Do you repeatedly end the day feeling powerless or defeated? Let's take a look at your inner Rule Book. What invisible RULES drive your day? What rules drive whether you end the day feeling strong and secure and like you achieved a good day's work, or disempowered and weak, achingly wondering when success and satisfaction will ever be yours?
If you haven't examined your Rule Playbook, you may still be running a set of Bad Old Rules. These can sap your power in multiple ways, such as low-level, chronic heart's-tension and fear, repeated internal messages of low worth, or invalidation of any of your professional talents or high-powered projects as never being "enough". They can make you work late and even later to "go the extra mile", even when you're already going the extra mile and desperately need life balance. They can leave you feeling you're never good enough, despite your most brilliant efforts.
Bad Old Rules won't jump out at you saying, "Hey! I'm a bad old rule!" Instead, look for emotional structures where no matter what you did during the day, you repeatedly end up with thoughts of "What a loser I am" or "Well, another day when I didn't succeed" or just vague feelings of aching disappointment in yourself. Look for instances where even though you had a "big win" in the day, it evaporated almost immediately and you find yourself back at dreary Status Quo thoughts of, "When will I get to feel successful? When will I get to feel I've 'arrived'?"
Bad Old Rules won't jump out at you saying, "Hey! I'm a bad old rule!" Instead, look for emotional structures where no matter what you did during the day, you repeatedly end up with thoughts of "What a loser I am." Click to tweet.
Here are some examples of Bad Old Rules:
The Perfection Rule. "If you attracted any criticism at all today, made any mistake, disappointed anyone -- no matter how small the issue -- you're clearly wrong, bad, broken. You should be ashamed of yourself. And you're certainly not a success going around disappointing people like this."
The Never-Forgive Rule. "You'd better not make a mistake, because it will never be forgiven, and in fact, there is NO WAY you can make it right, no matter what you do, no matter how much time passes."
The Never Enough Rule. "No matter how many hours you worked today, if you didn't try to work even harder and for even more hours, you're clearly not committed and not a team player. You're just not enough."
Do you have any of those? Most Bad Old Rules originate where nearly all our "stuff" originates, in childhood family survival strategies, usually learned before we were 7 years old. The Bad Old Rules described above come from survival in a narcissistic family, which used an impossible ideal of perfectionism to keep the child permanently "down", and modeled that any mistake they made would never be undone and could be used "against them" forever. In adult life such rules just keep on running. If not explored and changed, they can do lifelong damage to professional advancement and achievement.
If you had a similar family structure, you may be operating with invisible rules that create a terror of ever "making a mistake" as there was "never" a way you could remedy it. Or you may end the day feeling you didn't dodge every bullet of possible criticism and are therefore, "still not enough", since the inner Bad Old Rule is that even merely attracting criticism means you are a failure, rather than a success. This is utterly disempowering, because it puts your Locus of Control outside yourself in a desperate attempt to please/control/not offend the world, so that you don't get that permanent black mark in your inner rule book. Instead of living your vision, you spend all your time trying to dance around and regulate things outside your control.
Bring your Locus of Control back into yourself! You are powerful, and these Bad Old Rules will never serve you in everyday power and achievement. Begin to explore and defuse them. Create Good New Rules now. Set ones that support learning, exploration and achievement. The hallmark of Good New Rules is that they place ALL the control INSIDE you.
Some Good New Rules you could experiment with:
Exploration Is Safe and Desirable. "You can enjoy any and all exploration into new fields of thought and action today. These grow your skills, power, and ability to handle and regulate the unknown. Meeting new people, trying new things, new professional projects, are all expansive and desirable. How much did you explore today? How will you build exploration into every day as positive criteria?"
Failure Is Always Forgiven. "Your failure is just feedback. You forgive yourself right away. If you really need to apologize to someone, just do so. If the other person doesn't respond, they are responsible for their emotions, NOT you. Fail forward fast, learn, be compassionate to yourself and move forward. How many times did you constructively fail today? Kudos to you, because you're learning well."
You Are Enough, And Your Contribution Matters. "You are enough. You are enough in all you do. Your contribution matters to your life, the workplace, and the world. How many times did you remind yourself today that what you bring to the table matters as it can never be replicated by anyone else?"
Explore! What are your Bad Old Rules? What did you learn about "what a (supposedly) successful person does in a successful day" that absolutely doesn't work because it repeatedly disempowers you?
Recode. Upgrade your Rule Playbook! What are the Good New Rules you can define for yourself that make growth and achievement an everyday occurrence? That keep your power within you, where it belongs?
Keep Growing,
