Last week, I posted about the first law from the book "The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws" by Vishen Lakhian, Escaping the Culturescape. It explained moving away from what is the cultural norm. The 2nd law Vishen talks about in his book is to question the Brules.
What is a brule? According to Vishen, "A Brule is a bull $hit rule. There are bull $hit rules that we adapt to simplify our understanding of the world." These rules can come from religion, culture, politics, media, etc. We all follow at least one brule in our lives. For example, it's expected for everyone to go to college to get a Bachelors degree so you can get a job and then possibly get a masters degree to get a better job. Then we're expected to believe that having a job is going to equal success. An example that Vishen provides is about a friend of his who was 5 years deep in law school. In his friend's last semester, a professor said "Here is a warning, you will be depressed as a lawyer, better get used to it now." After hearing that, his friend quit law school and became a writer. Why should we get used to something like depression, just for a job? Vishen then describes 5 ways to rewrite the rules.
1.) Live a MISSION oriented life
A mission fuels you. A job pays the bills, a career provides a place to move up in life, but a mission drives you to be a better person and love what you do. Extraordinary people live mission based lives, they don't fret about small things and they don't always know they're mission right away. Vishen said the first 10 years of his working life he experimented with different fields. He worked for Microsoft and didn't like his job. He was a stage actor. He was a sales person. He became a mediation instructor. He started a startup. It takes time, but eventually the mission will come. A mission also can be a broad topic. Helping create a better education system could be a mission and you could start a company that doesn't work out, but the benefit to having a mission is that you can now create another company or work for a different company that will continue to fuel your mission.
2.) Don't Distinguish between Entrepreneur or Employee
Not everyone has to be an entrepreneur to be successful or to find/follow your mission. A lot of people are employees, but are still passionate about what they do.
3.) Not all Paths are Equal
Vishen talks about 2 types of companies: Humanity+ and Humanity-. Examples of Humanity- companies are fossil fuel companies or fast food restaurants. Humanity+ companies would be alternative energy companies or health food companies. A lot of companies have employees who work Craptastic jobs. Vishen defines Craptastic as "a large number of jobs exist solely to make crap sound fantastic." Don't be in one of these jobs because you'll only be fooling yourself that you're trying to help humanity.
4.) It Ain't Easy
This goes back to experimenting to try to find what your mission is.
5.) Know your Liveable Income
What is the smallest amount of money you can actually live on? Use that number to try to figure out how much you need to make to be comfortable. Vishen said Elon Musk tried to live on $1 a day and because of all the bulk stores available, he did. After that he realized it didn't matter if he used up almost every last dime to create his dream, as long as he had enough for $1 a day.
6.) Be realistic
This one confused me a bit. He says to be realistic, yet he states to set unrealistic goals. Maybe this is just his way of being realistic. Setting unrealistic goals helps you become a realist because you take little steps to try to achieve that unrealistic goal and on the way there your mission will become clearer because of the baby steps you took to get there. He asks a question "What would you do if you knew you would succeed and had a decade to pull it off?" People tend to over estimate 1 year goals but underestimate 10 year goals. So maybe this is where the realistic part comes in. Be realistic with goals, know that 10 years is a long time to set goals and 1 year is not that long. Take baby steps to get to that 10 year goal, which may sound unrealistic now, but in the future could be very real.
I love this book. It's been helping me open my mind to things I would never have thought of if I didn't read it. Here is a link on Amazon to The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws, I have no affiliate connection, just want to help. FYI- it's free for Prime members. Next week I will go over his 3rd law.