Have you ever been lost and had to ask for directions?  Sometimes those directions you receive at the side of the road are a little confusing, but having directions allow you to get closer to your destination.  Take a left at the next corner then once you cross the hayfield keep going till you see the blue house then take a right.  This is one way to get directions, giving directions in relationship to landmarks.  Go left on 1st street until you hit center avenue then take a right.   This is another way to give directions by giving street names.

Following rules is like following directions.  It’s like knowing which way to turn when you encounter a certain street or a given landmark.  You don’t even have to think about it, you know what to do.  Knowing what to do makes it easier to do it.  If you’ve ever questioned whether you should or should not do something, (remember that plate of chunky chocolate chip cookies) chances are you will make an exception if you are not following a rule.    When you follow rules there is no room for exceptions.   You are either following the rule or you are not.

Having a rule gives you a road map to what to do next.  Is it a left on 22nd or a right? Follow your rule and you know what to do.

What if you don’t follow your rule.  We’ll if you don’t use your rule you discard it.  I have a rule for no yelling.  Does that mean I never yell anymore.  Unfortunately, no.  But by having a rule I have an expected behaviour that the everyone knows about.  If Dad is yelling the kids are the first to say “no yelling”.  This not only empowers me but also empowers them.  They know the rules and they know what is expected.

You make rules so that you can get to your destination.

How do your goals influence the rules you create?  Every rule that you use turns out to be a goal.  A rule is something to be followed to be used to create a certain action.  A goal is also something to be followed and used to create a certain action.  So does that means goals are rules and that rules are goals.   In the great tradition of ambivalence, my answer is sometimes.

Rules are goals of a certain action.  You follow a rule with the intention of having a certain outcome from that rule.  If you follow Rule 1 – Don’t panic, your goal is to be calm and efficient when you feel like panicking.  If you want to be relaxed and calm in your when handling any situation, this is a rule you will want to follow.

When you turn your goals into rules they become easier to follow and more relevant in making those goals come to pass.   A goal can be a big nebulous thing – you want more money,  a bigger house, a better relationship.  These can be expressed in general terms without any plan of action.

How do you create a plan of action?  By turning your goals into rules.   Rules are action items.  They describe how you will act or react.   It’s the consistency of action that makes  rule powerful.   A goal inherently has no action, a goal is something you desire.  While you can lay out a plan to achieve your goal you do not have to have a plan to have a goal.  A rule, however, is a plan.  It’s a plan to act or react in a certain way.  By creating rules that move you towards your goal you are creating a powerful plan.

Rules give structure to a plan and add more weight to the follow through.  If you have problems following through on a goal making rules will help  you.  Let’s give an example.  If your goal is to loose weight, then you will want to eat less and exercise more.  Hmmm maybe I can copyright that as the ultimate diet plan.  Anyway, most people will start out on a diet that they will follow for a bit and then abandon.   A rule is more permanent, you do not make a rule with the intention of following it just for a short time.  A rule is meant to be continuously followed.  However a rule that is not used is to be discarded.   As long as you use the rule you keep it.   This is not to say that rules are abandoned just that if they don’t apply any longer they are no longer needed.

Now you want to make a rule that you will continue to follow and use and will help you keep a healthy weight.  A rule needs to be consistently followed so you would not make a rule to eat only a 1000 calories a day.  Ok there are people who practice CR a calorie restricted diet in order to live longer.  They do follow daily rules of consuming a limited number of calories.  But for you and I, living on a subsistance diet is not what we want, we only want to loose a few pounds.  So we can make a rule to eat a healthy breakfast.  It’s something we should do and easy to follow everyday.  We can also make a rule that we will exercise in some way.  Now the rule cannot be stringent something we cannot follow or do not want to follow.  We can make a rule to walk whenever we can.  Now this rule at first seems not concrete, but if we remember that we only have a limited number of rules this gives it more weight.

The average person can easily follow and keep 7 rules.  Some will have no problem keeping 9 or even more.  But like the phone number our rules need to be ever present.   We have to know them in order to follow them and that means limiting the number of rules that we follow at any given time.  Seven seems to be the magic number and was first described by Millers famous study in 1956 “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”.   Here Millar delineates that the memory span of a young is approximately 7 items.  While subsequent studies have shown that this number varies among individuals there is a limit to our working memory.

While we all follow rules that we consider to be who we are, not everyone can change the rules that they choose to follow.   If  you are  healthy and physically fit, then you can choose the rules you follow.  What does being physically fit have to do with whether you can follow a rule?  Being physically fit is tied to mental health.  One of the best ways to improve your mental health is to become physically fit.  This is not to say that if you are not physically fit then you are not mentally healthy.  This just means that if you are physically fit, you have a greater chance of being mentally healthy and if you are mentally healthy you can more easily choose the rules that you follow.  And therefore more easily change who your are.

Some conditions make it more difficult to choose the rules you follow.  If you have a learning disabilities it can be more difficult to follow directions and as a result more difficult to follow rules.   But if you have a learning disability you can choose your rules it just sometimes can be more difficult to do so.  If you have a neurological disorder such as Alzheimer’s or a mental disorder such as schizophrenia then, depending on the severity of the case, you will not be able to follow rules that you choose.   As long as you have the ability to recognize that you are following rules and that those rules are created by you then  you can actively choose which rules you want to and will follow.   This is the case for the vast majority of people and most likely the case for you.  I know of  no scientific studies about the qualifications on being able to rules.  But it follows that if you cannot realize that you are following rules then it will not be able to make changes to those rules that you follow.