 About once every few years we get one of these books where the contents are supposed to be life-changing but when you start reading a book, you hear the same old cliches you have to face when scrolling through social media. But when Jordan Peterson takes control of these cliches, the work combination, the tone, the velocity of speech, they simply work. And Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychology professor at the University of Toronto, a cited scholar and one of the most influential public intellectuals of the English-speaking world. And three years passed since the release of his first mainstream book, Twelve Rules for Life, which was centered around Jordan's idea of order versus chaos. And now he is back, and his new book, Beyond Order, Twelve More Rules for Life, is the yang to the yang, adding some chaos and disruption to your existence purposefully, thus completing the first piece of the puzzle, Twelve Rules for Life. This is part two of my summary and quick review and contains the last six rules in the book. If you want to watch the first part where I run through the first six rules, please make sure you check the link in the description down below. Havily influenced by yang, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Giotte and many more, Jordan Peterson uses their philosophy as spiritual windshields as one of the purposes of the humanities is to teach one how to live well. Now this kind of comes hand in hand with rule seven, which states that you should not do things that you hate. And Jordan Peterson makes a point that doing things you hate is kind of like the equivalent of lying. And there's this idea that you can construct an ethical framework not to do the things that you hate, the same way you might have an ethical framework not to lie. And yes, life is random and difficult and you might find yourself in situations where you are extremely constrained and can't do much about it and have to do stuff that you hate. And if you're true to yourself and choose to face and attack the things that you have to get done so that you can get to a point where you don't have to deal with them anymore, that can be a great start, indeed. Because if you keep doing things that you hate doing, having no plan to arrive at the escape door or at least reduce the number of entirely, these lies will come to haunt you. So every time you interact and do something that is not closer to what you know you want to become and be, you remove one more brick from the wall of your future self. Your character is your strength that you have to bring to bear in the world. And aiming not to compromise it and stop encouraging its state of decay is an important framework you should have in your back pocket. Now rule eight comes in as a sort of enhanced version of Jordan Peterson clean your room advice that has also become an internet meme for the past few years. And this was featured in numerous lectures and public speaking events and written on the walls. And the idea was simple, clean your room and then fix your family before you go attempting to change the world because these are things you can reasonably perform and accomplish and that's how you build competence. And it is not productive for an individual to think and say that all of his or her problems are society's fault. And building on your clean your room advice, research has shown that being surrounded by physical clutter competes for your attention and this can result in decaying levels of attention and focus. Now Jordan Peterson comes in and constructs an improved version where after creating a space that's in order, one can start meditating on the idea of subjective beauty, which is a mysterious oftentimes intangible thing. Because sometimes it can be even intimidating to talk about beauty as human beings are flawed by default. And encountering something beautiful is also about unconsciously realizing all the ways you are not that. And this shames you and gives you a pushback but it also gives you something to work on. And beauty is not an usual thing one can contemplate. Beauty is the mind of the person beholding the object and what is beautiful to one observer might not be so to another. And elevating your room to the next level can be a crucial tool in one's arsenal especially in this day of age. You can start with one small corner in your room or balcony and arrange that with your representations of your subjective idea of beauty. And you can explore a particular trivial item in such a way that it can become a thing of beauty. You need to pay attention. And I believe that one should not start just randomly buying unnecessary objects just to populate your house and fulfill this idea. Because yes indeed there is beauty in maximalism but there is beauty in minimalism as well. And beauty is a true window that allows you to jump into another realm and we are often trying to capture it and hold it as much as we can. And this is why we put frames around beautiful paintings or wrap or gifts in nicely arranged wraps. Simply to hold the beauty in and keep it from getting damaged by the outside world. Now with Rule 9 things get really interesting because Jordan Peterson formulates this idea that if your old memories still make you cry you should write them down carefully and completely. He argues that if something from the past keeps bothering your present self you are kind of stuck in the past. This means that your experience has not yet been processed and processing such an experience can be done by articulating it as detailed as you can. There is some part of you that stuck in the past and you need to rescue yourself by articulating the past as clearly as you can because life is demanding and it takes all of you to be present here and now. And remember that writing is crystallized thinking. If you start writing your good and bad memories down so that you can filter and analyze them so that you don't repeat them is a cathartic process. And this canon probably will give you a new perspective that can cultivate in times of need so that you don't replicate your past mistakes. And this sort of goes hand in hand with Rule 10 which states that you should plan and work diligently to maintain the romance in your relationship. Even though one might say that romantic endeavors must be organic and not forced out, statistically speaking these can fade away if you fail to maintain the flow. Asking questions such as what makes you think that you are natural at being in a relationship? Why do you think that this type of stuff can simply work out organically? Sure if you are 16 and have stormy hormones devastating your inner being the chemical fluctuations of love will show at your doorstep but this will be mostly the product of nature and this will be something that happened to you and you had no control over because you at that particular point in time were not really you. It was a very strange mix of being young and naive, ignorant as well with an overwhelming hormonal influence. And while it might be easy to maintain a relationship in the first few months, things can get trickier with time and maintaining a strong long-term relationship is an art. It requires nurturing and investment. And GP often reflects on this point as he was very much involved in psychotherapy. He discussed how as a clinical psychologist he encourages his patients to date their wives and husband asking questions such as when was the last time you did something romantic together. Oftentimes the response is one year ago, two years ago. And there's also this example we've all been through replicating what modern nature does in a way which is that the first time when you are trying to impress someone so that you can have a relationship or have sex and in that particular moment you are more willing to put additional effort and time than ever before. So if you're following this line of thought, why are you not willing to do that for the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? Why are you neglecting the flower in your garden? Now communication is one key aspect when talking about maintaining a relationship and there's also creative endeavor where constant inspiration and novelty need to be elements you need to learn to use and play with. And Jordan Peterson outlines a tactic you can use to at least attempt to achieve this type of scenario and that is to talk to each other at least 90 minutes a week. Asking questions about, you know, individual worries and trivialities as well because these are things that need to be discussed and you need the same amount of time to do something which is at least an approximation of romance and intimacy. And this again requires effort and sweat and this is why GP calls it an art. It needs repetition and if you can become good at it, you can start playing around with being spontaneous. Gradually sliding toward rule 11, this one states that you should not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful or arrogant. The reason why this is an important rule to pin down is due to the random and terrible forces that life will bring on you. Times when you will be constantly outmatched by the realities of human existence, there's this constant state of flux that's going to be filled with a lot of dreadful things such as fairness, moral injustice, betrayal, things that will make you suffer and decay, fall into the rage and sin and start hating life and everyone around you. And you can combat the fall into darkness by getting to know yourself better by asking questions. The first one Jordan Peterson suggests is what is the world made of and your subjective interpretation of the world is going to be your first clue. When you wake up in the morning, you might say that the world begins in your bedroom. You can see your sheets, your furniture, your significant other. You do not need to consciously apprehend what you already understand. You are there. But also when you wake up and see a world full of possibilities, things you can choose to do and things you can choose not to. So you might ask yourself, what should I make of the possibilities that I see and play in front of me? The offerings the world can serve, the potential you get on a silver plate does not follow logic. You have tragedy, you have comedy, you have good and evil and everything in between at the same time. We constantly ingest the advice that you should be here and now and I do resonate with that, but this device should not minimize our willingness to investigate the future and ask ourselves, what could be? Because this is the rise of a new being that you can unleash into a realm of paradoxical possibility. We must remind ourselves that there's unlimited potential out there and that we are alive and breathing and there's abundance to be seen. And Jordan Peterson argues that we, the modern people, often have a hard time understanding what the sacrifice is. The sacrifice implies having a sacrificial attitude will put us on a path to discovering a greater future that is going to be fueled by chaos. And also remind ourselves about our constant ability to negotiate and abandon instant gratification while keeping an active, long-term mindset in mind. But again, life is chaotic and unpredictable. And what happens to you might simply be the manifestation of that chaos, but you can get better in at least one way by attempting to construct small plans that will gradually push you forward. Deceit and arrogance are also brought to the table. And these are tools that we somehow unconsciously think that will give us an advantage and we avoid doing what we need to do and hide it in the shadows. And if you come to an arrangement with yourself and end up with a conclusion that deceiving, lying and arrogance will suit your agenda, you are effectively modifying the structure of your reality and you will adjust yourself to fit and operate within these new structures. But what if we could constrain our malevolence and serve and transform our institutions more responsibly and be less resentful? What if we replace anger with gratitude and truth and work diligently to keep away the darkness that's constantly attempting to get us? Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful or arrogant. The final rule of the book expands on gratefulness and starts with the idea that being down only can define being up. Jordan Peterson believes that people do have the ability to confront and transcend their suffering psychologically and practically because without pain and sacrifice we will have nothing and only when we lose everything we are free to do everything. But we also need to have some sense on how bad things could be and keep ourselves humble and grateful. And we are indeed fascinated by darkness and evil we see it in media and TV shows and we read about it in books. Even the psychoanalysts believe that we are occupied by spirits that are beyond our control and conscious knowledge and the human race has been dealing with loss and death forever. And we do have the capacity to fight such evil. If you can be the one that chooses to fight a catastrophe the others will see real evidence that fighting is indeed possible. And as always if you think your life is hard and unfair there will be someone else facing hardships you could not even imagine. And there's going to be a chain with these unfortunate people also knowing others that might be more miserable than them. So countering that with your grateful attitude toward life itself being courageous, attentive, alert, observant can set you in a position that's on an upward spiral fighting life's suffering including those who are on a lower level of the chain with you as well. And you must remember that life is good just for life itself and not necessarily for you. You are part of everything and everything is part of you. A weird paradox you'll have to embrace. Your existence is the most important thing in the world and the least important thing in the world. You can choose to have a view where the world is dreadful and unpleasant or you can have a view where you say, you know what, the world is both nasty and amazing and I just want to leave my part where I can contribute. I can just make something out of it and just do the best that I can whether it happens or not. I will simply control what's in my control.