Watch – Jordan Peterson on What Makes a Good New Year’s Resolution

Psychology professor and author Jordan Peterson told Breitbart News that a good New Year’s resolution is to compare yourself to who you were yesterday and begin by making small incremental improvements, adding that starting with small steps will have a larger impact over time.

Dr. Jordan Peterson spoke to Breitbart News this month at Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he suggested a New Year’s Resolution that everyone can implement – one focused on “conduct[ing] your life in a slightly more honest and useful manner than you managed today.”

“Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today,” said Peterson, who mentioned that he had written about making these improvements in his book 12 Rules for Life.

“It’s a good resolution to figure out small steps forward that you would actually implement, and be pleased that you can make that kind of incremental improvement.”

“It’s also extremely useful to know that even though the steps forward might be small,” added the professor, “and small enough to be humiliating when you are forced to admit how small they have to be so that you will implement them, it’s still an unbelievably powerful method across time.”

“It’s also extremely useful, even just to resolve that it would be a good thing to do everything you can in your own life to improve so that you improve your situation and the situation of people around you.”

Peterson said that while this may be a “generic” New Year’s Resolution, society would come a long way if everybody simply focused on these small steps toward personal improvement.

“That would be a good thing,” said Peterson, “because who knows what would happen if everybody tried to make things better instead of trying to make them worse.”

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo and on Instagram.