Greetings brothers,

Today I want to share you some simple rules that can be applied to your lives. These rules help raise your SMV and the quality of your life. Let's start off with the first rule.

Rule 1: Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back

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. Most people these days don't have a good posture. I, myself have terrible posture, but I am lifting and stretching the parts that need tending. So quit drooping and hunching around.Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others.Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.

Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible for Helping

People are better at filling and properly administering prescription medication to their pets than to themselves. If we wish to take care of ourselves properly, we would have to respect ourselves—but we don’t, because we are—not least in our own eyes—fallen creatures.

Rule 3: Make Friends with People Who Want the Best For You

You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It’s a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It’s appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future.

Don’t think that it is easier to surround yourself with good healthy people than with bad unhealthy people. It’s not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage. Use your judgment, and protect yourself from too-uncritical compassion and pity.

Rule 4: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not Who Someone Else is Today

No matter how good you are at something, or how you rank your accomplishments, there is someone out there who makes you look incompetent. Instead compete with yourself. Pay attention. Focus on your surroundings, physical and psychological. Notice something that bothers you, that concerns you, that will not let you be, which you could fix, that you would fix. You can find such somethings by asking yourself (as if you genuinely want to know) three questions:“What is it that is bothering me?” “Is that something I could fix?” and “Would I actually be willing to fix it?” If you find that the answer is “no,” to any or all of the questions, then look elsewhere. Aim lower. Search until you find something that bothers you, that you could fix, that you would fix, and then fix it. That might be enough for the day. “What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?”

These are just 4 of the 12 rules that I have from a book called: 12 rules of life. I am not claiming any credit for it, but I want to share the knowledge that I have found and read with you fellows.