September 17, 2012

5 Rules to Live By and 5 Rules for Living Life

published this at 7:11 am

How to Happiness

Do You Rule Out Living Part of Your Life?

cooltext443809558_authenticity

She showed me her blog post about how she wasn’t doing enough. It listed out all of the things she was inspired to do now. Wow. She said she was going to read so many books; write so many blog posts, go to so many events; meet up with so many friends and family members; and excel at work.

So much commitment … I was wondering where the time was be alive.

Commitments are good things, especially those commitments we finally learn to make to ourselves. Yet, we can throw ourselves off course with commitments and rules until we lose sight of the spontaneous, growing, learning and living human beings we are.

5 Rules to Live By

Can we really make rules to live by? We need the right navigational skills, knowledge, and tools true enough, but making rules for life … Isn’t that sort of like making definitive rules about how to paddle the rapids or drive the back roads? Don’t we have to let the conditions of the rapids and the roads figure in on our choices?

Now, I’m not saying it’s not a good idea to have a few “rules of the road” to guide us. I’m saying we could do a lot fewer of them …
Of course, we need a few stretchable boundaries. A little definition gives us purpose and raises our expectations.
I’d never say take off without any idea of a destination. Gotta know where we’re going.
I’m not even thinking that we should disregard our method of transportation.
It’s even probably a good idea to choose the general route we might be taking …

But, we don’t need to determine how many miles that we’ll be moving while the sun shines, where we’ll be stopping to take a photo, or how long we’ll be swerving to miss an unfilled pothole. We don’t need to be portioning out the hours, minutes, and seconds we’ll be talking to, listening to, or sharing silence with people we love. To do that we need to know what we value and who we care about.

But … remember that humans don’t come with an instruction manual or a rule book for life.
We learn who we are by living our lives.
We’re each a one-of-a-kind experiment.
We all need a few rules of our own.

5 Rules for Living Life


BigStock: Humans don’t come
with a book of rules for life.

As kids, we all looked forward to growing up for the chance to decide when to eat ice-cream for breakfast and other such stuff. Then we found out those decisions aren’t the ones that count. Even worse, we found out that the rules we thought were guides of our lives aren’t the same for everyone in this bigger universe.

The entire world population can’t meet to decide what makes a life worth living. Who’d be in charge? How would we pick?

Deciding the rules that make your life worth living is really up to you.

For the sake of conversation, here are a few rules you might try out. I think of them of as rules for living life. They’re all adaptable to any size, temperament, time line, location, or living conditions you might design.

Be open to the opportunity that serendipity serves up. Experience ideas that grab your attention. Realize what challenges you and discover what problems you can solve. Choose a few rules for living that make this life your own.

Knowing where you’re going is irresistible.
Being alive while you go is even more irresistible than that.

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

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3 Comments to “5 Rules to Live By and 5 Rules for Living Life”

  1. September 17th, 2012 at 8:47 am
    jon-david Mafia Hairdresser said

    This is one of my rules: “Go back to my rules,” because I get caught up in all the “details and doings” and I forget to have relationships with friends and family.

  2. September 17th, 2012 at 10:56 pm
    Liz said

    Hi Jon-David!
    I have a rule a LOT like that one. :)

  3. October 13th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
    40 Rules To Practice In Life - Bradley Anderson said

    [...] 5 Rules to Live By and 5 Rules for Living Life BioLatest Posts Bradley Anderson Visionary Web Designer and Information Architect. Blogger, marketer, consultant, bon vivant, rock star-wannabe, music and internet addict. [...]

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