It’s been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
(via books-n-quotes)
(via books-n-quotes)
Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
— Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (via the-red-lotus-blog)
The shadow would be all the parts of the personality that the persona rejects, and that might be the aggressive elements - certainly that’s the case for people who are highly agreeable. There’s two pathways tied to the development of the shadow, and they’re both tied to one another; the fundamental pathway is truth, and that’s to face the bitter truth about yourself but, to break that down more particularly, you might think about that as the capacity to observe your own resentment; you’re going to be resentful and bitter in many situations because
you don’t get what you want, and if you watch that resentment and bitterness, you’ll see that it produces fantasies that can be unbelievably dark. And that can be very frightening, and you might not want to admit to yourself that you’re actually capable of having fantasies like that, or impulses, or aggressive feelings like that.
But the thing is that if those aggressive feelings and impulses and fantasies are integrated into your character it’s like you’re opening up a dialogue with a part of yourself that can be very forceful and strong, and dangerous. And it’s really useful to be dangerous - if you can be dangerous, you often don’t have to be. And it’s often weak people; for example it’s weak men generally speaking who [commit] violent acts, but it’s born out of weakness, not of strength, that’s for sure.
And so, anyways, you attend to your resentment honestly and you observe yourself and what you’re actually like, you gotta pay attention as if you don’t know yourself - as if you might harbour hidden devils. And then maybe they’ll emerge. — Jordan Peterson (via jordanpetersonquotes)
you don’t get what you want, and if you watch that resentment and bitterness, you’ll see that it produces fantasies that can be unbelievably dark. And that can be very frightening, and you might not want to admit to yourself that you’re actually capable of having fantasies like that, or impulses, or aggressive feelings like that.
But the thing is that if those aggressive feelings and impulses and fantasies are integrated into your character it’s like you’re opening up a dialogue with a part of yourself that can be very forceful and strong, and dangerous. And it’s really useful to be dangerous - if you can be dangerous, you often don’t have to be. And it’s often weak people; for example it’s weak men generally speaking who [commit] violent acts, but it’s born out of weakness, not of strength, that’s for sure.
And so, anyways, you attend to your resentment honestly and you observe yourself and what you’re actually like, you gotta pay attention as if you don’t know yourself - as if you might harbour hidden devils. And then maybe they’ll emerge. — Jordan Peterson (via jordanpetersonquotes)
Surreal art of August Vilella. h/t Art Collector Association
The Most Valuable Things Everyone Should Know by Professor Jordan B Peterson
- Tell the truth.
- Do not do things that you hate.
- Act so that you can tell the truth about how you act.
- Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.
- If you have to choose, be the one who does things, instead of the one who is seen to do things.
- Pay attention.
- Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you need to know. Listen to them hard enough so that they will share it with you.
- Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationships.
- Be careful who you share good news with.
- Be careful who you share bad news with.
- Make at least one thing better every single place you go.
- Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at that.
- Do not allow yourself to become arrogant or resentful.
- Try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible.
- Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
- Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens.
- If old memories still make you cry, write them down carefully and completely.
- Maintain your connections with people.
- Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or artistic achievement.
- Treat yourself as if you were someone that you are responsible for helping.
- Ask someone to do you a small favour, so that he or she can ask you to do one in the future.
- Make friends with people who want the best for you.
- Do not try to rescue someone who does not want to be rescued, and be very careful about rescuing someone who does.
- Nothing well done is insignificant.
- Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
- Dress like the person you want to be.
- Be precise in your speech.
- Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
- Don’t avoid something frightening if it stands in your way – and don’t do unnecessarily dangerous things.
- Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
- Do not transform your wife into a maid.
- Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.
- Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated.
- Read something written by someone great.
- Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
- Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
- Don’t let bullies get away with it.
- Write a letter to the government if you see something that needs fixing – and propose a solution.
- Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.
- Be grateful in spite of your suffering.