Stop Waiting and Start Stumbling: The Path to Becoming Yourself
Jordan Peterson explains how personal growth works through the Jungian concept of circumambulation: your future self calls to you through interest, but you must act despite uncertainty and incompetence. Mistakes and overshooting are not failures—they're how you learn. Waiting for the perfect idea or moment guarantees stagnation; doing it badly is infinitely better than rotting at home.
The Call to Adventure: Your Future Self Beckons
Circumambulation: Spiraling Toward Your Potential Self
Jung's concept describes how your future self—everything you could become—manifests in your present life by making you interested in specific things. These interests are not random; they guide you along the path of maximal development. As you move through life, you circle closer to your true self, like a musical theme with variations, gradually revealing who you're meant to become.
Interest Is Your Biological Compass
You are biologically set up to be automatically interested in things that would fully expand you as a well-adapted creature. This is not mystical or metaphysical—it's profoundly biological. Your interests capture your attention because they lead down the path of genuine development.
The Fool Precedes the Master
You must be willing to be a fool before you can become a master. When new parts of yourself manifest and grip your interest, you initially do it badly and shoddily, stumbling around like an idiot. This foolishness is not a barrier to mastery—it is the necessary precursor to it.
The Paralysis of Waiting for Perfection
Almost All Ideas Are Stupid—Start Anyway
The probability of getting your idea right the first time is zero. Almost all ideas are stupid, but waiting for the perfect idea is futile because you are too incomplete to recognize it even if it appeared. Waiting turns you into a 40-year-old thirteen-year-old—perpetually unprepared and stagnant.
Nietzsche's Will to Stupidity
Nietzsche called the refusal to act despite uncertainty a 'will to stupidity.' The proper response is to take tentative steps on your pathway to destiny while assuming you will do it badly. This removes the burden of perfectionism and makes action possible.
Doing It Badly Beats Rotting Away
The recurring message in Genesis is that flawed people should have left their father's house earlier. They stumble through tyranny, famine, self-betrayal, and violence—but this is infinitely better than rotting away at home. Action, even clumsy action, generates growth that stasis never can.
How Overshooting Leads to Precision
The World Shifts as You Move
When you move toward your goal, your perspective changes and you become sharper and more focused. The target that glimmered before you shifts location—not because you failed, but because you now see it more accurately. You may need to reverse course almost 180 degrees, but you are far ahead of where you started.
Learning What Not to Do Teaches What to Do
As you overshoot repeatedly, you learn what you shouldn't keep doing. Learning enough about what to avoid is tantamount to learning what you should do. The errors are not wasted—they are data that refines your path.
Overshooting Decreases Over Time
As you progress, the degree of overshooting declines. This is observable and not hypothetical: when learning piano, you make wild mistakes initially, then errors disappear. Children learning language babble every human phoneme before zeroing in on their native language's sounds after hundreds of repetitions.
The Desert After Escape: Chaos Before Reconstruction
Exodus: Escaping Tyranny Only Begins the Journey
When you escape a tyranny—whether external or the pathological axioms you held—you think you're free. But you're not on the way; you're in the desert. You wander stupidly, worship the wrong things, until you finally reorganize yourself morally and head in the proper direction. Freedom from something is not the same as direction toward something.
Nothing Is Better Than Pathological Something, But Still Hard
When you shed baggage and pathological scaffolds that were keeping you in place, you're left with nothing. Nothing is better than something pathological, but you're still stuck with the problem of nothing. This is why enlightenment is not a linear uphill climb but punctuated by intermittent deserts and catastrophes.
Collapse Is Par for the Course, Not Failure
When you move forward and collapse, it's not indication that you failed—it's indication that growth is really hard. Collapse is punctuated and expected. When you learn something, you also unlearn something, and unlearning is painful. Not knowing this leaves you screwed when the inevitable desert arrives.
The Permission to Be Imperfect
Your Faults Don't Require You to Stop
The fact that you are full of faults does not mean you have to stop moving forward, nor does it mean you cannot learn. You can posit an ideal even if you're wrong about it—what matters is that you move toward it. Imperfection is not disqualifying; it is the condition of all growth.
Doing It Badly Is Accessible to Everyone
Anyone can do something badly. This is not a high bar, but it is the bar that matters. You don't need to be efficient or perfect; you just need to do it and move forward. The trip may be more interesting precisely because it's inefficient.
Notable quotes
It's way better to do it badly, than not to do it at all. — Jordan Peterson
You're too stupid to know when you've got it right, so waiting around isn't gonna help. — Jordan Peterson
It's a hell of a lot better than just rotting away at home. — Jordan Peterson
Action items
- Identify one interest or calling that glimmers before you right now, no matter how uncertain you feel about it.
- Take one tentative step toward that interest this week, accepting that you will do it badly.
- When you make mistakes or overshoot, remind yourself that this is how learning works—not a sign of failure.
- Notice where you are waiting for the 'perfect moment' or 'perfect idea' and commit to moving forward with imperfection instead.
- Reflect on a past collapse or desert period in your life and recognize it as part of the growth process, not a detour.