What are the rules you need to commit to? And what are the rules you need to break?

Over time, I have developed an intuition with my habits and actions.

If I’m not doing something, I can listen very carefully for whether or not it is Resistance stopping me doing the thing.

This is a version of a question Robert Holden often asks people: is it fear talking, or is it wisdom?

Mostly, I can tell.

This matters, because whilst rules and discipline can empower us in incredible new ways, they can also hold us back.

We have to be a little careful sometimes with the rigidity we have created.

I realised this fully when I was on one of Holden’s masterminds, where some of the content and discussion was held on Facebook. In a peer-coaching session with another member, I had an insight about why I wasn’t engaging with the things that were happening on Facebook, why I was struggling with it.

I had a rule about Facebook. I had thought about it really carefully, and come to the conclusion it mostly served to sap my attention and take it away from what mattered. And so, I didn’t have the app on my phone. But not having the app on my phone made engaging with the mastermind Facebook group really laborious.

And so we have to be careful with our rules - the rule I had set myself had stopped serving me, and it was time to change it. To put Facebook back on my phone.

What was interesting was, years of not having it there and awareness of the cost of letting it take my attention made me far less likely to be seduced by it. And I was able to engage more on the mastermind.

This brings to mind a frame that I heard from the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (and no matter how controversial some people may find him, he has some incredible ideas that have helped me see the world more clearly and change my life for the better).

That is: the best time to break rules is when breaking the rules is more in service of the rules than sticking to them. His example in his second book, Beyond Order, is how this shows up in the Harry Potter series.

At the end of several of those books, something like this happens: Harry, Ron and Hermione are docked 30 house points for being out of bed at night but then awarded 1,000 house points for saving the world from He Who Must Not Be Named. This is, of course, because the rule is about safety for students, and saving the world is better for the safety of students than staying in bed and letting Lord Voldemort win.

The important side of this idea is that we must really understand the rules. It might be wise to understand the ones we don’t understand before we decide to flout them, and we must really understand our own rules, remembering why we created them.

Because if I am keeping Facebook off my phone in order to keep my attention more on what matters, then if having the app on my phone helps me put my attention more on what matters… well, it’s time to get my app back on my phone.

I have a rule with my blog: to write every week that I am not on holiday. And yet, last week, my holiday finished on Wednesday.

I listened to my intuition, which told me that pushing myself to fit in writing among the many other competing commitments wasn’t the right thing. I’m 99% sure that was wisdom and not fear (Resistance).

I can sense check that: what is the purpose of my habit, my rule? Well, it’s something like this: it’s to make sure I prioritise the important but not urgent task of writing, with all its myriad benefits for me across my mental, emotional and spiritual energy.

But in a week, if other things are more important, or other things give more benefit across my mental, emotional and spiritual energy, perhaps it’s time to break the rule.

And besides, by now I’ve put in a lot of recommitting reps. So I can trust that I’ll be back.

And here I am.

Sometimes rules are like these, about habits and boundaries. Sometimes they are deep; sometimes we don’t even realise we’ve made them.