I've just finished The One-Life Solution and while fascinated, challenged and intrigued by the whole book, it is a chapter titled: "Follow the Misery and Make a Rule" that is really rattling around in my heart and mind. It's a interesting principle - make personal rules so that you don't continue to live in misery.
"What I am talking about are nonuniversal rules that are the policies of how to be you. They are rules that you make just for yourself. These have to do with areas of your life in which you are morally, legally and ethically free to engage, but that you have found are not the best practices for you.....It is in these areas that wise people, althrough free to do otherwise, have self-rules that they have learned to live by." (p. 146)
My father-in-law has a motto he followed before he retired: "The company you work for will take as much time as you're willing to give it." He had some rules about vacations, days off, not working after certain hours. Every rule has an exception when something goes wrong, needs to be fixed, but it definitely should be the exception.
I am making a list. Dr. Cloud writes a whole chapter on email and writing some rules around it so that your purpose runs your life instead of your inbox. I need a rule for email in my life. Blocks of time when I'll pay attention to it but it can't be the thing I do first thing in the morning. Just as each swimmer has a lane, we need boundaries, lines, rules to keep us headed in the right direction.
A helpful thing I started a few months ago that goes with this theme is sending my schedule to my staff along with a list of what I titled "major projects" for the week. Unknowingly it was a way to establish some rules to help me meet the goals for the week.
I'd like to pay more attention to managing my energy for peak performance. What I mean is what Dr. Cloud talks about with deadlines, planning ahead and even what hours of the day are best for reading, writing, prayer, study and email. I used to have some of these kinds of rules and am thankful to my Seminary professors for helping me see the need to establish them. Life happened, shifting my time commitments and instead of adjusting the rules I jettisoned them.
I'm thinking about rules with gossipers, people who talk about other people to a third party. It's a cancer in the church. (I already have some rules but I think they can be more concise.) I think the rule is simple: "I don't want to hear about it." or "Let's go talk with that person about it right now." Toxic relationships need rules.
Marriages need rules like date night. Dating relationships need rules to help with "hands off."
Our spiritual lives need rules for worship and personal time in God's Word. These are rules that aren't constricting but more restricting for the purpose of achieving our purpose in life.
Paul says it this way:
1 Corinthians 10:23 “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive."
Freedom is great but freedom unrestrained actually creates chaos. Rules help. If I know something is not going to be helpful to reaching my goal I need a rule for my life. It's what a recovering addict does - stay out of certain places, away from certain people and in a certain number of meetings each week. These are helpful rules.
To quote Dr. Cloud again: "Wisdom is, among other things, knowing to not do what we already have experienced as not helpful." (p. 159)How many times have I made the same mistake that caused the same misery!
"Rules are not made to be broken - they are made to keep us from getting broken." (p. 161)
This is a book I'll need to go through again. Whomever is going to type the notes for me will have a lot of notes to type.
Where do you find misery, the repetition of poor results? Where do you need rules in your life?
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