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Lewis Howes"FOLLOW This Life Advice To CHANGE Your Future In 2023!" | Jordan Peterson
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Chapter summaries
Why an aim is necessary: meaning vs. bitterness and cruelty
Jordan Peterson argues that without a clear aim, suffering becomes pointless and leads to bitterness. He says bitterness tends to turn into cruelty toward oneself and others, making life and the world worse. Lewis Howes presses the idea that an aim is needed at any stage of life to reduce pointless suffering.
- •An aim provides sustainable meaning; without it, pain and anxiety spiral into bitterness
- •Bitterness can transform into cruelty and resentment, harming self and others
- •Life contains unavoidable adversity; being aimless makes it feel pointless and worse
- •Lewis frames the takeaway as needing an aim regardless of life stage
Mapping your past to orient your future: the Past Authoring Program
Peterson introduces selfauthoring.com and explains why establishing an aim requires knowing where you are. He describes the Past Authoring Program as a guided autobiography that helps people organize emotionally important memories. The goal is to understand what happened and avoid repeating negative patterns.
- •You can’t orient yourself on a map without knowing where you are
- •The program breaks life into epochs and examines key positive and negative events
- •Memory’s purpose is learning what went wrong so you don’t duplicate it
- •Painful recurring memories indicate parts of life that haven’t been properly mapped
Why painful memories persist and how writing helps you ‘fix it’
Peterson explains that lingering memories keep returning because the mind is trying to prevent future repetition of a past pitfall. He describes anxiety as a system that repeatedly flags unresolved problems until you address them. Lewis asks how to fix it, and Peterson says the work begins by understanding how the situation arose.
- •Recurring painful memories suggest unresolved understanding of a past failure
- •Anxiety repeatedly replays events as a demand to ‘fix it’
- •Fixing starts with figuring out why it happened—often not simple
- •The writing program exists because thinking it through is complicated
Present vs. Future Authoring: strengths, weaknesses, and building a workable plan
Peterson distinguishes Present Authoring (virtues and faults) from Future Authoring (setting aims). He says the question “What do you want?” is too vague, so the program narrows it into structured prompts. He emphasizes treating yourself as someone you’re responsible for helping and looking three to five years ahead.
- •Present Authoring focuses on leveraging strengths and addressing faults
- •Future Authoring breaks the vague ‘what do you want?’ into structured questions
- •A key mindset: treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
- •Look three to five years ahead with the assumption you’ll make necessary sacrifices
Designing your life domains and how aims reshape perception
Peterson walks through major life domains the Future Authoring prompts explore—family, career, education, health, temptation, time use, and intimate relationships. He claims aims structure perception, changing what you notice as opportunities and obstacles. He also stresses completing a rough plan rather than waiting for perfection.
- •Future Authoring prompts cover family, career, education, health, and relationships
- •Plans include managing substances and using time meaningfully outside work
- •Aims ‘structure perceptions,’ helping you see pathways and obstacles
- •A bad plan is better than no plan; you can refine once you start
Motivation needs both a destination and a ‘hell’ to avoid
Peterson says motivation strengthens when you have something to run toward and something to run away from. He describes an exercise: envision the worst plausible outcome in three to five years if weaknesses multiply. Lewis asks for examples, and Peterson lists common patterns like lying, procrastination, impulsivity, and resentment.
- •Motivation increases when you’re going somewhere and avoiding somewhere else
- •Exercise: imagine your life becoming as bad as it could be in three to five years
- •Examples of weaknesses: lying, procrastination, avoidance, narcissism, impulsivity
- •Writing the negative vision helps push action when hope alone isn’t enough
Discipline, exercise, and the long-term cost of avoiding pain
The conversation shifts to the idea that ‘structured pain’ (hard conversations, training, sacrifice) prevents deeper pain later. Peterson and Lewis use athletics and weightlifting as examples of deliberate difficulty building capacity. Peterson connects physical fitness to cognitive function and argues exercise is foundational as people age.
- •Short-term sacrifice can prevent larger future suffering
- •Athletic improvement is framed as years of deliberate pain and discipline
- •Peterson links physical fitness to maintaining cognitive function
- •He contrasts people who built a physical base early with those who didn’t
Turning vision into goals: steps, calibration, and a compelling rationale
Peterson explains how to convert a vision into specific goals, ranked and broken into incremental steps with timeframes. He warns against setting inappropriate goals to justify failure and bitterness. He adds that goals need a justification that benefits you, your family, and the broader community to withstand doubt and criticism.
- •Convert the vision into ‘stateable’ goals and rank them in a hierarchy
- •Break goals into incremental steps with timeframes to raise success probability
- •Mis-calibrated goals can become an excuse to stop trying and become bitter
- •A strong rationale should be good for you, your family, and the community
Ethics, self-doubt, and living so you can ‘speak of what you do’
Lewis asks how to overcome others’ opinions and self-doubt; Peterson says criticism stops you when it echoes doubts you haven’t addressed. He argues for taking doubts seriously and grounding action in ethical reasoning, including reducing unnecessary suffering. He also discusses conscience, and later shares his personal fear about health and his disciplined routine to keep going.
- •External criticism lands hardest when it aligns with your unresolved doubts
- •Taking doubts seriously can improve your goal and strategy
- •Peterson frames ethics as living without violating conscience and reducing unnecessary suffering
- •He shares his biggest doubt: whether he’ll be healthy enough to continue, and describes a strict routine
Catastrophe close to home: his daughter’s illness, narrowing timeframes, and resilience
Peterson recounts his daughter’s severe childhood illness, the pain she endured, and the family’s strain. He says when life becomes unbearable, you shrink your timeframe to what you can tolerate—down to a week, a day, or an hour. He emphasizes not letting illness become a character excuse and describes how they tried to prevent psychological collapse while adapting practically.
- •He describes years of intense pain and medical crises affecting his daughter
- •Coping strategy: shrink the timeframe until it becomes tolerable
- •Family rules and boundaries (like stopping certain discussions at night) helped preserve functioning
- •He warns against using illness as an excuse and blurring illness with character
Public visibility, reputation risk, and the demand to be careful with words
Lewis asks about mass attention and reputation; Peterson says reputation matters but emphasizes deserving a good reputation through truthfulness and care. He describes fear of being ‘shredded’ publicly for real or perceived ethical errors and how visibility increases risk. He says acting so you can speak of what you do is a safeguard against reputational catastrophe.
- •He distinguishes caring about reputation from focusing on deserving it
- •He describes the high cost of ethical errors or even the appearance of them
- •He credits careful speech and a public record of lectures as a buffer
- •He warns about both lying in words and ‘lying in action’
Money, marketplace discipline, and the danger of casual contempt
Peterson explains his views on money through the lens of building and selling the self-authoring program, emphasizing that price is tied to value and sustainability. He discusses discipline, conscientiousness, and respecting marketing and sales as necessary skills. He warns that ‘casual contempt’ for domains you don’t understand blocks learning and leaves you unskilled and vulnerable.
- •He argues selling can be appropriate because pricing reflects value and sustains infrastructure
- •He emphasizes discipline, conscientiousness, and hard work as major drivers of earning
- •He criticizes contempt for sales/marketing and says it undermines success
- •He shares a lesson about needing lower-intensity leisure skills and not dismissing relaxation
Marriage practices: truth, conflict resolution, negotiation, and maintaining romance
After the sponsor segment, Lewis asks about the keys to a long, functional relationship. Peterson highlights truthfulness, necessary fights, and working issues through rather than hiding them. He describes using repeated patterns as a trigger for discussion, the role of vows in making honesty possible, and the importance of negotiation—including around sensitive topics like sex.
- •He says their foundation is doing their best not to lie to each other
- •They confront problems to the bottom so issues don’t ‘drag behind’ them
- •He recommends calling out recurring issues and negotiating future behavior
- •He argues vows reduce escape routes, increasing motivation to solve problems; he also discusses jealousy and sexual negotiation
Parenting, discipline, and creating a ‘walled garden’ for family play and peace
Peterson reflects on raising children, especially under the stress of illness, and describes aligning with his wife on child-rearing to avoid being divided. He explains discipline as helping a child become self-disciplined and gives an example of teaching his son to regain control of anger. He closes by describing family play as precious, fragile, and dependent on addressing conflict rather than avoiding it.
- •He emphasizes unified parenting and shared strategy between spouses
- •Discipline is framed as helping a child master impulses and become competent
- •He describes creating conditions for play—security that allows experimentation
- •He says delayed conflict multiplies and resentment can be either a warning of oppression or immaturity
