Tony Robbins -Re-Awaken_the_Giant_Within

On the other hand, some people don’t feel that they’re great lovers. Is this because they aren’t great
lovers? Or is it because their rules are inappropriate? This is an important question to answer. In many
cases, people won’t feel that they’re a great lover because their partner doesn’t tell them that they’re a
great lover. Their partner may respond passionately, but because they don’t meet the specific rule of this
individual, the person is certain they’re not a great lover.
This predicament of not feeling the emotions we deserve is not limited to relationships or lovemaking. Most
of us have rules that are just as inappropriate for defining success, making a difference, security, intelligence,
or anything else. Everything in our lives, from work to play, is presided over by this judge-and-jury system.
The point here is simple: our rules are controlling our responses every moment we’re alive. And, of
course, as you’ve already guessed, they have been set up in a totally arbitrary fashion. Like so many
other elements of the Master System that directs our lives, our rules have resulted from a dizzying
collage of influences to which we’ve been exposed. The same punishment and reward system that
shapes our values shapes our rules. In fact, as we develop new values, we also develop beliefs about
what it will take to have those values met, so rules are added continuously. And, with the addition of
more rules, we often tend to distort, generalize, and delete our past rules. We develop rules in conflict.
For some people, rules are formed out of their desire to rebel against rules they grew up with.
Are the rules that guide your life today still appropriate for who you’ve become? Or have you clung to
rules that helped you in the past, but hurt you in the present? Have you clung to any inappropriate rules
from your childhood?
Rules are a shortcut for our brains. They help us to have a sense of certainty about the consequences of
our actions; thus, they enable us to make lightning-quick decisions as to what things mean and what we
should do about them.
When someone smiles at you, if you had to engage in a long, tedious set of calculations in order to
figure out what that means, your life would be frustrating. But instead you have a rule that says if a
person smiles at you, then it means they’re happy, or they’re friendly, or maybe they like you. If someone
frowns at you, then it triggers another set of rules for what things mean and what you should do about
it. For some people, if someone frowns at them, then their rule is that the person is in a bad state and
should be avoided. Other people, however, might have a rule that says, “If someone’s in a bad state,
then I need to change their state.”
ARE YOU MUDDLED OR PERFECT?
I remember reading an intricate story in Gregory Bateson’s book Steps to an Ecology of Mind. It was a
transcript of a conversation he’d had with his daughter years ago, and I’ll paraphrase it for you here. One day
she approached him and asked an interesting question: “Daddy, how come things get muddled so easily?”
He asked her, “What do you mean by ‘muddled,’ honey?” She said, “You know, Daddy. When things
aren’t perfect. Look at my desk right now. Stuff is all over the place. It’s muddled. And just last night I
worked so hard to make it perfect. But things don’t stay perfect. They get muddled so easily!”
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