A summary by Josh Hughes

This book is great! An absolute must read for anyone who wants to put their life in order and might not know where to start.

Below I have summarized and given a small take on each rule, so you may get a brief explanation.

A bonus to any potential reader is that this book is available on audible, narrated by the author himself, Jordan Peterson.

As stated on the previous page, I must stress how much you are losing out if you do not read through the chapters in the full book for an in-depth understanding of these rules, and why acting them out is so powerful.

"Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back"

In this chapter, Jordan dives in deep to the psychological importance of standing up straight with your shoulders back. He uses stories about lobsters, (believe it or not there are many memes of Jordan and his stories about lobsters) chimps, and other animals. Animals, including humans organize themselves along dominance hierarchies. What is a dominance hierarchy? A dominance hierarchy is how living things organize to establish leaders based on things like physical strength, competence, wisdom, and even compassion. Dominance hierarchies typically dictate how resources are split among a population of not only humans, but all living species. Standing up straight with your shoulders back not only gives you a higher perceived place within the dominance hierarchy, but it raises your serotonin levels, and will actually condition you to win. Inadvertently slumping and not standing up straight will give you a losing mentality on a subconscious level, and will condition you to lose in you day to day endeavors.

"Treat Yourself like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping"

This is an interesting rule. What makes it so interesting is why people at large don't do this automatically. Why is it that people have a tendency to skip doses of medication for themselves, or decide to not take them at all? People on average will move mountains to make sure their children or pets take the prescriptions that they have been given, AND on schedule! Now, it is reasonable to assume that your pets, and/or your children love you, and would want you to take your prescriptions on time. So why are we so dismissive about taking care of ourselves? A strange trend, yet a trend non-the-less. 

Take the time to take care of yourself, eat healthy, exercise, and set yourself up on the right path by aligning your actions with your values and goals.

"Make Friends With People Who Want the Best For You"

Now we are talking! People make friends in so many different ways, for so many reasons. It is necessary as humans to have a good friend or two. Friends can keep you level headed, be called upon to get you out of trouble, lend an ear when your need one, and countless other things. Great friendships are one of the relationships that make life so grand. When you make a friend, sometimes you overlook certain things because you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, or frankly you don't want to lose them as a friend. The old adage "Take a look at your closest five friends, you are the sixth" is true for a reason. If you are to improve your life, it would be best for you to surround yourself with people who also seek to improve their lives. "Iron sharpens iron" it might be hard to find these types of friends, but when you do, make certain to keep them. There are the type of friends who are the polar opposite, people who will encourage you to call of work to hang out with them, stay out late drinking all night even though you said you only wanted to have one drink and get to bed. You don't have to cast these people out into the cold and never talk to them again, but it would be best for you to spend less time with them, and make some friends who want the best for you.

"Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday,

Not to Who Someone Else is Today"

This is going to be a hard rule to follow for most people. In today's world you can peak into successful people's lives through the lens of tv and social media, and that can be dangerous. It is helpful to have an idol or a hero, however you cannot allow yourself to get demoralized by the fact that you have not achieved the same level of success as they have. Envy is one of the sins for a reason. Jordan has discussed that the word sin on top of having the religious implication, has the meaning "to miss the mark" and has been a common term in archery.

Work on improving yourself day to day, and run your own marathon, do not think you have lost because someone else has finished theirs.

"Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything That Makes You Dislike Them"

Now, of course you are always going to love your children. The point of this rule is that with your deep love of your children, if they are doing something that makes you dislike them even a little bit... Strangers will hate your child. You owe it to the world and your child to prepare them for adult life. Your child will not make it anywhere if there are an intolerable person. Correct the bad behavior, so they can make people like them, and they can later use those people skills to be successful.

"Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World"

This rule is where all the memes about Jordan Peterson telling people to make their beds has arisen. There is only so much you can do in the world, but your house is arguably going to be the easiest thing for you to put in order. When your room is in order, it sets a positive precedent to your morning. When your house is in order, it can achieve its ultimate goal. Your home can and will serve many deferent purposes depending on your lifestyle. Most people's idea of a home is somewhere to relax, spend time with love ones, and even host events for the ones they care for. How can you actually relax when you are buried in filth? You can pretend, or you can even worse, accept a dirty unorderly house. Unacceptable.

It is easy to criticize nearly anything, it is not however easy to lead by example. Just because it is difficult to live your life in the ideal way, and may even be near impossible, doesn't mean that you shouldn't stive towards the epitome of what your life could be.

"Pursue What is Meaningful (Not What is Expedient)"

There are many stories that have exemplified this idea that I'm sure we have all heard. One that comes to mind is the story of Cain and Abel. Abel was favored by God, and Cain seemed to always get the short end of the stick. Cain eventually got so envious of his brother that he killed him, and as the story goes, became humanity's first murderer. This is a dark story indeed. Why was Abel favored and Cain was more or less looked over? Well, if you read into the tale deeper, you can deduct that Abel's sacrifices were of much higher quality that Cain's sacrifices. It is because Abel made the highest quality sacrifices that he earned God's favor. This story as far as anyone can tell, illustrates that if you make the proper sacrifices in life, you will be rewarded.

As humans have evolved over the millennia, we have learned and observed about the concept of the future. This may not seem like such a big deal to us now, however it is the discovery of the future that allows us to have things we hardly even think about because they seem so simple. Money exemplifies a "bargain" with the future. Think about it. The only reason why you or anyone else accepts money in a trade for goods and services is because we can largely count on someone accepting the money from us in a trade further down the road. This means that we can largely count on the world not collapsing around us, and we can even save our money as a representation of work that we have performed in the past to trade for things far into the future.

If you look at largely successful people across time, it seems like one of the things that they all have in common is that at one point or another, they delayed satisfaction. Going to the club might feel good tonight. It might feel good tomorrow night, and every night that you go. You know what would be exponentially better? Owning the club. You are never going to stumble upon owning a club by being a frequent patron and by being a chump. Don't go. Save. Spend that time doing something, anything productive. Even if you aren't using that time productively, at least you are saving money. Clubs aren't my thing personally, but I hope it is an easy enough example that you can apply to whatever activity you might be wasting your time and money on at outside of work hours.

"Tell the Truth, or at Least Don't Lie"

Telling a lie almost can be tied into our last rule of pursuing what is meaningful. Every-time you tell a lie, your word loses value. Even a white lie is a lie. The classic example "Does this dress make me look fat" might come to mind. In this laughable exchange of dialog, say what you honestly think. Now, there is no need to be rude about it, however if you have any love or respect for this individual, you should be able to communicate your thoughts effectively. "You look so beautiful in the yellow one you tried on earlier" for example.

Here is a more practical example in why a white lie might just haunt you for the rest of your life. You fall in love, and are head over heels this person who you just adore, and can't get enough of. The stars have aligned, and you two get married. One night for dinner, your now spouse makes you a meal, something that they say is their specialty. You can't wait to dig in, everything that this person has made you feel is beyond words, and if this is their specialty, you know you are in for a real treat. Its gross. You can't stand the smell, the texture, and its worse than having no flavor, it tastes terrible. Now, you love this person, and this is a meal that they made and feel proud of. Is it really in your best interest to not voice that you don't like it? Do you really want to sit and fight down your dinner once a week for the rest of your life? Maybe Twice a week? I don't think so. Tell the truth, and save yourself and your spouse the heartache later down the road.

"Assume The the Person You Are Listening to Might Know Something You Don't"

Everyone has their own journey. People will tell you just about anything if you actively and genuinely listen to them. Regardless of how high or low you may be on the scale of perceived intelligence, you can always learn something from anybody. Sometimes this information will categorize in the "things not to do" rather than advice that you would apply to your own life. A differentiator between people who are smart and those who are wise:

A smart person learns from their mistakes.

A wise person learns from the mistakes of others.

For tens of thousands of years, all of human's knowledge was passed down from generation to generation orally. Though we can learn things from what we read, and what we see, it is important to see the value in what everyone brings to the table.

I will treat you with a quote from Bill Gates:

"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it"

"Be Precise in Your Speech"

You cannot help the fact that people are going to interpret any message in their own way. Given this fact, it is still your responsibility to be as accurate in the words you use as your can mange, to minimalize the misinterpretation of what you said. I'm sure that there have been plenty of times in your life that something you said was not interpreted in the way that you meant when you said it. Could you have been more accurate in the words you used? Could or should you have been more descriptive? Did you deliver your message in a tone that wasn't your intention? This task can be a tall order, because you don't want to belittle someone by over explaining something. If it is of the highest importance that you always tell the truth, if your words can be twisted to mean something unintended, whether you meant it as a lie or not, it may be perceived in that way.

"Do Not Bother Children When They Are Skateboarding"

Now, this can be taken literally, but this rule is a distillation of a larger concept. The essence here is that you must allow children to take risks. Skateboarding can be dangerous, adventurous, and a creative avenue. If you shelter a child and cage them from the world, they will never be able to take risks. Any pursuit worth going after is going to involve a degree of risk. You can scrape your knee, you can even break an arm. You live and you learn. As a child, it is important to fall and get back up. If a child reaches adulthood and hasn't learned to deal with adversity and risk, they may take a small fall, and instead of brushing it off and getting back up, they will make it out to be a much larger problem than it had to be.

People need risk. You should not seek to avoid risk, but to optimize it! Challenge yourself, so you can grow.

"Pet a Cat When You Encounter One on the Street"

Another rule that you may take literally, however it is best to extrapolate the larger meaning. Take a Breath of fresh air. Enjoy the little things. Be kind to animals you come into contact with. (Please, do not pet a bear or other wild animals, I WILL NOT be responsible for your poor judgement on that on that one!)

Life is full of beautiful and mysterious things, do not get so wrapped up in your day to day human existence that everything blends into the void.

One of the most refreshing things about being around children is how you can experience things for the first time again through their eyes. A child will ask you questions about things that are miraculous to them, just because they are new to them, though that magic has dissipated in your life because it has become mundane.