Ask Me Anything

with The Jordan B. Peterson Premium Podcast

Subscribe to ask a question

Society and Individual Potential

With the understanding that each individual is unique and valuable, and that by speaking truthfully and acting rightly, anyone may contribute significantly to the betterment of humanity, could western society do more to capitalize on this resource?

What does it mean if my life defies my personality traits?

I took the understand myself five factor personality assessment and scored on the extremes of the ranges: Agreeableness 92nd Conscientiousness: 0th Extraversion 28th Neuroticism 26th Openness 96th Until age 25, I was an uneducated musician / actor happy to sleep in and scrape by. I then married and felt the call of responsibility. 20 years later I am an accomplished software consulting executive working long days and weekends and talking on an average of 7 hours of phone calls per day including difficult negotiations of conflict. And I enjoy my job and don’t feel drained after a 12 hour challenging day. Almost none of the predicted negative outcomes from my results seem to be manifested in my life. Did I somehow answer dishonestly? Do I not know myself well? Or is it possible I overcame extreme personality preferences somehow? I don’t know what to make of the contradiction.

How do I get my father to do something meaningful?

My father is a very well accomplished man. He's a business owner who worked extremely hard when he was young and his firm is one of the leading firms in the engineering industry in our country. Now, however, he's become very complacent and lets all his employees do the work for him. I, myself, am in university and striving hard to fill, and even surpass, his shoes. Despite this, he gave up on trying to pursue a doctoral degree and would rather watch movies on netflix. Is there anything I can do to get him to get off his ass?

What if we write about the people we hate instead of traumatic experiences in the past?

Carl Jung often noted that shadow projections turn the world around us into a replica of our unknown faces. In this regard, there is always an uncertainty about ourselves that is reflected in others, and a traumatic events alone don't necessarily have to trigger negative reactions. What if we face the uncertainties within ourselves by writing about others?

Would you consider creating a self-authoring program for integrating the shadow?