To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want”. It is also not “what would make you happy.”

…

You need to consider the future and think, “What might my life look like if I were caring for myself properly? What career would challenge me and render me productive and helpful, so that I could shoulder my share of the load, and enjoy the consequences? What should I be doing, when I have some freedom, to improve my health, expand my knowledge and strengthen my body?”

…

Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities. Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”

Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

Can I be honest

This book is a difficult read. It’s so difficult that I’m surprised it’s a national and international bestseller. To get to the insights and “gems” of the book, you need to navigate through paragraphs of circuitous, somewhat onerous intellectual discourse.

That said, the book does make you think in fresh perspectives. This chapter dealt with an investigation into just why we tend to be so self destructive and self sabotaging and contends its something to do with an innate sense of self-shame and disgust at our moral being. It encourages us to adopt the perspective of being someone who needs to take care of “us” – if we were to be our own self coach, what excuses would we stop making? what plans would we actually start executing rather than leave languishing in procrastinations?