Recently I have been doing a course Self-Authoring which I found through Jordan’s Peterson work. It consists of writing about your past, present and future. The idea is to understand everything that has happened in your life (at least the main key points), understand where you are right now, which tools you have available in your daily life and also your weaknesses.
This helps you plan your future by creating goals, describing them, setting a timeline as well as ways to keep track of all your goals. In this review, I will share three reasons why you should try this course and learn more about the power of writing. Follow on for Jordan Peterson: Self Authoring Program – A Course Review.
Intro to Self Authoring
Easy to Follow
“Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).” -Jordan Peterson
The course is divided into the following chapters:
- Present Authoring – Faults
- Future Authoring
- Present Authoring – Virtues
- Past Authoring
You can decide which one you want to do first, and they also provide you with their recommended structure. You can always go back and change what you wrote, the course recommends that you take your time and be honest with yourself.
You can even send a report of what you wrote to your email and then delete everything in the course so you can do it again every year, after reaching all your goals.
Benefits
“Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.” -Jordan Peterson
Let’s start with the past authoring. Writing about our traumas and suffering, which can be hard to do, helps us understand why and what happened, especially after years of living with it, with a mature and different point of view.
The truth is that we will not let go of our pain until we understand it. This is a hard pill to swallow, but it’s worth it.
“The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity.” -Jordan Peterson
Now, focusing on the present part of the course, when writing about our faults and virtues we can identify what is hurting us in the present and how to change it, while also identifying our strong points and how to take advantage of them.
The last point is future authoring, here we can set values and shed some light on our future, writing about what we want (a family, closer friends, a career, a better job, etc).
Price
“You must determine where you are going in your life, because you cannot get there unless you move in that direction. Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with (and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse).” –Jordan Peterson
You can buy each one of the chapters separately or buy them all for a good price. The whole course costs just $29.90 (USD) and depending on where your perception of value is at can seem expensive or cheap.
I will argue that this is a course that you can re-do once or twice per year so it has amazing benefits in the short and long term.
So, would you try the Self Authoring Program? Would you dare to look at your demons from the past and look them straight in the eye? As the great guru of famed spiritual teacher Paramahansa Yogananda (Sri Yukteswar) said “Look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you”. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
