Cleaning your room might seem like a small task. But big lessons can be learned from making sure you keep the space around you neat and tidy.
Here’s a transcript of our conversation:
Connor: Hey, Brittany.
Brittany: Hi, Connor.
Connor: So, I am excited because we have a new kid’s book and we haven’t done one in, oh gosh, it’s been like over a year because Elijah and I were so focused on the history book, and that took a lot of time. But we were able, once we finished the history book to work on a kid’s book, it’s out. Now, you guys listening, you know, by the time you’re listening to this, it’s already out. It’s selling like hot hotcakes. It’s going well, and I’m super excited by this one. This one is based on as you know, all of our listeners know, each of our kids’ books is based on a, you know, classic or super important and interesting book because we want to take these amazing ideas and we want to turn them into more simple, fun stories so that kids can learn about these ideas as well. And then as they get older, they could obviously, hopefully, go read these original books to get kind of the full in-depth ideas. So, this new one, our 13th book in the children’s series is based on a book by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson called 12 Rules for Life. And this book has been sold. They’ve sold millions of copies. I was gonna say it’s been read by Millions, but you never know if people.
Brittany: You never know.
Connor: Actually, read the books that they buy or if it’s just sitting on, you know, people’s nightstands gathering dust. But, it sold millions of copies. Dr. Peterson, of course, is extremely well known now. There’s all kinds of YouTube videos, you know, his lectures or debates that he’s been in, presentations he’s done, interviews he’s done where I mean, in my mind, some of the more interesting interviews are when he’s being challenged and when there’s kind of an adversarial interview, where, the host or the interviewer is kind of pushing on him a little bit and he gets to kind of defend himself. So, you can kind of see the contrast of these ideas. So, anyway, he’s got this book and it’s sold a bunch. And why is it sold a bunch? Well, I think it’s because he has distilled into one book some really important ideas that are really needed for our day and age that young people especially really need to hear. Of course, his book has been really popular with young adults in particular, who are looking to improve their lives or figure out their lives and things like that. So, Brittany, you’re a fan. Yes. Of, Dr. Peterson’s. Before we kind of get more into the kids’ book, let’s, maybe share why his message or why these ideas resonate or why you’re attracted to these ideas, and why they’re important for you.
Brittany: Yeah. Well, I think one of the biggest complaints people have against, these rules is, oh, they’re so simple. This is common information, like your room or stand up straight, things like that. But then you think about it, and you’ve probably noticed this, a lot of young adults don’t seem to have common sense or good advice these days, right? So, Peterson was like the dad we all needed, who came to give us maybe simple advice, but advice we needed to hear. And it helped, especially since I think millennials and even Gen Zers, which I guess I think our listeners will be, I don’t dunno how they do generations, it’s very confusing to me. But, you know, we tend to, some of us, but play the victim, like think that if something is bad in our lives, that it’s everybody else’s fault. And one thing I really liked about Peterson’s book is he said like, Hmm, like, maybe it’s not all it, not everything is everybody else’s fault. Like, maybe take a look in the mirror and think, how am I making my life worse? And maybe, you know, maybe you can make it better, not maybe you absolutely can make it better. And here are some 12, you know, simple rules that will help you learn to make your life better. And so that really attracted me because I think at some point you kind of get sick of blaming everyone else for your problems, right? And so you just, listen to or read his rules. I listened, I cheated and I read the audiobook. But, and then he gives you these great rules that you can use to change your life for the better.
Connor: Well, I think there’s something to be said for, well, let’s put it this way. When I’ll come home sometimes, and I’ll share this idea and I’ll be excited about it or interested in it, and my wife will say, I told you about that a few weeks ago or, or like, growing up, you know, like, my mom would, or my parents would say, do this, do this, but then I years later read it in a book or someone else tells me, and I suddenly click with it better. So, I feel like there’s this weird element we all have where when we hear a certain message or topic from our parents, or, you know, later maybe our spouse or family members, maybe we’re not as open to it for some reason. I don’t know why our brains work that way or for a lot of people they do. But when you hear it from someone else, suddenly, maybe you’re more kind of open to it. And so, like you were saying, Brittany kind of the dad we all need kind of thing, sharing these simple ideas with, you know, some, I think interesting, insights. It’s not that he just says, you know, clean your room, the end, you know? There’s, what I really like about Dr. Peterson is, you know, he’s weaving in all kinds of interesting ideas, psychology and economics and history and theology, and just weaving all these really interesting ideas together. So yeah, you can take a simple idea like clean your room, but he’s explaining it in these really deep, complex, interesting ways. Now, obviously, for the kids, for you guys listening, let’s say you’re eight years old, or you’re 10 years old, or however old you are, reading a book like Dr. Peterson’s is gonna be pretty hard. Because as I just mentioned, he’s got a lot of like deep stuff in there. So, that’s more for adults. But these ideas are super powerful, and they’re really interesting when you think more about them. And so, Elijah and I felt like this would be a good Tuttle Twins book because here’s powerful ideas and important principles that kids need, but we gotta simplify it for them. And so we created a book called, The Tuttle Twins and the 12 Rules Bootcamp. And so for those who have read the teen books, the Choose Your Consequence books, you may recall or know that, Mr. Tuttle has a younger brother that Grandma Tuttle has, you know, a son younger than the twin’s dad, and his name is Brock. And so we thought about this, and he is in the history book too. So, man, if you guys don’t yet have the history book, you gotta get that. That’s at Tuttletwins.com/history. We’ve been really promoting that one because it’s like 240 pages, tons of stories, just really, really great way to learn American history. And so Brock’s in there. So we thought, you know, let’s bring Brock into this book. And what we did in the story is we set it up so that Brock is, you know, just graduating high school, and he is kind of a, I won’t say loser, we don’t call him that in the book, but his life is not in order, let’s say that, right? He’s kind of struggling to figure out what he wants to do and who he wants to be. He’s, looking around at, you know, his, his older brothers, so Mr. Tuttle, and then at, Uncle Ben, and, who he featured in the, which one was that one? That was in the food truck fiasco. And so he is looking at his older brothers, he is looking at his nephew and niece, the Tuttle twins, and like, how successful they are. And he’s feeling kind of bad about himself. He’s like, look at this family. Everyone’s doing these, you know, really interesting things, and, you know, who am I and what am I doing? And blah, blah, blah. So, the twins end up teaching him the 12 rules. Now, our rules are slightly different, like we say them a little bit differently, just to kind of make them a little bit more relatable to kids. But, but the principles are all there. There’s the same kinds of ideas that are in Dr. Peterson’s book, and we wanted to make sure that we could create a fun story where kids can see and look as you apply these ideas, as you actually implement them in your life, your life can improve. And these are rules that are available to anyone. They’re not secret, they’re not, you know, you don’t have to say some, you know, magic thing. And then suddenly, like, you know the rules. Anyone can read these books and you can too. And so your life can improve if you are willing to put in the effort and move forward and follow the rules. So, I wanna share really quick the rules as we describe them. We also kind of changed the order of them too. So we didn’t go in the same order as the original book with Dr. Peterson, because as we kind of created the story, the flow of the story required us to kind of shuffle things around so that it made more sense. I’m gonna list really quick the 12 rules, and then I’ve got a question for Brittany. So, here are the 12 rules in our Tuttle Twins book that Brock learns and starts to apply in life. And maybe this sounds kind of boring, yay. Rules. Okay, great, I wanna read.
Brittany: Everything. Kids love rules.
Connor: More rules, but it’s a really fun story. The twins put Brock through this boot camp, like a military boot camp, and they whip ’em into shape, and they’re making him do pushups, and he has to go clean these toilets while the twins are eating brunch at Buzz Nelda. And there’s all kinds of fun, silly things happening along the way, because yeah, we didn’t want a book of like, here’s the 12 rules to read the end. See you later. It’s a fun story. But here’s the quick 12 rules just to show you kinda what we’re talking about. Number one, tell the truth. Number two, communicate precisely. Number three, learn from others. Number four, take care of myself. Two, number five, I think this one’s a really big one. Don’t compare yourself to others. Number six, pause to appreciate. Number seven, take control of myself before taking on the world. Number eight, do meaningful things. Number nine, don’t be afraid to fail. That’s a message a lot of kids need to hear. Number 10, keep good company. Number 11, act like my best self. And number 12, bring honor to my family. Now, these might be rules that your family talks about. These might be things your parents have taught you and that, and that’s great. That means they’re teaching you important, true, you know, principles and ideas, right? But the value of getting these from a book is you’re kind of seeing another character or someone else implement them in their life or struggle with them and ask questions about them. And you’re gonna better understand some of these rules when you have that reference point of reading along in the book. Now, Brittany, I wanna ask you this question. So, something I’ve wondered about Dr. Peterson’s popularity, shall we say, is that you know, there’s a lot of these, young adults especially who find themselves really intrigued by his ideas. Maybe it’s, as you said, you know, the dad we all needed. But we were just laughing about this. Oh, yay. More rules to follow, right? As you think about yourself and you’ve read or listened to the book, and you’re very well versed in these ideas, why aren’t you turned off to this, right? Because it is more rules, great rules to follow. Why should we care? Why did you care about listening to that book and incorporating these rules into your life? What does it benefit you?
Brittany: That’s a good question. I think it’s good to have principles no matter what, right? I think if we, let’s look at the difference between like rules and laws. Like, we don’t like unjust laws, right? We don’t like the government telling us what to do. But when you listen to somebody who’s maybe a little bit wiser than you or knows more than you, and they give you like wisdom, some good advice to live by, you kind of, you wanna listen, right? You, you wanna take that into consideration. And so for me, this might sound silly, Connor, it was actually really kind of fun for me because it gave me a challenge to say, can I make myself better by following these rules? And so, again, that might not seem like something most people wanna do. Like, okay, this is gonna be really fun to live by these rules, but I didn’t really have those, those boundaries, or let’s call them more standards. So, like standards to live up to. And once I had those, it became like an everyday almost like a game, like a challenge to be like, alright, how can I be better today than I was yesterday? How can I really apply these rules? And every time some like difficult situation came up, I could think like, okay, which rule applies to this? And how can I maybe make a decision that’s better than one I would’ve made two years ago or three years ago? So, in some weird way, it was not only kind of fun but, I saw that my life was better. Like, over time, when you give it time, you just see like, oh, this has worked. I’m, I’m dealing with things better or better things are happening to me because, like you said, Connor, I’m putting in the work. So you don’t just read the book and then it’s like, I’m perfect now. Right? That doesn’t happen, but it’s really good because it strengthens you and challenges you to be a better person.
Connor: I like that. And you know, I’ve been investing a lot in myself lately, lately with like coaching and self-improvement and reading a lot of books. And I’ve really seen over the years, the benefit I get from trying to be intentional and say, what am I not doing well? How can I do it better? How can I improve by asking other people, asking my parents, asking my wife, you know, asking my kids, having open conversations? Hey, where do you guys see, you know, something that I could work on? And when we’re vulnerable like that when we’re willing to say, you know what? I’m not perfect. So, how can I be better at, you know, being friends with, you know, the new kid, at church or at school? How can I, do more service for people? How can I be kinder to my siblings? You know, how can I make more money? How can I be more entrepreneurial? How can I be a better critical thinker and not just believe what I hear in the news? When we ask ourselves these questions, it opens up an opportunity to be creative and come up with ideas, research online, and find different ways that people handle these same things. But it starts with a desire. It starts with a desire to improve, right? I desire to be better. I desire to grow my talents. I desire to be bigger, better, bolder in my life and do awesome things. So these rules, these standards, Brittany, as you call them, I, like that, better. ’cause no one loves, you know likes rules. You must follow. Be home before 9:00 PM and be, you know, all the things. So these standards in our life can really help us. But we have to have the desire, we have to want to, improve. And I think all kids of all ages. It’s constant improvement. You guys are learning and growing and maturing. You’re overcoming challenges. You’re learning from your mistakes. You’ve got your parents to guide you. These standards can help. And so, the Tuttle Twins and the 12 Rules Bootcamp is the book. We’ve got as always, discussion questions at the end for your family to talk about. We have even more of them in the activity workbook, for the parents out there. We’ve also got a parent’s guide too. We’ve got the audiobook. So, head to Tuttletwins.com/12rules, one two rules all together. Tuttletwins.com/12rules.
Brittany: And we’ll add it, to the show notes too.
Connor: Yes. Yeah, we’ll put it in the show notes, as well. so make sure you get the book, you guys. And if you’ve missed, the last few, some of you, sometimes I hear like, oh, I got like all eight books when there were eight. I’m like, that was like three years ago. Catch up, you know, we got more books. So if you’re missing, you know, numbers 10, 11, 12, great opportunity to catch up on some of the latest ones as well. so head to Tuttletwins.com/12rules, or check out the show notes page. Brittany, great topic, fun talking with you as always. Thanks. And until next time, we’ll talk to you later.
Brittany: Talk to you later.
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