When I look back to when I was a kid, there was a point when I believed everything adults told me. Adults would say, “You’re a good boy for doing this” or “You’re a bad boy for doing that.” And I believed their words.
In The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, he talks about domestication and the dream of the planet.
The dream of the planet includes all of society’s rules, its beliefs, its laws, its religions, its different cultures and ways to be, its governments, schools, social events, and holidays. Ruiz explains that, as children, we don’t choose the beliefs (which he calls agreements) that build our dreams.
Basically, we were born with the ability to dream, but society, our family, and the town where we live programs us with their dream. They make our dream rules, meaning we never had the opportunity to make our own.
Ruiz also shares that, as children, we undergo domestication – kind of like pets. Domestication creates a fear of being rejected, not being good enough, and invariably, can shape us into something that we are not.
At some point, we don’t need others to tell us. We start believing all of these rules or “brules” (aka bullshit rules) – as Vishen Lakhiani in The Code of the Extraordinary Mind calls them. He describes “brules” as the rules we’ve set for ourselves based on things we’ve been told in our lives that we chose to believe.
I wonder if who we are and what we think is more about where we were born and how we grew up.
The good news is that it’s never too late to rebel against the “brules,”the domestication process, or dream rules that have been created for you. You have the power and ability to reshape them or get rid of them altogether.
So, my challenge for you is to ask yourself these questions: Who are you? Who do you want to be? Who do you not want to be? It turns out, the choice is yours and firmly in your control.
Life is good.
Jeff
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