12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Peterson insists that, by nature, humans compare themselves to each other. They look to peers or competitors for standards of success and failure. This tendency is destructive and distortive because the various undertakings everyone performs in their lives occur within highly individual, complex, and intersectional contexts. Peterson discusses how a person can train him- or herself out of this type of thinking.

Peterson notes that there are some merits to comparison, as everything does not exist in a vacuum. He says, “Standards of better or worse are not illusory or unnecessary” (87). People can and should make “value judgments” that assess things like risk, reward, right, and wrong. Comparison becomes problematic when it becomes a way to repeatedly put one’s self down in the fashion of the “cliché of nihilism,” where “There will always be people better than you” (87).

Peterson suggests first taking stock of the various immediate circumstances that will determine notions of possibilities, success, and failure (93). With a more level analysis of the stakes at hand, a person can make more empowered decisions that avoid the pitfalls of nihilistic dismissal of everything as hopeless. Peterson also advocates steadily aiming higher with goals, a process made possible by being a better boss when a person self-talks, rather than being a tyrant (95-96).