Pain is inevitable in life, but there are ways to alleviate it. This book provides twelve rules for us to abide by, each corresponding to a common life problem. When facing life’s conundrums, we should adopt a positive attitude, set goals, engage with issues, solve them, and take responsibility for our lives. When dealing with negative emotions, we should actively find ways to remove obstacles, establish a better outlook, and live a truthful life.

 

Hi, welcome to Bookey. Today, we are going to unlock the book 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos.

 

If someone says, dignified or worthless, people live like lobsters, would you agree? Don’t be so quick to shoot down the idea. Imagine one of your friends serves a lobster at a dinner party and asks everyone’s opinion of the impressive dish. What do you think they would say? Probably something along the lines of “Looks delicious!” or “Wow! Such a big lobster!”, right? Then, what if your friend continued by asking, “Who knows if this lobster is a king or a loser?”, most people would find this question laughable. Do lobsters even have such classifications? Yes, in reality, they actually do.

 

Lobsters shed their shells as they grow. When they molt, their bodies become soft, and the lobsters know they need to protect themselves from the outside environment, so finding a safe place to stay is vital. Unfortunately, good places are few and far between. Conflict may erupt when two lobsters have their eyes on the same territory.

 

The Lobsters’ fight for territory can be divided into different stages. At first, they may compare pincer sizes to judge which is the biggest. If an inevitable winner can’t be decided by such a method, the lobsters will begin a desperate whipping competition using their antennae. Only after that point does the real battle commence. Two lobsters, now worked up and angry, wrestle one another. Each aims to flip the other over onto its back. Sometimes the fight is to the death. But the process of the conflict is not our focus here. What is important is that once the battle is over, the defeated lobster, no matter how brave it was previously, completely loses the will to fight. Even if in the future they encounter lobsters they had defeated in past battles, they will flee rather than fight another time. It seems that after a single failure, the defeated lobster’s brain is rewired. The lobster becomes a loser, through and through. Sadly, the same phenomena can happen to humans too. After suffering major blows in their careers or relationships, many people allow themselves to embrace a loser identity.

 

Indeed, living is not always smooth, and we will encounter unexpected pain and suffering throughout life. However, do we really want to accept the life of a loser? Is that a responsible way to face the world? Are there strategies we can adopt to be easier on ourselves?

 

To these questions, in 12 Rules for Life, the author Jordan Peterson provides definite answers. Peterson worked as a dishwasher, a chef, a beekeeper, a worker on an oil field and various other manual-laboring occupations in order to survive. Through his own efforts, he aspired to become a teacher and is now a popular professor, highly respected by his students, and indeed, one of the most important thinkers on the world stage. He has been described by those he has taught as one of their top three life-changing lecturers.

 

In this book, Peterson condenses his research and life experience into twelve rules to help us solve significant life problems, including how to live positively, how to deal with pain, how to establish correct values, how to support children properly, and more. Follow these rules well, and your life will be enlightened.

 

Next, we will break down the main contents of the book into two sections:

 

Part One, Facing life head-on with a positive attitude

 

Part Two, Dealing with pain by being mindful