12 rules for (health & wellbeing) life

As soon as we meet someone, we size them up to see where they fit in our social hierarchy. We can’t help it. It’s in our genes. This influences the release of serotonin. Serotonin is a naturally occurring body substance that is involved in many bodily functions, ranging from regulating mood to digesting food.

When serotonin levels fall, so does our mood and motivation. Physical changes occur and negative thoughts may emerge. Your behaviour becomes passive and others may easily influence you in a particular negative direction.

More and more of us spend unhealthy amounts of time with our spines in that ‘C’ position as we crouch over devices. Standing up straight, with our spines properly aligned in a good posture ‘S’ shape, is not only good physically, but a metaphor for how we assertively approach life.

Stand up straight with your shoulders back and take the first step to become your new assertive self.

Many people lack confidence, put themselves down and don’t realise it. On the other hand, If your family or friends are in need of help and support, you are most likely there to help and support. You may have a pet. It’s very likely that when you take your pet to the vet’s you will ensure that your pet takes all medication and follows the vet’s instructions to the letter. And quite right that you do!

But you don’t apply the same standards to yourself.

If you neglect yourself, you will establish a pattern of behaviour and mistakes which will make your life worse and ultimately worse for those around you.

So, encourage your family and friends to go to fitness classes they like, eat healthily and sleep well. And why not give yourself the same advice and encouragement? Exercise, in most cases, is the most effective medication you can take.

Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.

Most of us are clear about our family group and our real friendship group. Our friendship group is not nearly as fixed as the family group is. We choose our friends. And we should not treat this lightly.

In a motivational sense, people can fall into two camps, energy sappers or energisers.

Energy sappers tend to see the downside of things, are flat, perhaps ‘C’ shaped metaphorically and physically, and will find reasons not to do things. An energy sapper may have their own issues to address. They don’t want you to change. Change might mean you leave them behind. Better that you remain with issues, like them.

Energisers are the opposite and will provide the kind of help and support you need; the kind of person our Armed Forces or sports stars would say you would go into battle with, who appreciate your strengths, support your aspirations and celebrate your achievements with you.

Having friends with whom you enjoy a social life is of course important. However, If a ‘friend’ persistently persuades you to share a bottle of wine and you miss your pilates' session, to fill yourself with chocolate because ‘you only live once’, tells you that you can’t do anything about the ageing process, tell them your truth. Tell them you want to be better and ask for their support for your goals. As a last resort, drop them. You have to be strong and determined to take difficult but meaningful paths.

Being around energy sappers is hard to resist. Sappers will make you adopt the lazy, unhealthy options.

Choose friends who want the best for you.

It’s tempting to compare yourself to others, particularly celebrities who are more successful. Social media exploits this and addicts us to comparisons with others.

It’s much better to focus on yourself, on your life and your immediate surroundings. Think about what it is you want to change or improve.  It's ME versus ME.  

If it’s not something you can change or influence, don’t waste energy stressing about it.

You must also recognise that real change takes more than a couple of days, or an 8 week ‘transformation’ programme or diet. It requires more time and effort. A lifelong effort.

Measure your progress against what you did yesterday. One step, one more rep, a little more energy and body tone. Drive yourself by the thought that you are in a better shape than yesterday and that you’ll eventually reach your long term goals.

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today.

This rule is about parenting and therefore does not, at first glance, lend itself to support your health and wellbeing.

But it’s worth a second glance.

Children need effective parenting and you are their best role model. Peterson writes in detail about effective parenting, but moralising about parenting is not the purpose of this article. We are not perfect individuals, however, and therefore not perfect parents, retaining our own capacity to be harsh, vengeful, arrogant, resentful, angry and deceitful.

It is the primary duty of parents, Peterson contends, to make their children socially desirable. How do we do this? 

We need to set the right examples when it comes to health and wellbeing. Children will usually follow your example. If your life and lifestyle promote and celebrate exercise, good eating habits and the importance of sleep, children will follow.

Do not let your children develop unhealthy habits (that would make you dislike them).

Wherever we look, we see many things wrong and a lot of things to complain about. However, if we dwell on it there is little benefit at all since we become more and more resentful. Cursing and criticising all the time is fruitless and we should start taking more meaningful actions.

First of all, we have to correct ourselves.

Being busy criticising society all the time makes us neglect ourselves. So, take good care of yourself first, stop doing anything that you know to be wrong and start doing and saying only things that make you proud.

The first step is to ’bring peace to your household’. Or, in this blog context, bring health and wellbeing peace to you and yours.

After that you can criticise the state and attempt to change society for the better.

Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.

Meaning is associated with the way we protect ourselves from the difficulties of life. Meaning was once provided by religion. This is no longer the case. We all get emotionally wounded. 

According to Peterson, meaning is like an instinct or vision that lets you know whether you are in the right place or not. We don’t want to get lost in ‘chaos’, where we don’t have control over our lives. Nor should we be always staying safe with ‘order’. We need challenge in order to develop and grow.

The pursuit purely of happiness, Peterson contends, is a pointless goal. Happiness is a bi-product of living a more meaningful life.

“It’s all very well to think the meaning of life is happiness, but what happens when you’re unhappy? Happiness is a great side effect. When it comes, accept it gratefully. But it’s fleeting and unpredictable. It’s not something to aim at – because it’s not an aim. And if happiness is the purpose of life, what happens when you’re unhappy? Then you’re a failure. Happiness is like cotton candy. It’s just not going to do the job.”

Expediency is what people do to get themselves out of trouble here and now, but the drawback of this is that we sacrifice the future for the present. That means that expediency is only good for temporarily escaping your problems.  

We need to build our lives around meaning. We do this by taking care of ourselves, as individuals, in a manner that makes us better for our families and our communities.

Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

One of the hardest things to do sometimes is telling the truth. Truth can be harsh and difficult to deal with.

Truth is very important in our lives as it is associated with meaning, according to Peterson. Only truth can bring you out of trouble, maybe not immediately sometimes, but in the long run you’ll have everyone’s trust. There will be times when you won’t know what to do or say. Start by just telling the truth! It will make it easier to face any situation.

On the other hand, lying makes us weak. Most of the time, the moment you lie you start immediately feeling strange, weak and insecure. Others can sense it too and start doubting you.

Even if they happen to not be able to prove you wrong, you still are not satisfied because you know you’re lying and you’re fake. Lying is the antithesis of meaning and reality. The only thing you could achieve by lying is only get away from a situation, but only temporarily.

You need to be truthful with yourself as well as others. Evaluate yourself, your fitness, health and wellbeing. Watch out for fitness industry ‘truths’ which are far from it. Choose a personal trainer who will be truthful with you. Who will design programmes around your needs and not promote activities that suggest an easy fix or are ‘transformational’.

Tell the truth (to yourself as well as others) - or at least, don’t lie.

When people argue about something, they often fall in the trap of trying to win over that argument and miss the true point of a good conversation; that is to come out wiser than you went into it. 

Listening is an undervalued skill. 

Often we are composing a response before we have listened to what is being said. How much do you really hear, a third, or half?

'Winning' an argument does not necessarily mean that your thinking was smarter. It may be that you are simply more verbally fluent. And it shouldn’t be about winning.

The best thing to do is to take a good advantage of what someone is trying to tell you. Give them a chance to fully explain and make you understand what he or she is exactly thinking.

Who knows, maybe you could find ideas or suggestions better than some of your own that help you face future problems. Peterson even says to listen to your ‘enemies’. They may lie about you, but may also be frank about things that your friends might not see or don’t want to tell.

Of course not everyone will be telling the truth, particularly if they are seeking to promote or sell you something.  Learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. Listen to as many views as you can regarding your health and fitness, but be particularly questioning of quick fix solutions.  

Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.

Language is crucial in establishing meaning from chaos. We struggle to articulate clearly some of our problems in life. We need to be able to establish a common understanding of what something means in order to establish meaning.

We need to be prepared to make, and accept mistakes, in order to become more precise in our speech and better communicators. Free and more precise speech will enable you to make better decisions and sense of your life.

Precise speech is important since it give us power to control our lives. You can bring things out of the dark. Words are not to be underestimated as they have a creative power. Don’t create more chaos through poor communication.  

A goods personal trainer will give clear and precise direction regarding exercise performance, not only what to do but why it should be performed in a certain way.  A good personal trainer will also elicit clear feedback from you so that he can ensure that activities are directed towards your goals.  

Be precise in your speech.

Sounds obtuse, but isn’t.

It’s a metaphor about risk. Children, for example, do all kinds of risky things. We should let them, within reason. It’s important to face danger.

We lose that urge to enjoy risk as we get older and an overprotected life does not provide us with the emotional strength when times are hard.

Embracing risk of course brings the further risk of failure.  But we can learn from failures that enable us to re-think and re-set our goals.  

It’s not too late to embrace risk and challenge. Set your health and wellbeing goals. Be ambitious for yourself.

And don’t bother children when they are skateboarding.

This final rule is mainly autobiographical and Peterson tells us about tragedy and pain.

When tragic things are in front of us and we’re powerless, we must keep our eyes open for those little things that make life worthwhile.

When you feel that your life is screwed up there is a way to make it easier to handle until you make it back on your feet. That is to shorten your temporal horizon.

Stop thinking about what’s going to happen in the next few months. Think about what and how you can improve today’s day or maybe just the next hours. Shrink the time frame until you can eventually handle the rest of it and this is how you adjust to devastation. It’s very important to not give up. Even in the worst situations, even if you’re at a place you’d rather not be, always try to look for what’s meaningful and worthwhile.

You can pet a cat, dog or any animal. The story illustrates how paying attention to the small items of life, a cup of good coffee, a sunrise, the fragrance of a flower, or petting an animal can help us smile, laugh, and regroup. We are tough and resilient. We cope by repairing what is in disorder. We improve what we are already doing , and make it better.

Many clients will have underlying health conditions that may mean repeated setbacks. Clients need help and support to shorten and simplify their objectives within a shortened temporal horizon in order to climb back towards their goals.

Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.