The Rules You Didn't Know You Were Living By

At the beginning of a recent live conversation with Marisa Peer, I asked the audience a simple question:

A rule that you've been living by that is not serving you right now?

The answer that came back overwhelmingly was perfectionism.

And Marisa said something that stayed with me:

“Your mind doesn't require perfection. It requires direction.”

There is a big difference between those two things.

Perfection says: I need to get this right before I begin.

Direction says: I need to know where I'm going, and then take the next step.

One keeps you evaluating yourself.

The other gets you moving.

But as our conversation continued, I realised perfectionism wasn't really the only thing we were talking about.

We were talking about rules.

The invisible rules we create about ourselves, other people, money, relationships and what we're allowed to have.

The rules running underneath our lives

People brought all kinds of things into the conversation.

“My partner is useless.”

“Money is hard to get.”

“I need to get it right.”

On the surface, these sound like completely different problems.

But underneath each one is a conclusion that has become a rule.

And once something becomes a rule, we stop questioning it.

We don't wake up every morning and consciously decide:

Today I will behave as though I'm not enough.

We simply make decisions from that assumption.

That's what makes these rules so powerful.

You can forget that you made them.

“Is that all you think I'm worth?”

At one point, Marisa told us a story that made me laugh.

A man asked her on a first date and suggested he could come over with a pizza.

Her response was essentially:

“Is that all you think I'm worth? Dream on.”

😂

It's funny, but there is a serious idea underneath it.

Marisa's point was that we often accept according to what we believe we're worth.

Or, put another way:

You don't attract what you want. You attract what you think you're worth.

That made me think about how often we focus on changing the thing outside us.

A better relationship.

More money.

A bigger opportunity.

More recognition.

But if the internal rule hasn't changed, we may continue accepting, choosing or recreating versions of what we already know.

Wanting something different isn't always enough.

Sometimes you have to examine the rule deciding what you believe you're allowed to receive.

The final rule

At the end of our conversation, I managed to squeeze in one last question.

“If there were one rule you would want everyone here to delete, what would it be?”

Marisa's answer was:

“I'm not enough.”

That one landed.

Because nobody is born thinking:

I'm not smart enough.

I'm not attractive enough.

I'm not successful enough.

I'm not worthy enough.

These thoughts are learned.

Sometimes through something someone said.

Sometimes through rejection.

Sometimes through comparison.

Sometimes through experiences we interpreted long before we had the perspective to understand them differently.

Eventually the conclusion gets repeated enough that it stops sounding like a belief.

It starts sounding like a fact.

But as Marisa reminded us:

If you learned it, you can unlearn it.

Showing up is evidence too

There was something else about this conversation that stayed with me, and it happened before Marisa taught us anything.

She woke up at 5:00 am in a hotel room to spend more than an hour with our book club.

She had a flight to catch later that day. She was busy. She could easily have asked to reschedule.

Instead, she showed up.

Not for an auditorium of thousands of people.

For our little community.

I will remember that.

Because our rules aren't changed only by what we say.

They're changed by what we repeatedly demonstrate.

And sometimes the evidence that you're becoming someone different is surprisingly small.

You turn your camera on.

You ask the question.

You publish before it's perfect.

You keep the commitment.

You walk away from the metaphorical pizza. 😂

You show up.

Every one of those actions gives your mind a new piece of evidence about who you are.

Maybe that's where changing the rules begins.

Not with becoming perfect.

Just with choosing a direction.

And taking the next step.