Yesterday, I started reading Jordan Peterson’s currently #1 Amazon best-selling book 12 Rules for Life.
The first chapter of the book entitled “Stand up straight with your shoulders back” talks about winning and winners, which is also the main theme of this site.
Here are my own conclusions I drew from the chapter. Note that he doesn’t directly say many of these things. For drawing your own conclusions, I urge you to go ahead and read the book.
- There are 2 types of men: Winners and losers.
- Winners have different brain chemistry than the losers. Winners have higher serotonin levels in their brain.
- The difference in the brain chemistry of a loser and a winner is reflected in their postures. Winners stand up straight with their shoulders back, losers don’t.
- This brain chemistry can be observed in lobsters which have been inhabiting the earth for 350 million years. Lobsters existed before there were trees.
- Winners get the best girls, the best food, and the best real estate. Losers have to settle with the scraps.
- Nature selects fitness. The genes of the loser males are unapologetically weeded out as they don’t get to have sex with females. Moreover, losers live under the pressure of enormous stress which makes them unhealthy. Also, losing causes losers to be impulsive which furthers their loserdom as they are likely to jump at any possibility of pleasure because they severy lack it in their lives. For this reason, losers are more prone to engage in short-term mating opportunities, or any possibilities of pleasure, no matter how sub-par, disgraceful or illegal.
- For all the reasons above, winner males live fabulous lives whereas loser males live miserably. Winners are happy, relaxed and healthy. Losers are unhappy, tense and unhealthy.
- The average male is a loser. Women can get away with being average but men cannot. The top males get the most of anything that’s worth getting and the rest of the males get next to nothing.
- If you are a loser male, you don’t have to continue in that mode. It can be turned around. Standing up straight with your shoulders back will rub into your subconscious and help you behave like a winner. This newfound winning attitude will be amplified by the reactions of other people. Standing up straight with your shoulders back will cause people to perceive you as a winner. Your brain will pick up those signals and help you behave more and more like a winner. The levels of serotonin in your brain start to increase. When you start to have, you will probably get more.
- Standing up straight with your shoulders back can trigger upwardly moving loops in your life which can help you eventually become a winner.
Winner Males And The Survival Of The Fittest
What Jordan Peterson writes in the first chapter of 12 Rules for Life has many commonalities with what I have been writing on this site.
When I wrote Being an Average Man Will Kill You, I wasn’t joking. I wrote about the miserable life of an average male in a post entitled Is That the Man You Want to Be?. I wrote How to Live a Fabulous Life stating how winner men live fabulous lives.
One of the most important benefits of physical fitness is mating success. If you are able to attract women, you are an overwhelming success in terms of evolution. It means that nature finds your genes worthy of being transferred to the next generation.
I published many posts emphasizing the benefits of physical fitness in attracting women. Benefits of Strength Training – Sex Benefits, Do Girls Like Muscles? – 10 Ways Building Muscle Helps You Get Laid to name a few.
Nature selects fitness and it’s no surprise that physical fitness is almost synonymous with survival fitness. Average men are not healthy and they are also not preferred by women.
Have you ever heard of a woman that has a fetish for fat and/or weak men? All women’s erotica books have lean, muscular, fit men with six-pack abs on their covers. It’s not a coincidence. A lean, muscular and strong body signals survival fitness to the lizard brains of women. It’s impossible to beat that conditioning because it has been alive and well for 350 million fucking years.
Attraction is not a choice. You can’t negotiate desire. You can’t talk women into being attracted to out of shape men. You can’t cheat the system of attraction that’s been around for 350 million years.
It’s no surprise that the benefits of fitness go well beyond mating success. Being physically fit will also make you healthier, more confident and more of a bunch of other things.
Can Standing Up Straight With Shoulders Back Really Turn A Loser Into A Winner?
More than a year ago I wrote a blog post entitled Is Your Posture Holding You Back in Life?
In that post, I talked about the story of a real estate broker who went from broke to earn $850,000 a year in gross commissions in 1960s dollars. He started to succeed after straightening up his posture.
I wholeheartedly believe that having a good posture is strongly correlated with success, so yes, I think Jordan Peterson is bang on with his advice “stand up straight with your shoulders back”.
How To Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back
Jordan Peterson doesn’t provide a strategy on how to stand up straight with your shoulders back. He seems to advocate a kind of “fake it till you make it” strategy.
Why fake it when you can go ahead and be a real winner. Why try to cheat the system when you can make it work for you? We live in a world where the majority of men are overweight. It’s never been easier to be a physically top man.
If your posture is weak, it’s a sign of a lack of muscle mass in your frame.
It doesn’t take long years of training to build a great physique. Actually, it’s pretty straightforward when you know what you are doing. I wrote almost 2 years ago that even a fat, out of shape person can get six-pack abs in a matter of months. When winning has so many perks, why not just get in great shape and look like a winner in just a matter of months?
Another reason why your posture is weak is the low levels of serotonin in your brain.
Strength training solves both physical weakness and low serotonin problems because it not only builds you muscle mass which will automatically straighten up your posture, but also it increases the serotonin levels in your brain.
When you build a lean, strong and muscular body, you will be perceived as a winner and the reactions of the other people will trigger the flow of even more serotonin to your brain.
It doesn’t even matter if you can’t afford a gym yet. You can start to build muscle in the privacy of your home through bodyweight training.
With all the benefits you get and for how little time and money it costs, I can’t think of a reason not to start strength training. The benefits dwarf the downsides by a large margin.
Build a body you can be proud of, stand straight with your shoulders back and start winning.