Why You Shouldn't Get What You Want

Quick Overview

You should not get exactly what you want because pursuing an overly perfect, sterile goal can lead to disappointment, emotional instability, and an inability to handle minor chaos, as demonstrated by the example of a client who could not vacuum his room for 12 years until he made a small, incremental commitment.

Key Points: Setting overly precise, long-term goals (like a perfectly clean room or career path) can lead to disappointment if not met, making progress feel insignificant. The speaker recounts a client who, despite being 30, could not vacuum his room for 12 years due to fear of failure and the chaos involved in the task. The initial step to overcome this is defining a goal and then breaking it down into micro-goals so small that failure is not highly probable, such as just moving the vacuum cleaner. If you attempt to implement a highly complex, perfect plan immediately, you risk creating more chaos and discouragement rather than order. The speaker suggests that the inherent difficulty in confronting chaos (like an untidy room or relationship issues) requires immense humility and an acceptance of incremental progress. If the client had succeeded in vacuuming, the next goal might have been to communicate needs to his partner; the failure to do the small task meant he couldn't even attempt the next step. The core advice is to set a high moral goal but pursue it through the smallest possible, reliably achievable steps to build momentum and confidence.

Context: Jordan Peterson discusses the pitfalls of setting overly ambitious, perfect goals, drawing from his experience as a behavior therapist. He illustrates this by recounting a story of a 30-year-old client whose life was characterized by chaos, exemplified by his inability to clean his room for over a decade due to fear and an aversion to confronting disorder, which he described as a 'bloody state of disorder.' Peterson argues that the path to achieving meaningful goals, especially those involving bringing order out of chaos, must be approached incrementally rather than through an all-or-nothing, perfectly executed strategy.