Our personal rules, the dos and don’ts that we follow in our lives, should be empowering and not disempowering. We need to develop personal rules that move us to action and lead us to happiness. We should frame rules that cause us to follow through, not rules that stop us short. We must make rules that are achievable and easy to feel good. If we are to do this, we ought to know the rules we live by. Robbins (1991) has pointed out three primary criteria that would enable us find out whether or not, our personal rules are empowering.
Our rules are empowering, if they
(i) are capable of meeting our goals;
(ii) are within our control; and
(iii) provide more ways to feel good than bad.
When we apply these criteria to our personal rules, we will be able to know whether they are empowering or not. In case we find them unrealistic and disempowering, we must reformulate them in such a way as to make them to work for us and not against us. If our personal rules are empowering ones, they may exhibit some characteristics like:
They would express preferences rather than demands;
They would exhibit a coping emphasis rather than perfectionism;
They are amenable to change in the light of information;
They would lead to a functional rating of specific characteristics, not to global self-rating of our personality.
If we wish the personal rules we frame to be empowering, we have to abide by the dictates of our conscience or our inner rule-book.
Reformulating Personal Rules In case we find that the personal rules that we carry about us are disempowering, we need to reformulate and make them functional. Suppose, we have the following as examples of our personal rules:
1. I must be approved by everyone with whom I come in contact;
2. I don’t like to be criticized by anyone.
The above rules, as we know, are unrealistic, as they are difficult to meet. If you go about with such personal rules, you have every chance of being disappointed and angry. They need to be reformulated in such a way as to be practicable, if they are to be of any use to you. The first of the above two rules you could reformulate as, “Though I prefer to be approved by everyone I come across, it is something unrealistic, since the people are not in any way bound to act the way I wish.” Following similar lines, you can actually reformulate the second rule as “Feedback by way of criticism is important. What I expect from people is to be tactful while criticizing me.”
Thus whenever you find any of your personal rules unrealistic, you need to reformulate them so as to avoid facing rule upsets. At the base of any emotional upset there is a rule upset. The reason for this upset is your unrealistic demand on others. Somebody did something or failed to do something that violated your belief about what he/she, they must do. To avoid such upsets, we need to reformulate our personal rules when they are found unrealistic.
This Excerpt is taken from the book ‘Broaden your prospects in life’ by Dr K.S. Joseph. For more information about the book: Click Here!
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