Ep #9: Dr. Kashey's Fix For Stupid Rules

We all have personal goals we intend to accomplish. And part of accomplishing those goals is to create a series of rules for ourselves to follow so that we can actually reach it. And what happens when we inevitably break some of our own rules? Well, we tend to beat ourselves up and then set harsher, stricter, even harder to follow rules which we also inevitably break. A few rounds of this, you got yourself a downward spiral. This episode, the good Dr. Cashy explains just how to respond when you break your own rules. Roll the intro! Today is a very special day. On today's episode of. Coffee with Cashy. I am your host Dr. Cashy with my water-based coffee substitute from the far away magical land of Fiji. It is perfect as usual as Dr. Bill Huttman says. Good morning, Michael. Hey, Mickey. Somebody, Ozziell, I'm just going to say Ozzie. I'm going to call you Ozzie. If that makes you irritated, please tell me so I can make sure to correct it or not and use it as a way to bug you. There is a question about essentially making decisions that hurt us and doing the thing, knowing the thing is going to hurt. So I had a short explanation of that. I try and cover that as best I can with all the messaging that I have all around and that I try and provide some tools and perspectives to make those connections to kind of point out when and where to go. How to connect the dots and be okay with the way you make decisions. So I want to start out by saying when rules are unreasonable, they make you want to stick it to the man, right? We all love sticking it to the man. Feels good, right? You see it every day. I'll be the first to admit I love sticking it to the man. Like, everybody has their own definition of what that means, but I think everybody can pretty much ubiquitously say that sticking it to the man feels good, right? Power to the people. Take back what's yours. We don't need the boss. The boss needs us down with the patriarchy. Another various angry white people exclamation of inconvenience, right? However, when you are the one that makes the rules and those rules are unreasonable, you still want to stick it to the man, but in this case, the man is you. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. And one of those pirates of the Caribbean movies, the particular one alludes me. Maybe it's the first one. Everyone gets all cranky because I think Jack Sparrow, the protagonist or whatever you want to call him. Some sacred pirate rules, right? And a paraphrase teases something like, they aren't really rules. They're just guidelines. Oh, and there's a little bit of that. Some nuggets you can sink your teeth into. Having structure is different than locking yourself in a structure. One keeps you on a path and the other one is, well, the definition of being in prison. Funny enough, that's what you probably do. Lock yourself down with rules, painting this picture of perfect behavior within these multiple sets of handcuffed parameters you've made for yourself. You slip up inevitably like humans do, and then you're harder on yourself and make harsher rules. Then you slip up again, you're hard, even harsher rules. Soon, the rules you set for yourself are impossible to follow. So you do something else entirely, right? These rules are still there in the back of your mind. However, they become a joke because they're impossible to follow. But yet, you're still mentally exhausted and feel guilty in the back of your head for continuously breaking them. And since you're so hard on yourself for circumventing all the extreme restrictions you place on yourself, you feel like a joke too. And to be real, you kind of are. And that's okay. It's good because it's a fixable thing. Because this ends up creating like the swirling vortex of doom, a combination of accomplishing nothing, feeling like a joke, and then yourself efficacy, your ability or your perception of being able to accomplish things get so low that it feels like even doing the simplest of tasks is impossible. And then you get stuck in a rut, sometimes for years. Many times for years. And thankfully, there is the option to inject a little bit of logic here. Some of my water-based coffee substitute. At first there was chaos, right? Then, in your wisdom, and I say that seriously in your wisdom, you attempt to bring order to that chaos by creating rules. Arbitrary, they may be, they're still rules. And here's where things get spicy. You broke one of your own rules. Oh no. What happens now? What happens now? With low levels of self-awareness and immature data collection strategies, the answer is in front of your face. Easy peasy. More rules, harsher rules. If you broke your own rule, then you must have given yourself too much freedom, right? Your goal is to improve yourself. Make yourself better. Accomplish the impossible. So the obvious step is to hogtie yourself. Duck. But wait, there's more. In your attempt to restore balance to the force, acting as the authoritarian, you added restrictions to decrease the amount of freedom in the hope that you are more aligned with the goals that you have, or the problems you want to solve. But now the restrictions are so great, it's impossible to accomplish what you need to accomplish, leading to further failures. So what happens now? What happens now? This is too much work. Life is unfair. Everyone has it easier than me. They don't understand. I'm a failure. This sucks. Nothing is worth it anymore. Why do I even bother? There's no point to this. I'm useless and I hate myself. This is the stimulus and the beginning of the response. And here's your opportunity to inject the logic. If this started as chaos, you made up rules to bring order, which is good. You also make up temporary rules, giving yourself permission to break the rules you have in place. Then you begin being disappointed in yourself, maybe even hating yourself. And then you make harsher rules. And now many of these rules might even conflict with each other. Maybe you've scheduled yourself out for more things than there's time for. Maybe now you have responsibilities that overlap or conflict with each other. Now the rules are so harsh that become a stupid joke. Now you act as if the world is chaotic again, with the added benefit of hating yourself for continuously breaking all the rules you created. I wonder you're exhausted. Do you see a commonality here though? All these rules you broke, re-broke, made harsher, etc. You made them. You made those rules. Or you accepted somebody else's rules as your own, which is the same thing practically speaking. So if you ever stepped back and said, "Crick, this camera here a little bit." If this rule is impossible to follow, maybe it's a stupid rule. Maybe instead of making more and harsher rules with even greater self-hate, I can do what I did in the beginning. Recognize that I'm living in chaos. Recognize that I need to create order. Identify which rules were so dumb they forced me to stick it to the man. Address the fact that when I'm sticking it to the man, I'm actually sticking it to myself because I'm the man that made the rules. And then internalize that sticking it to myself is a dumb idea. And use those experiences to create a new and better set of guidelines, ones that set you up to whim. You made stupid rules in the beginning. That's okay. You need to learn how to make rules properly, right? You made even stupider rules in the middle to try and make up for the stupid rules you made in the beginning. But you made rules. This also means you can unmake them and create structure that makes sense. In the meantime, here are some useful tools to see if the rules you set for yourself suck. Got some good ones here. I really racked my brain for this, so I hope you get some value out of it. How often do you have a micro conversation with yourself and use words like "should, shouldn't, must, have to, need, can't, all, none?" Today I have to stick to this. I must. do this exactly, I need this to be perfect. Hmm, that might be a flag. When you have micro conversations with yourself, how often do you use the word no versus using the word yes? For instance, no, I can't do that. Or yes, I'm keeping promises to myself. See the difference, we're here the difference. That might be a flag. If you had organ failure, or let's say you had something like sickle cell anemia where you needed frequent blood transfusions to stay functional, would you rearrange your schedule? Would you reset your priorities? Would you possibly inconvenience a few people to get it done? Think about the threshold of where your needs come before others and how that impacts your ability to stay on track. Does your pandering to other people make it too inconvenient for you to follow through with your own rules? If somebody you deeply cared about came up to you in the same situation as you, feeling like a failure, hating themselves, feeling like it's impossible to do anything right, but get this. They had the exact same set of rules you put on yourself and they made it for themselves. Help me to understand how you would respond to them. Would you say something like, yeah, you're definitely a failure, a worthless sack of fat and hot air, get yourself a one-way ticket to Loserville. If you would say that, maybe that's a flag. Or would you be able to sit back with this person and show them how you see their situation a bit differently than they do and offer a new perspective, your perspective versus theirs? If so, describe what that perspective would be. I'm willing to bet a dollar that the advice you'd give that person is pretty good. I'm willing to bet another dollar you'd be able to immediately tell if this person was holding themselves up to a hurtful standard instead of a helpful standard. Would you ever give a small child directions to get something off the top shelf and if that child struggled, would you be mad at him? Or would you see him struggling and say, hey, maybe we should get a step stool. Would you opt to kick somebody while they're down, adding friction to an already difficult situation? This is something to think about, you know? So think of it this way. Take a step back again and think, why do I take the time to treat the person I love so fairly? But when it comes to me, I immediately resort to hating myself and feeling useless, even if the situations are identical. You're the one that sets the standards. You're the one that changes your standards as you see fit. Instead of changing the standards at will to set yourself up to fail by adding more and harsher rules that are so harsh you're forced to avoid them, which also makes you feel crappy. Think about ways you can change your standards at will to set yourself up to win. Think about what you would tell that person you care about so much. I bet it would be worth it to follow the advice you gave them. If somebody had the exact same ugly situation as you, you would probably give them decent advice. Maybe following that advice is a good idea. It seems reasonable enough, I think. So if you have some trouble finding out which rules are too ridiculous and better ways to help restore structure during times of chaos, well, I'm here for you. That's why I'm here. I'm pretty easy to get hold of for that. But that's my piece today. Think I think you probably create unreasonable rules for yourself and that means that the standards you have set are silly if they're impossible to reach. It sets you up to fail. And so identifying those rules is often enough to go about addressing them. Because even just becoming aware of the rules you set for yourself written out saying, oh my goodness, this is an expectation I have of myself. This is absurd. It gives you the opportunity to, again, inject some logic and replace it with something that makes sense so that even though life might be unfair, you can still be fair to yourself and set you up to win. Oh, I hope that in some degree sets you up to win for the rest of the day. I love you guys. You guys have a freaking awesome day. Wanna continue having coffee with Dr. Cashy? Head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave review. It is very much appreciated. Thank you and see you next week. Dr. Cashy is out.