From The RULES, a six-week course I made in early 2017. A short video and one small exercise a day.
It's early 2017. I'm sat in front of a camera, about to press record on day one of a brand new course, and I haven't made the other 41 videos yet.
That's on purpose. It's the first time I've ever coached people through video instead of face to face, so I'm recording a few days at a time and reading the emails that come back. If someone gets stuck, the next video can deal with it. If I'd waited until all 42 were perfect, the course would still be sitting on a hard drive. (Done beats perfect.)
The first slide says "You can't play the game if you don't know the rules."
The game is life
And the point is to play it a bit better. Most of the rules we play by sit under the surface. We never wrote them down. We don't even know we're following them. Most of what you decide in a day, you decide without noticing. And you can't change a rule you can't see.
Over years of working on myself, and coaching people one to one, I kept seeing the same five rules turn up. They're behind almost every decision I've watched people make, mine included. So I put them into one word.
The RULES
R is for resentments. Resentment comes from an old French word meaning "to feel again". Anything from your past that you keep feeling again counts, good or bad. More on that in Resentment means "feel again".
U is for untruths. The things you believe that simply aren't true. You're rarely lying to yourself on purpose. Think of it as contaminated knowledge, and your memory is a big source of it. That's Three ways your memory lies to you.
L is for legends. The stories you tell about yourself, especially anything that starts with "I am". They're the legs under the table that hold your untruths up. See You're holding the pen.
E is for excuses. This one sounds odd at first. Procrastination is a form of protection. Excuses keep life predictable, even when predictable isn't what you want. That's Procrastination is protection.
S is for standards. What you'll accept and what you won't, from other people and from yourself. Sometimes they're too low. Quite often they're too high. That's Shift your standards (sometimes down).
They all overlap. A resentment usually sits on an untruth. The untruth is propped up by a legend. The legend hands you a ready-made excuse. And your standards decide how much of it you'll put up with.
Start with your victories
Before you go digging, I'd ask you to do something that feels a bit odd. Write a victories list.
Take a sheet of paper and write down everything you've achieved in the last 12 months. Big or small, it doesn't matter. Give it at least ten minutes and keep going until you run dry. Then start a second page for the last ten years. Most of us overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in ten, and this page tends to prove it. Then a third page for your whole life. Learning to ride a bike counts. So does learning to tie your shoelaces. By the time you get to that third page, you'll find far more than you expected.
Why bother? Because some of what you find when you look at your rules won't be comfortable. On the days it stings, it helps to have proof, in your own handwriting, of what you've already done.
And a gratitude list, every day
The second habit is a gratitude list. Three things minimum, and fresh ones each day, so no repeats from yesterday. I like doing mine just before bed. Some people prefer the morning. Do what works for you.
Gratitude has helped me enormously. It also means that even on a day when the digging gets uncomfortable, you know there was something good in it.
Where your attention goes
In one of the live sessions I ran for members, I asked everyone to try this. Have a quick look around the room you're in. Now close your eyes and picture everything you saw that was blue.
Now, without looking again, tell me what you saw that was red.
Most people can't. They were busy looking for blue. That's what focus does. Whatever you give your attention to, you notice more of, and you feel more of. You can spend the day feeling old things again, or you can read your victories list. Either way, you get to choose.
Try this
Tonight, write your victories list, all three pages. Then write down three things you're grateful for today. Tomorrow, find three new ones.
Over the next week, start noticing the decisions you make without thinking. You don't need to fix anything yet. Just start to see the rules.
Start with the one-year list. I bet you've done more than you think.
