Writing your own rules
Drawing out the boundaries of who you are
About a week or so ago, I ran up against a self-inflicted constraint.
When I started writing this blog I promised myself that I wouldn’t be a giver of unsolicited, decontextualised advice like every other person on Linkedin, and almost immediately I failed.
Then I failed again, and then about a week or so ago, sitting trying to think of something to write about, I decided that it was a stupid constraint and it had to go.
My mistake had been to put the rule in place before I’d actually learned the lesson and developed some experience of regularly writing well constructed brain farts, and putting that constraint in place so early with the intent of it being a forcing function had actually created a blocker.
Rules of thumb have to come from practical experience, not theory, which I already knew, but had forgotten in my rush to limit myself.
In a weird way I like rules. Not in a ‘weird’ way calm down.
I was drawn to the concept of a ‘code’ or creed when I was a little boy watching Samurai movies, where I first learned about ‘Bushido’ the samurai moral code. As a child of parents who were quietly Catholic, I grew up surrounded by other people’s rules, so it seems obvious now why I would be drawn to the idea of writing my own ‘code’ or catechism.
In the 2001 film ‘Amelie’, there’s a scene where a friend of the main character Amelie gently interrogates a man with whom Amelie has fallen in love by asking him to complete some proverbs. Her rationale is that in her family they have a common saying, that people who know proverbs cannot be bad.
There’s cheery old Marcus Aurelius and his ‘Meditations’, which vacillate between enlightening insights and horrifying darkness. Understandable for someone who was dubbed ‘the reluctant warlord’, but lots of it still holds true today (and lots of it doesn’t…)
Since 2014, designer Christina Wodtke has been keeping a list of personal heuristics, rules of thumb for living a happier life, so taking her prompt, I thought I’d start a list of the rules I find myself living by, and hope maybe you’ll do the same (and let me know).
Embrace moments of solitude
When I was young and found myself alone and bored at the weekend I would panic, thinking that I was missing out on the world, or that life was passing me by (big FOMO energy). I’d grieve for all the lives I didn’t have, then force myself out into the world thinking that’s what I had to do to have a fun, fulfilling existence. I took longer than it should have for me to accept that I enjoy solitude, that it’s actually my preference, and to embrace those moments when I find myself alone or at a ‘loose end’.
Don’t pursue happiness
Life isn’t always going to be great, and bad things are definitely going to happen that will make you feel bad. I’ve found it useful to let go of the idea that I have to be happy all the time or that positivity has an answer for everything. Seeking happiness (and potentially not finding it, over and over again) is a recipe for guess what, unhappiness. I trust that there will be happy moments in life, and since I like my happiness with a spoonful of serendipity, I don’t feel a need to go looking for it.
Don’t ask, don’t get / Shy bairns get nowt / The quiet child doesn’t get fed
I’m a quiet person, and I need to remind myself all the time to speak up, to say it out loud and to ask for the things I want.
There’s a Scottish proverb that goes ‘Shy bairns get nowt’, which is pretty harsh, but you don’t get 100% of the things you don’t ask for.
Buy cheap, buy twice
Years ago I worked in a bar on opening night, and we didn’t have any corkscrews. One of my colleagues ran out to buy some, and triumphantly returned with 5 of the cheapest corkscrews in the shop. As the night went on, one after the other they fell apart, causing our manager to eventually shout ‘Buy cheap, buy twice’ before he went back out to the shop and returned with one single expensive corkscrew.
It didn’t really need much more explanation that night, because it had been demonstrated. (It was years before I learned about the ‘Boots Theory’ of socioeconomic unfairness and connected that phrase to that concept. Poor people can’t afford the expensive item, so they have to buy the cheap item over and over again.)
The expensive item is expensive because it’s well made, the cheap item is cheap because it’s crap. If you buy the cheap item, you’ll buy it again, and again, and again, and in the long run it’ll cost more than if you’d just bought the expensive thing in the first place.
Back yourself
It seems obvious to me, but the people out there most capable of altruism aren’t practicing it, and everyone else has their own shit to deal with.
I can frame it two ways, first the sad, negative way: That I have to back myself, because if I don’t, nobody else will. Nobody else is looking out for me.
Then the positive, constructive way: I have to take responsibility for the parts of my life that I’m able to take responsibility for. If I want good things to happen in my life I have to go out there and try to make them happen.
And further to that…
Don’t beat yourself up over things you can’t control
Really, you control a minuscule amount of the activity currently happening in the world, and sometimes, ‘someone else’s shit’ is going to spill into your territory. Bad things are definitely going to come along from time to time, and all you can do is deal with them the best you can. They’re a lot easier to deal with if you don’t blame yourself for them. Shit happens. Constantly.
Suffer the short term pain to avoid the long term pain
You aren’t avoiding pain by procrastinating over difficult activities and situations, you’re creating more pain for the future.
The more you avoid it the worse it’ll get and the more it’ll hurt.
Bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, get it over with whatever it is.
Don’t start a negotiation with your compromise
I’m crap at negotiating. I am a crap negotiator and I cannot be bothered with it, and that in and of itself makes me a crap negotiator. But what I really can’t be bothered with, over and above the short term pain of negotiation, is the long term pain of knowing I sold myself short, or worse the niggling feeling that I got screwed over.
I see too many people do exactly what I used to do, and start a negotiation with their compromise in the hope that it’ll draw the whole thing to a close early, or because they’re scared of imaginary hostility or ‘bad things’ happening.
Accept that everyone in a negotiation is looking to get a better deal for themselves, and people will use whatever degree of leverage they have to do that. The worst that’s going to happen is the other side says “That doesn’t work for us” in some form or another, and you all go round again.
You negotiate.
Go in asking for more. (See previous points: ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Get’ and ‘Back Yourself’)
And if someone does get hostile and nasty or tries to coerce or manipulate you or make you feel bad, don’t deal with that person. Walk away from that situation (or get a plan in place to walk away if you can’t do it immediately).
That’s effectively the second negotiation rule. Don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Your mind gets old when you stop learning
Your body gets old when you stop moving
I hear the phrase “I’m too old for all of that now” or some variation of it WAY too much.
Some people reach their mid-thirties and think they’re done. It’s all over.
Some people finish school or college and think the same thing, and that’s exactly what they manifest in their life.
They ~choose~ to stop learning, they ~choose~ to stop running around and playing and moving, they choose to stop exercising all of those muscles, and they turn into old people.
Stay curious and keep playing.