Rule #1: Be a lobster

"Stand up straight with your shoulders back."

This is Peterson's first rule from the book 12 Rules for Life

But the benefits of good, confident posture are obvious - no lobster metaphor necessary. Nobody is going to debate good posture. If we could press a button and always stand up straight with our shoulders back, we would. But we can't. Because we can't program our habits.

Like much of Jordan Peterson's advice, philosophical understanding feels good, but is rather useless. The real challenge is doing it. Aka developing the habit. And "reminding our should muscles to fire all day long" is a particularly difficult habit to create.

There's a lot of tricks for developing habits, but there's one that's particularly good for developing good posture.

You can do it right now, no matter what your situation, and we suggest you try.

The idea is that you identify with the space that occupies your environment.

It sounds silly, but it's incredibly effective.

Take your eyes off the screen, and imagine that "you" takes up all of the space around you. As if your existence diffuses throughout the whole environment. We'll call it "diffused identity."

If you do it right, simply putting yourself in this state of mind should completely open up your posture.

Do it! Try it right now! It's pretty amazing.

This is better than simply trying to remember to put your shoulders back. The reason is complicated, but it's something to do with the fact that spacial awareness is governed by conscious processes while your shoulder muscles are governed by your subconcsious. You're always somewhat aware of your identity, but rarely aware of your posture. So remembering to calibration your identity is easier than remembering to adjust a muscle group.

So here's what you do - set up conditions where, when an event happens, it reminds you to diffuse your identity. This is called a "trigger."

Some notes about creating triggers -

- Avoid situations that involve emotional intensity or require focus. For example - creating a trigger for what to do when you see a car wreck is extremely difficult because in the event of a car wreck, your brain is on panic stress-response mode and there's absolutely no cognitive breathing room to consider your pre-planned actions. This is why EMTs go through endless drills, to drill the habit into their brain. It's easier to say - when I see a Volkswagon Beetle, I get to punch someone. Because seeing a slug bug is a calm and stressless event.

- Try to piggyback triggers onto current habits. Your brain already has deep grooves for certain behaviors, it's entirely possible to just tack on additional behaviors onto these old triggers.

Here's some good trigger ideas for diffusing your identity aka inducing lobster mindset.

  1. When you look at your phone, stop, glance up, diffuse identity
  2. When you pull your keys out of your car
  3. When you hit a cross-walk button
  4. As soon as you stand up
  5. Whenever your hands touch a door knob or door handle (this is my favorite)

Sometimes strategically placed sticky notes can help, but let's be honest, nobody actually does that.