Mindmap: 12 rules for life
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back
The opposite neurochemical configuration produces a defeated-looking, scrunched-up, inhibited, drooping, skulking sort of lobster, very likely to hang around street corners, and to vanish at the first hint of trouble.
# A lobster with high levels of serotonin and low levels of octopamine is a cocky, strutting sort of shellfish, much less likely to back down when challenged.
Those at the bottom are generally less healthy and don’t live as long (The poor and stressed always die first, and in greater numbers. They are also much more susceptible to non-infectious diseases, such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.). Being at the bottom necessitates a lot of emergencies and a strong will to survive but this burns our energy.
# Many human games are winner take all or winner take most so being a winner often has exponentially positive effects
You feel safe and secure so can take more risks, change is typically seen as good and you can be more confident, courageous, and generous, can be on less alert and plan long term, you can delay gratification. All characteristics, traits, behaviors that enhance chances of success.
Being higher up in the food chain, in the social hierarchy, has obvious social, physical, psychological, physiological effects which ripple into everything we do or undertake.
Many difficulties stem from biological imbalance and if we can get our sleep, diet, health in order.
# Having predictable daily routines offsets much chaos, unpredictability and ultimately fear that many people experience – go to sleep and wake up at similar times, have a high protein and fat breakfast.
Created by Danh Miller
Read 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
Rule #2: Care for yourself like how you’d care for someone else
Rule #3: Surround yourself with people who want the best for you
Rule #4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
No matter how good you are at something, or how you rank your accomplishments, there is someone out there who makes you look incompetent.
Growing might be the most impotant form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?
You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits.
We all live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If you did not see things this way, you might be in a frame of time within which nothing matters. Because, you cannot navigate, without something to aim at, because to see you must focus and to focus you must pick one thing above all else.
Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey up hill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.
“What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?” Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest.
“What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it?” assuming you are foolish enough to try
Rule #5: Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
Rule #6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
Understanding resentment, revenge, and the dark side of humanity is very helpful but you must come to know these in yourself before you can judge others. Once you see how hard it is to expect these things of yourself, you will better understand others and not have sky high expectations.
Rule #7: Do what is meaningful not what is expedient
Doing anything meaningful requires sacrifice and sometimes the bigger the sacrifice the more meaning you can gain.
Delayed gratification, planning, and sacrifice are essentially bargains with the future – you give up something today in order to have more and better tomorrow.
What is the biggest most impactful sacrifice you can make today and what is the most idea future that would create? Define this for yourself and align your life to give yourself the best chance of making that happen.
What is even better than sharing is sharing generously, without expecting anything in return, for this has many positive unintended effects and everyone loves and helps those who are generous.
The most successful sacrifice: any sacrifice which is difficult to make, and is personal. Do this until it becomes easy, until it’s routine.
Rule #8: Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie
Never lie for it is the road to hell. If you lie, you can’t present your true self to others and you will never get to know your true self either.
You have to know:
⦁ Where you are and where you are going so that you can chart a course.
⦁ What your principles are, what you stand up for, so that you can argue against those who do not believe in what you do, so you can protect yourself, and you can more easily tell what is worth striving for.
True thinking: Thinking can be thought of as a conversation between two or more avatars in your head and you have to be able to take each one of their sides, listen to each one, see how they would play out in your reality and then act on it.
Memory exists in order to help you not make the same mistakes over and over again.
Truly listening to someone is one of the rarest skills and gifts there are.
People organize their thoughts through conversation and if they have no one to share them with, they lose their minds. If you can truly listen, people tell you more than you could ever ask for and they will generally be very interesting and help you grow as a person.
Rule #9: Assume person you’re listening to knows something you don’t
What you don’t know is more important than what you know.
If you truly listen to people they’ll tell you what’s wrong, what they want, and how to fix it.
Rule #10: Be precise in your speech
