My 12.5 Rules of Life (373)

 Mike Malatesta  00:00

On today’s episode, I’m doing a solo. And it was inspired by Jordan Peterson, the professor at the University of Toronto and his book, which is called 12 rules for life an antidote to chaos. I got the book and then I was inspired to create my own 12 rules of life. And I’m actually going to give you 12.5 rules of life in this podcast. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the HOW’D IT HAPPEN Podcast. I’m Mike, and thanks for joining me for another one of my solo episodes. And today I am channeling Jordan Peterson. This is the book that I’m channeling. It’s called Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules for life. An antidote to chaos. The book was recommended to me by my friend, Mary Brown, although it’s a multimillion dollar, multi million copy bestseller. And I’ve heard Jordan Peterson many times I have not, I don’t think I had heard of the book, or maybe I heard of it in passing, or whatever. But anyway, I got the book. And it inspired me to think about my own rules of life. So you can get his book, Jordan Peterson’s book, which I’m showing you right now. And you can read about his 12 rules of life, of course, as you can see, it’s a pretty thick book. So he’s gonna go into it in much more detail on his wall rules than I am on this little solo podcast episode. But nonetheless, I don’t know that I’ve, before I read this, that I’ve thought that much about rules of life. But I guess I’ve always had rules, you probably have rules that you follow all the time, but I never really thought about, you know, distilling them into 12, or into a list of any sort of rules. And reading his book made me think, well, maybe I should. So I hope you get some value from this. And here we go. My 12 rules for life are 12 rules of life inspired by Jordan Peterson. Number one, hold doors open. Look, people in the eye, say hello, and smile. Number two words matter, especially the ones you tell yourself and your story matters. That’s a really important one, I find that lots of people that I run into whether they’re super successful people, or whether they’re just normal people like you and me, they don’t always have an appreciation for how powerful words are, how powerful the words you tell other people are and how powerful the word, the words you tell yourself are as well, your your brains, like I heard Jim quick once say that your brain is a supercomputer and is getting all of its inputs from you. And what you tell yourself is one of the biggest inputs it gets. And it’s it really means a lot. So words matter. Number three, surround yourself with people you like and who care about you. That sounds like a simple one, surround yourself with people you like and people who care about you. But it’s a little trickier. I think you’ll agree with me, it’s a little trickier than it seems. Because oftentimes you think you have to hang around with people or other reasons than liking them or thinking they care about you. And it’s not always possible. But to the extent that it is possible, to the extent that you can, I think it’s a really good idea to surround yourself with people who you like, and people who care about you. I mean, you want to talk about preserving and and feeding energy. I think that’s one of the best ways to do it. Number four, progress, not perfection. I got that from Dan Sullivan. At the Strategic Coach program. He says that all the time, progress, not perfection, we’ve all heard that perfection is impossible. But yet, a lot of times, I don’t know about you, but I still strive for perfection, because I want to be as I confuse perfection with wanting to be as good as I can possibly be. So rather than perfection, I’ve adopted this other saying, which is the best is yet to come. So well. I know I’ll never be perfect, but I know that I can always be better. And so I’m just going to run with the best is yet to come. Number five be a parent that your child wants to emulate and not one that they feel they need to emulate. And there’s I think there’s an important distinction there. And I’m certainly not going to say that I’m an expert on parenting. I’m not very far from it. But I think it’s a good idea. For those of you who are parents, maybe you’ll agree with me that your children need to develop their own lives, but they want but you sure hope that they just decide or make the choice to emulate at least some of who you are and some of what you’ve taught them. And what I mean by they don’t feel like they need to is it seems like there are some people parents who not only want their children to emulate them, but they guess they want it badly. That’s the only way as that they can have a successful child is for the child to emulate them and I don’t think that’s necessarily helpful. So instead, and that’s a lot of pressure on both both sides, so instead, just be the parent that your child wants to emulate. Number six, we’ve all got problems. Remember yours before you expose or take advantage of others. This is a important one for me, because the last thing I want to do is dump my problems on somebody else, especially if they’re not paying me to dump my problems on them, or I’m not paying them to dump my problems on them, or vice versa. There’s a lot of people, it seems like and I find myself in this, maybe you do too, sometimes who think that complaining to someone else is somehow cathartic. And maybe it is mildly, but we all have our problems. And I would rather work through my problems, then dump them on to somebody else. It’s like sort of a, an invasion or an intrusion, while people are nice about it, and they’ll, you know, they really don’t want it and don’t need it, because they got their own problems. And I just soon I don’t mind helping people with problems, and I don’t mind people helping me with with my problems, but I don’t want to make it an obligation of someone to do so. Number seven shiny objects might be horseshit. So I’m, you know, a lot of people like say entrepreneurs are add, it’s kind of like, wow, there’s a badge of honor, I don’t know that I’ve add or not. But I’m certainly curious about a lot of things. And I can be easily distracted or get curious about things in the moment that probably aren’t where I should be putting my energy at the time or take or is causing me to take my eye off of a ball that I should be more focused on. So just be careful. Be careful that just because something grabs your attention doesn’t necessarily mean it’s worth your attention. Number eight, how does doing this hard thing make me better? So I’m, I’m a fan of hard things, not like David Goggins hard things. But I’m a fan of hard things. I like to challenge myself to do do new hard things. Like, for example, doing the podcast in in the beginning, four plus years ago, that was a really hard thing for me, I didn’t want to do it, and it scared me and I didn’t know if I’d be any good at it. And then transitioning, again, sticking with the podcast, to doing video, the podcast, which I had only had an audio podcast up until a couple of years ago, and I didn’t want to do that because it was hard and I didn’t think I would be any good at it. And then it was doing solo podcasts, which I do now every week. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that because I thought it would be hard and and I thought it would be I would make a lot of excuses in my mind not to do the hard thing but I think it was Confucius or somebody said you know a journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step and every hard thing that’s in front of you or everything that you think is hard everything I’ve thought as hard I can make progress on with just one step and so getting back to number four Dan Sullivan’s progress not perfection doing a hard thing I don’t have to be perfect at it and I think that’s that’s a fear to like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna suck at this Well, you probably aren’t gonna suck at it. That’s why it’s hard but hard things make you better are things give you confidence are things generate progress are things make you feel good about yourself and hard things probably make you more valuable to the world number nine all progress starts with the truth that is another Dan Sullivan ism and one that I use all the time now because it’s just so damn true to Dum Dum true of course, all progress starts with the truth. But how many of us want to make excuses for not making progress by telling ourselves some type of lie that’s not accurate? So it’s helped me quite a bit like whenever I’m thinking about, you know, what? Our progress structure the truth, Mike? So maybe the truth is that you don’t want to do this. Maybe the truth is that you’re scared to do this. Maybe the truth is that you have no idea how to do this, whatever it is, the first step for me to get past it is to acknowledge the truth. And then, you know, take that first step, like, like, like the hard thing, and number nine, number 10. Take the best away from every interaction and leave the rest behind number 11. Say what you mean to the best of your ability. I love clarity. I love directness, I don’t like people that are like priggish about it. But I like directness, I like clarity. I like knowing exactly what is expected of me. I know I like having people around me know exactly what’s expected of them. And so many of us don’t want to say exactly don’t want to say what we mean. Exactly. Because we want to kind of nuance, a one, either a way out of it or to a way to make a way out of it if the other person doesn’t like it, for example, or gets mad about a to a way for us to say well, yeah, I told you that and it’s like, No, you didn’t tell me that. My wife gets me on that all the time. Because I’m not always clear with her because it’s clear in my mind, but it’s not clear coming out of my mouth. And it needs to be I need to say what I mean to the best of my ability and I think that’s, I think you’d agree with me number 12 Have fun and be okay with it. Don’t take yourself too seriously. I am going to admit to you that that is one that I hope I’m getting better at but I’ve struggled at over the years I’m not a naturally like go to fun person and I struggle with it. And I don’t know why. And then the taking yourself too seriously for a long time I took myself too seriously and maybe you’re taking yourself too seriously now or maybe you’ve you know you’re one of those people who does not take themselves Seriously, I really like people who don’t take themselves too seriously. I feel like I’m making progress toward that. You tell me if you think differently, but but I think it’s one of the rules of life that I either am living by, or I am certainly aspiring toward. And here’s a bonus, here’s my 12.5 rule of life. And that is, pay attention to what’s in front of you, and be kind to whatever that is, again, to the best of your ability, pay attention to what’s in front of you, and be kind to whatever it is, or whomever it is to the best of your ability. So there you go. That’s my Jordan Peterson inspired 12 rules for life. And I do thank you for investing your energy and time with me in this podcast today. And I hope you’ve gotten a return on that investment. If you have, please share the episode, follow the podcast if you are not currently following the podcast so that every episode comes to you automatically. And until next time, please maximize your greatness and make your future your property a property that you are proud to own everybody. Thanks for listening to the show. And before you go, I just have three requests for you one if you like what I’m doing please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me Give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two, I’ve got a book it’s called owner shift how getting selfish got me unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller, and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes and Noble Amazon, you can get it everywhere if you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy and if you get it please let me know what you think. Number three, my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast guests that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name Mike malatesta.com. 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