Are you living by rules that don’t actually serve you? How much of your worldview comes from your culture rather than conscious choice?
In his book The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, Vishen Lakhiani explains how your belief system is shaped by your upbringing and culture. He offers strategies for questioning these inherited beliefs and freeing yourself from what he calls “Brules”—the unwritten rules that hold you back from your ideal life.
Read on to discover how to think like a scientist about your own assumptions and start building a life based on what truly matters to you.
Examining Your Belief System
Lakhiani’s first step toward building the life that’s best for you is to free yourself from the societal and personal baggage that’s holding you back.
We’ll start by discussing how your culture may have influenced your belief system and expectations about life—and the importance of letting go of those assumptions. We’ll then go over Lakhiani’s process for questioning the rules you live by, so you can get rid of the rules that don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Looking Beyond Your Upbringing
The first step toward creating your ideal life is to recognize that many of your beliefs aren’t based on objective, universal truths. Lakhiani explains that your understanding of the world has been fundamentally shaped by your culture and upbringing: the social practices, belief systems (religious or otherwise), and even the language that you inherited just by growing up when and where you did. For instance, in gendered languages such as Spanish (which uses the masculine “el” and feminine “la” as opposed to English’s neutral “the”), speakers tend to apply masculine or feminine qualities to objects accordingly. This is just one of the countless ways that cultural influences shape people’s worldviews.
Furthermore, Lakhiani argues that most people accept whatever worldview they inherit without ever stopping to examine it. This is because, once you accept something as true, you simply see it as a fact rather than as a personal belief. Therefore, you don’t tend to reconsider your inherited belief system, in much the same way that you never “reconsider” whether ice is actually cold.
However, such unquestioning acceptance can limit you in ways you don’t realize. This is because you won’t strive for something you assume is impossible or morally wrong, without realizing that the beliefs leading you to those assumptions could be flawed themselves.
| How Scientists Overturn Their Beliefs The tendency not to question our beliefs isn’t an individual failing; it’s simply how the human mind works: We don’t recognize the assumptions we’re making until something calls our attention to them. This is true even among scientists, as science historian Thomas Kuhn describes in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn explains that scientific research is always grounded in our current understanding of how the universe works, which he calls a paradigm. Furthermore, he says that a paradigm can only be overturned when there’s some irreconcilable difference between what “should” happen based on that understanding (the scientists’ assumptions) and what researchers actually observe happening. For example, one famous paradigm that’s been overturned is the assumption that Earth is the center of the universe. Over many years, astronomers realized they couldn’t make their observations of star and planet movements conform to that paradigm, and therefore the Earth-centric model must be wrong. So, as you question the belief system you’ve inherited, try to think like a scientist: Stay alert for discrepancies between your understanding of the world and what you actually observe happening. When you notice such a discrepancy, consider whether there’s a reasonable way to resolve it, or whether it means your current paradigm might be flawed. |
Questioning the Rules You Live By
After recognizing that your upbringing has left you with false, limiting beliefs, you can start the process of critically examining the rules and expectations that others have set on you. Questioning the unwritten rules you live by, and discarding the ones that don’t serve you, is a major step toward reinventing your life.
Lakhiani says that nearly everyone follows some harmful or limiting rules that are based on flawed, subjective ideas about the world. He refers to these as Brules, which is a portmanteau of “bulls**t rules.” Such rules can manifest in almost every aspect of life, like your career choices, relationships, and goals.
For instance, many people have kids simply because that’s what their culture has told them to do. They follow the “rule” that they must get married and create a family. Because they never questioned the idea that they’re supposed to have children, such people end up trapped in parenting roles they never wanted. This can leave them (and often their children as well) deeply unhappy for many years.
With that said, it’s important to note that a lot of rules do have good reasons behind them. For example, many rules exist because they help people get along with each other, guide them through difficult or dangerous situations, and keep society functioning smoothly. Therefore, it’s not enough to simply identify the unwritten rules that guide your actions—before discarding any such rule, it’s important to examine that rule carefully to see whether it still serves an important purpose.
| Start With the Most Basic Question: “Why?” It’s often hard to realize when you’re limiting your own thinking, such as by following unnecessary rules that you learned in childhood. In A More Beautiful Question, journalist Warren Berger says that simply stopping to ask “why?” is an effective way to recognize and overcome such self-imposed limitations. To continue the above example, if you’ve always assumed that you would have children someday, you could ask yourself some “why” questions about that decision. For instance: “Why did I decide that I want kids in the first place?” “Why do I still want to have children now?” “Why not stay child-free (in other words, what would be the downsides to not having children)?” Answering those questions would help you determine whether starting a family is something you actually want to do, or just something you were taught that you’re supposed to do. If you find good answers to your “why?” questions, then the rule is likely worth following. On the other hand, if you can’t think of any convincing answers, it may be time to strike it from your mental rulebook. You can use this same tactic to look for the rules underlying everything you do, whether it’s something as important as starting a family or as trivial as choosing your outfit in the morning (“Why am I putting on a tie?” “Why this particular tie?”). |
Exercise
What’s one rule you grew up with that you’ve already questioned and discarded, as Lakhiani describes? This could be something as life-changing as what career you’re “supposed” to pursue, or as minor as what kind of foods are appropriate for breakfast.
