This book was very interesting. It had a lot of stories and deep knowledge of different things in depth along with the explanation and application of the rules. Even though the book was a little long in appearance (It was 350 pages long, your call if you want to call it long or not. š), it was an easy to read. The stories were intriguing and sometimes it was hard to put the book down. The book was very detailed so I have included only the most important parts in the newsletter. Take my word for it, if you want to read a non-fiction book that will amaze you, read this book, high chances, that you will love it. There are some rules which are metaphors and I will explain them too. As the summary is detailed, it might be a little lengthy, but trust me it is worth it. Dr. Peterson in the whole book focuses on how life is full of suffering and how you canāt avoid it. But with these rules, you can learn how to handle it.
Scientists have been using lobsters to understand human behaviour. Like other animals (and humans too), lobsters like to maintain a hierarchy. Territorial rights and social status go hand in hand for them. It is often a matter of life and death. The most dominant bird and animal occupy the best territory and have better chances of mating with higher quality mates. Contrary to popular belief, lobsters learn this on their own, not by watching others. If you would take a lobster who was born and brought up in an aquarium, and leave it out in the wild, it will automatically compete among other lobsters for a higher place in hierarchy.
Now hereās an interesting thing about lobsters. When the dominant lobster loses, it affects its brain. It affects so much that it will dissolve and grow a new brain that is more appropriate according to its social status.
Priceās Law (1963): An empirical rule which states that the majority of scientific publications in any field of study would likely come from a comparatively small number of authors.Matthew Principle (Matthew 25:29): To those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.
Now humans also stay in hierarchy naturally. To improve their ranking in the hierarchy instead of fist fighting, they compete in other things like skills, money, power, etc. Like lobsters, the better social status of a person, the better options they get for mating, they live a better life, have better neighbourhoods, etc. And the better ranking, the better confidence you will have. When you are confident you have better posture, you stand straight, you donāt slouch.You can induce confidence in yourself by having a better posture and this confidence will make you rise the status ladder.
Generally people tend to have a slackish attitude when it comes to taking care of their own health. They wonāt take proper medication or rest to get better. They will not do things that are good for them. They will give in to cheat days even when they know it is bad for them. But when they need to do the same for someone they care for like their partner, parents, kids or even pets, they will make sure they take proper medications and proper rest, they will do things that are good for them.
Author also talks about order and chaos in this rule. He tells how traditionally order is symbolically associated with masculinity. This is perhaps because hierarchy in nature is generally formed by males. Order is explored territory. Itās where you know everything and nothing new comes to disturb you. Similarly, traditionally chaos is symbolic with femininity as all the things we know were born of the unknown, just like everything we know were born out of mothers.
When you look after yourself like you look after someone whom you care for or are responsible to look after, you will look after yourself much more seriously. You will not do things for short term gain. You will do things that are actually good for you instead of doing things that feel good. When you look after others with such care, why shouldnāt you look after yourself the same way. Afterall, you are the most important person to yourself.
Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth or perhaps when they refuse responsibilities for their lives - they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people donāt believe that they can deserve any better. Sigmund Freud called this a ārepetition compulsion.ā When people choose people who are not better than them they get a false sense of security that whatever they are doing is quite good as no one in their circle is doing better than them in their circle. These friends will neither stop you from doing stupid things nor they will punish you for doing mistakes which you could have avoided. They will look away from your bad behaviour letting you be as you are or even let you get worse.When you make friends with people who want the best for you, you have an inner hope for improving. Because if you donāt want to improve yourself, no one else can. These good friends will help you in making you better. They will put in efforts from their side in an attempt to make you better. They will appreciate you when you do good things and punish you when you do stupid bad things.They will not overlook your bad behaviour. And when you are in a good company, you will want to improve too. These friends will motivate you to be better.
When people are young and live in small towns and small schools, they are good at one thing or another. So good, they are known for that by people around them. But when they move to cities with bigger populations, they feel discarded as they do not feel special anymore. Similarly, when people start with something new, they will look at someone and see that the other person is so much better than them. They start feeling bad about themselves. This method of comparison is absolutely wrong and you are ruining things for yourself when you do this.Someone else is not your competition. Your competition is you. Everyone has their own pace. When you compare your day 1 to someone elseās day 1000, you just demoralise yourself. What you should instead do is, you look at yourself. Look who you were yesterday and compare it with today. Observe how you have grown today, what new things did you learn today (For example, yesterday you didnāt know the summary of the book, but today you have already learnt four out of twelve rules.) Once you compare yourself to yourself, you will be focused on yourself more than you would on others, you will see your small flaws and then you will know how to correct them.
Children are hungry for attention. This attention comes from parents, peers or even other people. This attention is necessary for their growth too. When they fail to grab attention, they will do something a little more attention seeking. And they will do a little worse every time they fail to get attention. This same thing applies to when kids do a bad thing. If they are not stopped, they will continue doing that and will even grow worse. For example if you donāt stop your child when they snatch away someone elseās toy, they will do it again and they will snatch other kidsā toys too. And with time, this habit will become worse. When the kids are all grown up and they will show this kind of behaviour, you will resent them. This includes not finishing their food, sleeping late, fighting with other kids, etc. So, instead of letting that phase ever come into your life, you stop them from doing things that make you resent them.
When we look at the world, we see it is full of flaws and we imagine how good it would be if it was in perfect order. Many of us are ambitious enough to fix it too. But what we forget is that, we too, are full of flaws. We focus more on the outside world rather than ourselves. We try to fix the world when we should be fixing ourselves.
If you cannot bring peace to your household, how dare you try to rule a city?
When you are good yourself, only then you can ask others to correct themselves and become better others. And once you become better, the world becomes a little better too.