Beyond Order Summary and Review | Jordan Peterson

12 More Rules for Life

• Save

Life gets busy. Has Beyond Order been gathering dust on your bookshelf? Instead, pick up the key ideas now.

We’re scratching the surface here. If you don’t already have the book, order it here or get the audiobook for free on Amazon to learn the juicy details.

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial summary and analysis. StoryShots is an education service that stands politically neutral but encourages keeping an open mind.

About Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian YouTube personality, clinical psychologist, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He grew up in the wastelands of Northern Alberta. He earned his Ph.D. and post-doctorate in clinical psychology from McGill University prior to working as a professor at Harvard University.

Peterson’s various TV appearances for commentary on personality, religion, and cultural Marxism put his name on the map. More recently, in 2016, Peterson released a series of YouTube videos that criticized new discrimination laws based on gender identity. Because of these videos, he received significant media coverage ranging from criticism to praise.

Peterson describes himself politically as a classic British liberal and traditionalist. He supports individual liberty and maintaining tradition. That said, he doesn’t align with a right-wing ideology, even though he is often mischaracterized as right-wing.

Peterson is passionate about exploring the world. He has flown a hammer-head roll in a carbon-fiber stunt plane and explored an Arizona meteorite crater with astronauts. He has also taught mythology to lawyers, doctors, and business people. He has consulted the UN secretary-general and served as an adviser to senior partners of major Canadian law firms.

Synopsis

Beyond Order is a follow-up to Peterson’s International bestseller, 12 Rules for Life. In Beyond Order, he provides 12 more rules for living happier, more fulfilling, and successful lives. While 12 Rules for Life offers an antidote to chaos, Beyond Order asks the reader to go further. Neither complete order nor complete chaos will bring you fulfillment. So, Peterson’s 12 rules in Beyond Order encourage the readers to reach out into the domain beyond. Doing so is essential for adjusting to an ever-changing world.

StoryShot #1: Let Innovators Inspire You

Although Peterson describes himself politically as a British liberal, he insists liberals need to remember that social institutions exist for a reason. The reason they are maintained over long periods is that they offer many benefits. At the same time, Peterson offers advice to conservatives. Although social institutions are important, conservatives should be open to new ideas and ways of thinking. We should not marginalize those who are seeking to improve and innovate how society works. The world will change, and you have to be ready to adapt.

So, Peterson suggests the readers look at successful individuals and creative inventions as inspiration. All thriving societies feature a bottom-up hierarchy. This structure enables having an impact on the world but only on the condition that you accept the balance of society. Once you accept this balance, you must seek beneficial solutions. However, only those solutions to important problems are viable that can be repeated without decay across repetitions.

StoryShot #2: Imagination Is A Key to Success

Your mind has the potential to change your future self. Peterson describes imagination as a key to self-improvement. The most successful individuals had visions of things nobody had seen or done before. They challenged the social order and offered their chaos. We are all part nature and part culture. From the cultural side, a fantastic story has the potential to inspire us with unrivaled motivation. This is why our imagination is a priceless asset. It allows us to voluntarily confront the unknowns of the world around us.

So, encourage your imagination and use visualization to make these ideas a reality.

StoryShot #3: Life Can Make Us Scared to Grow. 

Peterson describes the fear we develop as we grow older. Many of us are nostalgic about our younger years when things were easier and trust had not yet been broken. As we grow older, many of us become scared of ourselves, others, and the world we live in. According to Peterson, dark times in your life are like fog. We are afraid of not knowing what we want or knowing exactly what we want but failing to acquire it. We fear that failure is the most likely outcome. Finally, we are often terrified to define failure. This is because when we fail, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were to blame. The outcome of these fears is that we don’t let ourselves understand what we want. 

Along with this, we are afraid of letting other people know our desires. This is because:

1. We worry that others are going to tell us what we want, even though we would like to remain ignorant.
2. These people might decide to prevent us from fulfilling our wishes.

According to Peterson, people tend to hide things they don’t like in the so-called fog. This fog is the refusal to consider emotions as they emerge, and a failure to communicate them to yourself and the people around you. To be successful, you should be able to notice and convey your emotions regarding the things you want and don’t want to do. If you manage to do this, you and your loved ones are able to help you determine your purpose. This is particularly important because Peterson believes you cannot have happiness without purpose.

Once you establish your purpose, you should invest your effort into achieving it. Ask yourself how hard you are willing to work to achieve things you are passionate about. The degree of effort you associate with your passion will determine whether it can become an effective purpose.

StoryShot #4: Taking Responsibility Encourages Happiness

Taking upon responsibility offers a chance to excel in the areas where others abdicated. People tend to avoid responsibility and procrastinate because they are looking for easier ways to satisfy their desires. A prime example of this is social media. Likes, subscribers, and comments provide us with an instant dose of dopamine. Meanwhile, when we do the necessary work, we expose ourselves to more opportunities. Oftentimes, we get more benefits tomorrow when we sacrifice the pleasures of today. At the end of the day, nothing can compare with the feeling of accomplishment that arrives when we reach our goals. Responsibilities, no matter how formidable they can be, create meaningful paths that encourage happiness.

StoryShot #5: Find a Career You Enjoy

Peterson believes that life is too short to be spending time doing what you hate. Although there will be times that you have to overcome challenges, you should not make a deliberate decision to do things that are not to your liking. For example, you should find a career you enjoy. Work takes up such a significant proportion of your time that it makes no sense to do a job that makes you miserable.

StoryShot #6: Never Blindly Follow Ideas

This rule recommends moving away from strict ideologies. Although we should respect ideas that have stood the test of time, we cannot follow them blindly. Instead, we ought to admire people and their ideas but challenge them nevertheless. Along with that, it is beneficial to be open to people and groups who have opposing views. We are shifting toward a world in which only our opinions are perceived as good. The issue with this is that it creates a dichotomy where individuals with different views are considered the enemy. This leads us to an imaginary world where we are surrounded by enemies who want to destroy us, hence we must fight back. Something similar is happening with modern politics. The good news is that we can change it by respecting the ideas of others rather than accepting or rejecting them.

The solution to the problem of blindly following ideology is focusing on small tasks that we can tackle on an individual level. We should then accept that we are responsible for the outcome of our actions at the individual level. Specifically, Peterson recommends having some humility by cleaning your room and taking care of your family. These individual responsibilities give your life meaning without God and ideology. If you can find something significant to you and commit to it, you’ll feel fulfilled. Once you master these responsibilities, you can start considering tackling bigger problems that affect more people.

Rating

StoryShots Rating: 4.6/5

Beyond Order PDF Summary, Free Audiobook, Infographic and Animated Book Summary

This was the tip of the iceberg. To dive into the details and support the author, order the book or get the audiobook for free on Amazon.

Did you like the lessons you learned here? Comment below or share to show you care.

New to StoryShots? Get the PDF, free audio, and animated versions of this analysis and review of Beyond Order and hundreds of other bestselling nonfiction books in our free top-ranking app. It’s been featured by Apple, The Guardian, The UN, and Google as one of the world’s best reading and learning apps.

Editor’s Note

This article was first published in April 2021. It was updated in March 2022.

Related Free Book Summaries

12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Think Again by Adam Grant

Atomic Habits by James Clear

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

How to Destroy America in 3 Easy Steps by Ben Shapiro

21 Lessons for The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

Fortitude by Dan Crenshaw

Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

Principles by Ray Dalio

On Tyranny

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl