Regardless of what you think about Jordan Peterson I don’t think you can deny that some of his ideas in 12 Rules for Life are worth while.
My current favorite is rule 8:
“Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie.”
I think there is something foundational about this "rule". Telling the truth is noble and good and keeps us as society on the right track. While each lie is just another step towards disorder and chaos. But the catch is that telling the truth is hard, so hard infact that most of us aren't capable of even attempting to speak the truth, however we can try and stop lying. So at least we aren't making things worse, even if we can't make them better.
Recently I have tried to observe myself in my daily activities and I feel like I consistently catch myself lying. Nothing major, nothing supposedly harmful, but nonetheless still lies. Like describing not getting good sleep for couple of days as “hanging on with 4 hours of sleep for multiple days” even though as you can see from the actual data even on my worst night I managed to get 5 hours of sleep in.
For non-Finnish speakers left time is “time in bed” and right one is “in sleep”
Sometimes it is about stating something as a matter of fact even though I only have a vague feeling that I am right - thankfully so far I have been right and haven’t had to eat my words, but I still don’t like the feeling I get when I catch myself in a lie and worst of all in a lie that doesn’t even matter.
How can I trust myself to tell the truth when I daily catch myself lying to my friends, colleagues, and myself? I guess all I can do is to work on myself and hopefully I can come out as a better person and maybe someone I can start telling the truth instead of merely not lying.