If you're not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you're going to be punished for them, then what's your motivation to continue?
Interpretation
The quote questions the value of maintaining one's principles if they lead to punishment instead of reward.
Jordan Peterson's quote highlights a crucial dilemma that individuals might face in life: the challenge of adhering to their virtues in the face of adversity. When good actions result in negative consequences, it creates a significant motivation crisis, making one wonder whether their efforts toward integrity and righteousness are worth the sacrifice. This brings into question the nature of reward and punishment in society and challenges the individual to consider the purpose and impact of their moral choices.
In practice
Use this quote in a motivational speech about the importance of staying true to one's values.
Part of the reason there's an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you're in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let's say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.
I don't tell people, 'You're okay the way that you are.' That's not the right story. The right story is, 'You're way less than you could be.'
Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.
If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.
Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.
Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.
A positive attitude will have positive results because attitudes are contagious.
Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
You are important enough to ask and you are blessed enough to receive back.
Raising your level of performance requires a proper mentality and meaning from within. This gives you the ability and drive to work on the things necessary to go to a higher level. When people ask me how to raise their level of performance, the first thing I ask is, How important is it to you?
Whenever I feel bad, I use that feeling to motivate me to work harder. I only allow myself one day to feel sorry for myself. When I'm not feeling my best I ask myself, 'What are you gonna do about it?' I use the negativity to fuel the transformation into a better me.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.