Jordan Peterson: Life is Suffering

Jordan Peterson is a philosopher, a professor of psychology, and a social commentator.

Jordan Peterson’s rules for overcoming suffering

Jordan Bernt Peterson (born 12 June 1962) is a Canadian professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, a clinical psychologist, and a YouTube personality. He began to receive widespread attention in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues, often described as conservative

Naturally, he is attempting to find solutions to these problems and to suffering. I’d like now to discuss some of these solutions. Just remember each path is unique and there is no one size fits all approach we can take.

Accept your suffering and continue on: It happens. Avoid unnecessary suffering, but understand that you are going to suffer in life. The first stage is acceptance and then you learn from it. You learn to stand up again and you don’t let it diminish your soul.

Face your inner psychopath: The second one is quite obvious from a Peterson perspective. Face your shadow, your dragon, and your inner psychopath. Face them down. Understand that anyone is capable of great evil including yourself. You’re not as strong or as moral as you think you are, and so are those you might wish to raise on a pedestal.

Grow up to slay dragons: To Dr. Peterson, one of the key things anyone can do to overcome suffering is to kill the dragon within. How that dragon manifests and how you defeat it is down to you. This could be defeating fears, phobias, bad habits, wrong ways of thinking, and so on. Just remember the most important element of good habit formation – keep trying. If you fail, try again. Over time you’ll build it up.

Tell truth to each other: If telling the truth, and this does not mean using the truth to insult or hurt others, cures us and creates real, good relationships, then being truthful is a key path to overcoming suffering. We can truth ourselves out of our dark sides. Even if that means telling someone, a professional, about the shadow, the beast, and the licking flames of hell.

Listen to others: Everyone is suffering around you. Do not assume you know everything; especially about others. Think again about the principles of John Stuart Mill on free speech. Maybe 99% of what someone says is wrong or unimportant, but some of it will be new, will change your world and your thinking.

It goes beyond that though. We cannot form decent connections to others if we do not listen to them. Listening humanizes others. And people want to talk. They want to let things out and share experiences, feelings, ideas, and anecdotes. Let them do it. Listen to them.

Would I have suffered less if I’d known these things when I was younger? Probably. And I am glad that younger people are able to take these practical solutions on early. Not only that, but that they can read more widely to solve the suffering in their lives.

You are where you are now, be you 14 or 94, and so you cannot change the past. You cannot go back and fix the errors of your ways or dodge the bullets that came your way. But you can control what you do from now on. What will you do?

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