Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping So if you’re trying to give yourself an advantage, follow the first rule: hold your head high and strike the posture of a winner.Ģ. Just like lobsters, humans are constantly measuring themselves up against each other, and we associate a person’s intelligence with their physicality. Studies have shown that those in the grips of alcoholism or depression are less likely to enter a competitive situation, which only reinforces more inactivity and continued low self-esteem and depression.Ĭonversely, those on a winning streak often present a swaggering and confident body language, which can help them keep their streak alive. This difference will factor into further confrontations, as the upright lobsters will appear bigger and more intimidating, causing the tense ones to remain submissive.Īs you may have guessed, similar hierarchies and cycles of winning and losing play out among humans. These levels can even affect the posture of lobsters: more serotonin will lead to the winners being more agile and upright, and more octopamine makes losers tense and curled up. Winners will have a higher ratio of the hormone serotonin to octopamine, while the ratio in losers will tilt in the opposite direction. Scientists have found that these competitive conflicts will lead to the winners and losers having different chemical balances in their brains.

Lobsters, for instance, whether they’re in the ocean or raised in captivity, will aggressively fight over the best and most secure spots for shelter. Pecking orders like this aren’t limited to chickens they occur naturally throughout the animal kingdom. At the bottom were the weakest chickens, with their feathers falling out, who only got to peck at the leftover crumbs. At the top were the healthiest, strongest ones that always got to peck first when the chicken feed came. It comes from the Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, who was studying barnyard chickens in the 1920s when he noticed that there was a clear hierarchy among these birds.

You’ve probably heard of the phrase, “the pecking order,” right? But do you know where it originated? Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Here's 12 rules for life summarized, but if you don't have time, here's the video version I just made, 12 rules for life in 12 minutes 1.

Peterson 12 rules