12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Jordan B. Peterson, 2018
Why do some people hold on through hard times while others break? Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson put together twelve rules for bringing order to your life when there is chaos all around. Behind them are fighting lobsters, the fate of a school friend, a late-night talk with a biker and the author's daughter's serious illness. The book's main idea: the meaning that comes from responsibility matters more than chasing happiness.
Who it is for
For anyone whose life seems to be coming apart at the seams and who doesn't know where to start. And for anyone who wants to understand why taking responsibility for your life can give you more than chasing happiness.
If you have a friend you wouldn't wish on your sister, your father or your son, why would you want them for yourself?
When the familiar cracks
Imagine your life is going to plan: work, home, the people you love. And then suddenly the familiar cracks. Someone you love leaves, a child falls ill, a job disappears. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto, calls moments like these chaos. For him, chaos is everything unexpected and unfamiliar, everything we aren't ready for. Order, by contrast, is everything familiar: everyday tasks and people who behave predictably.
Peterson believes that order alone isn't enough, and that there can be too much chaos. The best place to live is on the border between them: you stand with one foot on familiar ground and step into the new with the other. His book is made up of twelve rules about how to stay on that border. They all share one main idea: take on as much responsibility for your life as you can. In the author's view, this is exactly what gives life meaning, and meaning matters more than happiness.
Ahead are lobsters that lose fights, the author's school friend who was dragged down by the people around him, a biker with a toaster at two in the morning and Peterson's daughter with a serious illness. Here the twelve rules are gathered into five themes: you yourself, your aim, the people around you, your words and your pain. Let's start with the lobsters.
The lobster that lost the fight
Lobsters live on the ocean floor and are always fighting over shelters under rocks. When two lobsters meet, a ritual begins. They wave their claws and squirt a liquid at each other that tells each one how big and strong the rival is. If neither backs down, it comes to a real fight. Peterson describes what happens to the loser. He loses the will to fight, even against lobsters he used to beat. And after a crushing defeat, his brain almost dissolves and grows back, but now as the brain of a subordinate animal.
The winner and the loser have different brain chemistry. The winner has more serotonin, a substance that carries signals between nerve cells. He carries himself tall and confident. The loser shrinks and hides. If you give him serotonin, he stretches out again and goes back into battle.
Peterson believes that people, too, have an ancient counter working deep in the brain. It keeps track of how we are treated and decides where we stand among others. A slumped posture tells both the counter and the people around you that you have lost, and they start treating you like a loser. That's why the book's first rule goes like this: "Stand up straight with your shoulders back." For the author, this rule isn't only about posture. To stand up straight means to accept life's difficulties willingly and meet them face to face.
The second rule grows out of a strange observation. According to Peterson, out of a hundred people who are prescribed a medicine, a third don't even buy it, and half of the rest take it the wrong way. Yet when a dog is sick, its owners give it its pills more carefully than they take their own. The author explains it like this: we know our own weaknesses and secret failings better than anyone, so we believe we deserve less.
Hence the second rule: "Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping." This doesn't mean spoiling yourself. Candy makes a child happy, but you can't feed a child nothing but candy. Taking care of yourself means doing what is truly good for you.
Peterson shows where to start, using his own patients as an example. The first thing he asks is whether they get up at the same time every day and eat a proper breakfast soon after waking. He says that for many of his patients, these two habits alone noticeably eased their anxiety.
About the author
Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist and a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He used to teach at Harvard. His lectures on psychology and ancient stories have been watched millions of times online.
All books by this author: Jordan B. Peterson
Terms from the book
- Serotonin
- Inner critic
- Chris
- Ed
- Tammy
- Rogers
- Arthritis
- Chaos: Peterson's word for everything unexpected and unfamiliar: a disaster, a change, something a person isn't ready for. It's the author's image, not a scientific term.
- Order: Peterson's word for everything familiar and predictable: your usual routine, clear rules, people who behave the way you expect them to. This is also the author's image, the opposite of chaos.
- Simons: Daniel Simons, an American psychologist who studies attention. He's known for an experiment in which viewers fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit.
- Fairview: A small town in the north of the Canadian province of Alberta, where Peterson grew up.
- Alberta: A province in western Canada.
- Edmonton: The capital of the Canadian province of Alberta, a big city. When the author was young, about 600,000 people lived there.
- Denis: Peterson's neighbor and landlord in the years when he was training as a clinical psychologist at McGill University in Montreal. A former prisoner and the leader of a local biker gang, originally from Quebec.
- Mikhaila: Jordan Peterson's daughter. Since childhood she has lived with a serious joint disease.
- Columbine: An American school where two students opened fire and killed their classmates. Peterson cites their writings as an example of hatred for all of humanity.
- Solzhenitsyn: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer who went through the Soviet labor camps. He wrote "The Gulag Archipelago", a book about the camp system of the USSR.
All terms
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