Before, what was right, desirable, and worthy of pursuit was something narrow and concrete. But you became stuck there, tightly jammed and unhappy.

So you let go.

You make the necessary sacrifice, and allow a whole new world of possibility, hidden from you because of your previous ambition, to reveal itself. And there’s a lot there. What would your life look like, if it were better? What does “better” even mean? You don’t know. And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know, exactly, right away, because you will start to slowly see what is “better”, once you have truly decided to want it. You will start to perceive what remained hidden from you by your presuppositions and preconceptions – by the previous mechanisms of your vision. You will begin to learn.

Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life

I love how the “visual blindness” psychology studies are used here to explain that when we focus on a particular goal, we become much more sensitive to things that obstruct or support that goal.

That means that goal setting as an activity itself is very important. It has to be goals you really believe in, goals that you want and think is possible.

This will only work, however, if you genuinely want your life to improve. You can’t fool your implicit perceptual structures. Not even a bit. They aim where you point them. To retool, to take stock, to aim somewhere better, you have to think it through, bottom to top.

Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life