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Hey, this is Anne with your Coaching on the Go.

Now that you have a list of rules, you’ve been discovering what your rules are and if you haven’t done this, go back and do this. 

It is so important. 

Why is it important to know what your rules are? 

Because if you’re operating by a system that you don’t understand, and then the system isn’t aligned with where you want to go and it will never get you there, you’re going to be stuck forever where you are.

So this auditing process is super important. 

So once you have your list, I want you to go through it and see how many of the rules that you have are actually the rules that you created. 

How many of your rules are just accepted rules that come from society and how many rules are designed for you? 

Some societal rules might work and some might not.

They might be belief systems that keep taking you into a repeating scenario that’s not working. 

For example, after I found myself ready to divorce for the second time, this is when I started looking at my rules and my structures.

I started to ask myself about a system that I might be operating from that is leading me in the wrong direction.

Knowing that I was a great person, I was asking myself why I was not attracting a compatible partner for myself. 

Could it be things that I believe in? 

When I asked myself that, I started gravitating towards books. 

I would find these books in front of me, like The Four Agreements. 

If you haven’t read that, grab it and read it.

I started really auditing my system, really learning about where my rules were. 

So today, what I want you to do with your rules, I’m sure this list is going to continue to grow each time you ask yourself questions, particularly things that don’t feel aligned with you. 

Find out what rule is underneath that and jotted down. 

Then ask yourself, Is that a rule that I created or is that a rule I slipped into following by default?

I accepted it and it was somebody else’s. 

And then, what is true for me? 

What is true for me here? 

So I can go to this rule about family, where family stays together. 

I believe that family stays together. 

I looked at my mom’s family and they were all in proximity and I decided that they really loved each other.

And I was really confused that my dad’s family lived all over the country and they didn’t often see each other. 

I wanted my family to stay tightly together and as we grew up, we were right together. 

There were ten of us in a small house. 

We were stacked on each other like cordwood. 

As people grew up, they started to head out into different areas of the world to live and in different proximity to our home base.

And I felt like those siblings that moved farther away didn’t have a commitment to the family, didn’t love the family like the others did. 

And I started to feel pain with it. 

And I started to then have my own daughter, who has a great, great space from me. 

She needs it. 

And I started to change my rule. 

My rule is that people get to live in this space that they would like and they get to respect themselves by creating the space that’s good for them.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with how much they love somebody else. 

It has to do with how much space they would like to have and that they feel good in. 

So I shifted my rule that love can cross as many distances as is great of a distance as there is. 

And it doesn’t have to do with proximity.

So what rules are going on in your life that are creating repeated pains for you? 

Another rule I had about family was that family doesn’t hurt you. 

Okay, so now we get to talk about how no one can hurt us. 

It’s our interpretation of a situation that can hurt, and it’s locked into our rules. 

So if a family member said something or did something that didn’t feel right for me and I interpreted it as painful, then they had wronged me on two counts.

They had wronged me by not saying something aligned with me that was creating contrast

And then they also were breaching the responsibility that a family has to not hurt one another. 

So that was a rule that was setting me up for lots of pain because it’s often in our families that we have the greatest opportunities for massive expansion because we don’t quite get along and we have all sorts of structures, beliefs and rules around what family should be.

We have this rigid code of conduct for our family members.

So I’m hoping these couple of personal stories help you start to navigate into your rules and navigate into how you could tweak those rules. 

My rule about family now, or my belief about family, is that we came into this realm to mix it up together, and because we were so close and there were all these expectations around family, my family is likely the biggest source of my personal learning and personal growth in this world, and I’m thankful for that contrast.

I wasn’t always.

I am now because I changed my rules. 

So look at your rules today.

We’re taking the next simple step.

Which ones are yours and which ones you just accepted by default?

And then start thinking about, let’s pick one of those rules. 

How could you reworded or change it, or even get rid of it because it’s obsolete?

And I’ll go into that more. 

Have a beautiful day.