Most of us need more motivation.
Without motivation, our goals and ambitions stay stagnant. There is no growth. There are tons of people online who can motivate and guide you. One of them is Dr. Jordan Peterson. In this post, we’ll talk about Jordan Peterson quotes and what inspires him.
He is a clinical psychologist and a professor at the University of Toronto. He produces content in the self-improvement niche. Regardless of his controversial political and cultural views, we can learn from him.
His online lectures and books are geared towards improving yourself. How do you know he’s authentic? He has been suffering from depression since the age of 13. Still, he has managed to rise above it and make a name for himself. That doesn’t happen without the right kind of mindset and motivation.
We all know that quotes from successful people can give you a quick boost of motivation.
Here are 10 Jordan Peterson quotes that can help you lift your mindset.
Quote 1: “Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.”
Most of us think we are a glass-half-full kind of personality.
However, more often than not it’s not the case. We live in a goal-obsessed society. There is nothing wrong with chasing a goal.
That sometimes means it comes at the cost of gratitude.
To create a productive and meaningful reality, you need balance.
You must give equal respect to what you have and don’t have (want). You’ll find that the more value you give to the things that you have, the happier you’ll become.
Quote 2: “If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master”.
How many times do you hold yourself back?
Fear of failure often stops you from doing new things. But if you don’t do new things, you live a very limited life. True knowledge comes from failure.
This Jordan Peterson quote reflects our fear of being judged when we try something new. But, every master started at zero. Whether it’s fitness or business, you have to be willing to start at zero.
Quote 3: “Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care of yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, ‘He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.‘”
Most of us have our direction wrong.
When we want to change our life, we look outward. How can I change other people? How can I change that situation?
However, true change comes from within.
This quote is about what that internal work looks like. Self-care, personality development, and a clear sense of why is crucial to changing your life. It means willingly undertaking the goal of changing yourself.
Your life is the way it is because of who you are. Change yourself, not the outside.
Quote 4: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today”
We all want to see progress.
For that progress, we need to measure it. But, society teaches us to measure with a flawed scale. We compare ourselves to others, how better or worse off we are than them.
This is an inaccurate scale for your own life. It leads to little gratitude and you suffer terribly.
More times than not, we compare ourselves to people who are better than us. This leads to self-hate and doubts all of which are speed breakers to your growth. This is my favorite Jordan Peterson quote.
To fast-track your growth, you need to compare yourself to yourself. Are you doing better off than who you were before? If yes, then that is enough.
Quote 5: “It’s better to do something badly, than not do it all”
Perfectionism leads to procrastination.
It delays our success and keeps us stuck. And, yet, there is nothing wrong with wanting to give your best.
It’s an honest and sincere intention. You know that if you don’t give your best you won’t succeed.
However, it’s still true that you can’t perform at the same level all the time. Even Olympic athletes don’t hit their personal records every time. Yet, they still show up and train.
That’s what this Jordan Peterson quote is about, showing up.
Every day isn’t going to be perfect but it’s better than not showing up at all.
Quote 6: “Can you imagine yourself in 10 years if, instead of avoiding the things you know you should do, you actually did them every single day? That’s powerful.”
Action leads to change.
When you avoid what you must do, you also avoid who you could be. True change doesn’t come from thinking or reading. Those things can help but at the end of the day, change comes from action. Without action, it’s just random wandering.
If you act differently, you become a different person. You have a terrible responsibility to build your own life.
Who do you want to become? If you acted like them and did all the things they do, you would become like them. It’s that simple.
Most of us spend our time in productive inaction. We think we are productive but it’s actually not. So, what are the things you are avoiding today? Who would you become if you did them?
Quote 7: “You can do an awful lot by writing down what happened to you and thinking it through.”
Most of us are stuck in our patterns. This doesn’t lead to a meaningful reality.
We can’t get out of them because we can’t see them. You can’t break free from chains you don’t see. That’s where writing and thinking come into play.
If done rightly, they give you a third-person perspective on your problems. And, with that perspective comes clarity.
Have you ever noticed that you seem to know solutions to others’ problems? You know what they are doing wrong and what they must do. But, when it comes to you stay stuck?
That’s the third-person perspective you apply to others. Only well-developed insight can help you break free.
You can apply the same to yourself, as this Jordan Peterson Quote suggests.
Write down your problems, your situation, and what you go through. The mere act of writing will help you see things you aren’t seeing. It will give you clarity on what to do next.
Quote 8: “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.”
Would you drive a car, if you didn’t know where you were going?
It would become a nightmare. At every turn, you would have to go into an existential crisis about which path to take.
The same happens when you go through your day without vision and direction. You don’t know which path to take.
You live in eternal confusion. Weather should you take a break or work on your side hustle? It’s all a chaotic mess.
But if you set aside 10 minutes a day to set a vision and direction, the rest of the day you spend will be in clarity.
Quote 9: “It takes careful observation, and education, and reflection, and communication with others, just to scratch the surface of your beliefs.”
Human beings function on beliefs.
These beliefs are our assumptions about the world around us. We learn them through our interaction with the environment.
The quality of your belief determines the quality of your action and in turn your life.
If you believe that success is hard, you will find a way to work difficult. If you believe that you are not worthy of respect, you will hang out with people who don’t respect you.
Your reality is a reflection of what you believe in.
If you want to change your life, you need to change your beliefs. That’s what this quote refers to.
To shake up your beliefs, you need to become a scientist. Observe what your beliefs are, act against them, and see whether they are true or not.
Quote 10: “The successful among us delay gratification. The successful among us bargain with the future.”
Most of us are hard-wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure.
But the paradox of life is that we have to seek pain now to get pleasure in the future. If you want to look good and be healthy, you need to go through the pain of dieting.
Delayed gratification is a marker of success. It’s a process of creating your own well-being.
In the famous marshmallow experiment (1972), kids were made to sit in front of a reward (marshmallow or pretzel). Researchers gave them two choices.
The first was to eat the marshmallow right away, whereas the second was to wait for a period of time and get two marshmallows.
The kids who were able to wait and delay gratification did much better in life. That is what this Jordan Peterson quote says, you need to delay gratification.
