do not hurt yourself by looking at that which was not destined for you.

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

The shadow would be all the parts of the personality that the persona rejects, and that might be the aggressive elements - certainly that’s the case for people who are highly agreeable. There’s two pathways tied to the development of the shadow, and they’re both tied to one another; the fundamental pathway is truth, and that’s to face the bitter truth about yourself but, to break that down more particularly, you might think about that as the capacity to observe your own resentment; you’re going to be resentful and bitter in many situations because you don’t get what you want, and if you watch that resentment and bitterness, you’ll see that it produces fantasies that can be unbelievably dark. And that can be very frightening, and you might not want to admit to yourself that you’re actually capable of having fantasies like that, or impulses, or aggressive feelings like that. But the thing is that if those aggressive feelings and impulses and fantasies are integrated into your character it’s like you’re opening up a dialogue with a part of yourself that can be very forceful and strong, and dangerous. And it’s really useful to be dangerous - if you can be dangerous, you often don’t have to be. And it’s often weak people; for example it’s weak men generally speaking who [commit] violent acts, but it’s born out of weakness, not of strength, that’s for sure. And so, anyways, you attend to your resentment honestly and you observe yourself and what you’re actually like, you gotta pay attention as if you don’t know yourself - as if you might harbour hidden devils. And then maybe they’ll emerge.

The Most Valuable Things Everyone Should Know by Professor Jordan B Peterson

If you actually want something, you can have it. The question then is what do you mean by actually want? And the answer is, you reorient your life in every possible way to make the probability that that will occur as certain as possible. And that’s a sacrificial idea right? It’s like, you don’t get everything, obviously… But maybe you can have what you need, and maybe all you have to do to get it is ask; but asking isn’t a whim, or today’s wish. You have to be deadly serious about it

“Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember.”

“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”

We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.

The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let it go into the heart of compassion; you can weep. Releasing the grief we carry is a long, tear-filled process. Yet it follows the natural intelligence of the body and heart. Trust it, trust the unfolding. Along with meditation, some of your grief will want to be written, to be cried out, to be sung, to be danced. Let the timeless wisdom within you carry you through grief to an open heart.