Here you will find some extracts from the book 12 Rules for life. An antidote for chaos.
Jordan Peterson is a prominent Canadian clinical psychologist. Offers " rules for sorting yourself out, setting your house in order, and improving the world by first improving yourself."
Rule # 7. Pursue what
is meaningful (not what is expedient)
Expedience is the following of blind impulse. It’s a short-term
gain. It’s narrow and selfish. It lies to get its way. It takes nothing into
account. It's immature and irresponsible.
Meaning is its mature replacement. Meaning emerges when impulses
are regulated, organized, and unified.
Meaning emerges from the interplay between the possibilities of
the world and the value structure operating within that world. If the value
structure is aimed at the betterment of Being, the meaning revealed will be
life-sustaining. It will provide the antidote for chaos. It will make
everything matter. It will make everything better.
If you act properly. Your actions allow you to be psychologically
integrated now, and tomorrow and into the future, while you benefit yourself,
your family, and the broader world around you.
Rule # 8 Tell the
truth or, at least, don’t lie
Untruth, however well-meant, can produce unintended consequences
I had a set of experiences
a few years before embarking upon my clinical training.
I found myself subject to some rather violent compulsions (none
acted upon), and developed the conviction, in consequence, that I knew rather
little about who I was and what I was up to. So I began paying much closer
attention to what I was doing and saying . The experience was disconcerting, to
say the least. I soon divided myself into two parts: one that spoke, and one,
more detached, that paid attention and judged. I soon came to realize that
almost everything I said was untrue. I had motives for saying these things: I
wanted to win arguments and gain status and impress people and get what I wanted. I was using language to bend and
twist the world into delivery what I
thought was necessary. But I was a fake.
Realizing this I started to say only things that the internal voice will
not object to. I started practicing telling the truth, or, at least not lying.
I soon learned that such a skill came very handy when I didn’t know what to do.
What should you do when you don’t know what to do? Tell the truth. See the
truth. Tell the truth.
Rule # 9 Assume that
the person you are listening to might know something you don’t
Psychotherapy is not advice. Psychotherapy is a genuine
conversation. Genuine conversation is exploration, articulation, and
strategizing. When you are involved in a genuine conversation you are listening
and talking – but most listening. Listening is paying attention.
A listening person tests your talking ( and your thinking) without
having to say anything. A listening person is representative of common
humanity. He stands for the crowd. Now the crow is by no means always right but
Is commonly right. It's typically right. If you said something that takes
everyone aback, therefore, you should reconsider what you said.
How should you listen? Carl Rogers, one of the 20 century great
psychotherapists knew something about listening.
He suggested that his readers conduct a short experiment when they
found themselves in a dispute: stop the discussion for a moment, and institute
this rule: Each person can speak up for himself only after he has restated the
ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately and to the speakers'
satisfaction. I have found this technique very useful, in my private life and
my practice. I routinely summarize what people have said to me, and I ask them
if I have understood properly. Sometimes they accept my summary. Sometimes I am
offered a small correction. Now and then I am wrong completely. All of that is
good to know.
There are several primary advantages to this process of summary.
The first advantage is that I genuinely come to understand what
the person is saying.
The second advantage of the act of summary is that it aids the
person in the consolidation and utility of memory. This is what happened. This
is why. This I what I have to do to avoid such things from now on. That is a successful memory. That is the
purpose of memory.
You remember the past not so that it is accurately recorded, to
say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.
Rule # 10 Be precise in your
speech
When things break down, what has been ignored rushes in.
When things fall apart and chaos remerges, we can give structure
to it, and reestablish order through our speech. If we speak carefully and
precisely, we can sort things out, and put them in their proper place, and set
a new goal, and navigate to it –often communally, if we negotiate; if we reach
consensus.
If we speak carelessly and imprecisely, however, things remain vague. The destination remains
unproclaimed. The fog of uncertainty does not lift, and there is no negotiation
throughout the world.
Precision specifies. Be careful with what you tell yourself and
others about what you have done, what are you doing, and where you are going.
Organize those words into the correct sentences, and those sentences into the
correct paragraphs.
Courageous and truthful words will render your reality simple,
pristine, well-defined, and habitable.
You must determine where you have been in your life so that you
can know where you are now. If you don’t know where you are, precisely, then
you could be anywhere. Anywhere is too many places to be, and some of those
places are very bad. You must determine where you have been in your life
because otherwise, you can’t get to where you are going. You cant get from
point A to point B unless you are at point A, and if you’re just anywhere the
chances you are at point A is very small indeed.
You must determine where you are going in your life because you
can not get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not
move you forward.
Say what you mean, so that you can find out what you mean. Act out
what you say, so you can find out what happens. Then pay attention. Note your
errors. Articulate them. Strive to correct them. That is how you discover the
meaning of your life.
Confront the chaos of Being. Take aim against a sea of troubles.
Specify your destination and chart your course. Admit to what you want. Tell
those around you who you are. Narrow, and gaze attentively, and move forward,
forthrightly.
Rule #11. Do not bother children
when they are skateboarding
Its competence that makes people as safe as they can truly be.
Kids need playgrounds dangerous enough to remain challenging.
People including children, don’t seek to minimize risk. They seek to optimize
it.
When untrammeled and encouraged we prefer to live on the edge.
There we can still be both confident in our experience and confronting the
chaos that helps us develop.
Overprotected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected,
and full of opportunity suddenly makes its appearance as it inevitably will.
Rule # 12. Pet a cat when you
encounter one on the street
Across the street on which I live is a cat named Ginger. Sometimes
Ginger will trot across the street, tail held high, with a little kink at the
end. Afterward, if she feels like, she may come to visit you, for half a
minute. It’s a nice break. It’s a little extra light, on a good day, and a tiny
respite on a bad day.
If you pay careful attention, even on a bad day, you may be
fortunate enough to be confronted with small opportunities of just that sort.
Maybe you will see a little girl dancing on the street because she is all
dressed up in a ballet costume. Maybe you will have a very good cup of coffee
in a café that cares about their customers. Maybe you can steal ten or twenty minutes
to do some ridiculous thing that distracts you or reminds you that you can
laugh at the absurdity of existence. And maybe when you are going for a walk
and your head is spinning a cat will show up and if you pay attention to it
then you will get a reminder for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of Being
might make up for the ineradicable suffering that accompanies it.
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