By: Joseph and Sumay McPhail
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, professor of psychology, and author of the book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”. Peterson is widely regarded for his views on relationships wherein he emphasizes the importance of honesty, listening, and sharing deep interests. While Dale Carnegie teaches us a lot about how to win friends...Jordan Peterson can help us to build deeper relationships that help us to become better people.
Always tell the truth. That means being honest with ourselves and our friends. This can be hard sometimes, like when our feelings get hurt or when we need to set boundaries. But honestly is the foundation of trust. If we don’t trust our friends or they don’t trust us then it becomes very hard to grow a deeper relationship. At the same time...being honest does not mean we say everything we think all the time. We also need to be careful about how what we say might help others. Giving unsolicited advice like telling people how to change or fix their problems might honestly reflect how we feel, but we also need to be honest with ourselves about what we know and what we don’t know. Good friends don’t presume to know how others should live or deal with their unique situations because we can’t honestly say that we know what it is like to live in someone else’s shoes. We can help our friends in times of need but that requires that we learn to be great listeners.
Listen with the goal of understanding. People are like packages waiting to be unwrapped, but it takes a good listener to find out what’s inside. Listening requires patience and recognizing that we can always learn more about other people. When we give friends the gift of listening we help them to feel understood and that is one of the greatest gifts we can give. Sometimes when we talk to friends we forget to really listen, and that means focusing on what our friends are saying instead of just thinking about what we want to say next. Good friends will return the favor.
Build deep relationships around shared profound interests. We all like to relax and have fun, but what if that is all we do with our friends? Shallow friendships are born out of shallow experiences. If we don’t share deep and profound interests then we may discover that our relationships don’t have much meaning. Profound interest can be a lot of things. They can be a shared interest in learning about how to build better relationships, a project to help kids learn to love learning, and a book club around an interesting topic. What matters is that the shared interest is deeply important to you and your friend. That way you can pursue that interest together and in so doing build a deeper appreciation for your relationship.
Jordan Peterson is a psychologist and author with many insights on how to live life better. In this lesson we learned three ways to build deeper relationships. Specifically, he emphasizes the importance of honesty, listening, and sharing deep interests. We contrast Dr Peterson’s views with our Makeshift Homeschool lesson on Dale Carnegie who teaches us a lot about how to win friends...Jordan Peterson can help us to build deeper relationships that help us to become better people.
Question #1: People should tell the truth because
A. Trust is necessary for deeper relationships
B. Truth always makes us feel good
C. Being right is more important than being kind
D. We should always say what we think
Question #2: People should listen with the goal of understanding because …
A. Listening shows we care
B. We should fake interest in order to make friends
C. What we want to say is not important
D. Listening is easy … everyone does it naturally.
Question #3: Deep shared interests …
A. Help make for deep relationships.
B. Usually involve watching TV
C. Never involve personal growth or helping others
D. Create barriers between friends
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