Jordan Peterson went massive world wide with his first book 12 Rules For Life. His new book, Beyond Order provides ’12 more Rules For Life’.

Order is explored territory. We are in order when the actions we deem appropriate produce the results we aim at. We regard such outcomes positively. Chaos is anomaly, novelty, unpredictability, transformation, disruption and all too often descent. Neither the state of order nor the state of chaos if preferable. Like the yin yang, we need to find the balance between the two.

12 Rules For Life was the antidote to chaos and increasing order. Beyond Order, is about moving into chaos.

We both loved this book so much we are spreading it across 2 episodes. In this first episode we will cover the rules centred on the self:

• Rule 4: Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated
• Rule 7: Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one this and see what happens
• Rule 2: Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-mindedly at it

In the next episode we’ll look at the interpersonal rules:

• Rule 3: Do not hide unwanted things in the fog
• Rule 10: Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship
• Rule 1: Do not carelessly denigrate social institutions or creative achievement

Why Should You Read Beyond Order? 

Order is an explored territory. We are in order when our actions appropriately produce the results that match our expectations.

On the other hand, chaos is an anomaly, novelty, unpredictability, transformation, and disruption. But they move the world forward. Sometimes chaos manifests itself gently, revealing its mysteries in the form of experience that sparks our interest and curiosity. Neither the state of the order nor the state of chaos is preferable, we can’t expand your order unless you venture into chaos.

12 Rules for Life is an antidote to chaos. It focuses on solving the consequences of too much chaos and move closer to order. We respond to sudden and unpredictable change by preparing – physiologically and psychologically – for the worst. And because only God himself knows what the worst might be, we must in our ignorance, prepare for all eventualities. The problem with that continual preparation is: it exhausts us. But that doesn’t imply that chaos should be eliminated. In this blog, we provide you with an overview of 4 of our favourite rules from the book, which cover the topics of interpersonal and self-development.

Rule #4 – Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated 

Sometimes our coworkers, subordinates, or bosses do not do their jobs properly. We may be working with or under people that are narcissistic, incompetent, malevolent, or tyrannical. Such things happen, and we must deal with them reasonably. It’s bad to martyr yourself. You might ask the daunting question, “What would happen if I took the responsibility instead?” But if you are attentive, you may notice that your unproductive coworkers are still leaving a plethora of valuable tasks unfinished. 

If you want to become invaluable in a workplace or any community, just do the useful things no one else is doing. Arrive early and leave later than your compatriots without denying yourself a work-life balance. Organising what you can see is dangerously disorganised. When you are working, take the chance to learn more about the business or your competitors, rather than just looking like you are contributing. 

Doing so will make you invaluable and a legitimate lynchpin. People will notice that and begin to appreciate your hard-earned merits. 

You might object by saying, “Well, I just couldn’t manage to take on something that important!” But what if you began to build yourself into a person who could? You could always start by trying to solve a smaller problem. When you want to negotiate for a raise in the future, you can show all the things you’ve been working on to your boss.  

Even if there is a misstep while you work on something, you can learn from your mistakes. Remaining passive in the face of life is a major mistake, even if you excuse inaction as a means of avoiding error. 

When you face a challenge, you grapple with the world and convince yourself: this is making you a better person. Of course, there’s a challenge to all of this. The curve associated with the human discovery of the future requires work. It means sacrificing the delights of the present for the potential improvement of what lies ahead. We’re giving up some fun today for what may be more meaningful tomorrow. 

If you’re living only for today and not working toward a better tomorrow, you’re no better than the other animals lower down the food chain. Animals can’t think of the future; they’re driving only by what Dan Pink would call “Motivation 1.0” – the biological motivations of hunger, thirst, and sex. You would see lions taking a nap in a field in an African safari, with zebras eating grass all around it. As long as the lions are relaxed, the zebras don’t mind. But, of course, at any moment, that lion could spring to life and grab a zebra for dinner. The zebras only start panicking and taking serious action when they see a hungry lion. But, what if zebras had the perspective of looking to the future?  They’d have sacrificed some of today’s grass chewing for a more comfortable lion-free future. But zebras don’t look to the future. So, if you’re spending too little time to challenge yourself to grow and improve for the future, you’re no better than a zebra who’s about to be a lion’s dinner. 

You must sacrifice something of your manifold potential in exchange for something real in life. Notice that opportunity lurks where responsibility has been abdicated. 

Rule #7 – Work as hard as you can on one thing & see what happens

Multiple forces are operating in the human soul, and often they aren’t in alignment with each other. We do the things we wish we wouldn’t do, and we don’t do the things we wish we would. We want to be fit, but we sit on the couch eating Cheetos and scrolling TikTok videos. We are often directionless, confused, and paralysed by indecision. Despite our stated will, we are pulled in all directions by temptations and end up procrastinating. We feel terrible about it, but still, we don’t change. 

For this reason, archaic people believed that the human soul was haunted by ghosts, or possessed by spirits/demons/evil gods. We wanted to do one thing but ended up doing the opposite. They figured there must be something lurking inside of us that didn’t have our best interests at heart. 

The lack of internal union makes for increased suffering, magnification of anxiety, absence of motivation, and the lack of pleasure that accompanies indecision and uncertainty. The inability to decide between 10 different things, even if all are desirable, is the equivalent of tormenting yourself. Without clear, well-defined, and non-contradictory goals, the sense of positive engagement that makes life worthwhile is difficult to obtain. 

Clear goals limit and simplify the world. They reduce uncertainty, reduce anxiety, shame, and self-devouring psychological forces unleashed by stress. A poorly integrated person is volatile and directionless, but someone with goals and direction is at least heading somewhere. 

If you aim at nothing, you become plagued by everything. You have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nothing valuable in your life. People always say, “you can be anything you want to be” – but that is too much! It’s far better to be “something” than “anything”. Even though it means sacrificing some things, picking something specific brings you relief and clarity. 

Rule #10 – Plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship

In our culture, we live as if we’re going to die at 30. The thing is we don’t. We live a very long time, but it’s also all over in a flash. Marriage, children, grandchildren, all the trial and tribulation already take more than half of our life. Peterson’s recipe for misery (that you should avoid): decide after age 30 that you want children only to realise that you don’t have a partner yet or you can’t have children. 

Cohabitation

You just don’t have that many chances in life to have an intimate relationship that works out properly. Maybe it takes you 2-3 years to meet the potential partner. Then another 2-3 to determine who they are. Those things alone already take 5 years. You begin embarking on your family building journey on 20 something and start to reap the benefits when you’re about 35. How many good 5 year chances do you have then? This means that your options decrease as you wait longer. 

But picking a life partner is probably the biggest and most impactful decision you’ll ever make. It’s a reasonable fear to worry about ending up with someone with a bad character. So you might think it’s safer to “test it out” and live together before getting married. It feels comfortable in theory but statistics show that people who live together but aren’t married break up at far higher rates than married people. Or even worse – people who lived together before they got married have a higher divorce rate than people who committed to each other from the outset. The idea of “testing a relationship out” is comfortable, but it’s a bad strategy that does not work. Coliving without the promise of permanent commitment and serious considerations doesn’t produce more robust marriages. 

Negotiation, tyranny, or slavery 

There are 3 fundamental states of social being:

• Tyranny (you do what I want)
• Slavery (I do what you want)
• Or negotiation

The question is, what is going to make you desperate enough to negotiate? And that’s one of the mysteries you need to address if you want to keep romance in your relationship. You aren’t going to get along with your partner so easily unless you agree to be dominated. You are different individuals, so no one just simply gets along because of that. It’s going to get tough. Even if you strive to pull yourself together, there will be brutal times and they aren’t going to be brief. If you don’t negotiate, you will have your hands around each other’s throats for 60 years.

The domestic economy

When you live together, there needs to be a template for each person’s responsibility because otherwise, you would argue about it.

Whose career is going to take priority? How will you educate and discipline the children? Who does the cleaning? How are the bank accounts set up and managed? Who pays for what? Who adopts responsibility for taxes? There are 200 things you need to do to run a household properly, with the additional difficulty of managing it with a family member.

Furthermore, you need to talk to your partner for about 90 minutes per week about purely practical and personal matters. You keep the lines of pragmatic communication open, so you stay updated with the other person. But if you dip below 90 minutes, you start generating a backlog and losing track of your partner. At some point, the backlog is so large that you don’t know who you are yourself, and you certainly don’t recognise your partner.

Finally romance

When you’re young and not very experienced, you’re likely to make 2 assumptions that are simply not true. The first is that there’s someone out there who is perfect. You’re even likely to encounter this hypothetically perfect person and foolishly in love with them. The second assumption is that there is someone out there who’s perfect for you. From these assumptions alone, you’re marking at least 3 errors. There isn’t anyone out there who is perfect to begin with. There are just people out there who are damaged – although not irreparably, with a fair bit of individual idiosyncrasy. Apart from that, if someone is perfect, they would take one look at you and run away screaming. Unless you are deceiving someone, why would you end up with anybody better than you? A sensible person would think of their new potential partner, “Oh my god. You are either blind, desperate, or as damaged as me!”

With a strong romantic marriage, you will maintain the love of your life and have a friend who acts like a confidant. This cold rock we live on will be a little warmer and comforting than it otherwise would be. 

Going Beyond Order

It’s challenging to embrace challenges in our life but think about the old Yin and Yang symbol. You have a nice balance between the black and white because too much of one – whether it’s chaos or order – isn’t necessarily good for us. So venture beyond the order and embrace chaos to grow in your life.