Rule Breaking is a Smashing Adventure
How many of us have lived dictated by rules?
The rules of:
Not to venture too far away from home ...
Not to speak unless you are spoken to ...
Not to answer back or question the status quo ...
Not to eat over a certain amount of Calories ...
Not to consume a forbidden or ‘naughty’ food …
Not to trust our heart, stomachs and natural instincts ...
Not to have food outside of specific meal times ...
Not to travel to countries that are perceived as unsafe ...
Not to walk less than 10,000 steps per day
Not to do things last minute without any preparation far in advance ...
Not to trust anyone other than our family or very close friends …
Not to go out of the house without makeup
Not to wear clothes that stand out in a crowd
Not to get a job unless it pays a wealthy wage
Not to go out with someone who comes from a less privileged or less educated background ...
Rules may have governed your life for as long as your last diet, the last few months, for several years or, like probably most of us, for the rest of your life. Deep down, you may be fearing a negative consequence of breaking these rules, without actually knowing what the consequences actually are or where you learned to believe in them...
For myself, my life was literally over-ruled by rule based systems. Left, right and centre, I couldn’t move through the restriction of the rules I had created. I had created them in my own mind as a result of all the false messages my family and society had fed me - based on the very rule based systems they too had been falsely led to believe. I remember once, physically shaking from the shear thought of going out for a meal - feeling terrified that my life would be pretty much in pieces if there wasn’t anything ‘healthy’, ‘low calorie’ or ‘safe enough’ on the menu…
So many of my rules were based around control- control over food, body shape, exercise and trying to please others. I became so rigid in my rule based systems, that I was no longer familiar with saying YES to life.
Instead, I remained reclusively indoors most of the time (apart from when being obsessed with going to the gym and following exercise rules!) I would almost squeal at the thought of deviating from my structured meal plan, or even choosing where to go out for a meal when there wasn’t an option to check the menu beforehand or control everything else I had eaten that day to ‘make up for it’ !
I thought these rules were maing me safe - safe from judgement and feeling guilty and unworthy. But infact, they were making me unsafe. They were making me miss out on so many important life experiences, meeting new people and just being able to enjoy life to the full. The reality is, my life was only being half lived (if that), and for many individuals it is the same.
None of us need to live like this, because it is not living at all. Living by so many rigid rules is like living your life as a stiff stick. In the wind, and the natural flow of life, it will snap. When our rules are broken, we too choose to snap. Either we feel terribly guilty, or we fly off the handle and do whatever we can to express our anger and hit the self-sabotage button — hurting no one but ourselves.
The primary issue with so many of the rules we have integrated into our everyday lives, is that they come from a place of lack. We feel we aren’t good enough, or can trust ourselves fully, so we need to rely on some kind of system in order to keep ourselves in check. When we don’t fully trust ourselves, we are saying that we don’t love ourselves fully either, because no love can ever be founded on a lack of trust.
Also, rules imply that we can’t flow freely through the world guided by life’s natural opportunities… This might seem a little odd for the thousands of us who stick to rigid plans or live by their daily/hourly planners. But we forget that we weren’t born to live like preprogrammed robots who know exactly what to do.
Rather than thinking of rules, what we can do is think about our internal navigation systems. What feels right for us - genuinely? Sometimes, it may feel right to go out and eat a cake at a cafe with a friend outside of a meal time.
Sometimes it might feel right to skip an important meeting or event because you’d rather spend time with family. Sometimes its ok to eat over your usual Calorie/energy needs, or skip going to the gym because you happened to say YES to a date night at that gorgeous restaurant you have been wanting to try.
These type of rules are dictated by your authentic self, and are NOT accompanied by feelings of guilt, shame and anxiety when they are broken because they also involve realising one very important thing - WE ARE ALL HUMANS - NOT ROBOTS.
Of course this doesn’t mean that we go around breaking certain laws or murdering people - that really would be throwing out the biscuits with the cake. However, what it does mean is that we can become more aware of what rules keep us living in fear, and what rules keep us living our truth… You can realise this when noticing how certain rules either bring you joy or anxiety. In the long run, your rules should rarely make you feel distressed or unable to go with the beautiful flow of life.
Sometimes rules are for a reason, and some are simply meant to be broken. So i invite you to look at your own rule based systems. Ask how are they serving you, if at all, and how you can allow them to become more aligned with what your true self feels best.
When you live in trust, and testify against the rules that only served a system that exploit rather than cares for your welfare, you can begin to see the beauty in rule breaking.
I can guarantee it will be a smashing adventure that will shatter your world into a million pieces that feel a billion times better and a trillion times more free.
