Quotes from Jordan B. Peterson

And this brings us to a third erroneous concept: that nature is something strictly segregated from the cultural constructs that have emerged within it.

conflict in the present, in the service of longer-term truth and peace?

Because these really are rules. And the foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Period.

The acts of life we repeat every day need to be automatized. They must be turned into stable and reliable habits, so they lose their complexity and gain predictability and simplicity.

It doesn't matter so much if they go to bed at the same time each evening, but waking up at a consistent hour is a necessity. Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer has unpredictable daily routines.

Art bears the same relationship to society that the dream bears to mental life.

Nuestro gran poder tecnológico convierte las consecuencias de nuestros errores y debilidades individuales en cosas cada vez más graves; si deseamos seguir expandiendo nuestro poder, también debemos expandir continuamente nuestro saber. Por desgracia, es horrible pedir algo así.

I have had many clients whose anxiety was reduced to subclinical levels merely because they started to sleep on a predictable schedule and eat breakfast.

The ancient counter will even shut down your immune system, expending the energy and resources required for future health now, during the crises of the present. It will render you impulsive,20 so that you will jump, for example, at any short-term mating opportunities, or any possibilities of pleasure, no matter how sub-par, disgraceful or illegal.

He had already concluded that adults were contemptible, and that he could safely defy them. (Too bad, then, that he was destined to become one.)

Everyone's life is a tragedy

before a problem can be solved it must be formulated precisely.

Extracting useful information from experience is difficult. It requires the purest of motivations ("things should be made better, not worse") to perform it properly. It requires the willingness to confront error, forthrightly, and to determine at what point and why departure from the proper path occurred.

Assume ignorance before malevolence.

The parts of your brain that generate anxiety are more interested in the fact that there is a plan than in the details of the plan.

It requires the willingness to change, which is almost always indistinguishable from the decision to leave something (or someone, or some idea) behind. Therefore, the simplest response imaginable is to look away and refuse to think, while simultaneously erecting unsurmountable impediments to genuine communication.

La aceptación de la información anómala aporta terror y posibilidad, revolución y transformación. El rechazo del hecho insoportable asfixia la adaptación y estrangula la vida.

A responsible person decides to make a problem his or her problem, and then works diligently—even ambitiously—for its solution,

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.152 … Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.153

Imagine that you're unhappy. You're not getting what you need. Perversely, this may be because of what you want. You are blind, because of what you desire. Perhaps what you really need is right in front of your eyes, but you cannot see it because of what you are currently aiming for.

A voluntary death-and-rebirth transformation—the change necessary to adapt when terrible things emerge—is therefore a solution to the potentially fatal rigidity of erroneous certainty, excessive order, and stultification.

Unfortunately, in the longer term, this willful blindness leaves life murky and foggy; leaves it void, unseen, without form, confused—and leaves you bewildered and astonished.

Escogemos un camino u otro en cada punto de decisión de nuestra vida, y acabamos siendo la suma total de nuestras decisiones. Al rechazar nuestros errores, ganamos una seguridad a corto plazo, pero renunciamos a nuestra identidad con el proceso que nos permite transcender nuestras debilidades y tolerar nuestras vidas dolorosas y limitadas.

You must decide how much of your time to spend on this, and how much on that. You must decide what to let go, and what to pursue.