Are Your Rules Stifling You?

“The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes

Feng Shui

My wife, Jenni, has studied Feng Shui, and tries, where possible, to embrace and employ its principles.

Among other things, she is a great believer in keeping the lid on the toilet firmly closed while it is not in use. An open toilet supposedly acts as a drain on the positive energy or \’Qi\’ that exists in a home.

Having grown up in a ‘toilet seat up’ household, I struggled at first to implement Jenni’s rule, finding myself regularly chastised for allowing the good energy of our home to be flushed down the loo through the open toilet lid!

Happy wife, happy life

I’ve always had respect for the mantra ‘happy wife … happy life’ so I gradually managed to condition myself to go with the flow (excuse the poor pun) and maintain a ‘lid down’ policy.

Nowadays, I’m an advocate of the practice as I reflect on the fact that it promotes a far more appealing and/or hygienic perception.

But whereas I may have been brought into line, our offspring march very much to their own tunes.

My daughter is a practical, no-nonsense kind of girl.

The mention of feng shui, or anything bordering on the esoteric, is likely to draw raised eyebrows and a marginally irritated exhaling of breath. For her, keeping the lid up on the toilet is the common sense thing to do. At the same time, she would view keeping the seat down as an act of decency and respect to the fairer sex.

Then there’s my son.

He believes the idea of faffing around with a toilet seat is a simple waste of time and energy. His convenient, hassle free approach to life dictates that the seat – and the lid – should be left up at all times … unless there is more serious business to be done!

Toilet humour

I hope you’ll pardon my ‘toilet humour’ but my intention is to demonstrate that – with all things in life that matter to us in a big or small way – we concoct our own rules for how things should be done, and how we should feel.

Just as each of us holds a unique set of beliefs that have been formed thanks to our upbringing, education, past experiences, events and their outcomes – and even our fertile imaginations – we each have a unique set of rules that we apply to just about each and every situation in our lives.

Rules are beliefs

In fact, rules are beliefs. The difference is that they harbour conditions and are generally expressed in a format similar to the following:

IF [this happens] THEN [that will be the outcome].

One of the aims of life coaching is to hep people live value driven lives, or lives in which they frequently experience the states of being that they judge to be most important to them in life.

It may sound surprising but most of us are our own worst enemies when it comes to allowing ourselves the freedom and latitude to live the lives that we love.

My personal take on this is that mankind has had to endure centuries of being made to feel unworthy of happy stress free lives by various controlling powers with vested interests in subduing and manipulating ordinary people … but we won’t pursue that theory today.

Masters at setting the bar high

Suffice it to say that we are masters at setting the bar ridiculously high when it comes to allowing ourselves to feel good. Or, put another way, we set very tough and sometimes unrealistic conditions, or RULES for experiencing our very own happiness!

The burden we place on ourselves only becomes evident when we take the time out of our extraordinarily busy day-to-day lives to consider what our true values are and explore the conditions – or rules – we have subconsciously set for feeling or experiencing those values. (This is, of course, something that life coaches are adept at helping their clients with.)

Examples of disempowering rules

Let me share with you three very simple examples to illustrate what I mean. Let’s assume that the three people mentioned here are all clients of a life coach by the name of Dan.

Sarah puts a high value on family connections but her five siblings are all married and living in different parts of the world, a fact that had left Sarah feeling very depressed. Dan helped her realise that she had subconsciously imposed the rule: “Only if my brothers and sisters come together to live in one place then I will feel a proper sense of family connection.”

Kurtley values peace and tranquility but has a high powered job located in a busy inner city environment. Dan helps him to surface his rule for feeling tranquility: “Only when I can live and work full time in the countryside will I be able to feel true peace and tranquility.”

One of Nerina’s top values is independence but she has taken up the offer to live with her parents for the next few years to help her as she saves up for the deposit on her own home. This has left her agitated and sullen. With Dan’s help she has identified the rule that is at the heart of her emotions: “Only if I can live without dependency on my parents then I will feel authentic independence.”

Disempowering rules like those in the examples above can leave us hostage and rob us of the feelings we most want from life. But the good news is that once we are consciously aware of our rules and how difficult they make it for us to feel good on a frequent basis, we can quickly turn things around.

Examples of empowering rules

Dan does some work with each of his clients on replacing their unrealistically tough rules with new empowering rules that make it easy to feel great most of the time. Here are examples of new rules that he helps each client come up with:

Sarah: “Anytime I make the effort to call or message one of my siblings, I feel great love and connection with my whole family.”

Kurtley: “Whenever I take a little time out of my busy day to imagine my ideal home in the countryside, I feel great peace and tranquility within.”

Nerina: “Whenever I spend time with my parents I feel grateful, loving and so proud of the strongly independent nature they have helped me cultivate.”

Empowering rules are those with minimal restrictions, hence “Anytime I…”, or “Whenever I…” replaces the strictly limiting “Only if [this happens] then [I will feel the value]\”.

Jump start your journey

Replacing disempowering, restrictive and unrealistic rules with empowering, unrestrictive and easily met rules is a simple yet powerful technique that will liberate you … and jump start your journey to enduring happiness!