WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Healing Hour: Stand up Straight With Your Shoulders Back

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Adriana and Erika kick off the semester with a brand-new series: reading Jordan Peterson's Twelve Rules for Life and thinking about practical ways to apply his wisdom. Today, they tackle Rule One: Stand up Straight With Your Shoulders Back. They discuss the importance of posture, feedback loops, and the stories we tell ourselves.

and welcome to the healing after your weekly dose of healing. I'm your host, Adriana Azarian. And I'm your co-host, Erica Kaiva. And we are here to help you become your happiest, healthiest, fullest self after a full summer away from you. Yeah, welcome back to the semester. Welcome back to all the college students. Welcome back to our show. We are so excited to be back with you guys.

I miss this so much. Me too. And we've been talking about this idea over the summer. we are starting a new series within the podcast and we are so excited to dive into this. We are talking about Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. Think of this as a sort of book club. We're going to be talking about one rule per life per episode. And the first one is stand up straight with your shoulders back.

This is really important and I've found it play such an important role in how I perceive myself. And the way that like my personality, I feel like has changed because of this one rule for better, for better. But before we get into that, as you may remember, every episode, Erica and I discuss what we did over our week away from you guys that was healing for us. But this time, we had 10 weeks of healing activities. Erica, where were we this summer? We were in the capital of our nation, Washington, D.C.

The District of Columbia itself, folks. Oh my gosh. What an experience it was. So I was interning with the National Catholic Register. I was interning with Radio America. And we just had so much fun, like, meeting people and getting into the D.C. kind of networking culture, but also, like, just like getting to know people for who they are. And, yeah, it's really, like, a first taste of, adult working life.

You're living away from home. You also don't have the same structure that school provides. You're actually clocking into a job and internship every single day. And you're managing life on your own. Yeah. Diet, working out, sleep schedule, connecting with other people. That's all you. Transportation.

Yeah. And it was great because there were a bunch of other Hillsdale students there. But there was also like our fellow interns who came from different schools and just we would go to events. And we had to be very intentional about just like meeting people. And, like, you know, becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because I think, you know, like, we can be in a bubble sometimes, regardless of where we are in life. And just being kind of put in those situations where you have to be confident. And I think that ties perfectly into our discussion today about standing up straight and exuding confidence.

But we also, you know, ate really well. We did. Shout out to LeGrand Boucherie near the White House. best friendship ever had in my entire life. If you're ever in D.C., go there. Please shout out to my boy Scott, the manager. Good guy. And we also learned a lot about working out and how to improvise

when you don't necessarily have, you know, the college gym right down the road that you can hit up at any time and you don't want to go running at night. Adriana, what did we do? We did dance workouts. and walking workouts and hit workouts. Yep. What else did we do?

We did a lot of these just like workout videos, gospel dance things. Gospel dance parties. But we did this on the patio of our house. For everyone to see. Yes. No one could see us. If they wanted to, they could have some house. If they really wanted to.

I'm sure our housemates were confused as to why there was jumping up and down and thumping at 9 p.m. Yes, but I really think that we were very intentional about moving our bodies the best that we could and just going for walks. I mean, I don't know about you, but I got like an average of five miles a day. Sometimes I walked 11, 12 miles. It's a pretty walkable city. It is, definitely.

And what that experience definitely taught me is that if you want to, you can find a way to do it if it's important to you, you know, just having a space where you can work out. a computer where you can find workout activities, a friend to do them with. That adds in the motivation. Yes. So we learned a lot of things from this summer. Honestly, I want to go back so bad. Yes.

But before we go back, let's talk about Jordan Peterson. Yes. So we're going to be talking about his first rule for life, stand up straight with your shoulders back. So Jordan Peterson opens up the chapter by talking about the evolutionary history of why posture matters. So we're going to get into that a little bit. And then we're going to talk about the importance of feedback loops, why they matter for you, and what posture has anything to do with that, why that matters and is crucial for you to start thinking about to make your life better. So first, evolutionary history of standing up straight with your shoulders back.

Adriana, how old is this? Oh, it goes back, you know, a few years. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It goes back to A few million years, one might say. Right, yeah. There's a creature, perhaps you've heard of it, called the lobster. It's a really ugly creature. But Jordan Peterson opens his book talking about this lobster and what it does to guarantee its survival and mating. Erica, take it away.

Yeah. Basically, lobsters are very, very territorial. You need a place to live in the bottom of the sea where you're going to be safe from predators and you have access to food. And so these lobsters have to fight each other most of the time. They're very, very combative creatures. And what we learn from this is that if you pit two lobsters against each other, there's the victor and there's the defeated.

The victor kind of gets these positive hormones pumping through his little lobster body and he gets bigger. He makes himself bigger. He's more confident. Whereas the defeated lobster, he'll start slouching, you know, and he has a lot of negative. cortisol, you know, pumping through his little lobster body. And both of these lobsters, they are deeply affected by the outcome of that fight,

that influences how they see themselves as fitting into the lobster hierarchy. And so what we've learned from this is that we share these same pathways with lobsters. If you give a lobster serotonin chemicals, which is what you would give to, which is used in depression medication, if you give a lobster depression medication, he'll stand up and he'll go fight again if he's a defeated lobster. This is something Jordan Peterson loves to talk about. So basically, we share these neural pathways with lobsters, which gets us into the importance of feedback loops.

Yes, so the point being that when you stand up straight, you think of yourself as a victor. You are that big lobster. You are the big lobster. You are the confident lobster who can get back up. and fight again. Now, in your daily life, you're probably not fighting that many lobsters or humans. I know it has happened to a few of my friends before. I have video proof of this. Lobsters, by the way, not humans. Oh, yeah, yeah, lobsters. But in life, right? Like, when you're in a

social situation, if people pick up on the fact that you're slouching, they pick up on the fact you're looking down, that you're making yourself smaller than you are, okay? And because it's just very subconscious, like you notice it, but on a very subconscious level, you know, we're drawn to people who are, make themselves bigger, who speak loudly, who make eye contact, who are firm, you know, those people are happier, right? They're happier. And in having these good habits, they also, you know, keep perpetuating that. I know speaking from my own experience, like, I'm four-footed. I'm a pretty small person. I, like, coming to Hillsdale would really try. I think you can to an extreme, I would really try to make myself as big as possible and as intimidating as possible

to people. And I think there's a difference between doing that and, and like exuding confidence in a positive way, right? Because like for me, it was out of defense that I wanted to be, like, as big and intimidating as I could be versus like being inviting and happy with myself. And the more that I tried, like that I changed my mindset about being confident and made it more so to attract people instead of to keep them away, the more I was happier with myself and the more that I drew people into myself. Okay, so long story short, basically the point is that when I change my mindset from being angry with the world and scared of the world to being open to other people and being open to the world and what it had to offer me, I just kind of subconsciously started to like smile more, to look straight

ahead at people, to kind of look around the room, to want to talk to people, to have people just approach me and like me just approach other people, I just feel a lot more confident and happy in myself because of that mindset shift. And that brings us to the importance of feedback loops. Basically, your self-perception influences the way that you carry yourself and the way that you carry yourself influences your self-perception, which is what you discovered in freshman year. Jordan Peterson, I beat you to it. So basically, if you perceive yourself as at the bottom of the social hierarchy or you look down on yourself for various reasons. And you're carrying yourself

in a in a slouched way in a way that says, you know, like, I'm no threat. I'm just going to look at the floor. You know, I'm going to duck my head. I'm not going to make eye contact. You're not just sending a message to other people. You're also sending a message to yourself. Yes, I am at the bottom. However, when you change your posture, that's sending an entirely different message to yourself. I mean, we're not lobsters. Like, we can make the decision to switch our physical posture. And we know that that's going to affect the way that we see ourselves. Is that what you found? Yes. When you were making that adjustment. Yes, that is what I found. And also, I find that I am attracted, not romantically, just in general, we're attracted to people who also exude that same kind of

confidence. Right. Like, I feel like they are secure in themselves and therefore they'll be secure, like they will not be critical of me, right? Because, you know, people, who are insecure tend to be more critical of you. I tend to find the people who are more confident, are more open, they're more sincere. I think you attract what you put out in the world. And so, especially in D.C., like it can be a very intimidating city.

I mean, there's a lot of very important people who work there who work for very important people, but it was made so much easier just by simply like going up to people and just thinking of them as people because they exuded that warmth and that confidence. just by their posture and how they carry themselves. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale on 101.7 FM.

This is The Healing Hour with Adriana Azarian, your host. And Erica, your co-host. And we are talking about Jordan Peterson's first rule for life, stand up straight with your shoulders back, and how it influences feedback loops within our own minds, the posture the way that we carry ourselves, influences the way that we see ourselves, and the way that we see others.

and Adriana you were just talking about how if people carry themselves with confidence you are more likely to perceive them in a they're warmer and they're friendlier because insecure people tend to look down on others which is an interesting thing to think about I think that we often associate perhaps falsely people who are very confident with the loudest voice in the room or the person who is the most dominating but there are different kinds of confidence right I mean like there's a sort of quiet confidence. You know somebody who knows their worth, even if they're not talking and dominating the conversation all the time, just by the way that they carry themselves. And maybe it takes a sort of confidence to, you know, allow another person to shine in an academic

discussion or a professional setting or anything like that. Yeah. And I would say the common denominator between a confident introvert and a confident extrovert is how they're carrying themselves, right? I mean, your real personality, it doesn't, like, you don't have to be an extrovert to be confident, your real personality is going to shine through when you are confident in whatever you are. Something that I think bears thinking about is, you know, which part of the feedback loop are we going to tackle first? Because there's the physical side, I mean, like carrying yourself, you know, in an upright manner. And then there's also the mental side, like how you are deciding to perceive yourself. Yeah. I mean, the physical, because we're embodied creatures, the physical

instantiation of deciding to carry yourself a certain way. Obviously, it has a deep effect on your mind. But how can we think about the other side of that, you know, the ways that we speak to ourselves? I know that that's something that you're interested in. No, I think it definitely starts with the psychological, kind of like the spiritual, emotional aspect of things. You don't stand up straight, you know, the reason why you stand up straight is because you perceive yourself as someone who is a gift to the world. You are unique. You have something to contribute to the world that nobody else can, and you're ready to share that with people. And that's why you want to be perceived as open, and you want others to also seem open to you as well, right? So I think for me, going back to my

experience in my first year at Hillsdale, like, I perceived everyone else is a threat, and I perceived myself as like, I want to protect myself from that threat as much as I can by looking tough, by looking serious, by having people take me seriously. Right? But in retrospect, I'm like, that's just funny. Like, it's just stupid. Like, how does anyone take that seriously? But for me, it was that mindset shift of, no, I am.

No, no, no, people want to know me. People want to get to know me, you know? And I want to get to know people. And we're all, like, worthy of being known and worthy of being loved. And I think that also comes from just the Christian perspective of things, of the fact that we're all, you know, unrepeatable creation. of God and our worth isn't the fact that like Christ became man and died for us. And that is, I think, the ultimate kind of confidence you could ever have in yourself.

Yeah. And to be perfectly fair to your freshman yourself, that is not the way that I perceived you. I didn't feel like you were looking out at the world in like a suspicious way. At least that wasn't the impression I had of you. When I would first talk to you, you just seemed like somebody that was really open and friendly and receptive to other people when they were trying to talk to you, or they started talking to you. And I was like, this is the type of person whose friend I want to be.

I just think that that relates to feedback loops too. I mean, we're constantly telling ourselves stories about the world, about how we relate to the world and about ourselves. And so, and we need to recognize that, you know, just because we have a very strong reaction to something or we think that we see something based on circumstantial evidence and we have these really negative emotions, the emotions don't make it true.

And somebody's eyebrows coming together by a quarter of an inch, don't. Wait, actually, because it happened to me today, and I like freaked out, and I'm totally kidding, I'm totally kidding. I think what you tell yourself becomes your reality, right? If you tell yourself, I'm not good at lifting weights, I'm bad at it. Over and over and over again, you tell other people that, you say it long enough. Eventually, you're just like, that's your reality. Like, you're just bad at lifting weights.

It's a fixed mindset. Yeah, it's a fixed mindset. If you say, you know what, I'm improving. every single time. Every single time I go to the gym, I'm getting stronger. Like a growth mindset, that will change, that will change your mental view of things. And also that will have effects on your physical health, because then you'll actually be lifting weights and you'll be jacked. And the ladies will love you. Yes. Or if you're a woman like me, I mean, you'll just like be really tough looking and like pretty cool and everything. So yeah, would recommend it. And the ladies in your friend group

will all love you. It's true. One time Erica, complimented my muscles and I think about it every single day. So there. She is jacked. Stop, stop. If I could just add in one more thing. Please. While we have time.

So Jordan Peterson says, to stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order. And at first glance, it's hard to understand what he's saying. at least it was hard for me. Because a lot of the times I think we think, oh, you know, I want to stand up straight with my shoulders back.

I kind of want to just feel better about myself and go on with my day. But, I mean, if you think about it, if you start to believe what you were saying earlier with the affirmations, I am a child of God, and I have an important role to fulfill in this world, and I am capable of doing something good. That means accepting responsibility. And maybe that's why Jordan Peterson uses the word

the terrible responsibility of life because, I mean, suddenly it matters what you do or you don't do. You can't just say, oh, I'm at the bottom of the hierarchy, so I guess I can, you know, not do my homework or spend three hours on Instagram. I am guilty of that, by the way. I've never done it in my life. Never. Or, you know, I think that it's easier to give yourself an out, too, at the same time, if you're viewing yourself in a very negative way versus choosing to transform your posture, choosing to transform the way you view yourself and saying I'm going to adopt responsibility.

What do you think about that? Yeah. No, I think that it's, I'm going to get better because I have a responsibility to myself to be better and I deserve better. And no one else is going to get me better except for myself and God. My cooperation with God. Right.

Because at the end of the day, you're not, like, you have to love yourself, right? And I don't mean that in like the sinful, narcissistic, you know, way but like you are a creation of god and you have to love god's image in yourself and um you know you're how you present yourself to the world is a reflection of that interior truth like make that truth known is what i'm saying make that truth known in in who and how you talk to people how you carry yourself um and you'll just as the more you reinforce it the more that it will be it will feel true to you and i love that you ended on the note of self-love and what that means and what that looks like

in a non-narcissistic sense, because that is going to take us directly to rule two next week. So excited for that. As always, thank you so much for tuning in to The Healing Hour on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Adriana Azarian. And I'm your co-host, Erica Kaiba. Follow us on Apple Podcasts to stay tuned for new episodes or to revisit old episodes. We will be here next week, same time and same place.