Rule 1 – Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Many creatures are obsessed with status and position. The strongest, wiliest, healthiest and most fortunate creatures occupy the highest levels of the social hierarchy. They are more likely to attract higher quality mates and have healthy, successful offspring. Dominance hierarchies have existed for half a billion years.

In assessing for dominance, your brain watches how you are treated by other people. If you are judged to be of little worth, serotonin availability is restricted, and you become more reactive and impulsive. If you have high status, your serotonin is plentiful, and you are more likely to be calm and able to delay gratification. Winning increases the ratio of serotonin to octopamine, which affects confidence and posture. Losing increases the ratio of octopamine to serotonin, yet a loser exposed to serotonin will mimic the behaviour of a winner.

Your internal dominance calculator can malfunction, habits can interfere with its accuracy when they initiate feedback loops. A habitual assumption of subordination renders a person more stressed and uncertain than necessary, this habitual posturing attracts genuine negative attention, which can lead to further submissive posturing, and further negative attention.

There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, and strength of character. The potential of anger and aggression to produce cruelty and mayhem is balanced by the ability to push back against oppression, to speak truth, and to motivate resolute movement forward in times of strife, uncertainty and danger.

Maybe you're a loser, maybe you're not. Circumstances change, and so can you. Positive feedback loops can be destructive, but they can also get you ahead. Altering your body language is an important example of this. If your posture is poor, you will feel small, defeated and ineffectual, others' reactions to you will amplify this. If you straighten up, people will look at and treat you differently. People, yourself included, will start to assume that you are competent and able. Your nervous system responds differently when you face the demands of life voluntarily, when you respond to a challenge, rather than brace for a catastrophe. Positive responses will embolden you, the probability that good things will happen to you will increase, and those things will feel better when they do happen.

To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, it means to willingly undertake the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality.

Stand up straight, with your shoulders back.