Some Notes From 12 Rules For Life
By: Furkan Topal
Tags: 12 Rules For Life, Self Improvement, Jordan Peterson, Self Help, Psychology

RULE 4

“Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today”

“..If the internal voice makes you doubt the value of your endeavours- or your life, or life itself- perhaps you should stop listening.”

“…Maybe its comments are chatter, not wisdom.”

“…In a million years, who’s going to know the difference? The proper response to that statement is not, Well, then, everything is meaningless. It’s, Any idiot can choose a frame of time within nothing matters. Talking yourself into irrelevance is not profound critique of Being. It’s a cheap trick if the rational mind.”

“…If you hadn’t decided that what you are doing right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn’t be doing it.”

“…If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse.”

“…Meaning itself require the difference between better and worse.”

“…But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult.”

“…Before you can articulate your own standards of value, you must see yourself as a stranger- and then you must get to know yourself. What do you find valuable or pleasurable? How much leisure, enjoyment, and reward do you require, so you feel like more than a beast of burden?”

“…When you have something to say, silence is a lie.”

“…Could you, and would you, fix that one thing that announces itself humbly in need of repair? Could you do it now?”

“…Five hundred small decisions, five hundred tiny actions, compose your day, today and every day. Could you aim one or two of these at better result? Better, in your own private opinion, by your own individual standards? Could you compare your specific personal tomorrow with your specific personal yesterday? Could you use your own judgement, and ask yourself what that better tomorrow might be?”

“…you aim at what you value…”

“…For this reason (although not only for this reason) it is necessary to let things go during the journey uphill.”

“…life doesn’t have the problem. You do.”

“…If your life is not going well, perhaps it is your current knowledge that is insufficient, not life itself. Perhaps your value structure needs some serious retooling. Perhaps what you want is blinding you to what else could be.”

“…I will try want whatever it is that would make my life better- whatever that might be- and I will start working on it now.”

“…pursuit was something narrow and concrete. But you became stuck there, tightly jammed and unhappy. So you let go. You make the necessary sacrifice, and allow a whole new world of possibility, hidden from you because of your previous ambition, to reveal itself.”

“You are too complex to understand yourself.”

“It is instead the realization that the tragic irrationalities of life must be counterbalanced by an equally irrational commitment to the essential goodness of Being… You realize that you have, literally, nothing better to do.”

“What is it that is bothering me? Is that something I could fix? And would I actually be willing to fix it?”

“Notice your fear, and have some sympathy for it.”

“Don’t tell yourself, “I shouldn’t need to do that to motivate myself.“ What do you know about yourself?”

“Don’t over-estimate your self-knowledge.”