These 11 Rules Will Change Your Life Forever

medium.com/the-mission/these-11-rules-will-change-your-life-forever-c2e4af244087

1/17/2017

There are people on this planet who wake up every day and dont know why.
Its those who ask this question and follow through with action that live happy, healthy, productive lives.

Pay attention!
By the end of this post, youre going to have to make a choice.
Most people click on posts like this because they want to be happy.
But have we dened this? Do we know what this looks like? Have we tried something we thought would make us
happy, only to nd that it didnt last?

When was the last time you looked back and asked yourself:
What is going well?
What isnt going well?
Whats in my control, that I can do to sway the odds in my favor?

If youre not intentionally and consistently taking time to retrospectively analyze your own
behavior and decisions:
Youre going to continue:
. . . dating the same kind of person,
. . . getting the same kinds of jobs,
. . . and making the same mistakes in every aspect of your life.
A problem cannot be solved with the same kind of thinking that created itAlbert Einstein

Find your battle rhythm.

How often do you need a retrospective, where you look back at your progress and decide whats holding you back?
Every two weeks? Every month? Every new year?

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Its your responsibility to start learning about yourself and how you operate from now until the rest of your life.
No one else is going to help you with this.

In the meantime, you may want to consider these rules Ive developed for turning your life up
to 11.
1. Unreasonably question authority.
Just because something hasnt been done before, doesnt mean you shouldnt do it. Just because weve always
done things this way doesnt mean we should continue to.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
Be unreasonable. Changing the status quo depends on it.

2. Think for yourself.

Every time you accept an argument, ideology, or philosophy, youre building a habit of agreeing.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Krishnamurti
Skepticism is extra work, because it requires you to think and challenge.
Complacency is easy because it doesnt take much energy to just roll over.
Do you want to live a life where youre the director or the player?
Putting in the work is a prerequisite for a life of self-driven purpose.

3. Question yourself and your narrative.

Just because you believe something now doesnt mean you should or will always believe that thing.
If this list doesnt change in the next 5 years of my life, it means I havent progressed. I havent evolved. I havent
adapted to the adaptations in my world. A year ago, this list was 7 items long.
Constantly interrogating your own rhetoric and beliefs is a sure-re way to build condence in the things you know
and discover so many new things.

4. Dont make assumptions, test ideas and follow the evidence.

Every time we guess, were diluting the truth. Its not lyingyetbut its heading in that direction.

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This rule alone is the foundation of learning and education. By searching for the truth, we are forced to consider all
truths.
Think about how many of us would actually believe in the reality and consequences of climate change if each of us
could get past this!
Just because you know something, doesnt mean youre right.
Youre responsible for testing and proving your own truths, too.

5. You could be wrong.

When you engage with others, do you listen?
Do you ask questions with genuine interest?
Before you open your mouth with an intention of advising, telling, or coming from a place of knowing something,
remember that you could be wrong.
This is the very perfection of a man; to nd out his own imperfection.
Saint Augustine
Socially, admitting that you could be wrong is an eective way to reduce tension among work teams because it
quickly reduces the perceived stakes of the situation. Once you put your own neck on the line, it doesnt matter
whos right. Suddenly more people are open to the possibility of the actual truth.
The fastest way to create a wall of defensiveness is by asserting your knowing without hearing or connecting with
others rst.
You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him to nd it within himself.
Galileo

6. Dont take anything personally, people are in their own worlds.

Each of us exists within our independent, separate realities.
We each have experiences and understandings that have developed to construct our perspective of the world.
When someone insults you, is it because they are mean? Or might it be because they are constantly criticizing
themselves?
If someone judges you, is it because you are awed? Or might it be because they repeatedly judge themselves?
When you remember that people are interacting with you from their own world of reality, its easier to be sure in
yourself and forgive others.

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The more you react to what others are saying, the less you are being an authentic version of yourself.

7. Always do your best, where you are, with what you have.
Youre the only one who can be responsible for this.
Whats in your control? What isnt?
You have no excuse for not doing whats in your control.
That domain is up to your perception, to dene. If you can practice this everyday, youll nd that more and more
things in your environment are within your control.
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe
This requires consistent, every day action. This requires patience. This requires putting in the work.

8. Make time for play, because the journey is more important than the destination.
There is an entire eld of empirical evidence supporting the notion that play enhances the mind, memory, creativity,
and generally; mood.
Its very rarely a bad time to be in a positive mindset.
Daniel Gurevich

9. Take the time to stop, zoom out, and observe your own perspective.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

If youre not carving out the time in your schedule to think about your thinking, work on your working, or build on your
building, youre not moving forward.

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Rather than seeking to see the world through photo-ops between foreign but familiar hotels, we aim
to experience it at a speed that lets it change us.
Tim Ferris
The time it takes to do this is invested in your ability to improve. It wont compound for a while, but when it does, it
will yield wisdom.
Life is the pursuit of eternally broadening context.
Scott Woods

10. When in doubt, trust your gut.

There isnt a formula for everything.
You wont be able to gure everything out.
When it comes down to it, at the end of your life, as you lay in your proverbial death bed, what will you dread?
The most common feeling is regret.
The top two regrets of the dying are:
Not living the life I really wanted.
&
Working too hard.

If the goal is to be happy by avoiding regret, how will you backwards engineer your life to
this goal?
If you do something you know you shouldnt have done, youll kick yourself later.
If you follow your gut and do something true to yourself and your beliefs, and you end up being wrong . . . well, youll
still be wrong, but you wont regret it.
Youll feel the pain of learning instead of the pain of regret, and youll move on to live another day.

11. Always respond with love.

This one is non-negotiable.
You cant control the way you feel about something.
If someone lied to you, youre allowed to be mad.
If someone cheated you, youre allowed to feel betrayed.

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If someone insulted you, youre allowed to feel rejected.

Youre allowed to feel however you feel. Thats how feelings work.
Youre NOT allowed to hurt others, lash out, or beat yourself up because of the way you felt.
Actions only occur after feelings. Its up to you if you want to act in the heat of the moment, of if you want to act from
another mindset.
The sooner you can regulate your emotional response and start responding to the world as the best version of
yourself, the sooner youll start feeling less dependent on others for validation and aection.
At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling
of love.
Ernesto Guevara
Take the time you need to process whats going on, and wait until you can respond with love.

The next time you say something, think:

was that comment a judgement?
did I mean that in my heart?
was that nice?
The more you respond with love to others, the easier it will be to respond with love to yourself.

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