Jordan Peterson presents us with two fundamental problems:
- What kind of person should we want to be?
- Why can't we just flip a switch and be that person?
"You have a nature and you cannot successfully tyrannize yourself out of it.”
In western culture, the wisdom of our thoughts outweighs the wisdom of our actions. With every diet fad and self help meme, the gap between what we "should do" and what we "do" grows further out of proportion.
The most critical point for converting theory into action is the point where abstract turns into motor function.
This seems to be something Jordan Peterson underestimates, and what we aim to color in.
During a Peterson interview on H3H3, Ethan says:
"I'm aware of my flaws, but I'm not really sure how to improve [them]. I don't know how to instruct myself to improve."
Which is something anyone who has tried to improve themself can relate to.
Peterson's advice was - "take my self-authoring program."
And I did his self-authoring program, and it brought me to the point where I
Here's one way to look at it: you have concieved and mapped out a goal, and your conceptual understanding is pretty clear, but for whatever reason it doesn't pan out as expected - you got too much going on right now, you'll be more suited to do it later, etc. This model maintains the integrity of the goal and offloads the problem onto your life and the world. Essentially saying - the goal isn't the problem, me/life/distractions are the problem. And this is probably the wrong way to look at it.
Here's a better way -
You have concieved and mapped out a goal, and your conceptual understanding feels clear, but for whatever reason it doesn't pan out as expected. Then the problem lies in your conceptualization of the goal.
If you concieve of a change you want to make in your life, and it doesn't happen, the problem is not with you or your life, the problem is that your conception of the change is faulty and/or insufficient.
This is to say - if you agree that you should clean your room, but your room doesn't get cleaned, the problem is that you lack the understanding of what is entailed in cleaning your room. It's probably just too abstract.
Cleaning your room is a great example, and I think that's why Jordan Peterson uses it so often. Here's a full break down of how to clean your room.
Taking cold showers is another great example.
This is something you can't argue with - conceptual understanding of the benefits of taking cold showers and then agreeing it's something you ought to do.. is a categorically different mental process than acting out the motor functions of stepping into a cold shower. It's an entirely different part of your brain. Just go take a cold shower and see.
So I hope this resonates with some people, because I think it's 100% accurate, and recognizing this cognitive miscommunication between conceptual understanding and embodied understanding is the key to improving our ability to convert mental preconceptions into embodied manifestations.
The aim of this site is to convert Peterson's wisdom into specific, actionable, bottom-rung-abstraction behaviors that we can instruct ourselves to act out in our lives.
But really, start by cleaning your room.