Success can be misleading.

It offers you a stage, then steps back to see what you’ll do with it. It doesn’t ask if you’ve healed, or if your integrity runs deeper than your ambition. It just hands you a microphone.

Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is often filed under self-help, but it’s not interested in helping you feel better. It’s trying to steady the ground beneath your feet. It’s not a blueprint for climbing higher. It’s a quiet challenge to dig deeper.

It asks questions that rarely make it into leadership seminars:
Are your habits building someone who can be trusted?
Are you living in a way that could still stand if the spotlight disappeared tomorrow?
Are you strong in the places no one sees?

Most people don’t fail from lack of opportunity. They fail when the opportunity outgrows the person.

The Slow Collapse We Don’t See Coming

We tend to assume collapse is sudden. A headline. A scandal. A sharp turn. But most of the time, it’s slow and silent. It happens in the moments no one applauds.

In the Gospels, Judas didn’t betray Jesus in the garden. That was just where it showed. The real betrayal began long before—quietly, in the small decisions, in the slow drift of his affections. By the time he kissed Jesus on the cheek, the foundation was already gone.

That’s what unchecked ambition does. It outpaces formation. It creates the illusion of progress while your soul is quietly buckling under the weight.

Jesus asked, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” That question is not about hell. It’s about misalignment. It’s about the cost of building something great while becoming someone small. The math doesn’t work.

We praise giftedness. We chase platforms. We measure fruit. But Scripture always returns to the root.

“A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,” Jesus said, “and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” You don’t fix a life by polishing the branches. You fix it at the root system. That part that takes time. That part buried in silence.

Success Doesn’t Sanctify You

Somewhere along the way, we began treating success like evidence of blessing. That if the doors are opening, if the followers are growing, if the money is flowing, then clearly, God’s in it.

But Scripture doesn’t flatter that kind of logic.

Solomon had wisdom and wealth. He also had a disordered heart. His downfall didn’t come from a lack of knowledge. It came from divided loyalty. From forgetting the God who gave him everything in the first place.

If wisdom alone was enough, Solomon would’ve finished well.
If impact was the goal, Judas would’ve been a hero.
If fruit without root was sustainable, we’d see more healthy leaders today.

But we don’t. Because the platform always reveals the person. Eventually.

Living Up to Your Name

When I met Peterson, he signed my copy of 12 Rules for Life with five simple words:
Live up to your name.

I haven’t been able to shake it.

In Scripture, names weren’t just labels. They were calling. They were identity. They were prophecy.
Abram became Abraham. Jacob became Israel. Saul became Paul.
But none of those names were earned through achievement. They were received in surrender.
They were lived into, not performed for.

To live up to your name isn’t to impress anyone.
It’s to live in such a way that your inner world and outer world are speaking the same language.
Where your public life doesn’t outpace your private one.
Where your faith has weight.

That kind of person isn’t always the one with the biggest following.
But they’re the ones you can trust when everything’s shaking.

The Rule Beneath the Rules

Peterson gives twelve rules. But under all of them is one question that Scripture asks over and over:

Can this life bear weight?

Can this heart hold what it's asking for?
Can this foundation stay firm when the wind picks up?
Can this person, this actual person—not their resume, not their voice, not their image—carry the responsibility they’ve been praying for?

If not, then the prayer is premature. And the answer might be mercy, not denial.

Build slowly.
Strengthen the roots.
Live in such a way that if God handed you everything tomorrow, your soul wouldn’t break under the blessing.

And maybe that’s the most important leadership lesson of all.

Not how to rise.
But how to become someone worth following, even in the quiet.
Even in the waiting.
Even if no one’s watching but God.