Читать книгу Ten Times Happier - Owen O’Kane - Страница 9

Rules about how you live your life can be helpful but, unfortunately, many are not, especially if they are inflexible or create distress in your life. I’ll share a personal example. In my own life as an Irish Catholic I was taught to always be a good person (with the threat of going to hell if I wasn’t). That was the rule I was taught to abide by. The upside of this is I try to lead a decent life. The flipside is that I learnt how to be hard on myself. Sometimes I experience unnecessary guilt and so I have had to work towards unlearning this rule. I sometimes joke when I’m giving a talk that my personal mantra used to be, ‘If it feels good, it must be bad.’

As children, we are not in a position to know what we can let go of. We simply inherit all of these rules and beliefs from families, cultures or religions. But that doesn’t make them right or healthy.

I suggest that you stop to reflect on some of the rules or beliefs that impact negatively on your life. Remember, not all rules are bad. Some can be beneficial. Focus here on the rules in your life that feel restrictive for you. They usually tend to be prefaced by should or must. I’ll explore later in the chapter how to let go of these influences from your past.

Examples of some unhelpful rules I hear every day in therapy are:

• I must be perfect

• I must not fail

• I must never disappoint

• I should be better

• I must never do anything wrong

• I must be the best

• I should succeed at everything

• I must be a good person.

It is also important to be aware that these beliefs can also flow into how you believe other people should be or behave. For example, if you have a belief you should be perfect, then you might have unrealistic expectations of everyone else. This is never much fun for the partners of perfectionists!

Take a moment here to write down in your journal a few of the rules or beliefs that create challenges for you and make life a struggle at times. The easiest way to do this is to look firstly at the areas you struggle with in life. You can then figure out how your rules might be influencing that. This will then enable you to make decisions about which of those rules serve a positive purpose in your life and which don’t. Take your time with this and don’t be surprised if you feel emotional at times. This is totally normal.