The Rules You Live By: The Culprit Hindering Growth and Success

Feeling a little stuck in life or your career? What do you believe is keeping you from achieving your goals, feeling confident, or making a change necessary to move forward? What if I told you what might be keeping you stuck is hidden in how you think? Sometimes the standards set for how we think things should go or be is built on a faulty, and unreasonable foundation. 

All of us are guided by an internal set of beliefs that we whole-heartedly believe must exist to keep us motivated for achievement and success. It may be surprising to learn that some of these rules or standards may not be as important, accurate, or motivating as you believe. You may be relieved to know despite other’s effort to convince you, reducing your standards is not the key.

In this blog, we will explore and examine rules and standards to see how you may reduce unnecessary stress and free up some pressure hindering your progress.

WHAT ARE RULES AND ASSUMPTIONS?

Rules and assumptions guide our decisions and behavior. Sometimes these rules are great- they help us make healthy decisions, keep us from doing irresponsible, harmful things, and allow us to act and behave in ways aligned with our values. 

Helpful rules tend to be realistic, adaptable, and have reasonable evidence to back them up. They influence how we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us to support our core belief systems.

However, sometimes we abide by certain rules that make our lives much harder than necessary. Rules, assumptions, or even expectations become problematic when they are arbitrary– unrealistic, rigid, and lack real evidence.

These rules tend to be judgments about…

HOW LIFE SHOULD BE

o    I have to get married and have kids by the time I’m 27.

o    If I don’t get this promotion after working here for 4 years, that’s it for my career.

o    People should spend at least 10 years in this job before moving up.

HOW THE WORLD SHOULD BE

o    Everything should always be fair and just.

o    Everyone should attend college; if they don’t they must not be very intelligent.

WHAT WE MUST DO OR HOW WE MUST DO IT

o    I must be productive all day otherwise I’m lazy.

o    I should never do anything I’m not capable of succeeding at.

o    If I don’t work through the weekend, then work will be a disaster Monday.

o    I must be successful in everything I do.

WHAT WE EXPECT OF OTHERS

o    If he doesn’t succeed at this project, he’s a failure.

o    My team should never question my process, this is how it has always been done.

o    I good employee should never make a mistake.

o    Everyone should be able to speak English.

o    People should always smile at others when walking by.

Lots of “shoulds” and musts, right? In the psychology world, we call this the “case of the shoulds”. You may even notice some “if, then” type statements and use of overgeneralization words such as “always”, “never”, or “every”. We may have pretty rigid or inflexible standards, rules, or assumptions in one domain or across many life domains such as our:

• Career and work
• Activities and hobbies
• Family
• Friendships
• Relationships 
• Health
• Home

These little judgments carry a powerful message to ourselves and others- but are they messages you want to hold and send? How are they impacting you, your relationships, or your work? What are the benefits to maintaining these rigid standards or rules- what about the consequences?

THE REAL CONSEQUENCES

More often than not, unhelpful rules and assumptions hinder performance at work, keep you from truly connecting with others in relationships, and make it difficult to be vulnerable, genuine, and authentically you.  Not to mention, they lead to some serious stress, frustration, unnecessary pressure, and anxiety. 

They may lead you to believe: 

"I am better than everyone else: I’m superior to others. I better work harder to pick up their slack, no one can do it as well as I can. If I don’t do well, it’s probably because everyone else brought me down."

OR

"I’m not good enough: I’m never good enough or smart enough. I better work harder to avoid failure or I better give up before inevitable failure."

We engage in a type of crazy cycle with our unhelpful rules, despite how they may not serve us very well or even hinder us. We continue to live by them despite many consequences because we receive reinforcement that appears to convince us the rule is necessary. These unhelpful rules are sneaky because they have probably been with you for a long time, running your life unchecked, and leading you to feel really awful, stressed, depressed, or frustrated if these rules are broken or not met. 

Since these rules tend to be unrealistic, and likely impossible to maintain 100% of the time, we are bound to “fail” at meeting them. So, the negative feedback loop begins, you feel awful yet again.

"As high achievers, sometimes self-worth is overly reliant on achievement. "

Unhelpful rules are learned through our experiences and maintain negative beliefs. We maintain and act according to these unhelpful rules as a way of protecting our vulnerable selves (self-esteem). As high achievers, sometimes self-worth is overly reliant on achievement. When we are holding ourselves or others to maladaptive rules or assumptions, we respond by engaging in performance-related behaviors and unhelpful thinking patterns. This leads to one of three outcomes of holding maladaptive rules or assumptions:

1. Temporarily meeting standard = temporary relief which reinforces the maladaptive rule or assumption 
2. Failure to meet standard = counter-productive behavior of over-compensation and a downward spiral of criticalness, stress, and anxiety
3. Avoidance = counterproductive behavior, delayed overcompensation, and self-criticalness

Learning about rules, assumptions, and standards in this way can help you identify the real pattern in your beliefs and behavioral patterns. After some deep examining you may find these arbitrary rules and assumptions are actually where you get stuck the most. 

THERE IS HOPE

You know what’s really great? Many unhelpful rules are self-imposed. This means we have the ability to change them. They tend to be very resistant to change, typically because we believe without them, we will experience dire consequences such as:

“I won’t stay motivated if I don’t think this way, I will definitely fail then!”

“I’ll absolutely make mistakes if I don’t expect these things, then I will fail.”

However, with practice, it is possible to dismantle and replace them! Once we begin to establish more flexible rules, it actually becomes easier to reach realistic goals and feel more fulfilled. This gives much more room to establish achievable goals.

WHERE DO YOU GET STUCK? 

What types of situations do you doubt yourself the most? What kinds of catastrophes do you find yourself scrambling to avoid by attempting to control everything around you?

Examining the rules we live by can help you decide if they are helpful.  Then decide how to modify them for better success. You get to decide what stays and goes- remember unhelpful rules are self-imposed. 

Do you suspect you’ve been making life harder than necessary? Are you wondering if some of your expectations are hurting your relationships or career goals, but worried changing them will lead you to be less successful? You’re not alone. Let’s explore unrelenting stress and pressure that’s keeping you from you’re creative process, making your next breakthrough, deciding on your next steps, or putting your best foot forward.

Contact me to learn more about working through unhelpful rules, expectations, and standards. Stay tuned for more solutions!

Elizabeth Gentzkow

www.elizabethgentzkow.com