escape  

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from permanent [bad] habits.” Nietzsche, The Gay Science

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If suffering motivates us to confront our bad habits and problems, we will then have  

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to struggle and suffer in order to overcome them. But in contrast to neurotic suffering  

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which breeds stagnation and a wasted life, this type of suffering is constructive as it leads  

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to personal growth. Or as Peck observed: “It is through the pain of confronting and  

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resolving problems that we learn...it is in this whole process of meeting and solving  

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problems that life has its meaning....Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed,  

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they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of the pain of problems  

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that we grow mentally and spiritually.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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It is because legitimate suffering is a great teacher and a spur to personal growth that M.  

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Scott Peck observed that: “…wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and  

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actually to welcome the pain of problems.” Two of the wisest figures in history, Buddha and Jesus,  

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harnessed the pain inherent in their problems to ascend to an elevated level of consciousness that  

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was marked not only by a profound capacity to endure suffering, but also to experience  

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overflowing joy. Or as Peck explained: “One measure—and perhaps the best measure—of  

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a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the great are also joyful. This,  

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then, is the paradox. Buddhists tend to ignore the Buddha’s suffering and  

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Christians forget Christ’s joy. Buddha and Christ were not different men. The suffering  

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of Christ letting go on the cross and the joy of Buddha letting go under the bo tree are one.”  

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M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled But it is not just the tendency to avoid  

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the pain of our problems that locks us in a mediocre and mentally ill life. It is also our  

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laziness - for as the psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz wrote:  

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“When people try to evade problems you first have to ask if it is not just laziness. Jung once said,  

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"Laziness is the greatest passion of mankind, even greater than power or sex or anything."”

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Marie Louise von Franz, The Way of the Dream M. Scott Peck defined laziness as “the force of  

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entropy as it manifests in the lives of us all.”  In the external world entropy is the tendency of  

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systems to degenerate into a disordered and stagnant state; while in the inner world of  

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the psyche it is the force of laziness that breeds disorder and stagnation. Laziness is  

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so common and pervasive that Peck called it the one and only original sin, or as he wrote:  

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“For many years I found the notion of original sin meaningless, even objectionable…Gradually,  

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however, I became increasingly aware of the ubiquitous nature of laziness…original  

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sin does exist; it is our laziness. It is very real...Some of us may be less lazy than others,  

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but we are all lazy to some extent. No matter how energetic, ambitious or even wise we may be,  

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if we truly look into ourselves we will find laziness lurking at some level. It is the force  

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of entropy within us, pushing us down and holding us all back from our spiritual evolution.”  

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M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled Many will protest that they are not lazy as  

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they work long hours and devote their limited free time to doing chores, spending time with friends  

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and family, and resting. But as Peck notes, “laziness takes forms other than that related  

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to the bare number of hours spent on the job or devoted to one’s responsibilities to ‘others.’…A  

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major form that laziness takes is fear.” (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled) Although  

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many of us give lip service to wanting to change, grow, succeed, and perhaps even attain greatness,  

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we often fear personal development more than we desire it, simply because of the immense amount  

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of work and effort that is required. This intimate connection between fear  

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and laziness is why the mind unconsciously devises ingenious ways to justify laziness;  

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as but one example, we tell ourselves that our laziness is not really laziness,  

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but merely the drive to relax and enjoy life - a type of refined hedonism. Or as Peck writes:  

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“In the earlier stages of spiritual growth, individuals are mostly unaware of their own  

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laziness...This is because the lazy part of the self, like the devil that it may actually be,  

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is unscrupulous and specializes in treacherous disguise. It cloaks its own laziness in all  

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manner of rationalizations, which the more growing part of the self is still too weak  

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to see through easily or to combat.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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Friedrich Nietzsche also identified laziness as an entropic psychological force which exhibits  

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devil-like qualities, and he recommended a joyful approach to overcoming it. When we see  

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through our rationalizations and become aware of our laziness, instead of feeling guilty,  

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we should laugh at it in the recognition that it is an innate part of human nature. And then  

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we should remind ourselves that true happiness is not found in maximizing time spent in passive  

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leisure activities, rather, it is a byproduct of voluntary effort in the service of personal growth  

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and meaningful goals. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche called the entropic force of laziness  

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“the spirit of gravity”, and as he wrote: “And when I saw my devil, I found him serious,  

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thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity - through him all things are ruined. Not  

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by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk;  

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since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to  

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move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”  

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Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Enduring the legitimate suffering that  

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accompanies confronting and solving personal problems and exerting a joyful self-willed  

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effort in the quest to override the original sin of laziness, is the road less traveled and the  

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way to escape the mediocrity and mental illness that is so rampant in our age. Some may find  

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this advice to be too general and desire a more specific and personalized plan for overcoming  

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their problems, but as Peck cautions: “There are many who, by virtue of their passivity,  

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dependency, fear and laziness, seek to be shown every inch of the way and have it demonstrated to  

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them that each step will be safe and worth their while. This cannot be done. For the journey of  

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spiritual growth requires courage and initiative and independence of thought and action. While the  

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words of the prophets…are available, the journey must still be traveled alone. No teacher can carry  

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you there. There are no preset formulas.” M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

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