“You should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are”
Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life
Human beings typically do not like rules and restraint. Yet, we need structure in our lives, which is rather challenging without rules. Rules bring order, facilitate cooperation and stable relationships, without which there will be chaos and uncertainty.
The book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B. Peterson covers a wide ground discussing discipline, freedom, ethical principles, psychology, mythology, religion, adventure and responsibility and personal anecdotes, in order to distill the world’s wisdom into 12 practical and profound rules for life. Peterson believes that the way to live a free and full life, is to embrace rules that help you to do good in life. The rules can appear a bit comical and tongue-in-cheek, but they are well thought-through, and thoroughly explained using far-ranging references across a multitude of disciplines, which also allow the reader to dip their toes in material they may otherwise not have entertained. It comes highly recommended, is likely to instill deep contemplation and self-examination, as well as betterment of your life in one way or another.
Jordan B. Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are the psychology of religious and ideological belief, the assessment and improvement of personality and performance. During his time at Harvard in the 90s, he studied aggression arising from drug and alcohol abuse. Peterson considers himself a pragmatist, and uses science and neuropsychology to examine and learn from the belief systems of the past and vice versa, but his theory is primarily phenomenological.
In 2013, Peterson began recording his lectures (“Personality and Its Transformations”, “Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief”) and uploading them to YouTube. He has also appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, Dave Rubin’s The Rubin Report, Sam Harris’s Waking Up podcast, Gad Saad’s The Saad Truth series and other high profile podcasts. In December 2016, Peterson started his own podcast “The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast”, and in January 2017, he hired a production team to film his psychology lectures at the University of Toronto.
By 2018, his clinical practice and teaching duties was on hold. Throughout 2019 and 2020, Peterson suffered health problems in the aftermath of severe benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome. In 2021, he published his third book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, resigned from the University of Toronto, and returned to podcasting. In 2022, Peterson signed a content distribution deal with conservative media company The Daily Wire.
I highly recommend this book. The key points are meant as a preview and not a replacement for the original work. If you are intrigued after reading this, please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the author intended it to be.
Key Points
The 12 Rules for Life in this book are built on the fundamental rule that we must each take responsibility for our own lives. Get your life in order and do the best for yourself, your society and the world at large. Only then will you discover the true extent of your potential and resilience, while helping mankind to thrive collectively.
1. Stand up Straight with Your Shoulders Back (fix your posture)
All animals, including humans, are governed by dominance hierarchies and involuntary biochemical responses. Lobsters, for example, battle for dominance. During a confrontation, 2 lobsters size each other up using their body/claw sizes and chemical secretions (which signal their health, strength and mood). Dominant lobsters have higher serotonin levels, project greater confidence, a better posture, and can fight longer. An alpha lobster typically “wins” without even having to fight physically.
After each confrontation, a lobster’s brain changes. The loser avoids further conflict, whereas the victor gains even higher confidence and serotonin levels. Similar patterns can be found in other animal species. Generally, stronger animals get more food, better dwellings, higher status, better mates, and greater cooperation from others. This is nature’s way of distributing scarce resources.
Likewise, humans have a dominance detector in our brain. How we perceive our social/economic status affects our well-being which reinforces our status in a positive feedback loop.
- People with strong self-esteem feel/transmit a sense of security and confidence, which makes them more attractive and respected. This improves their productivity and well-being, which further reinforces their self-perception. Higher serotonin levels are associated with greater resilience, happiness, health, lifespan, pro-social behavior and leadership.
- On the other hand, people with a low self-perception feel insecure. They are more likely to be stressed, jumpy and reactive. They make poor decisions, fail to command respect/resources, which reinforce their loser complex.
In short, our self-perception affect the vibes we transmit to create a self-reinforcing loop. If you feel like a loser for whatever reason, the first step is to break the negative cycle by correcting your posture.
- Do not slouch
It conveys defeat and a low status, which prompts others to treat you poorly and reinforce your low self-perception. - Attend carefully to your posture
Stand straight, push your shoulders back. Speak up (speak your mind), put your desires forward. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Make eye contact. This will also encourage the serotonin to flow through your neural pathways. It signals confidence to yourself and others. You will feel better, others will show you more respect, and it starts a virtuous cycle. It is about standing tall, facing up to reality and taking responsibility to become all you can be.
To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the responsibility of life. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious existence of childhood, where mortality are only vaguely understood. It means consciously taking on the sacrifices necessary to forge a productive and meaningful life.
2. Treat Yourself like Someone You are Responsible for Helping
We tend to take better care of our pets than we do ourselves. When a pet is sick, we diligently follow the prescribed care. Yet, when we are sick, we fail to fill/take our prescriptions.
You may feel that you are not all that you could be. The proper attitude to have towards yourself is the attitude that you would have towards someone that you genuinely cared for. You are in the best position to take care of yourself, and it is incumbent on you to act as if you genuinely cared for yourself. It is a reversal of the Golden Rule known from e.g. the Bible (“Treat others as you would like others to treat you“), in some sense. You have a moral obligation to treat yourself well, because you make the world a worse place if you do not take care of yourself. Partly because you have something valuable to bring into the world, and you owe it to yourself and the rest of the world to fulfill that mission, or your purpose, or to create something good. Sort of leave the world slightly better than you found it, which is a bit like the Scout rule: “always leave a campsite better than you found it“.
3. Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You
If you make friends with people who want the best for you, then you have to realize that they get to demand the best from you. This is a good thing, as they will hold you accountable to your promises and for you living up to your potential. They will wish you well and commend you, and be happy for you when you have done something well. They will try to lift you up. People like this, will also try to stop you if you plan to or do something that is not in your best interest. They will look after you with the best intentions.
We typically become the average of the people we spend the most time with. In the wrong company, we can end up in crime or even suicide. So, why do we hang around people who drag us down? Do the opposite instead.
4. Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not to Who Someone Else is Today
The Pareto Principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. This applies to many avenues in life, such as for instance 20% of customers of a company yields 80% of the revenue, and 20% of the employees do 80% of the work, etc. You can think of this in many different ways. As you start to become successful, people offer you more and more opportunities, and as you start to fail people will move away from you, and you plummet.
It is also true that a small amount of people sits on most of the wealth in world, this is also true at the nation level. This means that there is a lot of inequality in the world. One can think of the communist experiments in Maoist China and the Soviet Union as examples of attempting to change the wealth distribution from a Pareto Distribution, to a more equal distribution. However, it turned out the cure was far worse than the decease.
Since there is inequality in the world, and we live in a highly-connected, populous world, you will in most cases be able to find someone who are better or better off than you are. One of the consequences is that you can become envious of people that you believe have attained more than you in a deserved or undeserved manner. This can lead to people feeling jealous, bitter or resentful, or in the worst case hopeless.
In order to not fall into despair, you need to do something worthwhile with your life. To do that, you need to keep moving forward. You need an ideal, because you need something to aim at. However, an ideal is a judge, which can make you feel insufficient. The way to manage this is to set a high aim, that inspires you. An aim you can strive towards, while ensuring to break down the path to that aim in enough steps so that the path is fairly clear. Also, ensuring that the next step to take is very clear and easy enough to ensure success, but challenging enough so that you have to to put some effort in and work at it. Thus, move forwards today by making some tiny increment better than who you were yesterday. The effects of this will compound, and make significant impact on your life over time.
From this it follows that it is much better to compare yourself to who you were yesterday or earlier on, and to use yourself as the target for improvement and comparison. By gradually improving your inner game and through that make your life progressively better, which will fundamentally shift your viewpoint, creating a re-enforcing positive feedback loop.
5. Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything that Makes You Dislike Them
Your fundamental job as a parent, especially for a child from 0 – 4, is to make the child eminently desirable socially. You are a successful parent, if your child at the age of 4, are in position so that all sorts of other children wants to play with your child. That is not to say that you are a failure if this is not the case, as there could be several reasons to that, but it is a hallmark of success. In other words, your primary responsibility as a parent is to help your child learn to behave so that the social world opens up its arms to them and welcomes them, at every level. You have done your job if you can manage that, and that is not a simple thing to do.
The rule of thumb is that if you like dislike your children, then other people will. It is a bad idea to allow your children to act in a way that makes other children dislike them or adults dislike them, given that they will have to deal with children and adults.
If you have a particular challenging day, which can happen every now and then, you could inform your children “I am not in a very good mood today, and I am likely to be unreasonable, so it would be best if you would go into your room and play for a little while“. That would allow for your children not to trigger you when you are in a bad state, which would be for the best for both you and the children.
Children are not born with social-cultural skills, they must be taught how the world works and how to navigate human society. Parents who do not set clear boundaries for their young kids actually end up hurting them in the long run.
Kids usually brings out the best in people. When people see kids they light up, smile and oftentimes engage in play with them, regardless of whether they know the children or not. Thus, parents should facilitate so that this property is nurtured and maintained, as this is part of opening up the social world for the child.
6. Set Your House in Order Before You Criticize the World
Bind your ambition with humility. Work on what is right in front of you. Work on yourself and your own suffering, before attempting to engage in large-scale transformation of other people.
Setbacks and suffering are inevitable in life. Some people respond with denial, helplessness, anger, resentment or even acts of vengeance (e.g. genocide). Yet, others are positively transformed by adversity, they make peace with what happened and devote themselves to making a positive difference.
Be mindful that even feelings such as resentment can be a great teacher. Listen to your resentment and try to understand and learn why you feel that way. A resentful person typically would like other people to change. However, as Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn did that resulted in the book The Gulag Archipelago, you can examine your own life and the choices you made with a fined-toothed comb. In that examination, you attempt to figure out when you made the wrong choices (at times when you knew what the right choice was), and why that happened. Then, with this newly acquired insight, you can apply this to the life you have in front of you, and make better choices. Peterson argues that this can be very powerful, and in addition to Solzjenitsyn he also refers to Nelson Mandela as an individual who’s personal examination served as an inspiration to the world.
This law/principle is also quite similar to the quote in Matthew 7:3 from the Bible “…why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye, but not notice the beam in your own eye?” (the small faults in the people around you, but do not address your faults which are typically more pronounced). Or, as we know from the Michael Jackson song “Man in the Mirror”:
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could’ve been any clearer
If they wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change“
The message is quite the same. Start with self-examination and introspection. Work on yourself, before judging externally, also it might be that a lot of the challenges and suffering that you are facing can be relieved from within through different perspectives, mindset and choices.
7. Pursue What is Meaningful (not what is expedient)
We can use suffering as an excuse to live carelessly in the moment, or we can do something meaningful to minimize the suffering. In some sense that is the core ethos of the book.
Imagine the atrocities of e.g. war, and work on yourself to come to terms with the fact that you, as all other people, are capable of unthinkable evil. Come to terms with that given a certain set of circumstances, mindset and a certain situation, it would even be possible that you could enjoy doing those horrific actions. However, you are also capable of doing good, and breaking those (in this case theoretical) thought patterns, and choose to take other actions for good. You are also capable of doing actions that would yield immensely wonderful outcomes. Thus, it is within your power to pursue what is meaningful and good, and based on that epiphany you should re-furbish your mind, and act accordingly.
8. Tell the Truth — or, at Least, Don’t Lie
Rule #8 is a necessary conjunction to rule #7. Peterson does not think that you can pursue what is meaningful without telling the truth. The fundamental reason to not lie is because you corrupt your own perceptions. When you corrupt your own perceptions, then you can not rely on yourself. If you can not rely on yourself, what are you going to rely on in the absence of your own judgement? If you lose rule 7, then rule 8 tell the truth — or, at least, do not lie will get you some of the way.
All of us are guilty of lying to ourselves and others from time to time. Find out why you lie, how you to avoid it in as many instances as possible. Some people even get stuck in a “life-lie”, which can be severely detrimental to the quality of our life. Attempt to search for and live your personal truth (ref. rule #7).
For an even deeper sense of the importance of not lying, we would also recommend reading the book “Lying” by Sam Harris.
9. Assume the Person You Are Listening to Knows Something You Don’t
This is about recognizing your own ignorance. You are going to be surrounded by what you do not know your entire life. If you can appreciative this fact, then it is going to make things easier for you. Why should you be appreciative of what you do not know? If you believe that things could be better with regards to your own personal life and the effect you have on other people, then what you do not yet know will be more important than what you do know. Always be hungry to learn new things. Thus, pay attention to find out what you do not know in every possible instance.
Listen intently and try to summarize what the other person said in order to validate whether you actually got it. If you did not get it right, then continue until you get it. When you do get it, then you need to grapple with what was being said. Oftentimes this can mean that you (and probably the other person) need to stop certain behaviors and change others. This can be uncomfortable, challenging and perhaps also unlikely. However, if you do not, then you continue to face the same challenge every day for the rest of your life. Thus, it is probably far better to undergo the misery of stopping/changing it, than the misery of continuing it.
Reflections: Foster the attitude that each person in world have at least one thing you can learn, and that you will have at least one thing to teach them, and it is your job to try to uncover what that is through conversation. This mindset leads to being curious about the other person, and being humble rather as opposed to arrogant or assuming. It will also lead to wonderful encounters, new friendships and acquaintances and vast amount of interesting stories and perspectives that will enrich your own life as you enrich others’ life (and make you less ignorant as Peterson would say).
10. Be Precise in Your Speech (define your problem precisely to make it manageable)
Be precise in your speech. Peterson’s thinking is a variant of a New Testament injunction (from the Bible) “ask and thy shall receive“. You might get what you aim at, and your aim might get better as you aim as well. If you specify the nature of what you seek/want, then you radically increase the probability that it will occur. Your parents may say that you are not living up to your potential, which is actually a compliment, but also a judgment. You could be more than you are. You will hang your head if you have any sense and consider that this untapped potential actually constitutes a transgression against the good you could yield.
We avoid looking deeply into a problem in the hope that it will go away by itself, but this only causes the doubts and uncertainties to build up into a catastrophic failure.
11. Do Not Bother Children While They Are Skateboarding
This is actually a discussion of courage, of encouragement, more specifically. What role parents play in the lives of their children? Attempting to guide your children, so that they act in a socially desirable manner so that the world opens itself up to them. You also want to encourage them. The world is a very hard place. It is a bitter place in many ways. It is also touched with betrayal and malevolence and that is the fundamental bottom line. However, there is something in you (your child) that is capable of taking that full-on and transcending it, and that is encouragement. As difficult as things are, you are up to the challenge.
To interfere with children when they are e.g. skateboarding, when they are doing inadvisably dangerous things (which kids of course do), is to interfere with the child’s willingness to voluntarily expose themselves to the risks that they need. They need these risks in order to develop the sort of competence, tenacity and resilience that allows them to thrive in a world they cannot be sheltered from. Thus, to interfere with children when they are taking necessary risks is not love or empathy, but cowardice on the part of parents. It is deeply damaging to children. As a clinical psychologist, Peterson have never had a client say: “my parents made me too independent“.
In nursing homes, the rule is to not do anything for anyone that they are capable of doing themselves. The reason being that it would a kind of theft. If you do something for someone and it facilitates their movement forward, then they moved forward because you helped them. This is something Peterson was very careful about as a therapist. He did not want to give his clients advice. It might fail, in which case they are going to pay for my advice. If it succeeds, then Peterson would get to be the successful one, and he does not want to steal the success from his clients. He wants to help them figure out what it is that they should aim at and then help plot out a strategy for attaining that. He wants to ensure that it is their destiny, not something he is imposing. The imposition of that sort of thing is the hallmark of a bad therapeutic relationship, but also a bad relationship in general.
One of the things you want to do with your partner/your spouse/your children is to listen to them so that you can figure out what their problems are. Then perhaps aid them in the development of a strategy, but you have to ensure very carefully that you are not imposing your own structure in a manner that is going to steal from them what is rightfully theirs.
A certain amount of provision for safety is worthwhile. You should probably wear your seatbelts when you are driving, because you do not want to take foolhardy risks. Encouragement is a much better medication than sheltering. Life is essentially not a place to attain happiness or even to aim for happiness, even though you should be grateful if some comes along. The element of e.g. a book or movie that is gripping, is the adventure. The way that you facilitate the adventure is through encouragement.
Peterson once had a client who said his girlfriend wanted to go bike around southern Ontario. She talked to her parents and they made every provision possible to help her prepare for the journey. To make sure her bike was in good shape. To make sure she had the right equipment to help her plot out a route. When he talked to his parents, all they did was worry that he was going to get hurt. He might get hurt because, but they did not understand that they were choosing between the hurt that he might encounter having an adventure, or the hurt that he would encounter by staying at home cowering in his basement under the protection of his over loving parents while his girlfriend ventured bravely into the world.
12. Pet a Cat When You Encounter One in the Street (take the time to appreciate the good things in life)
This is sort of a meditation on fragility. When things have gone badly for you (tragedy in your personal life, family, community, etc.). How do you cope with that? It is immensely helpful to narrow your timeframe. Sometimes the right way to look at the world is across years, while other times it is across months. When things are more out of control, perhaps it is across days, or even across hours/minutes. During that time you concentrate on doing the best with what is in front of you for the longest unit of time that you can tolerate. Conceptualize it. Then you take the time to appreciate everything you can that manifests itself in that moment of grief/despair.
Suffering is inevitable and some people seem to have to go through more than others. If you find yourself wondering about the seemingly-pointless suffering around us, this rule can aid us in seeing things from a different perspective and to balance the good and bad in life, so that life regains purpose and seems worth living.
If we did not attempt to make terrible things even worse than they are, then maybe we could tolerate the terrible things that we have to put up with in order to exist. Maybe we could make the world into a better place. This is what we should be doing, what we could be doing and frankly we do not have anything better to do.
A good person is someone who is trying to get better. The real goodness is in the attempt, in the process. When you learn something painfully, there is a part of you that has to die. When a dream is shattered, the part of you that constituted that dream dies with it. In this light, life is a constant stream of birth, death and rebirth. Each time a part of you dies, the new part that emerges is something better. The betterment of people comes from voluntarily undertaking that process of death and rebirth. So, to fully participate in life, is to allow yourself to trust the process and be redeemed by it.
We can use these 12 rules to guide us. It is not easy, but we should trust the process. Until the entire world is redeemed, in a sense we all fall short, but that is ok as we are continuously improving.
If you would like to continue down this fascinating rabbit hole, please consider the below episode #1070 of the Joe Rogan Experience with Jordan Peterson in relation to the release of the book “12 Rules for Life“.
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