My Own Rules for Life

I've seen that Jordan Peterson has a new book out, with new rules for life influenced by his recent (negative) health experiences. I don't typically have any time for him, but was interested to read this Guardian review that presented a more nuanced and even-handed view, which, while not letting him off the hook for his own brain-fartery, also assigns blame to over-zealous interpretations of his books and pronouncements on alt-right jerks on the internet.

In the interest of fairness, whenever I've looked at the list of his original 12 rules for life, I've approved, because they are fairly uncontroversial. For example, "make friends with people who want the best for you" is pretty good advice, even if it comes from a right-wing culture warrior with unclear ideas about anything. And I can't disapprove of his final rule, "pet a cat when you encounter one on the street", which implies an appreciation for gentleness and spontaneity that is wholly admirable.

There are some even better ones in his latest book, Beyond Order (which I haven't read, just as I haven't read the previous one). My favorite is "abandon ideology" - physician, heal thyself! "Do not do what you hate" is also deceptively simple but worth remembering.

But it still sort of irks me to let a favorite of the alt-right have this "rules for life" business to himself, so here are mine. They are a combination of my own, and ones that I like from other writers:

• Know what you should be working on at any given time
• This one is adapted from Chris Hardwick's The Nerdist Way. I set a lot of goals, especially for my nightly writing, and it helps to remind myself what I want to work on now, rather than getting lost chasing and not finishing a bunch of different things
• Increase the good, instead of decreasing the bad
• This is from Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You to be Rich. It's more widely applicable than finance, and it's also quite simple. One of his examples is to increase the healthy food that you eat, rather than focusing only on decreasing the unhealthy food. I don't always follow this one as well as I'd like, but it's always on my mind.
• Articulate what you do want, and don't waste time thinking about what you don't
• I got this from Goals, by Brian Tracy. It reminds me to think positively about my goals, rather than trying to articulate what I want by ruling out what I don't. It's applicable for everything from what I want in a partner to where I want to go for dinner (with my partner, of course).
• Better one pleasure than a hundred displeasures
• My dad sometimes repeats this, in Piedmontese dialect, but it's one of those obvious ones that are sometimes easy to miss. And it's related to the ones just before it, so points to me for being thematically consistent
• Stay off social media after 10pm
• This is my own personal rule, and it falls within a broader "no internet before bed" rule. It's not just about sleep hygiene, as the main example I can think of is seeing something that enrages you just before you go to bed. It's bad to subject yourself to such things at most times of the day, but when you go to sleep your brain is free to think about everything it's seen all day, without mediating influences like work, your family or anything else.
• If your mother says she loves you, check it out
• They used to say this around my journalism school. It's not really about your mom, or my mom (who I'm reasonably certain does love me), but a call to really check on things that you learn. It's especially important these days, when right-wing provocateurs have made an industry out of presenting anything done by the left as an affront to common sense. There's always something to dig into. And that goes double for when people are trying to tell you that "the establishment" is lying to you about something (e.g. climate change, fluoride in water, vaccines, etc).
• Check in with your friends
• This is kind of obvious, right? It's been brought home to me in the past year when it's been basically impossible for me to see them physically - at the moment I play Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends, and the weekly check-in feels good, even if we're not talking loads about our daily lives.
• Ask for help
• And finally, one that I've blogged about. When I lost my job a few years ago, I took immediately to Facebook to let people know, and the response was great. One friend took me up to Foothills Park for beer and weed, another went over my resume with me, and a couple more hooked me up with job contacts, one of which panned out. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as that, but when something big happens, it's easy to put it out to your social network that you need help with something, and even if nothing comes back, then at least people will commiserate.

These aren't twelve rules, because that's Peterson's schtick. They might be banal or repetitive or stolen, but they're some of the most important rules I think about all the time, and because they've helped me so much, I think they could help others. Let me know what you think in the comments.