What’s the most fundamental rule you should adopt in life? Here it is: Rule Number 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Let me explain.

The First Rule Is

It may sound comical and innocent but it actually has a profound impact on your overall experience of reality. This is not some self-help positive thinking bullsh#t but it’s programmed into your physiology and psyche.

Jordan Peterson who’s a Canadian clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto talks about this in his latest book The 12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

Rule Number 1 Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back is a meditation on the habits and dominance hierarchies of lobsters that can apply to humans as well.

A while back, Jordan Peterson read some papers on lobsters and he made an insightful discovery. Namely that the way lobsters hold their body and what posture they’re in had a predictive outcome on their position in the lobster dominance hierarchy and neurochemical future.

The Psyche of the Dominance Hierarchy of Lobsters

Male lobsters engage in fights with each other as a way of establishing themselves in the dominance hierarchy of the group.

The lobster who wins the battle will experience a boost in confidence and audacity, namely because of a surge in a neurotransmitter called serotonin. Serotonin is the feel-good neurotransmitter that makes you feel fulfilled and pleased.

This increases the winning lobster’s position in the dominance hierarchy, which gives them access to more food, better mating opportunities, shelter, less stress, and an overall physiological performance-enhancing effect.

The victorious lobster who’s running high on elevated serotonin is going to feel better and more confident about itself, which makes it hold a more dominant and upright posture. This, in turn, will have an additional neurochemical boost that can increase serotonin, even more, thus increasing the chances of being victorious in the future again.

The lobster who loses the battle will experience a decrease in serotonin levels, which make it feel more inferior, more pathetic, more stressed out, less eager and confident to engage with the world and basically experience full-blown depression.

This is going to also reflect in the losing lobster’s future success – they’re not going to get access to that much food, which makes them weaker; they’re not going to get as many mating opportunities, which creates more stress; they’re not going to sleep well because of their low serotonin levels; and they’re less likely to win the next fight because of this impending feeling of apathy.

Your Life in a Posture

It just blows you away because it’s so remarkable and significant – your entire experience of reality is rooted in your psychological experience, which itself stems from the sensory stimuli and your perceptions.

In lobsters particularly, serotonin governs status, emotional regulation, and posture, just like it does in human beings so it’s safe to presume that the same effect happens in the human nervous system as well.

Lobsters’ neurochemistry is actually very well understood because they have a very simple nervous system and it can give some insight into understanding organisms with more complex nervous systems.

The way you hold your body has a tremendous impact on your physiology as well as psychology.

What Message Are You Sending to Your Brain

There have been previous studies in humans showing how holding a more confident body posture actually increases confidence and boosts testosterone in men.

Standing in a particular position literally unleashes neurochemicals into your brain that make you perceive the world as either a friendly or a hostile place. This intricate perception is the key to reality as it unravels in your psyche. As far as you’re concerned, you’re already living in a psychological matrix of your own mind.

Whenever you stand up straight with your shoulders back you’re not only keeping your joints and back healthy but you’ll also boost your confidence

This can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy with detrimental consequences.

If you hold yourself slouched over you’ll start to feel more pathetic and weak, which will reinforce the idea that you are a pathetic human being and you’ll keep holding yourself in that slouched position and you’ll keep feeling like you’re a pathetic person.

If you hold yourself upward and straight, you’ll feel more confident and you’ll be more eager to take action in the world. Because you’ll feel confident, you’ll achieve more positive feedback about your actions which in turn releases serotonin inside your brain. Serotonin makes you feel even better about yourself thus boosting your confidence even further thus making you seek out even more positive reinforcement thus boosting your confidence even further.

The circle always ends back where it started and it’s difficult to break out of the vicious feedback loop if you’re stuck inside of it. Sometimes the only way to get back to normal is to seek out help. Check out this page regarding starting online therapy.

Winners Keep Winning,

Losers Keep Losing

If you’re a lobster at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy, then you’re there because you feel so bad about yourself and that’s going to impede your attempts of improving your circumstances.

This principle or rule does not just apply to lobsters or human physiology but it’s in physics as well.

Newton’s First Law of Motion is this: „An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force.“ It means that if you’re stressed out or if you feel lazy and want to procrastinate, then you’re more prone to keep feeling more stressed out and keep procrastinating. The self-fulfilling prophecy will continue to recreate itself because it’s easier to stay motionless if you’re already standing still.

That’s why you have to recognize whenever you’re verging on the edge of chaos and feel incapable of handling it because it’s a potential danger that may put you on the back burner permanently.

To no fall into this downward spiral of apathy and low serotonin levels, you have to keep yourself in an optimal physiological state so your mind could feel as if you’re winning and rocking the world.

Rule Number 1 Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back

I hope you’ll start to pay attention to how you hold your body and what conversations you have with yourself as it literally determines your perception of reality.

There are definitely many additional things that determine your outlook on life but the first and easiest thing you can do is correct your posture – to stand up straight with your shoulders back.

This will make you feel better about yourself, which will make you talk in a more positive way about yourself, which will make you see yourself in better light, which will give you more confidence to take more action in life, and to experience more victories in life, which will then become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This RULE #1 comes from Jordan Peterson’s latest book The 12 Rules of Life, which I highly recommend every human being to read because it delves into the psychological nature of human consciousness and finding meaning in a universe that is indifferent to conscious experiences.

If you do find yourself as a losing lobster who slouches over and suffers from low serotonin, lack of motivation, no self-esteem, and first signs of depression, then check out the second part of this series on optimizing your serotonin and dopamine levels.

Click Here for PART TWO!

But if you want to know how to not only fix your posture but to also optimize your nutrition, sleep, and neurotransmitters, then check out my Body Mind Empowerment Handbook Free E-Book.

After reading this, I hope you corrected your posture.

Stay Empowered

Siim