Who Wrote Your Rule Book? — A 10 Minute Exercise for Anxiety, Stress and Overthinking

We all have one.

An invisible rule book. A set of rules we carry about how the world should work, how people should behave, how life should go, how we ourselves should be. Rules we never consciously chose, that were handed to us by our upbringing, our experiences, our culture, and that we have been living by ever since without ever stopping to question them.

Rules like: people should be considerate. Life should be fair. I should always be productive.

What happens when the world fails to follow our rules?

Every time a rule is broken, we suffer. We feel frustrated, anxious, angry, hurt, disappointed. Not because something terrible has happened, but because something has failed to match our rule book.

In this 10 minute exercise, I guide you to play with your rule book...

Please let me know if you enjoyed this session: sylvia@sylviaingle.com

And if today's exercise has stirred something in you, a curiosity, a longing, a quiet sense that you are ready for more, I would love to support you further.

Visit www.sylviaingle.co.uk to find out how we can work together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. In today's recording, I'd like to start by just talking about this concept of a rule book. I kind of adopted it from Brooke Castillo's concept of the manual, similar concept. It means that we all have our rule book for most things in life. These are our should and shouldn'ts. For example, people should always speak to me respectfully, or people should never shout at me, or I should be able to find a parking space when I want to park. Or my friends should reach out to me every now and then. You you get the gist, these are the things we live by, things that we've maybe picked up from our significant carers in our childhood or made up ourselves, but these are our rule books, and the more rigid those rules are, the more stressful life appears to be. If I were to ask you to think about something that was upsetting that's sad or frustrating that has recently happened, um I would like you to do that now. Find some event or person that at the results of that interaction you were you ended up feeling annoyed, angry, frustrated, upset, whatever. Anyone, um, and now ask yourself what rule was broken here? Which ones of my rules was broken? Um, because underneath every frustration, anxiety, flash of anger, disappointment, there is a rule, and sentence that begins with should. So people should listen when I talk. Uh, people should return things if they borrow from me. My parents should look after me, or I I should look after my parents. These are the rules also we've got um against ourselves. So just I'm curious, and I'd invite you to be curious to find that rule. Now notice what that rule is, and I wonder if you start arguing with me saying, Yeah, but surely that's the way things should be. I invite you to in this meditation or session that I will start conducting in a minute. I invite you to relax this rule a little bit, uh, to rewrite them, to make them less rigid if you like. Just be curious, it's a fun exercise, and if you're ready, we can begin. So take a deep breath in and let that go. Take another deep breath in and relax into this moment and find imagine you have a your rule book. It could be a very thick book, or it could be several other different ones that you have for every situation, every person for yourself. So imagine there is a band or very thick one, your rule book. Notice maybe pick it up if you can and notice how how heavy it is. Notice how it's always placed in the middle of your room or in a significant place. Notice the prominence of it, how important it looks. Maybe it's leather-bound, maybe it's in a special folder, but seems like it's an important piece of equipment to deal with life, that rule book or books, and notice the heaviness of it. And now to just play a little bit to see if life can be lighter. I'd like you to imagine that you can change this rule book and or books, imagine making that rule book a little bit lighter. So maybe imagine condensing everything in one much thinner rulebook, and if you scan through it rather than having this heavy ink, make it in a fan colour, squiggly writing. And imagine that you can replace all the shoulds and shouldn'ts and mast or massins. Imagine replacing them with it, would be nice if it would be nice. It would be it would be kind of nice if people didn't shout when I speak. Just imagine rewriting that into a fun, squiggly, colourful. You can put pictures in it also. Make it fun and light. That's very light and portable. And notice that this document doesn't have to be placed in a middle in the most prominent place. You can put it on the side, you can put it on the side, and you can maybe make that place a fun place. So put some stuff in there that you enjoy. If you're into maybe drawing, maybe put some watercolors there. Maybe if you like reading, put some other books there. If you're into crystals, candles, anything you like, just decorate that little corner of a room where this rule book is with other fun things. You can put a base of beautiful flowers or photos of your family, friends, yourself. So that this rule book or this notebook now or this document doesn't feel like a burden, it feels like something light. easier, lighter. That's right. I'll give you maybe a few more moments to decorate that place or that document in any way you you like. And if you've got thoughts, objections, like but surely there should be rules, that that's absolutely fine. For now, just play with the ones that make sense to have them lighter to release yourself from the grips of them. Again, you don't need to know exactly what they are, your subconscious mind will. This is just making a little bit of fun session. You can in that if you are if you love music, you can have a lovely, happy, light, entertaining, relaxing, musing play, music playing in that in that corner where this rule book is now. We're all doing this, we all have these rules, the books full of rules. Every one of us walking around with our rule books, bumping into each other's rules, wondering why the world is so difficult. How interesting. Now breathe in and allow yourself to feel the spaciousness of life with a little more curiosity in it, little bit of less, little bit less of shoots, and breathe out any rule that's been taking up too much of your room. Again, breathing in, making everything lighter, more spacious, and breathe out, and when you're ready, you can open your eyes. Your rule book now, your rule document is still there at the edge of this room if you need it, but it's no longer in charge, you are in charge. Thank you.