Personal Mastery: 3 Rules for Life

Whether we know it or not, we’re all seeking personal mastery. This comes down to our purpose, vision, belief, commitment, and self-awareness. It is knowing what our potential is and striving to reach it.

Personal mastery is imperative for the modern leader because before we can even think about leading others, we must lead ourselves.

In his book 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson provides life advice through essays on ethical principles, psychology, mythology, religion, and personal anecdotes.

This ties in with personal mastery in a big way, so here are three of his 12 rules which will provide you with food for thought on your journey of personal mastery and becoming the best version of yourself.

1.     Make friends with people who want the best for you

The company we keep has a major influence on our decisions. As the saying goes, “you are the company you keep”.

The main takeaway from this rule and its relation to personal mastery is that you should strive for relationships with people who want you to succeed. People that want the best for you.

There are a few different reasons preventing people from choosing friends who want the best for them, but it normally comes down to low self-esteem or wanting to “rescue” people that are in a bad way.

The big challenge on your journey to personal mastery is knowing when to let go of certain people.

Keeping friends that uplift you will have a positive impact on your life. This will increase your sense of belonging and purpose while boosting your self-confidence and reducing stress.

2.   Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today

The key takeaway from this rule is learning to use your inner critic, that “voice” inside all of us to your benefit. For the purpose of building yourself up as opposed to breaking yourself down.

We all have our own inherent nature – we all have something that drives us. The point is to not be too harsh on yourself as this inner critic has the ability to destroy our sense of self-worth.

We need to use it to improve ourselves in a productive way. It can be used to guide us in the right direction. It starts by focusing on the future by comparing yourself to who you were yesterday. We need to set ourselves realistic goals and make time for frequent reflection on our paths to personal mastery.

3.     Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

Now, this rule is related to sacrifice. It’s the realisation that you may need to give up something you have now which is of value in order to attain something greater in the future.

This can be something simple such as going out over the weekends or binging on Netflix after work in the evenings.

Think about it; how can you expect to achieve greatness without putting in the hard yards? This ties in with Malcolm Gladwell’s rule of 10,000 hours. You can’t possibly master something without putting in the time. And that normally means a heck of a lot of time.

By sacrificing the present, you can mould and manipulate your future reality.

These takeaways can be combined with setting a vision for yourself. What do you want to accomplish? By knowing what you want to master, it will give you a starting point – a sense of direction.

Once you have identified this, it will give you purpose. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a massive goal either. These can be short term goals like writing the first page of your book, getting a promotion or writing a business plan.

Take the first step towards personal mastery by reflecting on these goals to give yourself an idea of how you can progress.

To find out more about personal mastery and leadership, get in touch with me. No goal is unattainable.