> For some reason I am repulsive towards 'self-help' books.
I wouldn't classify 12 Rules of life as a typical 'self-help' book because Peterson is not a self-proclaimed self-help guru without any substance.
If you check his career section on Wikipedia you'll find out that "Peterson's areas of study and research are in the fields of psychopharmacology, abnormal, neuro, clinical, personality, social, industrial and organizational, religious, ideological, political, and creativity psychology.
Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers. Peterson has over 20 years of clinical practice, seeing 20 people a week, but in 2017, he decided to put the practice on hold because of new projects."
And he doesn't try to sell you the idea that life is beautiful and amazing, he actually agrees that life is tragic and brutal.
> I always have a feeling that you just cannot sum up all the things to be "happy" or "content" or whatever in one book
I agree to that. You cannot sum up all the things which make you happy or more content, but you can follow principles which increase the probability of success in what you want to do, such as "be a bit better tomorrow in some minor way"[1]
> I am interested to know, how often when you face a situation, you stop and think, oh I read this and that in a book, I should act this way instead of my natural intuition to do the other way.
Not every time, but more often than before reading that book. For example, I've read Feeling Good: The new mood therapy(another great book with a self-helpish title) and after reading that book I really started to put in practice some exercises in that book which by now they became almost automatic. For so much time I was a victim of cognitive distortions and now I finally found a way to beat them. And not only me. [3]
I wouldn't classify 12 Rules of life as a typical 'self-help' book because Peterson is not a self-proclaimed self-help guru without any substance.
If you check his career section on Wikipedia you'll find out that "Peterson's areas of study and research are in the fields of psychopharmacology, abnormal, neuro, clinical, personality, social, industrial and organizational, religious, ideological, political, and creativity psychology. Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers. Peterson has over 20 years of clinical practice, seeing 20 people a week, but in 2017, he decided to put the practice on hold because of new projects."
And he doesn't try to sell you the idea that life is beautiful and amazing, he actually agrees that life is tragic and brutal.
> I always have a feeling that you just cannot sum up all the things to be "happy" or "content" or whatever in one book
I agree to that. You cannot sum up all the things which make you happy or more content, but you can follow principles which increase the probability of success in what you want to do, such as "be a bit better tomorrow in some minor way"[1]
> I am interested to know, how often when you face a situation, you stop and think, oh I read this and that in a book, I should act this way instead of my natural intuition to do the other way.
Not every time, but more often than before reading that book. For example, I've read Feeling Good: The new mood therapy(another great book with a self-helpish title) and after reading that book I really started to put in practice some exercises in that book which by now they became almost automatic. For so much time I was a victim of cognitive distortions and now I finally found a way to beat them. And not only me. [3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz2tYGt0_As
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380...
[3] https://blog.ncase.me/nicky-reads-feeling-good/