Jordan Peterson - What To Do If I Don't Have Any Goals?

What if I don't have any goals or passions to begin with? How do I start making future plans if I have no motivation for anything?

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[SirJoelsuf]

"There's probably like 5 things I can do today that can make tomorrow slightly better"

Genius.

[Zaphod]

Sometimes you clean the room, and sometimes the room cleans you

[Invisibleful]

Goals do not appear from nowhere. The trap behind the idea of 'life goals' is that we wait for something to happen, some mission or quest to appear in front of us, but while we wait, we forgive ourselves for being completely useless. We avoid studying, trying to be more talkative with strangers, taking on projects that we aren't that passionate about, and for all that we have that hidden excuse up in our heads "When time comes, I will show how powerful and motivated I am by achieving what I truly call my life goals".
And over time, something just doesn't feel right, nothing appears, we start to give up, feel hopeless, directionless. But when you come to think of it, the many different tasks that you avoided might have been a path to series of engaging, truly meaningful goals that you strive for.
The trap is basically, we want our goals to appear infront of us, but they don't, because we don't engage in solving our little goals, that might have been the true path to finding our passion.

[timwestchester]

You know that thing that happens when you tell your parents a joke or ask them a simple question and it turns into a full-blown, 30 minute, moral lecture? I have to imagine that that happens in the Peterson household far too often lol.

Jordan's son: "Dad I saw a snake today!"

Jordan: "You know, snakes are the symbolic representation of the archetype of the unknown. You see recordings of this in biblical literature dating back

[littlebighead]

It's not like I don't do what I need to
My apartment is clean and organized
I have 3.8 GPA and will soon be graduating in less than a year
I just feel like I have no direction, purpose, or motivation
It's a problem that I've been facing for the last 3-4 years of my life, and I started to seek professional help recently
Don't even know why I'm writing this truthfully
I guess it helps me

[recency_bias]

This is reminding me of my dad telling me 99% of what we do is fighting back against the chaos and 1% is active progress.

[bearistotle]

Jeez.
I really need to clean my room.

[zikdeec]

It reminds me of a quote:

"Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, then suddenly you'll find yourself doing the impossible."

[williamkoscielniak]

I've been sober for about 5 months now but I've been having intense cravings these last few days and just going through a rough time. I was having cravings just like 15 minutes ago and then I watched this and I realized that I needed to vacuum a small portion of my room that had cat litter on it. I did so and for now the cravings have subsided and I feel some peace.

[mermaidman]

Past few months I've been overly stressing about my purpose in life, but I think we get too caught up in people who say they've _always_ been passionate about a certain thing, and _always_ knew they were meant to pursue it, and that puts us off guard since many of us, myself included, don't feel that way towards anything.

In this scenario, I think it's up to us to make our own purpose. Which is hard, because how do you know it's the right thing to do? I've always been way too concerned with getting things right the first time, but sometimes you just gotta let life happen. What looks like craziness to me now is just my story unfolding.

[blast]

Society: You should follow your own dreams and passions. Don’t let others decide your goals

Me: I don’t have any



Edit: I made this comment a year ago. A year later, I finally found my passion.. I would always put away my dreams aside because I was afraid that I would fail someday. Now, not anymore.

I hope you’ll find your dreams/passions too

[Musashi]

Step 1: Clean your room & fix immediate problems in your life until you feel a sense of order and stability
Step 2: Look around you, inside your sphere of influence, and change things that need improving
Step 3: By creating that rythm and stability you will widen your perception and will be able to see things that will lead you to your goal, your vision. Then follow it.

[armandozertuche]

I feel like I don't have any dreams or hopes for the future. I dont even know where I'll be a year from now... and it just feels like I'm lost..

[jamessullivan]

He's spot on with this one. If you can't find a mountain to climb, look around you. Your messy room is full of mini mountains. Look at yourself, make it your goal to fix yourself up. Strive to take a sword to the little demons and in the process, you'll become better at wielding the sword, so when the time comes you'll be ready to take up the bigger challenges (which you'll probably find amongst all the smaller ones anyway). If you haven't found a purpose or passion already, it's because you're either distracted by sin or you're too weak to wield that sword. So get out there and start swinging.

[Preest]

Peterson blows my mind every time I hear him speak.... No one has had such impact on me.

[CrocPit]

Been stuck on the “clean your room” phase for three years now. I have a super clean house, but still utterly directionless in life and no idea where I wanna be even in two years

[OneLine]

Once you cleaned up your room, go clean other people's room.

[ananyochatterjee]

the way this man speaks, his cadence, his body language is so captivating and leader like. it's an honor to listen to him.

[GearsDemon]

So it seems like he is saying create a to do list of anything and everything that needs to be done and start knocking things off of that list. Don't procrastinate. Take action immediately. Clean your room.

[mrfoucs]

Listening to him is like a father giving you actual life lesson
At this point my eyes started tearing because i realised my father would never try to talk to me like that. Even though some peoples have a situation worse than mine sometimes i wish he never appeared in my life