8 Things I Learned From Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

Jordan Peterson has been a force for good in my life unlike no-one else.

I’ve been lucky to have many influential mentors throughout my life, both those I’ve met and those I’ll never meet.

But no one has changed my mind or behaviour for the better like Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.

Through his biblical lectures, his self-authoring program, his books, his podcast, and his countless interviews, I’ve been fortunate enough to receive a schooling in myself and humanity that the best universities in the world cannot even come close to touching.

Peterson’s biblical lectures alone had more value for me than a Master’s degree from Oxford University.

8 Things I Learned From Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

I learned A LOT more than 8 things.

But in imposing the restriction of an 8-point list, I hope to produce the points that were most resonant to me at this time in my life.

There’ll be more lists in the future. But let’s stick to 8 for now.

Forgive my commentary on each point. Jordan Peterson’s words stand for themselves and my amateur expansion on them is probably embarrassing and insulting.

But if you haven’t delved too deeply into Peterson’s body of work yet, I hope you’ll see something striking in this list that will prove to be a leaping off point for you.

1 – “You’re mostly deadwood.”

This video of Jordan Peterson alone is enough to be life-changing.

Every sentence is a maxim that can keep you busy for a long time.

Just some of the most affecting statements from the first couple of minutes of this lecture:

“You are an entity that both is and is transforming.”
“Don’t sacrifice who you could be for who you are.”
“You’re the thing that transforms who you are.”

Peterson says that in order to transform, you have to “shake off those things about you that you might be pathologically attached to.”

To transform, you have to ask yourself:

What should I leave behind?

What habits, people, ways of thinking should I leave behind?

Peterson evokes the symbol of the phoenix.

Why is the phoenix the symbol of transformation?

Because it burns off its old self into order to transform in a positive direction into its new self.

The question is not:

“Do you want to be reborn?”

The question is:

“Do you want to burst into flames?”

Peterson says the answer to that is generally no, but “that’s the wrong answer”.

What do we leave behind?

If we ask ourselves that question, we can instantly come up with a list of 100 stupid things you know you could stop doing that would improve your life.

And no one knows what those things are more than you.

2 – You can do a bad job.

It’s incredibly liberating being told you can do a bad job.

Most people (myself certainly included) have too high expectations before they even start. As a result, they don’t start at all.

Anything I’ve ever done successfully I’ve begun badly.

This is true for Jordan Peterson too. At the end of one of his biblical lectures, while ruminating on the unexpected size of their success, he says he just began by muddling through, with a willingness to be a fool in public.

One of the first things you’re told when starting the Self-Authoring Program (where you can create a vision for your future, deal with the demons of your past, and evaluate your present vices and virtues) is this:

Do it badly.

But do it.

Because the rewards of simply doing it are so numerous and deep, you just need to get started.

I was hesitant to start it but I told myself I’ll just answer one question and I’ll do it with a beer and not give a damn about spelling or grammar because no one was going to see it.

Before I knew it, I’d completed a sizeable chunk of the program.

And a few weeks and sessions later, after telling myself to “do it badly, but do it” – it was done and I felt like a phoenix fresh from the fire.

3 – Stop saying things that make you weak.

That means tell the truth.

Or at least don’t lie.

There’s a Peterson anecdote where he talks about how he spent a couple of exhausting months monitoring everything he said. He monitored to see if what he was saying was true – true in the sense that it’s true to oneself (because we define our truth).

This is when he discovered he was mostly deadwood because he had to stop saying 90% of what he’d normally say.

But the 10% left was really something.

Although I’ve been striving to improve this recently, I’ve always suffered from a sense that I’m not living in accordance to my truth.

You may not have uttered any grand lies, but how many times have you lied to spare someone’s feelings?

I’m naturally high in agreeableness and compassion (taking Peterson’s Understand Myself confirmed what I always suspected), so I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and I’ve often lied to avoid that.

But I know from my own experience that the truth – however bitter and painful – can be medicine.

The greatest breakthroughs in my life have come from someone telling me a truth I could barely stomach.

So why do I deprive others from medicine that could make them better?

Of course, this isn’t black and white.

Peterson himself, in discussing big lies, says it’s not clear to him that you’re morally obligated to reveal a lie if it’s going to cause destruction all around you.

If you want to relieve your conscience, in some cases it’s better to go to confession, deal with the guilt, and strive to try better from here on out.

But always seek truth.

Don’t seek comfort.

As C. S. Lewis said:

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

4 – You never get away with anything.

And it’s our fault more than we ever care to admit.

A lot of people are walking around in hells of their own creation right now.

But they can’t look that fact in the face.

The real hell is not in the nature of the hell itself but often because it was self-created and, as Peterson puts it, “we richly deserve it.”

We’ll often go against our own inner morality and, despite our stomach clamping, say that thing we know we shouldn’t say or do that thing we know we shouldn’t do.

And maybe we won’t pay the price financially or physically but we pay the price with our soul.

If you’re trying to get away with something, you’ll never sleep easy at night.

Because we know intuitively that we never get away with anything and we’ll always be sleeping with one eye open.

5 – You want to constitute yourself so you can ride out the storm

There’s a big difference between tragedy and hell.

Tragedy is your father dying of cancer in a hospital bed.

Hell is your father dying of cancer in a hospital bed while all the family argue around him.

At your father’s funeral, you want to be the one that others can rely on.

You want to be the one whose shoulder is there to cry on. You want to be strong.

You don’t want to be the one who is a complete wreck, turning the tragedy into hell.

And to do that you need to fortify yourself today so you can ride out the storm.

Because the storm is always coming.

You don’t want to fortify yourself to be happy. That’s the wrong aim. The right aim is to be Noah, preparing for the flood.

How do you do this?

You follow the now meme-status advice of Jordan Peterson:

“Clean your room.”
“Sort yourself out.”
“Accept responsibility.”
“Get your act together.”
“Aim at the highest good.”
“Start by fixing the things you can fix.”
“Live properly as an individual. Because you’re more powerful than you think.”

6 – The line between good and evil runs down the centre of every human soul.

This is a paraphrase of a Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote from The Gulag Archipelago, one of the books that most affected Peterson and which he recommends, along with the works of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, frequently.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

We like to tell ourselves that were the conditions of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or Maoist China to arise again that we would be on the side of good.

Could you kill, torture, or treat another human unjustly and with great malice?

If you say no, you’re probably lying.

And a lot of so-called “morality” is really cowardice in disguise.

The answer that Peterson came to after months of introspection was that he was a dangerous weapon and indeed capable of great atrocities.

But knowing your capacity as a dangerous weapon and consciously using yourself as a force for good in the world is the answer.

There’s also this wonderful biblical quote from Mathew 5:5:

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

“Meek” has been misinterpreted for many years.

It doesn’t mean submissive.

Taking the true meaning from the original Greek, what this quote really means is that the ones who shall inherit the earth are the ones who carry swords (hold great power), know how to use them, but keep them sheathed.

7 – Treat yourself like someone you care about.

If your pet is sick, most owners wouldn’t hesitate to take them to the vet, get them looked at, and then administer whatever medicine they need.

But when it comes to us taking our own medicine…

A third of us won’t even fill the prescription.

While the other third will take the medicine but won’t take it properly or finish the course.

For someone who espouses being a force for good in the world, it’s interesting that Peterson puts such great emphasis on taking care of yourself.

“Treat yourself as someone you are responsible for helping” is Rule 2 in his book 12 Rules for Life for a reason.

You HAVE to start with yourself in order to be a force for good in the world.

Getting your own act together is an unselfish act.

But it’s difficult and that’s why most people choose not to do it.

We have to detach from ourselves – see ourselves as another person – and think what would be an optimal mode of being that you could design for this person (you). Something that gives you credit.

Here are some questions Peterson offers that you can ask yourself to get started on this difficult path:

“What might my life look life if I were caring for myself properly?”
“What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I should shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences?”
“What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge, and strengthen my body?”

8 – Pick up your cross.

Life is suffering.

But how do you make the world a better place?

How do you help others?

You do it by example.

We’re all oppressed and we’re all a mess.

It’s not an accident that the axiomatic Western individual was someone who was unfairly nailed to a cross and tortured. It’s like… Yes! Right! Exactly!

But what do you do about that?

Pick up your damn suffering. And bear it. Try to be a good person. Don’t make it worse.

And:

There’s reasons to be resentful about your existence. Everyone you know is going to die. You too! And there’s gonna be a fair bit of pain along the way. Lots of it’s going to be unfair. Yeah, no wonder you’re resentful. It’s like… Act it out and see what happens. You make everything you’re complaining about infinitely worse. There’s this idea that hell is a bottomless pit. And that’s because no matter how bad it is, some stupid son-of-a-bitch like you could figure out a way to make it a lot worse.

You stop doing things that are expedient.

And strive in the direction of leading a meaningful life.