As long as you control the chaos around you.

The book I’m talking about is “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”, by the psychologist, professor and author Jordan Peterson.

Pretty self explanatory title, I know.

However, I feel like some of the rules he argues for are more important than others.

This is, evidently, coming from my own experience with each one.

In case you haven’t ever heard of this book, here are the 12 rules:

Rule 1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

Rule 2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.

Rule 3. Make friends with people who want the best for you.

Rule 4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

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.

Rule 7. Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

Rule 8. Tell the truth—or, at least, don’t lie.

Rule 9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.

Rule 10. Be precise in your speech.

Rule 11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.

Rule 12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

The ones that most impacted my life as a young adult starting his professional career teaching English to teenagers and adults were, without a shadow of doubt, rules 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and, above all, 7.

Let me explain why, starting with the first rule.

In order for me to do so, I need to give some context first.

I grew up with a dad who worked as a ship welder and a stay-at-home mom.

He religiously woke up at 3:50AM every single day for work because his commute would take him around 2 to 3 hours since he needed to take a bus and a ferry.

We had enough to get by, but definitely not enough to do more than that.

Going to the movies, for example, was pretty much a luxury.

The reason why I say this is because when you grow up in an environment like that, you tend to develop the mindset to just accept whatever comes your way.

Your reality is problematic in so many ways, it feels like you can’t really do much to change it.

That affects your outlook on life and on yourself.

And the way you carry yourself reflects it whether you notice or not.

It’s quite easy to see it: next time you’re on the streets, look at the people around you and see if you notice a pattern with the ones who give off a “happier” vibe.

You will for sure.

And this is exactly what rule 1 talks about.

Rule 1: Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

Peterson describes how, in the animal kingdom, posture is linked to dominance and social status.

Lobsters, for instance, display dominance by standing tall and upright after winning a battle, which increases their serotonin levels and improves their chances of winning future confrontations.

Peterson explains that by standing up straight, you can “voluntarily accept the burden of Being.”

That means taking on responsibility and striving for a meaningful life.

Doing this strengthens your own sense of self-worth and ability to face challenges.

As a matter of fact, I had this one student years ago who was the perfect example of this rule.

Not for nothing he reminded me a lot of my younger self.

He would talk to me about how he had low self-esteem, how he wanted to start working out too but couldn’t afford to go to a gym and how he didn’t feel good about himself.

Here’s the coincidence: if you saw him walking in the streets like I did sometimes, you’d be able to tell it right away.

All of his thoughts manifested in the way he walked.

Hunched over, as if he was trying to shelter himself away from the world.

It was because of the change I started going through and noticed a lot of people needed to as well that the second rule made so much sense to me.

Rule 2: Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.

My life truly changed when I understood this.

We might be willing to go out of our own way to care about and help out our friends and family.

But not to ourselves.

I used to be exactly like that, but could never figure out why.

Then, I came across this part of the book:

“[…] every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God. If that stark fact meant, however, that we had no responsibility to care, for ourselves as much as others, everyone would be brutally punished all the time. That would not be good. That would make the shortcomings of the world, which can make everyone who thinks honestly question the very propriety of the world, worse in every way. That simply cannot be the proper path forward. To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you. […] You need to determine how to act toward yourself so that you are most likely to become and to stay a good person. It would be good to make the world a better place. […] You could begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.”

See, that’s the thing we fail to understand.

We are not merely ourselves.

We are all part of this gigantic and extremely complex network of people in society.

This means that, if you truly care about others, then you have no choice BUT to take extreme good care of yourself.

Otherwise, you won’t be able to do anything for anyone.

It might sound like a cliché, but it’s absolutely true.

And it is due to precisely that, that you should also be very mindful of those you allow to be close to you.

Some people do not want what’s right for you and will actively make it harder for you to accomplish that.

Hence rule number three.

Rule 3: Make friends with people who want the best for you.

Ask yourself this question right now:

“Would most people around me truly rejoice in seeing me managing to accomplish something great?”

Truly reflect on it though.

I remember one time when I aced an exam while studying Physical Education in college and was so freaking happy for having done it.

I shared the news with two friends of mine from back in the day.

One almost seemed happier than me, screaming “LET’S F*CKING GOOOOOO DUDE!!!”.

The other literally sent me a picture of her semester report showing she had aced almost everything that semester.

Needless to say the latter and I no longer talk.

However, here’s the interesting thing:

I no longer talk to the first one either.

The reason why is because, when I started going to the gym, eating right, reading more and learning other things, not only did he not follow, he actually criticized and mocked me for “wanting to show off and be better than the others”.

Funnily enough, because I stopped associating with these people, I felt like I had enough reason to see myself as this sort of superior being, way above average.

That’s when a friend of mine who was an entrepreneur and had just surpassed 1 million in revenue started to take longer to reply to my messages.

And not just that.

Every time we spoke, I’d notice our convos took longer to develop.

It felt like we just couldn’t connect anymore, even though I’d try my best to do it.

And, with time, I understood him.

He had already told me multiple times that I was the best teacher he had ever come across and that I should take more chances.

He even offered to back me up financially for any projects I had with no guarantee whatsoever of the outcome.

But I chose to play it safe.

He didn’t.

Every time we spoke, his mere presence served as a reminder of that.

I knew I was wasting my potential because he wasn’t wasting his, and anyone could tell it too.

He started associating with like-minded people while I stayed the same out of fear.

We naturally grew apart and, for the first time, I truly understood what Peterson was talking about in the end of this rule’s chapter.

In his own words:

“When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future. Then you disturb others, in the depths of their souls, where they understand that their cynicism and immobility are unjustifiable. You play Abel to their Cain. You remind them that they ceased caring not because of life’s horrors, which are undeniable, but because they do not want to lift the world up on to their shoulders, where it belongs. Don’t think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgment, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity. Make friends with people who want the best for you.”

What I failed to understand back then, however, was what rule 4 states:

Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

I would compare myself to that friend and feel horrible because of it.

At the same time, I would compare myself to other polyglots or language tutors on the internet and feel terrible because of how many languages they spoke or how big their businesses already were.

But I was ignoring lots of things as well.

I, an able bodied Brazilian guy in his early twenties who had full-time access to the internet, all his essential needs met, spoke English to a native-like degree, had 20 something private students and therefore my own small business, was feeling terrible because of how much I hadn’t yet achieved.

Comparison truly is the thief of joy.

I was so caught up in looking at the neighbor’s grass that I didn’t realize my own was greener than that of many people.

Not only that, I felt like sh*t too.

I was aiming so high I didn’t notice I was already flying.

Once I understood that, I noticed many of my students had the same problem with languages.

They’d see a colleague who spoke better than they did and envy or resent them for it.

They’d feel inferior to them because of it, undeserving of promotions and new opportunities.

And because they felt that way, they’d behave accordingly and reject any new opportunities they’d receive that required the other language because they were sure the other one would do a much better job of it.

They were aiming too high.

If all of us had just focused on becoming a bit better than yesterday, our progress would be exponential.

We wouldn’t even be able to imagine how big our growth could be.

We just had to stop looking around and look deep within ourselves.

Find our own inadequacies and start working on them day by day.

That’s exactly what Peterson talks about:

“You no longer have to be envious, because you no longer know that someone else truly has it better. You no longer have to be frustrated, because you have learned to aim low, and to be patient. You are discovering who you are, and what you want, and what you are willing to do. You are finding that the solutions to your particular problems have to be tailored to you, personally and precisely. You are less concerned with the actions of other people, because you have plenty to do yourself.”

But in order to do that, you need to follow what rule 6 says:

Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

Be fully honest with yourself and ponder the following:

“Consider your circumstances. Start small. Have you taken full advantage of the opportunities offered to you? Are you working hard on your career, or even your job, or are you letting bitterness and resentment hold you back and drag you down? Have you made peace with your brother? Are you treating your spouse and your children with dignity and respect? Do you have habits that are destroying your health and well-being? Are you truly shouldering your responsibilities? Have you said what you need to say to your friends and family members? Are there things that you could do, that you know you could do, that would make things around you better? Have you cleaned up your life? If the answer is no, here’s something to try: Start to stop doing what you know to be wrong. Start stopping today.”

And look, I know.

The world isn’t fair at all and life can and will really suck sometimes.

But complaining about it without considering what you could have done to possibly improve your current situation even if by at least 1% won’t get you anywhere.

That’s why I love Peterson’s straightforward recommendation:

“Don’t blame capitalism, the radical left, or the iniquity of your enemies. Don’t reorganize the state until you have ordered your own experience. Have some humility. If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city? Let your own soul guide you. Watch what happens over the days and weeks […] Perhaps you will discover that your now less-corrupted soul, much stronger than it might otherwise have been, is now able to bear those remaining, necessary, minimal, inescapable tragedies. […] Perhaps you will become an ever-more-powerful force for peace and whatever is good. Perhaps you will then see that if all people did this, in their own lives, the world might stop being an evil place. After that, with continued effort, perhaps it could even stop being a tragic place. Who knows what existence might be like if we all decided to strive for the best?”

Now, you may do your best to follow all of these rules and the other ones, but to able to do it the first place, I believe rule 7 needs to be your utmost priority.

Rule 7: Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).

How will you put your life in order if you can’t properly judge what is truly valuable and what isn’t?

Who is truly valuable and who isn’t?

Think about it:

All of the rules you read above imply new behaviors.

Which means new habits.

Which means new thought processes.

We’re talking about literally changing your identity.

Again, that will not take place in a week or a month.

It truly is the work of a lifetime, but it starts today.

And it starts by you leaving your biases behind and acknowledging what is truly meaningful and deserving of your time and attention (which are your life energy).

This rule is the main reason why I say this book will put your whole life in order, and what I consider to be the main idea that’s helped the most ever since I came across it.

It made me understand the necessary balance between chaos and order.

As Peterson states:

“Meaning is the ultimate balance between, on the one hand, the chaos of transformation and possibility and on the other, the discipline of pristine order, whose purpose is to produce out of the attendant chaos a new order that will be even more immaculate, and capable of bringing forth a still more balanced and productive chaos and order. Meaning is the Way, the path of life more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that.”

Once you truly value what’s meaningful over what is expedient, all the other things will follow a lot more naturally.

But don’t get me wrong, it will take work and effort.

No doubt about that.

But this right here is the catalyst.

The one thing that changes it all.

I highly encourage you to grab a copy of this book if you still haven’t read it.

And if you’re not the type to read (yet), then you can watch this summary on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApC0faRYabI

Ponder on all of this as if your life depended on it.

Because it does.

And it will be immeasurably better if you truly do so.

Ad astra, my friend.