Jordan Peterson: 3 Habits You Should Avoid At All Costs

Jordan Peterson has hundreds of hours of interviews and lectures on YouTube, but with so much volume, it can be tough to distill the essence of his life philosophy. And to make things even more difficult, he sometimes uses abstract language like it's.

Within the individual that redemption can be manifested, let's say, and even insofar as the state is concerned, because the state's proper functioning is dependent on the proper functioning of the individual rather than the reverse.

Most fundamentally, that is actually the most concise explanation of his life philosophy that I've heard. But what does it mean concretely? Well, today we're going to break down the three things that you should and should not do in order to live an exceptional life, according to Dr. Peterson. And I'm going to simplify as best as I can in order to keep this simple, to understand, forgive me for that, Dr. Peterson. Also, at the end, I'm going to get some concrete actions to you that you can take today in order to move forward on each point. But first, the thing that you need to start with is fixing yourself before you fix the world, not the reverse. So many of us think that life is unfair, that society that we've been born into is unfair, and the only way to progress is to change things on a societal level. But as Jordan says, so.

And can you even clean up your own room? No. Well, you should think about that. You should think about that. Because if you can't even clean up your own room, who the hell are you to give advice to the world?

Think of it in terms of leadership. If you want to lead other people, you need to prove that you can do it first by leading yourself, motivate yourself. You need to inspire yourself. And you need to prove that following your strategies is actually a desirable thing that leads to desirable results. And the truth is, today that might not be the case, given where your life is at. So where do you start leading yourself? Well, here's some suggestions.

Clean up your room. That's a good start. Organize your local landscape, schedule your time. Start taking control of yourself. See if you can stop saying things you know to be lies.

To those suggestions, I would add addressing your health, repairing your relationship with family members, volunteering, meditating, moving forward in your career. But certainly the most fundamental tenet of fixing yourself up is to tell the truth, which is actually Jordan's second core tenet. Here he is talking about how that is actually the highest good.

It's a deep idea. It's the deepest idea of the West, I would say, and it's the deepest religious Idea. The idea is that there's a way to bring order into being that makes the order good, and that's to bring it into being by spoken truths.

Now, we have all been told not to lie before, but we were usually commanded to tell the truth because it was the quote unquote right thing to do. And it may have actually felt like telling the truth left you worse off. After all, it might have prevented you from getting what you wanted or forced you into making an uncomfortable confession. But that is actually not Jordan Peterson's main reason for insisting on the truth. This.

If I tell the truth as carefully as I can, then whatever happens is the best that could have possibly happened in that situation, no matter how it looks. Yeah, right.

That seems like a crazy idea. After all, there can be terrible consequences to the truth sometimes, which is why we avoid it in the first place. So let's just take an example and play it out. For instance, say that you have a boss who routinely verbally abuses employees. Telling the truth and standing up for yourself saying that this is isn't okay might get you fired. Or if you don't get fired, it could get you singled out to receive even more punishment. That would be bad, but according to Peterson's philosophy, it would still be better than not telling the truth. Because maybe getting singled out would force you to actually live the truth. You'd have to quit because you just couldn't take it anymore. And that might build self esteem because you're betting on yourself to figure things out despite the financial circumstances that were very dire. And it might set an example for the other people in the company. And if you did make it back on your feet in six months, that example might inspire them to escape such a tyrannical leader as well. Even more, you would become the type of person who is honest despite their fear. And that is someone that other people gravitate towards and are inspired by. And maybe, just maybe, the boss would actually reform his or her ways and things would get better immediately. The point is, you might not see how telling the truth is the best thing for you. It might look like it's horrible idea, but but it is inevitably good for you and good for the world. And there are plenty of archetypal stories that drive this point home, including Aladdin, where Aladdin first refuses to tell the truth because it seems like he'd lose everything if he did. Genie, I need help. Alright, Sparky, here's the deal. If you want to court the little lady, you gotta be a straight shooter. Do you got it? What?

Tell her the truth.

No way. If Jasmine found out I was really some crummy street rat, she'd laugh at me. But Aladdin is wrong. Sure, things appear to go the way that he wants for a little while, but his continued lying nearly destroys the entire kingdom and ends his relationship with Jasmine. And Jordan makes this point. It's that if your relationships have conflict, that's often just the surface level issue. The deeper problem is that you're not being honest about how you feel and what you need. You're not being honest about who you are. Instead, like Aladdin, you're only doing and saying the things that you think will make the other person like you.

It's the principle. When your relationships are working, whether they're with yourself or with one or many people, if they're working, they're working to the degree that they're guided by that principle.

So maybe that leads to you saying that you don't appreciate how someone close to you has been treating you. Or maybe it leads to you telling someone how much they actually do mean to you. Maybe it means putting down your pride and calling someone that you've fallen out of touch with because you'd like a good relationship with them more than you'd like to act like you're beyond caring. In any case, there are a number of traps that you could fall into when you start telling the truth. First off, you can be an ideologue, and that is someone who doesn't test ideas against reality and who doesn't adjust their ideas based on reality. They think they are telling the truth usually, but really they're just reciting someone else's worldview. Peterson explains it this People don't have ideas.

Ideas have people. One of the things that I learned from Jung was you should figure out just exactly which ideas are possessing you and then you should decide if those are your ideas and the probability that.

They are is zero.

They're not your ideas. It's hard to have your own ideas. You have to derive them from your own experience.

This means that as good as an idea might sound, you should actually stress test it against the real world. And that goes for everything you hear on this channel as well. Instead of agreeing with me on this point and mindlessly telling the truth, go out and live it in your life. See what happens and then you'll have first hand experience of how it impacts your self esteem and the results that you get in your interaction. Second, you can know the truth but not live the truth. You can know that something's wrong and just go along anyway, because standing up would put you at risk. Now, living the truth might be scary, but it is exactly what made Jordan Peterson famous. He risked public ridicule and the legal system in order to defend what he saw as the truth when it came to the legislation that insisted on the use of preferred gender pronouns.

Well, so what am I willing to do? Well, I think that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is probably obligated by their own tangled web to bring me in front of it. If they find me, I won't pay it. If they put me in jail, I'll go on a hunger strike. I'm not doing this. That's that. I'm not using the words that other people require me to use.

Then, of course, you can lie to yourself and deny aspects of yourself that you don't like. This is refusing to acknowledge your shadow. And it's the third huge mistake that people make, so we're going to treat it as its own. Now, if you're unfamiliar, the shadow is a union concept that covers thoughts and desires that we have that we find unacceptable, so we stuff them down. Jordan Peterson gives a concrete example of his own shadow here and accused me.

Of, like, siccing my Internet trolls on the poor hapless journalist. And I thought this was the dark part of me, right? That's the shadow part. Thought if I wanted to sic my Internet trolls on Channel 4, then there'd be nothing but broken windows and riots. And then there's a little part of me that thinks, wouldn't that be fun?

This is the devil on your shoulder, the voice in your head that wants to rage and hurt and lie. And if you don't acknowledge that it exists, it will run you without you realizing it. Acting itself out as passive aggressiveness or subtle social manipulations. People who don't integrate their shadow create suffering around them, but they do it in subtle enough ways, usually to not be detected. Oh, my God, I love your skirt.

Where did you get it?

Uh, it was my mom's in the 80s.

Vintage.

So adorable.

Thanks.

That is the ugliest effing skirt I've ever seen. Now, Regina George is a great example of a villain, but in the movie Mean Girls, it's actually the main character, Katie, who has the most trouble with her shadow. She begins with good intentions, wanting to right the wrongs and serve justice to the bad people. But because she can't admit that she craves popularity and that she is de down very much like the villain Regina George, she begins to behave like the villain without even realizing it.

You know, I couldn't invite you. I had to pretend to be plastic Buddy, you're not pretending anymore. You're plastic. Cold, shiny, hard plastic. You know what? You're the one who made me like this so you could use me for your eighth grade revenge. God. See, at least me and Regina George know we're mean. You try to act like you're so innocent, like, oh, I used to live in Africa with all the little birdies and the little monkeys. So why are you still messing with Regina, Katie? I'll tell you why. Because you are a mean girl.

It's only in accepting her vain desires that she can overcome them. And the same is true for all of us. So think of the person that you dislike the most or at least are the most easily agitated by, especially if this person is in your family. Now, I know this might sound crazy, but chances are the exact trait that you dislike in that person is one that you have in spades. And it's usually without realizing it. So solution here is not to deny those attributes in yourself or else you wind up acting on them without even realizing it. The solution is to integrate your shadow, to let your shadow make you even stronger. That's how you tap into assertive power. And you can see it in Jordan's face when he becomes severe with the people that he's talking to now. He's often kind, but when he feels that someone has crossed a line, he is able to tap into a restrained but serious communicative power.

The market sets the damn game, it's like. And the market is dominated by men. No, it's not. It's not. The market is dominated by women. They make 80% of the consumer decisions. That's not the case at all.

And because of this integration, he doesn't stay angry or resentful. It can pass when the moment does. Now, Jordan speaks about the shadow often in terms of its capacity to do harm. But I think it's also important to include all the things in yourself that you just prefer not to identify as being part of you. This means your fear, your guilt, your sexuality, and sometimes even your joy. I spoke about the idea of the repressed inner child in another video. I'm going to link to that in the description. But for now, just know that part of self love means integrating and accepting all aspects of yourself. So we have, first, fixing yourself before you go out and try to fix the world. Second, telling the truth instead of lying to avoid reality. And third, integrating your shadow so that it doesn't run the show without you knowing now, this isn't everything that it takes to live an exceptional life, but it forms a strong foundation. And the more you practice these three points, the more you become an honest, integrated individual, which is exactly what the world needs you to be.

It's the, it's the, the answer to the problem of humanity is the integrity of the individual. That's the answer.

So now some concrete advice on how to implement these three tips. And I'm going to keep it very simple. There's of course more you can do, but just one thing that you can do today that has elements of all three of these. It's this. Pick something that you have been afraid to do. A conversation that you should have had but backed out of, a confrontation that you've been avoiding, telling someone who's been treating you badly that they need to stop, or telling someone how you feel and do that thing. Live the consequences of telling and acting out the truth. Now do it with some tact that you've hopefully learned from our videos. But the best advice that I can give you is to do the thing that popped into your mind maybe as you were watching this video. Get it done today and let us know how it went tomorrow on the Facebook livestream. 11am if you're interested. If you're looking for more on how to live a good life, I have a recommendation courtesy of our sponsor for this video, Audible. And what I'm recommending today is called Kick Ass with Mel Robbins and she is a best selling motivational speaker. So this is actually a recording of one on one coaching sessions where she helps people to break out of their stuck patterns in relationships and business and health. And it's very cool because you're actually getting real time advice on how to transform in your own life. But I also like it because if you're paying close attention, you can learn how to coach other people so that they can begin to shift in their life. And if you can start to identify common patterns of dysfunctional behavior and you can help people to break out of those, you have a superpower. So if you want to listen to this and maybe learn something fantastic, go ahead, check out this audible exclusive@audible.com charismamel or text charismamel to 500 500. Also, I've seen that Jordan Peterson is actually going to be speaking debating Sam Harris in the next few weeks and I am guessing that there's going to be some good breakdown material there. So if you want to make sure that you do not miss that, go ahead and click the subscribe button to our channel and go ahead and hit that notification bell as well. That way you won't miss the video that we eventually do on that and of course, everything else in between. I hope that you enjoyed this video. I hope that you actually go out and do that first action step, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.