In the book “12 Rules for Life”, Ph.D clinical psychologist and YouTube sensation Jordan Peterson talks about lobsters and standing straight.
As you journey with him through his life experiences and his ideas of what the world is, you come to appreciate the effort he has put in.
In the first of 12 rules, he starts by talking about lobsters. How lobsters have been around since a time even before the dinosaurs and how the lobster is our earliest ancestor. How we inherit the mental circuits ( and behaviours) of the lobster nervous system.
He then goes on to discuss how humans (and other animals) see Success and Failure. What kind of mental infrastructure is reflected in cases of Success and Failure. He talks about how a successful animal (one that is big, strong, attractive) differs in mental chemistry and circuitry over one that has failed. Between these two indicators of success and failure, lies the animal kind. It is a range from 1 to 10.
He then goes on to talk about the Nature of Nature. How Nature is not something static. How it constanty changes and evolves. How Nature represents not only birth and abundance, but also death and disease.
He talks about how Nature is slow, unchanging in some processes (of evolution) and fast and constantly changing in other processes. He lays our attention on the fact that our basic nueral structures (and so our behaviour) have not changed for millions of years. The nueral circuits in our mind have a deep connection with truth and the world we perceive. They are subconscious mechanisms that drive what we think about our selves. You just can’t tell yourself to become something you aren’t in real life!
He then continues to talk about how we can take advantage of this knowledge. How we can sleep better, eat better and how we can use “positive feedback” loops to improve ourselves and what we think about ourselves.
He talks about how naive people who think in terms of good and bad should look within themselves to find the various flavours of who they are and what they are capable (good and bad) of doing.
To end the discussion, he talks about how we are more than just our body. How we are a Spirit (and psyche) as well; how our nervious system responds to that fact. How doing something voluntarily, whether it be taking on a new challenge or fulfilling our responsibilities, raises us to a different reality. A reality where we can stand through tough times, give support to those around us and find meaning!
Comments
Post a Comment