A Book Review of “ 12 Rules for Life” by Jordan

Peterson, reviewed by Dylan Timbol

Peterson, J. (2018). 12 Rules for Life. Random House Canada Penguin Allen Lane (UK)

12 Rules for Life is a fun, story-based, and straightforward self-help guide for
young people that lays out a set of ground principles that may help us become more
disciplined, behave better, act with integrity, and balance our lives while making the
most out of it.

The book starts off with the author saying “Rules? More rules? Really? Isn’t life
complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our
unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all
develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules
might be helpful to us all?” (Peterson, 2018). Our lives are already hard enough as it is,
What benefit would these rules offer to us, Won’t these rules inhibit us from enjoying life.
These 3 are some common things people may ask or say when they are presented with
the idea of there being certain rules we have to follow to enjoy life. Contrary to these
claims the book got to convey and provide 12 rules. The 12 rules were all simple in fact
but them being simple we tend to forget them.

The book provided was written in a way where-in each rule was explained
through certain examples, quotes, ideas, or life experiences of certain people in history.
With this, it made book contain a load of information but the content does not justify the
length of the book, after the stories and verbosity are removed, you are left with rather
simple principles that you could obtain in any self-help book or discover for yourself. An
example given for rule 1 was lobster evolution it states that women appreciate guys with
confidence, and that success breeds trust and greater success. This idea is already
obvious even if you do not know anything about lobster or breeding. The author also
uses the bible as a reference for some of his rules. Yes, there is nothing wrong with
using God as a reference or the Bible as a reference but when used excessively the
book becomes too influenced by biblical or religious stereotypes which would, in turn,
make the book more one-sided toward a certain religion, there are so many other
events in history that the author could have used to explain the concepts he was trying
to convey.
 Even though the book was kind of confusing at some points it still gave some
solid rules we should follow to achieve a better and happier life, out of the 12 rules given
by the author the rule that really stood out to me was rule # 4 Compare yourself to who
you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Even though it sounds simple
people tend to forget it, we being born in a technological era and being exposed to
different ideas and lives of people through the use of social media we tend to compare
ourselves to them, seeing them achieve the things that we wish we would either
experience or one day have leads us to look ourselves and what we achieved and it
may seem like nothing compared to others. As the rule says we should compare
ourselves not onto others but onto our previous selves. By comparing ourselves to our
previous selves we get to see how much we changed day by day, we are not the same
person we were yesterday we have grown older and wiser by each day.

Overall, I would recommend this book as it offers certain tips that may seem
simple but would greatly affect your life. The book may be confusing due to certain
concepts or ideas used to broaden or give an example to the rule given, but with more
time used to understand the book or by using summaries of the book that are found on
the internet, I’m sure people would find this book as really helpful in their life journeys.