12 rules for life summary

The author explicitly notes down the twelve outright ways of living a peaceful life with each chapter outlining each of the rules to comprehension. He argues that the world is amassed with hordes of suffering but individuals are subjective to either the choices of relinquishing and retreating or tackling it as it comes through facing and transcending the suffering. Peterson also concentrates on the meaning of life and opines that meaning of life should precede the meaning of happiness and its pursuit. Additionally, he notes that happiness is an effect of the meaning of life. Moreover, the happiness can be guaranteed when individuals shift their comparison from others to self the previous self to the present self (Jordan 54). This is a determinant to the subsequent performance because a winner has a high probability to win more in life, unlike a pessimist individual who notes defeat portrayed through the posture.

The rule therefore invaluably shares out how individuals physically or psychologically react and behave in different circumstances that gauge their lives. The physical reaction portrayed by the posture we display can extensively affect the neural circuits either positively or negatively. An individual who portrays the posture of a winner through standing straight chest out and shoulders back positively affects his or her neural circuit. It illustrates that an individual has chosen to ignore the chaos that the world might get at his disposal choosing the orderly way. As the saying notes, we are the average of the five individuals we spend most of our time with. Though the rule sounds familiar and simple, Peterson dives into the psychology knowledge in an endeavor to illustrate how and why friends are essentially imperative in defining our lives.

They can, therefore, make our lives easier or terrible. Despite it, some factors compel individuals to a given type of friends as exemplified by self-esteem. People who don’t believe in themselves are indignant of their self-identity culminating to the wrong choice of friends. This would translate to making them feel good. Nonetheless, Petersons prompts individuals not to let their children do anything that would make them dislike their children. In social psychologies, parents are noted to be the first agents of socialization. Moreover in most cases children would tend to emulate what their parents do to what they say. Therefore the young adults we have in the society are the culmination of the type of socialization individuals received in their tender years of socialization.

The rule, therefore, encourages the need to clean up our lives in an endeavor to live a good life less of havoc and of order. The pursuit of what is meaningful not what is expedient. Petersons urges that individual need to practice the art of sacrifice. Sacrifice refers to the act of forgoing temporal present gratification to future long-term gratification. Most youths forget the essence of future gratification on the contrary pursuit of happiness which is also temporary and short-term. Having great knowledge helps an individual live good. Being precise in our speeches is important going by the fact that we live in a cluttered world that is murky in information and everything. This predisposes the brain to more confusion. However, the ingenuity of the brain makes it easier making the world simple.