What could you do to improve yourself? - Prof. Jordan Peterson

How to improve yourself Right NOW (and why)

Why should you even bother improving yourself?
So that you and the people around you do not suffer more than is necessary. (There are consequences for not organizing yourself and getting your act together properly.)

You can say: “Well, I don’t care about that!” - But this statement is not true; you actually do care about it. Because if you are in pain, you will care about that.
And if you say you are not in pain when really, you are in pain, you are just lying to yourself.

Pain is Incontrovertible.

So, how do you get your act together?
Look around for something that bothers you, and see if you can fix it.

Game Exercise:
You can do this in any room - as an example, try this game exercise in your own bedroom:

Game: Step ONE - Ask yourself, “If I wanted to spend ten minutes making this room better, what would I do?”
Once you ask yourself that question, you will begin to notice things in the room that bother you.

- Coffee mug doesn’t have a coaster
- The room might not have a bin
- There is a bit of rubbish behind your computer monitor
- You might have a stack of papers that needs moving
- You do not like the layout of your cabinets and might have to re-position them

Game: STEP TWO - Pick one of those things that bothers you and fix it (Just one).

Try to play this game once a day in any room of your choosing. (Start in your own room if you can’t decide.) And eventually, you will begin to do this subconsciously every time you walk into any room.

“Fix a hundred little things like that, your life will be a lot different.”

“Then, when you feel competent in that, you can begin to start fixing things that are slightly bigger!”

“The less rubbish you have laying around, the less traps you are likely to fall into that are hiding in the rubbish”

One of the easiest things you can begin to do in psychotherapy is to tidy your room as step one of improving yourself.

“Start where you can start!”

Don’t bite off more than you can chew:
- An alcoholic schizophrenic homeless man stumbles towards you and incoherently mutters something. ← ← That is a problem!
- It would be good if you could fix it, but you haven’t got a clue about how to fix THAT!
- You just walk around that, and go look for something that you could fix.
- Because if you muck about in that, not only is it unlikely that you will help that person, it’s VERY likely that you’ll get hurt yourself!

“Just because you’re experiencing things announce themselves as in need of repair, doesn’t mean that it’s YOU right then and there that should repair them, you have to have some humility - You don’t walk up to a helicopter that isn’t working and just start tinkering away with it.”

You have to stay within your domain of competence.

There needs to be an aim!

Your mind is a very strange thing, as soon as you give it a genuine AIM or task (That is actually how you see to begin with.) the world will reconfigure itself around that aim, which is very strange.

There is an experiment:
A video (Click here to watch it) shows a group of people tossing a basketball back and forth. The viewer is asked to keep count of how many times the people in white pass the basketball. Unbeknownst to the viewer, a person in a gorilla costume walks on screen, dances briefly amongst the people, then exits. most viewers don’t notice the gorilla until it’s pointed out.

What this shows us is that you see what you aim at.

“Be careful what you aim at.”

What you aim at determines the way the world manifests itself to you.
So if the world manifests itself in a very negative way, one thing to ask is: Are you aiming at the right thing?

Do not build your entire life around this question, but it is still a great occasional thing to ask.

“How to improve Yourself Right NOW (and Why) - Prof. Jordan Peterson”, YouTube, Uploaded by Jordan Peterson Fan Channel, 28/09/2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE0u7-SX2hs.

“selective attention test”, YouTube, Uploaded by Daniel Simons, 10/03/2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo.