In all of our lives we encounter rules that are legal, cultural, familial, and personal. Sometimes these rules don’t match up with who we are and what we need, but we try to make them fit anyway, because we think that is what we are supposed to do.
We can be in situations where we are head over heels in love with someone, but if we believe that the person has to come in a certain package— they can’t have kids, they need to have a certain level of education— we will force ourselves out of the relationship, because loving them breaks our rule.
Then there are those of us who are stuck in unhealthy relationships because our rules say we’ve been friends too long to let the person go. Our rule says that we have to stay in relationships with people even if we have nothing in common, or have grown apart, or we don’t even really like them anymore.
When our rules clash with our happiness, we need to ask ourselves where these rules came from and why we’re following them. We need to ask ourselves why these rules matter.
Here are some signs that your rules no longer support your lifestyle.
You’re trying to make the problem fit the rule. You are trying to force your lived experience to exist within the confines of the rule.
What you actually want for yourself isn’t aligned with your rules. What you want and what your rule is demanding are clearly incompatible, but you’re trying to force them to coexist anyway.
You have changed but your rules haven’t. You are still operating by a set of rules that serve a different version of yourself.
You are allowed to reconsider your rules when they are no longer working for you.
Journal Prompts
What are the origins of your rules?
What would happen if you were to shift your rules? How might it impact your relationships?
How do you think other people’s perceptions of you might change if you broke your rule? Do you think people would think less of you or gossip about you?
Read
The End of Mom Guilt: Why a mother’s ambition is good for her family, by Lara Bazelon, in The Atlantic.
After Years Of Storing Trauma In My Body, A Good Cry Helped Me Finally Release It, by Saba Tekle, in Essence.
Watch
Life & Beth. I binge watched this show over a single weekend. It was really good. In the show the main character Beth is in a relationship with a guy for ten years. The guy looks good on paper, and he checks all the boxes, but there’s nothing really there, so Beth leaves him and starts dating someone new. In doing so, she really has to reconsider her rules around dating. The show has some family drama and mental health issues, but also comedy. You can watch the show on Hulu.
Listen
Clutter Coffins on The Minimalists Podcast. In this episode they talk about how instead of decluttering, we organize our clutter, and don’t actually get rid of anything. They shared that the United States is overpopulated with storage units because no one wants to let go. I don’t consider myself a minimalist, but I don’t like clutter, and I appreciate the way this podcast makes me think about the things I accumulate. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you stream podcasts.
Please let me know what rules you’ve had to bend or break in the comments below.
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