Communicate your rules

If you want to take control of your life, if you want to do well in business, if you want to be a great negotiator, if you want to be able to impact your children, if you want to be close to your spouse, then make sure you discover the rules they have for a relationship up front, and communicate; yours as well. Don't expect people to live by your rules if you don't clearly communicate what they are. And don't expect people to live by your rules if you're not willing to compromise and live by some of theirs. For example, in the beginning of any relationship, one of the first things I do is let the other party know my rules for the situation, and try to find out as many of their rules as possible. I ask things like " What will it take for you to know that our relationship is working? How often do

we have to communicate? What is necessary? "

For example, I was once talking with a friend of mine who is a well-known celebrity, and he shared with me that he didn't feel like he had very many friends. I said, " Are you sure you don't have many

friends? I see lots of people around you who truly do care about you. Is it that you have rules that eliminate a lot of people who could be your friends? " He said, " It just doesn't feel like they're my friends." I said, " What has to happen for you to feel like they're your friends? " He said, " Well, I guess I don't even know what my rules are, consciously." After giving it some thought, he identified one of his top rules for friendship: if you're a friend of his, then you talk with him at least two, or three times a week. " That's an interesting rule, " I thought. " I have friends all over the world, people I truly love. But sometimes, even with my best friends, a month or more may go by before we get a chance to talk again, just because of the intensity of our schedules. Often I'll be in seminars from early morning until very late at night, and then I may have had 100 phone calls in that day. There's no physical way I could talk to all those people! Yet they all know they're my friends."

Then I asked him, " Do you think I'm your friend? " He said, " Well, intellectually I know you are, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it because we don't talk together often enough." I said, " Wow, I never knew that! I never would have known that was important to you if you hadn't communicated it to me. I bet you have lots of friends who might love meeting your rules for friendship if they just knew what they were." My definition for friendship is quite simple: if you're a friend, then you absolutely love a person unconditionally, and you'll do anything you can to support them. If they call you when they're in trouble or truly in need, you're there for them. Months go by, yet the friendship would never weaken once you decide that somebody is truly your friend. That's it! You never question it again. I think I have lots of friends because my rules for friendship are so easy to meet! All you have to do is care about me and love me, and I'll care about you and love you, and now we're friends.

It's so important to communicate your rules for any situation in life, whether it's love, friendship, or business. By the way, even if you clarify all the rules in advance, can misunderstandings still occur? You bet. Sometimes you'll forget to communicate one of your rules, or you may not even consciously know what some of your rules are. That's why ongoing communication is so important. Never assume when it comes to rules. Communicate.

THERE ARE SOME RULES YOU CANNOT BREAK!

The more I began to study people's behavior and the impact of their rules, the more interested I became in a dynamic that I noticed consistently, and that was that there are certain rules that people would never violate, and other rules that they would violate continuously—they'd feel bad about it each time, but they'd go ahead and do it anyway. What was the difference?

After some research, the answer became clear: we have a hierarchy of rules, just as we do values. There are certain rules that, to break them, would give us such intense pain that we don't even consider the possibility. We will rarely, if ever, break them. I call these rules threshold rules. For example, if I asked you, " What's something you would never do?, " you'd give me a threshold rule. You'd tell me a rule that you would never violate. Why? Because you link too much pain to it. Conversely, we have some rules that we don't want to break. I call these personal standards. If we do break them, we don't feel good about it, but depending upon the reasons, we're willing to break them in the short term. The difference between these two rules is often phrased with the words must and should. We have certain things that we must do, certain things that we must not do, certain things that we must never do, and certain things that we must always do. The " must" and the " must never" rules are threshold rules; the " should" and " should never" rules are personal standard rules. All of them give a structure to our lives.

Too many " must" rules can make life unlivable. I once saw a program that featured twenty families of quintuplets. Each set of parents was asked, " What is the most important thing you've learned for maintaining sanity? " The one message that was echoed repeatedly was: Don't have too many rules. With this many bodies in motion, and this many different personalities, if you've got too many rules, you'll go crazy. The law of averages says your rules are going to be violated constantly, and therefore you're going to be in continual stress, reacting to everything.

This kind of stress affects you and the people around you. Think of the rules we have today for women in our society. They even have a name for it: the " Superwoman Syndrome." Women today seem to have to do everything, and do it perfectly. Not only do they have to take care of their husband, children, parents, and friends, but they have to have the perfect body, they have to go out and change the world, they have to prevent nuclear war, and they have to be the consummate business person on top of it all. Do you think that could create a little stress in life, having that many musts in order to feel successful?

Of course, women aren't the only ones in society who are going through this—today's men and children are also under tremendous stress because of increased expectations. If we're burdened with too many musts to meet, we lose our enthusiasm and zest [152] for life; we just don't want to play the game anymore. High self-esteem comes from feeling like you have control over events, not that events have control over you. And when you have a lot of " must" rules, the chances of them being violated are great.

What would be a " must never" rule in a relationship? Many people might say, " My husband or wife must never have an extramarital affair." For other people, however, that's only a should rule: " My husband or wife should never have an extramarital affair." Might that difference in rules have the potential to create problems down the road? It's highly possible. In fact, when people have relationship upsets, invariably it's because although they've agreed on the rules, they haven't agreed on whether it's a " must never" or a " should never." It's necessary not only to understand what kinds of rules your partner has, but also to keep in mind that both " must" and " should" rules are appropriate.

In order to achieve certain outcomes, it's important to have plenty of " must" rules to make sure that we'll follow through, that we'll take action. For example, I have a friend who's in superb physical condition. What's interesting is her set of rules for herself in the area of health: she has very few shoulds and a lot of musts. I asked her, " What must you never do if you want to be healthy? " She said, " I must never smoke. I must never violate my body with drugs. I must never pig out. I must never go more than a day without exercising."

Then I asked, " What must you do in order to be healthy? " Again, the list was long: " I must exercise every day for at least half an hour. I must eat the right kinds of foods. I must eat only fruit in the morning. I must combine my foods properly. I must ride at least fifty miles on my bicycle every week." And the list went on. Finally I asked for her " should" rules. She said, " I should exercise more." And that was it!

Now, this woman has an overweight friend. When I asked her what she must never do in order to be healthy, she gazed[153] at me with a blank stare[154]. She had no " must never" rules in the area of health! She did have a couple of must rules, however: she must eat, and she must sleep. Then I asked if she had any " should" rules. " Sure, " she said, " I should eat better; I should exercise. I should take better care of my body." She also had a list of " should not" rules such as, " I should not eat meat, I should

not overeat, " and so on. This woman had plenty of things she knew she should do, but because she had very few " must" rules, she never got into the position of giving herself intense pain for doing unhealthy things.

And it wasn't difficult to realize why she had never been able to keep the weight off. If you've ever procrastinated on anything, were you perhaps using some " should" rules such as, " I should start this project" or " I should begin an exercise program"? What would have happened instead if you had decided, " I must start this project" or " I must start this exercise program, " and then followed through by conditioning it into your nervous system?

Remember, we all need some structure. Some people have no clear rules for when they're successful. Rules can provide the contextual environment for us to create added value. Rules can motivate us to follow through; they can cause us to grow and expand. Your goal is simply to create a balance between your " must" rules and your " should" rules and to utilize both types of rules in the appropriate context.