Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Doing good (preventing evil from happening, alleviating unnecessary suffering) provides your life with meaning. Meaning defeats existential angst; it gratifies your short-term impulses to achieve long-term goals; it makes your life worth living.

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12 Rules for Life Jordan Peterson

argues that modern secularism and reliance on science has left a void in answers to important existential questions: What is the point of living? Why do bad things happen to good people? What am I supposed to do to make myself happier? Why does life have so much suffering? Without a clear guiding structure, you might feel directionless. You may be prone to nihilism (“there’s no point to anything

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Stand up straight with your shoulders back. There is a part of your brain that is constantly monitoring signals to figure out your position in society. Fix your posture to get others to treat you better, which will make you feel better and stand tall, thus kicking off a virtuous cycle.

Jordan Peterson

Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. Many people are better at filling prescriptions for their dogs than themselves. Similarly, you may self-sabotage yourself daily – by not taking care of your health, not keeping promises you make to yourself.

Nietzsche: “He whose life has a why can

Make friends with people who want the best for you. Surround yourself with people who support you and genuinely want to see you succeed. You will push each other to greater heights; each person’s life improves as the others’ improve. They won’t tolerate your cynicism, they will punish you when you mistreat yourself

David Heath

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. With mass media, it’s easy to think of yourself as miserably outclassed. Drill deeply into your discontent and understand what you want, and why. Define your goals. Transform your goals into something achievable today.

David Heath

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Children test boundaries of behavior to learn the rules. As a parent, your purpose is to serve as a proxy for society. You must teach the child what is acceptable, and what isn’t. Children who receive no/incorrect feedback don't learn boundaries

David Heath

Put your house in order. It’s easy to blame the outside world, a group of people, or a specific person for your misfortunes. But before you do this, question – have you taken full advantage of every opportunity available to you? Are you doing anything you know is wrong? Stop it today.

David Heath

Tell the truth. You may lie to others to get what you want; you may lie to yourself to feel better. But deep down you know it’s inconsistent with your beliefs, and you feel unsettled. You must develop your personal truth, and then act only in ways that are consistent with your personal truth.

David Heath

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t. As a listener, you are helping the other person think. The most effective listening technique: summarize the person’s message. This forces you to genuinely understand what is being said; it distills the moral of the story, perhaps clarifying

David Heath

Be precise with your speech. Anxiety usually comes from the unknown. You don’t know what the problem is, or something vague seems really scary. Specificity turns chaos into a thing you can deal with.Why don’t you treat every other problem in your life with the same clarity? Be precise. What is wrong, exactly?

David Heath

Leave children alone when they are skateboarding. Modern parenting has gotten overprotective. Let kids alone when they push against authority, toughen up, and do seemingly dangerous things. They need it to grow.

David Heath

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street. Life is tough. Good people get hurt. Suffering is pervasive. Notice little bits of everyday goodness that make existence tolerable, even justifiable. Watch the girl splash into a puddle. Enjoy a good coffee. Pet a cat when you run into it

David Heath

“He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”

Nietzsche

Transform your goals into something achievable today. If it’s not within your control, look somewhere else. Let every day end a little better than it started. If you do this correctly, you’ll be unconcerned with other people, because you have plenty to do yourself.

David Heath

Act only in ways that your internal voice does not object to. Like a drop of sewage in a lake of champagne, a lie spoils all the truth it touches.

David Heath

But there is no scientific code of ethics to inherit the stabilizing role of religion. In the absence of clear rules and a moral compass, people are prone to nihilism, existential angst, misery, and indulging their instincts.

David Heath

Take responsibility for your own life.

David Heath

Walk the line between order and chaos, where life is stable enough but also unpredictable enough to provoke growth.

David Heath

The classic hero must give up something to be reborn and meet a great challenge.

David Heath

Acknowledge that life is suffering. Your goal is to make progress to avoid suffering.

David Heath

Typical overprotective adults avoid discussing suffering with their children, with the hope that it will protect them from it.

David Heath

If we lived properly, we would be resistant to the pains of existence and to the enticing lures of empty ideologies promising safety.

David Heath

The neurotransmitter serotonin is thought to be the internal mediator of social status. If you feel (or are) dominant in status, more serotonin circulates in your bloodstream. [Frat leaders have higher serotonin levels than members] Serotonin also seems to improve pro-social behavior and reduces aggression.

David Heath

The ability to respond with aggression and violence decreases the probability that actual aggression will become necessary.

David Heath

Peterson notes that PTSD in war comes not from horrific things happening to them, but as a result of witnessing their own violent behavior. This never saw their capacity for oppression and bullying, and now see history’s terrible perpetrators

David Heath

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Charles Edwards

I grab coins and tees in my travels, but I usually mark my ball with a coin from Argentina, either a peso or a 10-centavo piece.

Angel Cabrera

Look, every actor has a different way of preparing or creating a character and yeah, we all are from different backgrounds.

Alex Pettyfer

Because the eye has seen thoughts are structured upon images and not upon ideas.

David Consuegra

I'd never had money growing up, and it's never been that important to me, except maybe to take our kids on a nice vacation or something like that.

Harlan Coben

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

Samuel Johnson

The road to success just might be your driveway.

Joey Reiman

When you ask people what they think of Africa, they think of AIDS, genocide, disasters, famine.

Mo Ibrahim

United States: the country where liberty is a statue.

Nicanor Parra

When you believe you reflect what is holy and good, you can see more that is good in every stage of your life.

Victoria Moran

A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.

David Frum

I started acting as a teenager, but it wasn't until I moved to New York when I was 20 that I made any kind of commitment.

Will Arnett

Unless there is one master gene for yield, which I'm guessing there is not, engineering for yield will be very complex. It may happen eventually, but through the coming decades, we must assume that gene engineering will not be the answer to the world's food problems.

Norman Borlaug

I think I can poach a pretty mean egg the old-fashioned way.

Wylie Dufresne

I've interviewed multiple people who know bin Laden... who tend to have a universal picture of what he's like, which is: modest, retiring, unassuming, kind of thoughtful - lots of things that don't fit with a mass murderer, which he is as well.

Peter L. Bergen

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Opening your chakras and allowing cosmic energies to flow through your body will ultimately refresh your spirit and empower your life.

Barbara Marciniak

I still picture myself as a student of the music. I'm always trying to learn new things. Music is just what makes me tick.

Big Boi

When I first went to Stevens Point, I never thought I'd ever be close to the NBA. I didn't even think about the NBA. The big start for me was making it to the final cut for the Olympic team, and I was the only one who was going to be back for my senior year of college.

Terry Porter

My goal is to make everyone and anyone a Kevin Hart fan.

Kevin Hart

President Ronald Reagan used to speak of the Soviet constitution, and he noted that it purported to grant wonderful rights of all sorts to people. But those rights were empty promises, because that system did not have an independent judiciary to uphold the rule of law and enforce those rights.

John Roberts

I think great bosses hire great people. 'A' people hire 'A' people, but 'B' people hire 'C' people; they're worried they might be shown up... they're concerned that that person might make them look bad.

John Stumpf

If I never have to write another word about cricket again, I'll be a happy man.

Joseph O'Neill

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.

Thomas Berger