Quotes from 12 Rules for Life

Jordan Peterson Quote on Life Priorities and How “Triviality” Can Be Deceptive

“[The] appearance of triviality is deceptive: it is the things that occur every single day that truly make up our lives, and time spent the same way over and again adds up at an alarming rate.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 117)

Beyond the Quote (207/365)

It’s the healthy-or-not lifestyle that shapes the person, not the random workouts. It’s the career that defines the person, not the few-and-far-between vacations. It’s the everyday interactions with your friends and family that makes up the quality of the relationships, not the random and spontaneous adventures that you might take. Sure, the exotic and extraordinary moments of life might leave an impact, but it’s the mundane and ordinary moments that occur every single day that make up the life.

48 Deep and Insightful Jordan Peterson Quotes from 12 Rules for Life

Excerpt: Chaos is a constant reality in life. Order—rules—is the antidote. These quotes from 12 Rules For Life are deep and will give you the insight you need to start battling the chaos in your life.

“If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 212)

Beyond the Quote (155/365)

Staying in hiding doesn’t only keep you hidden from the world—it keeps you hidden from yourself. For, as long as you stay hidden from the world, the lessons of the world will remain hidden from you. I can assure you, the lessons of the world will not come knocking at your door or come waltzing into your designated place of hiding. These lessons are only to be found OUT in the world and they must be pursued and captured.

“Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 63)

Beyond the Quote (141/365)

Maps are incredibly useful tools. They chart the unknown territory for us. They show us the way forward. They help us get to where we want to go. And usually, that’s one of the first things we think about when we grab a map—where they can take us. Thinking up where we want to go is easy. New York City! Yellowstone National Park! Australia! We might say. Or, if we’re thinking about where we want to go in life, we might say, “The top of the corporate ladder!” “Until I get a blue checkmark on Instagram!” “To a beautiful mansion with a white picket fence!” But, where they can take us means nothing if we don’t know where we are. And this is the imperative first question to consider—where are you?

“A life lived thoroughly justifies its own limitations.” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 365)

“Perhaps our environmental problems are not best construed technically. Maybe they’re best considered psychologically. The more people sort themselves out, the more responsibility they will take for the world around them and the more problems they will solve. It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city. It’s easier to subdue an enemy without than one within. Maybe the environmental problem is ultimately spiritual. If we put ourselves in order, perhaps we will do the same for the world. Of course, what else would a psychologist think?” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 364)

“There is no enlightened one. There is only the one who is seeking further enlightenment. Proper Being is process, not a state; a journey, not a destination. It’s the continual transformation of what you know, through encounter with what you don’t know, rather than the desperate clinging to the certainty that is eternally insufficient in any case. Always place your becoming above your current being. That means it is necessary to recognize and accept your insufficiency, so that it can be continually rectified. That’s painful, certainly—but, it’s a good deal.” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 362)

“When you are arguing with someone, you want to be right, and you want the other person to be wrong. Then it’s them that has to sacrifice something and change, not you, and that’s much preferable. If it’s you that’s wrong and you that must change, then you have to reconsider yourself—your memories of the past, your manner of being in the present, and your plans for the future. Then you must resolve to improve and figure out how to do that. Then you actually have to do it. That’s exhausting. It takes repeated practice, to instantiate the new perceptions and make the new actions habitual. It’s much easier just not to realize, admit and engage. It’s much easier to turn your attention away from the truth and remain wilfully blind.” ~ Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 357)

“Wish upon a star, and then act properly, in accordance with that aim. Once you are aligned with the heavens, you can concentrate on the day. Be careful. Put the things you can control in order. Repair what is in disorder, and make what is already good better. It is possible that you can manage, if you are careful. People are very tough. People can survive through much pain and loss. But to persevere they must see the good in Being. If they lose that, they are truly lost.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 351)

“When you love someone, it’s not despite their limitations. It’s because of their limitations. Of course, it’s complicated. You don’t have to be in love with every shortcoming, and merely accept. You shouldn’t stop trying to make life better, or let suffering just be. But there appear to be limits on the path to improvement beyond which we might not want to go, lest we sacrifice our humanity itself.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 347)

Jordan Peterson Quote on Disciplining Children

“It is an act of responsibility to discipline a child. It is not anger at misbehavior. It is not revenge for a misdeed. It is instead a careful combination of mercy and long-term judgment. Proper discipline requires effort—indeed, is virtually synonymous with effort. It is difficult to pay careful attention to children. It is difficult to figure out what is wrong and what is right and why. It is difficult to formulate just and compassionate strategies of discipline, and to negotiate their application with others deeply involved in a child’s care. Because of this combination of responsibility and difficulty, any suggestion that all constraints placed on children are damaging can be perversely welcome. Such a notion, once accepted, allows adults who should know better to abandon their duty to serve as agents of enculturation and pretend that doing so is good for children. It’s a deep and pernicious act of self-deception. It’s lazy, cruel and inexcusable.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life(Page 124)

Beyond the Quote (51/365)

Once we agree that the proper disciplining of children is necessary, the question that quickly follows is, how do we discipline properly? What strategies and tactics should we use to ensure that our children will abide by and will continue to abide by the rules we have decided upon? One idea that you might explore is a martial arts concept that is practiced in self-defense situations that suggests we use the minimum force necessary. If we have to defend ourselves, we only use the minimum amount of force that would stun or neutralize the opponent so that we can safely escape. For kids, the idea would be to use the minimum strategy or tactic necessary to get them back into accordance with the rule set.

9 Rules for Children from 12 Rules For Life by Jordan Peterson

Excerpt: 9 Rules for Children from Jordan Peterson that can offer you a solid framework to build off of when structuring home life for your kids.

“You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits. You might consider judging your success across all the games you play. Imagine that you are very good at some, middling at others, and terrible at the remainder. Perhaps that’s how it should be. You might object: I should be winning at everything! But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 88)

Beyond the Quote (15/365)

If you’re winning all of the time, every time, at everything, then one of two things has gone wrong: either you’re playing the wrong game(s) or you’re playing the wrong people. Who cares if you win against a two-year-old in chess all of the time, every time? There’s no challenge, which means there’s no growth, which means there’s no value. Either you need a new game to play or you need to find a new person to play the game against. Even if you were playing chess against one of your peers, and you were crushing them every time, it’s the same issue—no challenge, no growth, no value.

“What can be truly loved about a person is inseparable from their limitations.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 341)

“It’s a good idea to tell the person you are confronting exactly what you would like them to do instead of what they have done or currently are doing. You might think, ‘if they loved me, they would know what to do.’ That’s the voice of resentment. Assume ignorance before malevolence. No one has a direct pipeline to your wants and needs—not even you. If you try to determine exactly what you want, you might find that it is more difficult than you think. The person oppressing you is likely no wiser than you, especially about you. Tell them directly what would be preferable, instead, after you have sorted it out. Make your request as small and reasonable as possible—but ensure that its fulfillment would satisfy you. In that manner, you come to the discussion with a solution, instead of just a problem.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 287)

“Any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it. But (1) the collective pursuit of any valued goal produces a hierarchy (as some will be better and some worse at that pursuit no matter what it is) and (2) it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends life its sustaining meaning. We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequence is difference in outcome. Absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself—and then there would be nothing worth living for.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 303)

“Every word we speak is a gift from our ancestors. Every thought we think was thought previously by someone smarter. The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity. Culture takes with one hand, but in some fortunate places it gives more with the other. To think about culture only as oppressive is ignorant and ungrateful, as well as dangerous. This is not to say that culture should not be subject to criticism.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 302)

“People, including children (who are people too, after all), don’t seek to minimize risk. They seek to optimize it. They drive and walk and love and play so that they achieve what they desire, but they push themselves a bit at the same time, too, so they continue to develop. Thus, if things are made too safe, people (including children) start to figure out ways to make them dangerous again.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 287)

Jordan Peterson Quote on Judging Ourselves Based On Our Actions—Not Our Beliefs

“It is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs—those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface-level self-knowledge. You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don’t know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.”
Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 103)

Beyond the Quote (10/365)

I read an expression the other day that really took me aback: We judge ourselves based on our thoughts but we judge others based on their actions. I knew it was true the second I read it, but I never would have realized it if I hadn’t read it. This was, in fact, the way in which I judged myself versus how I judged others (for the most part) and it was a clear double-standard that I felt guilty about.

“You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with (and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse).”
Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (Page 282) (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)

Jordan Peterson Quote on Life Priorities and How “Triviality” Can Be Deceptive

Beyond the Quote (207/365)

48 Deep and Insightful Jordan Peterson Quotes from 12 Rules for Life

Jordan Peterson Quote on Self-Discovery and Why You Should Come Out From Hiding To Find Yourself