I trust this process helps you discover newfound clarity about your Narrative. You’ve now not only captured the events of your life, but in so doing you’ve also gained, or in some cases regained, a sense of the significance of these events and your response to them.

We have one more aspect of your Narrative to consider before we put all the pieces together: your Rule Book. Your Rule Book includes the dos and don’t—the “Thou shalls” and “Thou shall nots”—that guide you through life. In one sense you know these rules intimately, but in most ways you’re unaware of them because they operate at a less-than-conscious level. I’d like to change that. I’ve designed this portion of the Selfship journey to increase your awareness of these rules. Only then can you decide which rules you want to follow and which you want to break.

Where do these rules come from? Our Rules arise from the beliefs we form as a result of our Narrative—beliefs about ourselves, others, God, and the world around us. Some of these beliefs are accurate and helpful. We want to keep and obey these rules because they reflect the truth. Other rules stem from false and misleading beliefs. Shame, as we talked about previously, stems from a belief that something is wrong with you. This belief will inform the rules you adopt for life: “since there’s something wrong with me I should”…fill in the blank. Maybe you work harder, longer hours and drive everyone around me to do the same. Or maybe you shrink back and avoid risk and let others take the lead. Whatever it is, it all begins with a belief and this belief informs a rule.

Remember the CEO I spoke about in the last Audio Note? He realized that his lack of a consistent caregiver during his younger years led him to believe he needed to be independent and self-sufficient in order to survive. This belief informed a rule that he’s obeyed his entire life: “Take care of yourself and don’t trust anyone else.” This rule served him well when he was young. He may not have survived without it. But the very thing that helped him survive childhood began to erode his relationships and influence in adulthood.

You began crafting your Rule Book early in life. Some research indicates that you adopt your most formative rules by the time you’re seven years old. Certainly the Rules evolve to some degree depending on your Narrative, but it’s our formative years that seem to have the biggest impact on the rules we carry into adulthood.

Consider the research about attachment theory in infants and young children. In his book, Mindsight, Daniel Siegel references a study in which researchers observed two kinds of responses in babies: how they responded when their mom left the room and their responses when the mother returned to the room. They were struck by varying responses, especially the responses of the babies when their mother returned to the room. Babies with healthy attachment were distressed when their mother left and accepted their mother’s comfort when she returned. These behaviors were absent in babies that lacked healthy attachment. Some were indifferent to their mother’s absence, while others panicked. And upon the mother’s return, some refused their mother’s comfort, while others continued to feel distressed even in their mother’s arms.

This study illustrates that we adopt our “rules for life” at an early age, even a preverbal age. The babies that received consolation form their mother demonstrate a belief that their mother is safe and good. They can infer that there are safe and good people in the world. This informs the rules they develop and obey, rules like “Trust people until they demonstrate their not trustworthy.”

The other group of babies held a completely different belief: my mother isn’t safe, and by inference, people aren’t to be trusted. This belief gives rise to a completely different rule: don’t trust people. Both groups will carry these rules with them through life. The former group will go into professional situations and trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy. The latter will struggle to trust people no matter how much they demonstrate trustworthiness.

You carry with you your own personalized Rule Book with you wherever you go. It’s with you right now. You’ll identify and clarify these rules not by going back to your childhood so much as paying attention to how these rules reveal themselves in the present.

For example, I was recently meeting with a CEO from a large healthcare company. He described himself as having “creative constipation”—his words, not mine—especially when it came to proposing big ideas for the company. His Narrative includes formative events in which his parents criticized his school work and grades if they weren’t perfect. Though he teemed with ideas for his company, he’d adopted a belief: If I share my thoughts, especially my big ideas, people will shoot it down. Play it safe and share only small ideas; and only if they’re perfect.

Bear in mind that some of these rules don’t arise from specific aspects of your Narrative. They’re just part of being an imperfect and broken person. We are all in many respects poorly-equipped for this adventure we call life. No matter how many blessing or challenges dot our Narrative, we will invariably form rules that arise from inaccurate beliefs about ourselves, God, and the world we live in.

Let’s get to work on identifying the rules in your Rule Book by looking at some tendencies that inhibit you and your growth. Rather than take an inventory of all of your tendencies, select that one that holds you back the most. Do you tend to dominate people, or default to passivity? Do you drink too much, or check out in other ways? Do you believe others accept you how you are, or that you need to perform, appear a certain way, or own certain things in order for others to like you? Are you a name dropper? All of these tendencies, along with all of your responses to the varying situations you confront each day reveal beliefs you’ve adopted to navigate life.

Once you’ve identified your beliefs, consider what rules you’ve wrapped around those beliefs. Let’s take that last tendency I mentioned: name dropping. I was recently in a conversation with a leader that started dropping names of some famous people he’d been with over the weekend. Even though I had no idea who they were, he was clearly trying to impress me. Why? I suspect he believes that dropping the names of significant people makes other people see him as significant. If I’m right, there’s a belief at work: I’m not significant. This gives rise to a rule: Thou shalt use strategies that make me appear significant.

Herein we see that the very rules we follow to govern ourselves have a self-fulfilling quality. The person that name dropped in order to appear more significant, succeeds only in revealing his deep sense of insignificance. And the person that believes they shouldn’t trust people will invariably find reasons to confirm this belief and reinforce this rule, failing to see all the while that their belief prevents others from trusting them. That’s the cycle: beliefs create rules that confirm that validity of the beliefs.

Fortunately life offers up “disconfirming experiences” that challenge you to reevaluate your rules and consider beliefs about whether you are in fact, smart, gifted, lovable, acceptable, and all the other things you’ve struggled to believe throughout your life. As you begin to consider your Rule Book, be sure to also note these experiences that challenge your beliefs and invite you to reconsider and even break the rules you’ve faithfully obeyed up until now.

Your Nature and your Narrative influences how you show up every day in every situation. Now we can move to the final third of the Selfship process. I’ll introduce you to a framework that ties together everything we’ve covered so far. I use it everyday and use it with all of my clients. But like I said in the very first Audio Note, I’ve never presented it in entirety as I will in the coming Audio Notes. I can’t wait!

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