Discover nuggets of wisdom from one of today’s most brilliant psychologists
I have watched hundreds of Dr. Jordan B. Petterson’s interviews and podcasts (in addition to reading his books), and I can’t get enough because he always says something new that has a special impact on me.
These have been his most relevant lessons for me for the last year.
Let’s start.
On bad habits
“Allowing the spirit of sin — that you would otherwise crouch on your doorstep — to enter your house and have Its way with you. It’s like a collaborative Venture with Satan himself.” — Jordan B. Peterson.
When I was a kid, my mother used to tell me, “If you play with fire, you’ll get burned.” I didn’t listen to her and ended up an alcoholic.
There is no small sin because it always goes wrong and grows.
Due to her little sugar addiction, I have a friend who weighed 130 kg and is now trying to lose weight to save her life.
My friend walks through the cake section of the supermarket; she doesn’t buy any; she looks at the colorful packages and touches them as if she was petting kittens. She is like an alcoholic who orders a shot of whiskey and looks at it but doesn’t drink it.
Her sin, her addiction, left her scarred.
We always seek novelty, and when the adrenaline produced by a particular addiction is not enough, we tend to look for a higher dose or something that releases more dopamine in our brains because pleasure breeds tolerance.
Application to your life:
Don’t seek hedonic happiness — based on pleasure — because it leads to addiction; rather, seek eudemonic happiness- based on a sense of purpose. It is more lasting and less harmful.
On healing
“If you rediscover the innocent and the humility and capacity for play and wonder and open-ended trust you have as a child, but you still have all the wisdom that you have as an adult after seeing the world, you may enter into a new, more elevated form of being.” — Jordan B. Peterson.
Hermann Hesse explains this thought of Peterson spectacularly in his novel Siddhartha.
In Hesse’s novel, a prince who gives up everything and becomes an ascetic to solve the world’s suffering ends up a worldly gambler and lecher. Still, at the end of his life, he redeems himself and works as a boatman on a river — helping people move from one shore to another — in a humble way, finding life’s meaning.
In the words of Jordan Peterson, “The brightest possible light is only possible through the descent into the darkest possible realm of blackness.”
You can only talk about what you know. And it is often necessary to have lived a season in hell like Siddhartha to help those who are still stuck to get out of it.
To teach from your defeats to avoid suffering another human being is to ascend spiritually to a new level of consciousness.
The human being became what he is and sent spaceships to the stars thanks to the collaboration between people.
In the words of the great poet Wystan Hugh Auden, “Love one another or perish.”
Application to your life:
Be humble and remember those adversities that you overcame efficiently in your life, and then share that knowledge with others who want to cross the river of trouble, become their ferryman, their Siddhartha 🙂
On conformist
“There is going to be a price for the truth, but there is also a price for the security. The pathway to security it’s the one covered with spider webs, demons, and snakes.” — Jordan B. Peterson.
Imagine your life is over, and there is a trial on the other side of the sun. And they ask you what you did with your life. And you explain.
But then someone like a TV presenter (but with wings and a white beard 🙂 shows you on a movie screen in the middle of a cloud the dreams you could have achieved but you left unfulfilled for fear, for staying in the comfort zone.
Those dreams you had inside you were screaming for you to listen to them, but you didn’t hear.
You know perfectly well what dreams I mean. Those dreams you let die and regret every time you look back,
And all for what, to end your life in a safe but fruitless way?
The safe road seems very nice, but as Dr. Petterson says, as you go along it, it becomes dark and dangerous.
It is the trap of the tale of Hansel and Gretel and the chocolate house.
It is better to continue through the forest than to get into the witch’s house and end up boiling in a pot after getting fat eating chocolate and candies 🙂
Application to your life:
The problem with life is that you make concessions to supposedly play it safe (as if such a thing existed), and gradually, you stop recognizing yourself in the mirror.
There comes a point when you become the shadow of what you were.
And shadow implies darkness. And you don’t want a dark life.
You want a luminous life. And for that, you will have to shine amid the darkness. You will have to walk through the forest and avoid the chocolate house.
You don’t want to be trapped by the witch of conformity. You want a life full of adventures and worthy of being told to your grandchildren with pride and passion.
A virtual hug
AG
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