Eleven Quotes by Jordan Peterson That'll Make You Immune to Failure, Rejection and Victimhood (Guaranteed)

Even if you hate him and want him in prison

Image Credit-Rebecca Hendin

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Jordan Peterson is the most controversial man alive.

He touches on ideas and debates I wouldn’t dare to. Some people like him, and some think he’s the devil. I’m not personally a fan. But recently, I read a big chunk of his work because I believe you learn the most from people you disagree with and dislike.

Some of the stuff Jordan has said is disgusting. It’s worse than the ideas of the Holocaust. Yet a lot of people like him for his bravery.

To weigh in on the gender debate and the war against political correctness takes enormous guts.

The first time I came across his work was on social media site Quora 7 years ago.

Many people don’t know that his best-selling book “12 Rules For Life” was an answer he gave on Quora. That social media post became this popular book – and it was a freaking listicle! (Take that blogger haters and clickbait police.)

In 2019 I watched the documentary “The Rise of Jordan Peterson” with an open mind. At the end I was left thinking this is a deeply angry man. He came across as rude, arrogant, massive ego, polarizing, and as this weird kind of self-help guru.

That’s why nowadays, if I want to come into contact with his ideas, I prefer to read his work rather than see videos of him.

Here are the best quotes from my reading that’ll make you immune to failure, rejection, weakness, and victimhood mentality.

1. “Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.”

“When I have X then I’ll be happy, fulfilled, in a good place, etc.”

We’ve all said some version of this to ourselves. The problem is it places the focus of your mind on what you don’t have, so you become ungrateful.

You start to chase all the things you’re missing and it’s a never-ending game that is nothing more than a rat race. The real crisis in modern society is a lack of gratitude.

As always, I’ll point the bazooka at my big head first.

A few years ago my wife and I went through an odd period. We weren’t that happy. We realized after much analysis that we were ungrateful. We didn’t appreciate each other, our careers, and all the material objects we were so lucky to have.

This led us to create a daily gratitude practice with each other, and to write a basic gratitude journal (I hate using that phrase because it sounds like we’re saints and drink our own piss and say it’s good).

The problem of ungratefulness still shows up in our lives from time to time, but its power is much weaker than before.

If you’re unhappy or depressed, try focusing on what you do have instead.

You’ll probably realize you have an awful lot. And a boatload of problems will go up in flames forever.

2. “If you aren’t moving forward in your life there is some idea, mode of action, or habit you’re so in love with you won’t let go of it.”

When I first read this it hit me like a brick to the face.

This idea describes every low point of my life. And it describes most of the unsuccessful people I know. The quote “strong ideas, loosely held” applies here too.

Ideas are great but they can also imprison you.

I remember I dated this religious woman once. Nice gal. After some time together I realized she was deeply unhappy but she managed to wear a smile and cover it up better than a politician.

She didn’t just like her religion. No. It was a cult.

She didn’t understand any person who might not think about a god 24/7. She’d never considered the other side of her ideology, which is “What if there is no god?”

I’m not saying there is or isn’t, but if you can’t consider the other side to a debate, then you’re not an adult. You’re a 5 year old living in an adult body.

So our relationship ended.

Not over religion, but over the willingness to consider other people’s ideas without shutting down and throwing a tantrum.

Many people can’t move forward in life and achieve their goals, follow their passion, or chase their obsession because they’re standing in their own way.

Habits can be like this too. A good friend of mine is a chain smoker. He’s 50-something and his health is falling off a cliff. It’s so obvious he needs to quit and he knows it. But he won’t.

So his death will happen soon and three young kids will have no father.

It’s hard to watch.

Get the hell out of your own way. Consider opposites.

3. “It’s not them, it's you.”

One thing I have in common with Jordan Peterson is a strong belief in personal responsibility. Outsourcing blame has become an Olympic sport and people win gold medals for it.

The blame game is a lame game.

When you own your problems it makes them easier to fix. Why? Because you’re in control. Sometimes I own problems that really were created by other people, and this lie to myself still gets me further ahead than if I pinned it on the government. Or Elon Musk. Or Amazon. Or whatever other lame person or organization you want to blame.

Take back control. Be obsessed with personal responsibility.

4. “The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power.

Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.”

I have a bad relationship with success. I don’t like it.

My problem with success is it’s too easy to fall for status, power, and luxury distractions. Before you know it, you’ve got an ego that can’t fit through the door and you’re sipping margaritas on Hollywood Boulevard while next to your Ferrari.

It’s such a wank.

Real success to me is when my character improves. When I become kinder, or get better at handling adversity, or reach a new level of humility.

Yet you don’t hear gurus and Instagram influencers talking about that. Ever.

They just show you “the lifestyle” so you’ll get jealous and want the nightmare life they have that they secretly wish they could dispose of (but can’t because it’s all they’ve ever known and has become their identity).

Character can get you through anything. Status and power can land you in trouble.

5. “Don’t be a slave to stupid rules.”

Today I had coffee with my two mentors.

Somehow the conversation turned to government control. One mentor said “People are easier to control with more stupid rules.” It’s not a conspiracy theory, it just comes down to running countries.

Presidents and prime ministers can get more done and keep chaos away with lots of rules. But that comes with loss of freedom.

It’s why in the workplace there are a million different OH&S rules that no one can keep up with. Or if you walk through a hotel lobby when it’s raining outside, there’ll be thousands of “do not slip, d*ck whit” signs every few feet.

The Nanny Police are everywhere.

And if you obey every one of their stupid rules your IQ will plummet at the same time. Most rules are useless because there’s always a group of people that can get around them.

The smarter thing to do is challenge the rules. To find ways to legally bend the rules and push the constraints of society. When you do that you do a great service for the community and yourself.

6. “The successful among us delay gratification and bargain with the future.”

I have a quote pinned to my Apple Notes app:

All New Year’s resolutions come down to one thing: impulse control.

I see this quote multiple times a day. It’s a reminder that we all have addictions, whether we admit them or not, and how you manage them determines the quality of your life.

If you can’t control your impulses, you lose control of your life.

I read a few books recently on dopamine and how it works. The crux of my research boiled down to this: many parts of our life have become p0rn.

• Eating junk food is p0rn.

• Watching nude people hump is p0rn.

• Binge-watching Netflix is p0rn.

• Social media is p0rn.

All of these addictions mess with the pleasure part of our brain. If you don’t get your impulses under control and delay gratification and the high these things give us, everything goes downhill.

You lose motivation. It’s harder to focus. Life feels boring. Nothing has any meaning.

So stop chasing things with short-term rewards. Stop needing pleasure 24/7 to stay alive and keep your career running.

7. “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.”

Another slap to the face from Jordan Peterson. Spank me big boy - joking!

Most people live a life of avoidance. There are things they know they should do but they keep delaying them to “someday.”

It seems smart but it creates a life of quiet desperation. If you string together enough “somedays” you eventually have to scream “mayday mayday” and get help.

The hard thing about hard things is they require a lot of momentum, time, and energy to start. That’s why it’s easier to make progress on hard goals by chunking down the action steps and starting with the smallest ones.

If you do that for long enough, you’ll get 10 years of progress in 6 months.

8. “Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.”

Working on too many things is a disaster.

Focus is most powerful when it’s concentrated on one thing. Spreading focus just limits your power and therefore your potential.

The second part is working hard. Whenever I mention this the snowflakes come out and say “that’s hustle culture.” Somehow they think success will happen by NOT working hard, which is exactly what’s wrong with the world.

We’ve been taught big goals should be easy. Or that we’ll be discovered. Or if we pay our dues over decades we’ll get everything we ever wanted.

These are lies.

The people you look up to and admire work 10x harder than you realize.

Unless you have a decent work ethic you have nothing. No amount of self-care or work-life balance is going to do the work for you.

Slow down when you’re dead.

9. “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.”

I run a large online academy.

And I’ve given up on solely providing information. Action tells you more about yourself and your goal than a course ever will. That’s why my teaching style now is based on action and real-world challenges.

Without actions your real beliefs sit deep in your unconscious. They drive your behavior without you knowing. Action brings all the ugly stuff to the surface.

My favorite line from Jordan here is “you’re too complex to understand yourself.” I feel like people give themselves mental torture trying to overthink through problems and hypothesize on the future that’s uncertain, thanks to the laws of nature.

Trying to work things out in your head leaves you dead. Solutions come from execution. Get out of the death loop of planning and “someday.”

10. “If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.”

I’m a fool, there I said it.

I love to fool around and get called dumb or even a loser. We all start out as amateurs in whatever fields we choose to operate in.

But foolishness becomes genius if you stick to it long enough and learn through action. The problem is when people want to start out as a master or expert.

I see it with writers all the time. They think no one wants to read the work of average people. And they’re 100% wrong.

I’ve found average people are more relatable and it’s easier to get a cult following being average than it is being a billionaire that’s 10,000 steps ahead and is near-impossible to mimic.

A fool only stays a fool if they refuse to listen and learn. If you listen and learn then foolishness can turn into wisdom.

11. “In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”

Much of what I share with you here on Substack is me thinking.

It’s hard to think deeply in public because people are easily offended. Recently I had a conversation with a woman who wanted to get paid help from me with her newsletter.

I tried to help but…

She said “I’ve been doing this 19 years dontcha know, so I know what I’m doing already.”

Then I said “Let’s cut to the chase. How many email subscribers do you have?”

“3000.”

So I said “With all due respect, if you’ve been doing this for 19 years and only have 3000 email subscribers, you’re clearly doing something wrong.”

She got offended and blocked me. I wasn’t rude but I did challenge her. That’s what can happen when you become a deep thinker and try to help people with your skills.

Some people are just mad. They’re looking for any little trigger to go off their rocket and blame their failures on you under the guise of “you purposely offended me.”

The best strategy that fixes this being offended pandemic is this updated Mae West quote I stole from Tim Ferriss:

*Lights up a cigar*

Those who are offended need to be offended more often.

Final Thought

If you ditch Jordan Peterson’s political statements and look at his older work that was more life advice, he actually has a lot of wisdom.

Again, I’m not going to have his babies or anything. But studying someone I disagree with has expanded my mind. I hope it’s done the same for you.

When we take personal responsibility it makes us immune to failure, rejection, and victimhood. That’ll set you free and help you live a badass life.

What do you think of Jordan’s ideas above? Let me know in the comments.

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