Aug 21, 2020
#157: “Brules” can sabotage your life.
In Vishen Lakhiani’s book Code of the Extraordinary Mind, he introduces the concept of Brules (bullshit rules).
Brules are unconsciously chosen and untrue beliefs that govern your life, often at the expense of living your Purpose.
Here are 4 Brules I see governing many men’s lives:
- I can only feel joy/meaning/successful when I’ve achieved the thing I want.
Too many men hinge their entire identity and well-beings upon the accomplishment of something outside of themselves. In that pursuit, all the other successes along the way are unmetabolized and under-appreciated. A man like this cannot live Purpose, as he’s constantly focused on what he does not have…versus loving what he does, while building something bigger.
- Struggle, pain and grind are the primary avenues to getting what I want.
Of course struggle, pain and grind are part of any meaningful journey. But if they are the predominant feelings of your journey, you’re doing it wrong. Living purpose is energizing and meaningful. It’s supposed to feel good. If you believe that struggle and grind are primary indicators that you’re on the path to purpose, then expect a lifetime of struggle and grind in your future.
- I’ll be happy when __________.
Jim Carey famously said “I hope everybody can get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know it’s not the answer.” If you train yourself to be unsatisfied with every day you don’t have that thing you want, then by the time you get that thing you want, your years/decades of “unsatisfaction training” will cause you to be unsatisfied with that thing quite quickly.
- When I’m not “doing,” I’m being lazy.
I see a whole bunch of men running around doing all sorts of trivial stuff that have little relevance to their purpose or Great Man Within, in response to fear that they are inherently lazy if they are not constantly in motion. I personally do not trust a man who is constantly in motion, for he has spent little time truly reflecting on what’s important in life. A wise man knows when to do and when not to do with conviction.
Principles are the antidote to Brules. Principles are:
- Consciously chosen beliefs that guide your life
- Anti-Drift devices
- Empowered decisions that eliminate thousands of future decisions
I give you a roadmap on how to create your own guiding Principles in my book On Purpose Leadership. You can download the first chapter for free here.
In today’s episode I share stories from my life and from the men in The Great Man Mastermind about how we’ve been sabotaged by these 4 BS beliefs, and how we are designing Principles to empower our lives.
-DQ