A few weeks ago, I woke up on my “office day” with an inbox full of emails, a newsletter to do, personal things to attend to, calls to make… and a heart that was craving fall color. I checked the weather. To my great delight, it was the one perfectly sunny day in a long while three hours north. I tossed my backpack and a picnic lunch in the car and headed for the hills.
Honoring my heart was a good choice. Swinging from a hammock under the golden glow of rustling leaves, watching the speckled sunlight flicker and an entire meadow full of grasses bend and sway in perfect rhythm with the breeze, I melted into the oneness. The distant mountains felt like strong arms around me, and the energies that surround all living things started to glitter with an effervescence that I rarely see with my eyes open. My heart full, I drove home energized and ready for the busy season ahead.
In the past, I might have talked myself out of such a joyous day. Like many of us I learned that you got to play after you did your homework and chores. While that made sense during my school years, it is totally irrelevant to my life today. Being self-employed, I can work late, early, or on a day off if I need to make up for lost time. The old rules no longer apply.
Over the years, the angels have urged me question many of the “personal rules” I learned.
Some include how I handle physical conditions. I learned the “rule” that says you trust the experts if something goes haywire in your body. My new rule is that “my body knows what it is doing and will tell me if I need expert advice or natural cures.”
Other rules apply to how I handle finances. Although I would have argued that I never believed in the “No pain/no gain” rule, the truth was I used to feel I had to buckle down and work harder if I wanted something. Although I used to laugh at the old rule that “money doesn’t grow on trees” because paper doescome from trees, I still acted like I had to figure everything out when financially challenged. Over the years, I’ve adopted much kinder personal rules. “The universe is abundant in ways I can’t even imagine. I just need to be in an abundant, appreciative vibration.” “If what I do is based in love, I experience abundance from above!” Of course, I’ve kept some of the learned rules because they still serve me. Keeping good records makes tax time much easier! Doing accounting helps me stay in balance. I only get rid of my rules if they no longer apply or serve me in my present situation.
Perhaps the most significant shift in my “personal rules” has been around the subject of what makes me a good person. Like many of you, I learned that pleasing others made me a good person. I learned the good old religious guilt rules. Now I have new personal rules based on ones the angels have suggested over the years. “I’m already a good person! Be true to myself. Focus on love so I can be an authentic contribution. My job is to please the soul within me and trust all others to be able to do the same. I give from joy. I help from joy. It is not my work to save and fix, only to love and be real.” These were huge shifts that have made a tremendous difference in how I serve and whether or not I enjoy my own life while trying to help you enjoy yours. Had I not embraced better rules in this area, I would have burnt out years ago or become an automaton teaching by rote rather than from the heart.
Sometimes your personal rules feel like fact because they were drummed into you when you were very young. “I can’t rest when someone else needs me” is one I hear often. “I can’t rest till I make a certain amount” is another. Is it true? If you look at it objectively, it isn’t true at all. Many people rest even when others want something from them or before their bank accounts are in a state of glorious perfection. You just learned a rule that says you can’t. These are cases where a few new “personal rules” would serve your joy, service, abundance, and spirit much more than the old ones.
Here are a few tips to help you evaluate your personal rules and create better ones…
1. When you’re not happy, look at your “rules” around the subject
While we have to drive the speed limit, pay taxes, and honor the laws and contracts, few of those things cause our day-to-day discontent. Far more often, we find ourselves irritated because we “have to” do something – perhaps for someone else, or because good people do that, or because we feel you must meet the standards we were taught.
When you find yourself feeling unpleasant, uppity, frustrated, irritated, etc., check in with yourself. Maybe you are stuck in traffic or have to obey the speed limit, but often that does not bug you. Why does it bug you now? You most likely learned a rule that says, “Good people are always on time.” Aren’t you still good even if you arrive a little late? Don’t you deserve love, compassion, and understanding if you’re stuck in traffic or couldn’t get it together to leave early enough?
A tougher example would be the case of grieving a loved one. Of course, you feel sad because you miss someone with whom you shared great love, but the real agonizing pain of grief is far more often the heaping dose of “coulda, woulda, shoulda’s” that plague us when we lose someone. These are all manifestations of learned rules. These do not come from the soul. The soul says, “Celebrate the love you shared on this earth in this temporary life. Revel in the good you experienced and even celebrate all you’ve learned. Love and comfort and soothe yourself through your sadness because you are human, and death feels like a loss. Be kind to yourself. You both did the best you could.”
Many learned the old, painful rules by watching how those before us grieved. “They’re gone. That’s it. You can’t reach them anymore. Move on. Get a grip.” How terrible that our society once believed in and conditioned us to live by these rules. New and better ones might be, “They’ve expanded into their greater self. We’re all on an eternal journey. I can learn to interpret energetic communications from my loved one. I can allow myself to grieve. I don’t have to have a “grip” on my own feelings. I just have to love myself through them and trust the process.”
No matter why you’re not feeling great, check in and question the “personal rules” you learned. Pick ones that feel better.
2. Make sure the personal rules dictated by others resonate before you follow them
When you get sick, depressed, unhappy, or challenged, it can seem as if everyone has an opinion about what is right for you. You may have learned rules that empower you, such as, “explore your options and do what feels right” or “find someone who has been through this and see if you can learn something that feels right based on how they handled the situation.”
Far more of us learned unspoken rules like “Get the validation of others. Trust the experts. Make sure everyone approves of your choice. Cowboy up and deal with it.” Question these and choose new rules that resonate with your own heart.
For example, I once had a large group of friends who decided they were going to do an “intervention” with me and drag me to a hospital. I was healing myself naturally and was determined to learn every bit of the lessons I’d catalyzed for myself. My old learned rules said, “I should please everyone.” Had I followed that I would have gone against my own guidance to pacify the fears of this well-intentioned group. I would have made them happy and hurt myself. Instead, I listened to my new rule, “To thine own self be true.” I healed in a comfortable way, learned, grew, and moved on happily.
On the other side of the coin, a dear one had a bad feeling about taking a medication that others around had used with good effect and that a trusted doctor recommended. At first, this individual was determined to listen to their own feeling, but after a while, the others around inspired doubt. They took the medication, had a horrible reaction, ended up in the ER, and are still recovering. The old rule was, “You better listen to those who know better.” A newer and better rule would be, “It is wise to trust your inner compass.”
So while it is lovely to consult, learn from others, and research solutions, ultimately, it serves you best to honor only what resonates with your own heart.
3. Give up the need for approval and validation
We’re human. We’re pack animals! We want to be understood, appreciated, acknowledged, and validated. We like approval. There’s nothing wrong with intentionally creating this by focusing on what it would feel like to have more of this in your life.
However, if you want an easier and happier life, your personal rules must please you first, whether or not anyone agrees, approves, understands, or validates you. It is a happier, more abundant, kinder, and purposeful reality when you serve the light within you first and don’t worry so much about making sure the rest of the world “gets you.” The funny thing is when you start to serve your own soul, and use the personal rules that make you happy, you’ll attract more and more people who love and approve of you as you are!
Ultimately you want to be true to yourself and attract those who love you as you are. As you make peace with your own “personal rules” for living, you will find more and more of those who do resonate with you and you’ll get along more peacefully with those who don’t.
Old learned “rules” for living can feel like “truths.” They can be hard to spot. They may have been useful at one point in time. However, if they don’t add to your joy, abundance, kindness, love, and upliftment, they might be worth a second look. This week try to find a few that no longer work for you and pick better ones. Give them a try. Tell yourself often, “My new rule is…”
After the last relationship in my thirties that involved my own “martyrdom,” I wrote a new set of rules for myself entitled “The ten commandments of Ann.” They were a list of behaviors I agreed to follow in all future relationships. They were rules for me, not others. I posted them where I could to read them every day. Of course all my relationships and my life shifted for the better in every way!
Your life will shift too as you examine, question, and redefine the personal rules by which you choose to live.
Leave A Comment