The Book That Taught Me "Easy Mode"

I owe Jordan Peterson everything.

...but he didn't take one idea far enough.

In September 2017, I collapsed backstage at Elevate 2017, the insurance industry's greatest annual conference at the time.

I didn't collapse metaphorically.

Not "I was stressed and needed a break."

My vision went dark. I got lightheaded, my legs buckled, and I dropped to the floor backstage. This was minutes before I was supposed to walk onstage and close out the conference.

The irony was surgical. I was out there speaking about building better organizations while my own body was staging a revolt.

I wasn't eating. Wasn't sleeping. Wasn't exercising. I was grinding 80-hour weeks, running on caffeine, booze, and ego, building a company and wrecking the person running it.

Peterson wrote:

"Have you taken full advantage of every opportunity available to you? Are you doing anything you know is wrong? Stop it today."

I was doing everything wrong.

I knew it. I just didn't think I mattered enough to stop.

The Book That Found Me

When I got home from Elevate 2017, I was filled with mixed emotions.

The experience was incredible, the feedback was amazing, and as for the conference, I couldn't be happier...

...but I was disgusted with the physical and emotional state I'd allowed myself to fall into.

I was lost. After watching one of his YouTube videos, I picked up 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos — a book that has since sold over 5 million copies.

Peterson's message immediately resonated with me.

He was saying things no one else had the balls to say: 

You're the problem.

...and more importantly, you're also the solution.

But you have to care about yourself enough to do something about it.

This was my problem: I had stopped caring about myself.

RULE 2: Take care of yourself the way you would take care of someone else.

Rule 2 hit me like a truck:

Take care of yourself the way you would take care of someone else.

Peterson makes this observation that, once you hear it, you can't unhear: most people take better care of their pets than they do themselves.

• They fill the dog's prescription but skip their own.

• They make sure their kids eat vegetables while they inhale fast food in a parking lot at 10 PM.

...but the deeper cut is why we do this.

Peterson argues it's self-loathing: we understand our own faults more completely than any outside observer ever could, and we quietly believe we aren't worth helping.

No one has more reason to see you as pathetic than you. So you punish yourself by withholding the very things that would make you better.

That was me.

Taking care of every client, every employee, every deliverable, and treating myself like I was disposable.

As if the machine could run without the operator...

READ NEXT: The Addiction to Waiting

The Rebuild

RULE 6: Get your house in order before criticizing others.

Peterson frames this with a question that should make every ambitious person uncomfortable:

If your suffering is your own fault, then you can actually do something about it. If it's entirely the universe's fault, then reality itself is flawed, you are perpetually doomed, and you have absolutely no ability to change that. Which worldview would you rather have?

I chose the first one.

I chose ownership.

Over the next 6 months, I lost 25 pounds.

Not from a fad diet (standard anti-inflammatory diet), but from the discipline of keeping promises to myself.

Every broken promise to yourself is an act of self-betrayal, and I'd been betraying myself for years.

Kobe Bryant's "Mamba Mentality" captures this perfectly,

I don't negotiate with myself. The deal was already made. When I set out at the beginning of the summer and said, this is the training plan I'm going to follow...

Peterson's argument doubles into this: you must keep the promises you make to yourself.

...not because you deserve a reward, but because breaking them teaches you that you don't matter.

RULE 8: Find and live your personal truth.

Here's what nobody tells you about honesty: once you stop pretending, you can't shut up.

I wrote more in the year after reading Peterson than I had in the previous five combined.

I built Rogue Risk around a philosophy I called "Human-Optimized Business" — the idea that technology should eliminate transactional waste so humans can spend their time on relationships, problem-solving, and growth.

A national insurance organization paid seven figures to acquire that company. The philosophy worked...

...and most importantly, I became a better father.

Duke and Colton don't need a dad grinding himself into dust. They need a father operating from strength, not desperation. That's what Peterson's rules gave me: permission to matter.

READ NEXT: About People: Give a Shit

Where Peterson Stops and Easy Mode Begins

Here's the one thing I think Peterson got wrong, or at least, didn't take far enough.

RULE 4: Judge yourself by your own goals, not by others.

Get clear on what you want.

Focus on what you can do daily to make your life better. Keep improving your game and raising the baseline over time.

What you focus on is who you become.

RULE 7: Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.

Don't sacrifice the future for short-term comfort.

Do the hard things now.

Peterson is right on both counts. But he stops short of the conclusion that changed my life:

The hard things shouldn't feel like punishment. If they do, you're in the wrong arena.

That's the seed of Easy Mode.

Easy Mode isn't about doing easy things.

It's about finding the arena where hard work doesn't register as suffering, where the grind feels like purpose instead of punishment.

• A guitarist's fingers still bleed.

• A writer still stares at blank pages.

• A founder still gets punched in the face daily.

...but they keep going because the work itself is the reward.

Peterson gave me the structure to stop destroying myself.

Easy Mode is the framework for what comes next: how do you design a life around the thing that makes you dangerous?

The research backs this up.

Donald Clifton's research at the University of Nebraska tracked speed readers, students who were already in the top percentile.

When those students received additional training in their strength, their reading speed improved by 828%.

The students who received remedial training in their weaknesses? Marginal improvement.

The ones who invested in what they were already built for became exponentially better.

That's not a metaphor. That's math.

The Debt

My upcoming book, Easy Mode: How to Find Your Edge, Build Your Life Around It, and Cut Out Everything Else, doesn't exist without Jordan Peterson.

Without 12 Rules for Life,

• I don't get healthy.

• I don't build the company that proved the thesis.

• And I sure as hell don't become the father my sons deserve.

Peterson taught me that my suffering was my responsibility, and that was the most liberating thing anyone ever said to me.

...because if it's my fault, I can fix it.

Easy Mode is what happens when you take that seriously and follow it to its logical end.

You don't just stop destroying yourself. You find the thing that looks like suffering to everyone else but feels like play to you, and you build your entire life around it.

Peterson built the foundation. Easy Mode builds the house.

And if you're running hard mode right now, building something impressive on the outside while quietly falling apart inside...listen...you're not broken.

You're just building in the wrong arena.

If you want help finding your Easy Mode and building the life you desire, contact me and let's chat.

Find your Easy Mode.

Everything changes when you do.

This is the way.

Hanley

P.S. I'm writing Easy Mode to show you how. Subscribe at ryanhanley.com to follow the journey.