When our world officially admits it’s another year older, lots of people come up with resolutions.

“I resolve to lose 90 pounds.”

“I resolve to quit smoking once and for all.”

“I resolve to win the lottery.”

Considering how many resolutions are upended by the consumption of an entire bag of Doritos in one sitting or how many gyms look like ghost towns on March 1st, it’s amazing that we go through the trouble of of making them in the first place.

Indeed, the mandate that we should all come up with some sort of New Year’s Resolution is a rule that doesn’t exist.

Resolutions are good in theory, but they set people up for failure. Changing habits is hard, and the first stumbling block usually creates a wall of disappointment and shame that reinforces the negative pictures you had going into it.

I guess I’m just too lazy. Too fat. Too whatever.

Don’t get me wrong. Changing bad habits and setting goals are important. And anything worthwhile will be met with obstacles, which will need to be overcome by persistence and hard work. I just don’t think resolutions are the way to go about it.

The arrival of a new year fills me with optimism. Rather than saddle myself with a resolution that is likely to snuff it out in less than a week, I like the idea of embracing something that fuels the optimism and serves as a guide that will help me all year long. Which is why I love the idea of coming up with a word of the year. Considering I wrote a post about coming up with a theme for your summer, this idea is right in my wheelhouse.

A friend in my mastermind group introduced me to the concept, and I was recently reminded of it by Brandi and Tim who credit Christine Kane as their inspiration for picking a word of the year.

Here’s what Christine has to say about why resolutions don’t work:

The reason most resolutions don’t work is that they address only one level of your life. The DO level. It’s the DO-HAVE-BE model. “I will DO this thing.” (i.e., Lose weight) “So I can HAVE this other thing” (Self-Esteem) and I can BE this thing. (Confident.)

The average New Year’s Resolution doesn’t address the core of the issue – the “BE” level.

The best order for creating positive changes in your life is the BE-DO-HAVE model. This means you start from the BE level. When you begin changing on the BE level of your life, then the DO level and the HAVE level follow more easily.

Several years ago, my friend Kathy and I decided that, instead of making resolutions, we would pick a word that would guide us throughout the year. It would be our touchstone. It would remind us of living our lives at the BE level.

This didn’t mean that we didn’t take action. It meant that our actions were inspired from the BE level. In fact, I took more action than ever with this new approach!

I sort of did this by accident (one of the happy kinds!) this year. Early on, the word “simplicity” kept surfacing. (Certainly, adding a new member to the family added a whole new level of complication to my life.)

I wrote the word down, and it subconsciously guided me throughout the year. For instance, Kim and I bought our first house, and in the process, purged a lot of the possessions that added clutter and complication to our lives. (Check out ManVsDebt for a stellar example of a couple who has taken this concept to the extreme.) Then we hugely simplified our life by getting rid of our dedicated office space and bringing our business back into our home. We also decided to let go of certain parts of our business in order to focus on the parts that were most fruitful and and gratifying. And I have outsourced or eliminated a number of things that used to clog my to-do list.

These are just a few of the bigger examples of how I’ve been able to simplify my life this year, and there are dozens more. It’s exciting to think of how much I accomplished by deciding to focus on a word rather than a specific resolution or two.

Here’s an example of how Christine has seen this work in her own life:

One year, I chose the word “Generosity.” All year long, I held that word in my consciousness. I left tips for housekeeping at each hotel on my road trips. I paid the toll of the car behind me. (This is surprisingly embarrassing to do!) I observed when I was feeling too scared to be generous, clutching to my “hard earned” money. What I found was that the word “generosity” also taught me about courage, willingness, letting go, and wealth.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to come up with your own word for the year. For some tips about choosing a word and a list of possible words to consider, look here.

I’ve decided that my word for 2010 is freedom.

I look forward to letting go of some things that have been holding me back and unloading even more unimportant possessions. I’m looking forward to achieving freedom from some fear and worry that has plagued me this past year, as well as experiencing the freedom to have more fun and experience life more fully.

How about you? What do you think about this idea? Do you have a word that comes to mind for you?

Sign up to receive our free newsletter to get regular reminders and tips for stressing less and having more fun. Consider it a well-deserved jolt of happiness for your inbox.

How many business cards have you collected over the years? A handful? A hundred? Enough to wallpaper the bathrooms of every house on your block? Even if you’re not involved in “Business,” chances are you’ve received a number of business cards over the years, from the auto mechanic to your neighbor who sells Mary Kay.

Most business cards are, frankly, forgettable.

Why? Because they all look the same. They blend in.

You see, when business cards are born, the first thing their creators likely consider is, “What do business cards look like?” Of course, this question is asked and answered on a subconscious level. It doesn’t have be voiced or heavily belabored because everyone already knows what a business card looks like. It’s a 3.5″ x 2″ paper rectangle with somebody’s name, place of employment, and contact information printed on it. The designer’s job is to make it “stand out” by cleverly mixing up the paper stock, colors, graphics, and fonts.

But what is a business card, really? Isn’t it just a tangible object that you can give to a prospective customer so they (or their friend) can contact you if they need what you (or your company) sells? Obviously, the more memorable this object is, the better, as making a lasting impression is always better than being instantly forgotten.

You’ll notice that nowhere in the above definition is any mention of shape, size, or type of material. The common conventions listed above — it must be 3.5″ x 2″ — are rules that don’t exist.

If a child were tasked with the job of designing a business card, the results would be much different. (Paper is too flat — let’s make it out of LEGOs!) Kids aren’t tied down by what a business card is supposed to look like, so they have a greater chance of breaking the “rules” and coming up with something truly remarkable and — gasp! — more effective. The images accompanying this post are all business “cards” designed by people with a very childlike mindset. (See more here.)

If you don’t happen to be a graphic designer, you might be thinking to yourself, “This is all well and good, Jason, but what does this have to do with ME?”

Everything.

Whether you are a stay-at-home mom, a recent graduate looking for a job, a project manager, or a retired accountant, you are living by a set of rules that don’t exist. But don’t feel bad, because it’s normal. You operate much of your life on auto-pilot. Normally, this is a good thing, as it makes things more efficient. You don’t have to waste time every day wondering, “How do I get to work?”

But one disadvantage is that you lack a beginner’s mind. Like a business card designer, you are subconsciously operating with a stock answer to the question, “What is this supposed to look like?”

What is my daily routine supposed to look like?
What is my resumé supposed to look like?
What is our conference room supposed to look like?
What are my retirement years supposed to look like?

If I asked you a similar question about an aspect of your life, you’d probably have a certain set of conditions — or rules — from which you’d automatically begin. From there, like a designer adjusting fonts and colors, you make certain adjustments based on your own preferences, priorities and passion. Perhaps you’d batch your errands, print your resume on fancier paper, paint the conference room walls, or spend a little more time volunteering in your down time.

The tweaks and adjustments are fine, but my challenge to you is: what if you took a step back and blew up your answer to the first question? What if you blew up the rules that don’t exist?

Where is it written that a mother’s job is to endlessly chauffeur her kids to practices, games, and recitals every day of the week?

Why do we assume that resumés need to be printed on paper and be formatted according to common conventions?

It it always necessary for conference rooms to look so similar? Do they even need to be on-site, or even inside?

Who ever said that retirement can’t be used to launch an even more ambitious, passion-filled project that makes a bigger difference than anything you ever did while you were “working?”

Here’s the deal. You have a lot more control of you life than you probably realize. Your life can be less stressful, more fulfilling, more productive and more fun…today. Believe me or not, but it’s true. The trick is to spend some time questioning your assumptions.

Right now, at this moment, ask yourself this question:

What is my life supposed to look like?

Now let me ask you:

Really? Says who?

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Life is filled with countless rules that need to be broken. No, I’m not talking about running red lights or robbing banks. I’m talking about simple assumptions that we live by in order to fit in and stay comfortable. Kids like to break the mold and a great way to stay childlike, leaving Adultitis in the dust, is to follow their lead. Here are a few thoughts about the rules that don’t exist.

photo by limonada

We live in a culture of more. We are conditioned to want more stuff, sure, but also to be involved in more and more activities. Our schedules are bursting with everything from meetings, extracurriculars, and charitable activities to projects, practices, and parties of all kinds, including birthdays, baptisms, weddings and showers.

And of course, we can’t say no, for fear that we will appear selfish, offend somebody, or cripple our children’s chance of getting into Harvard or the NBA. Sometimes it’s as simple as not wanting to miss out on something fun. Having to say yes to all of these things or be crushed under the weight of our own guilt is a rule that doesn’t exist.

I get caught up in it myself. I’m prone to wonder (and often doubt) if I’m sucking all the marrow out of life, saying yes to enough things, and collecting enough experiences.

Am I living my life to the fullest?

Then I stumbled across some writings by Thomas Merton, which suggested a few things I’ve intuitively known all along. In his book No Man Is An Island, Merton wrote:

We do not live more fully merely by doing more, seeing more, tasting more, and experiencing more than we ever have before. On the contrary, some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual.

A tourist may go through a museum with a (travel guide), looking conscientiously at everything important, and come out less alive than when he went in. He has looked at everything and seen nothing. He has done a great deal and it has only made him tired. If he stopped for a moment to look at one picture he really liked and forgotten about all the others, he might console himself with the thought that he had not completely wasted his time. He would have discovered something not only outside himself but in himself.

Merton offers advice that seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Live more fully by experiencing less?

He’s right, though, isn’t he? How often do people return from vacations more tired than when they left, pining for another vacation just to recover? That’s because we try to cram way to much into our getaways. Like Merton’s museum visitor, we are convinced that we must do and see and taste everything (or at least as much as is superhumanly possible.)

How much richer would a visit to New York City be if instead of running around trying to see every single famous landmark, you spent a entire day immersed in the Ellis Island experience, or putzing around lazily in Central Park?

I also love this quote from Merton: “Everything depends on the quality of our acts and our experiences. A multitude of badly performed actions and experiences only half-lived exhausts and depletes our being.”

We engage in far too many badly performed actions, if you ask me. Rushing through dinner so we can get our kids to practice on time. Lunch with a friend spent distracted by texting and checking voice mail messages. Spending our time watching the penguins at the zoo thinking about what four exhibits we should go see next.

This idea of simplifying your life by doing less is the key to finding peace and happiness. It may be the message that this current generation needs to hear more than anything. Loyal readers know that this is something we try to advocate right here. But there are a number of other great resources out there as well. Some of my personal favorites include Zen Habits, Zen Family Habits, OnSimplicity, Man Vs. Debt, Exile Lifestyle, and The Happiness Project. Each of these sites do a great job of challenging me to take a hard look at my own life and discover what areas might benefit from a little downsizing and simplification.

I think Merton was right on. We will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual. What say you?

I love this picture. The boy’s name is Henry, the son of a blogger named Sabra, who explained the photo like this:

Because some days you should get what you want.  That’s my explanation for this picture.

Henry is wearing the PJ bottoms he begged to keep on, the shoes he insisted on (one a rain boot and the other a pair of sandals).  He’s eating peanut butter from a spoon and enjoying his binky.

Throughout our lives, starting at the very beginning, we are bombarded with rules.

Many of which don’t exist.

This collection of “rules” come from a wide variety of sources: our best friends, first grade teachers, parents, grandparents, politicians, old dead white guys, and even young celebrity trendsetters sporting more silicone than a non-stick bakeware factory. If we want to be successful, popular, get a good grade, or avoid death cramps when swimming, we listen to their advice.

Some rules were established for practical reasons. And even though the reason for which they were created are no longer relevant, they live on. For instance, the reason our keyboard is laid out into a haphazard alphabet soup can not be attributed to some drunk illiterate. Quite the contrary. In 1875, Christopher Sholes (his peeps called him Mr. Typewriter), ran into a problem with his new invention. The dang keys kept sticking together when a typist worked too quickly. Unable to figure out how to keep the keys from actually sticking, he decided the next best thing was to keep the typist from typing too fast. So he scientifically jumbled up the letters so that that commonest ones were spread apart. These days, jamming typewriter keys are only a problem for people who’ve been sleeping since 1984. But the “QWERTY” style keyboard layout is probably with us forever.

The 40-hour workweek was established with union pressure in the 1930s. Most of America still abides by it today. It’s another one of those “rules.” Work less than 40 hours and you’re a slacker. Work more than 40 hours and you’re either very dedicated or a workaholic (still some debate on this one.) Timothy Ferris questioned the necessity and intelligence of this rule (and ruffled some feathers) in his mega best seller, The 4-Hour Workweek.

I’ve had this post about rules that don’t exist in draft form for so long that mold started growing around the punctuation marks. I grew interested in the topic when Kim and I began our inaugural voyage through The Escape Plan and she nearly made a poor waitress’s head explode. She obliterated the age-old “rule” that you’re not supposed to eat dessert first by ordering chocolate lasagna as a first course at the Olive Garden. Before long, I started to notice all kinds of rules that don’t exist, things we do consciously or subconsciously for reasons that range from irrelevant to superstitious to downright stupid.

Along the way, I’ve been inspired by all sorts of people. People like Melynda at Our Blessed Arrows, who wrote:

We refuse to laugh at silly things, we don’t play tag or wear colorful socks. We focus our time on finding new and better ways to live another year, another week, another day even when the life we are trying to extend is boring. We worry about every morsel that goes into our mouths. Is it organic? Are the proper amount of government institution recommended vitamins in it? Will it cause cancer? Is it processed?

And then there was the always insightful Mark Stevens, who explained why he despises conventional wisdom:

It is not wisdom. It is just convention. And convention often boils down to doing things the way they have always been done simply because they are done that way.

I envisioned a tome I could write that outlined EVERYTHING I could possibly say about rules that don’t exist, complete with a library of examples that would make Wikipedia jealous and run crying home to his mommy. The concept eventually grew so intimidating that it scared the marshmallows out of me and gave me a major case of writer’s block and a rash on my right ear.

“Me write good about rules that no exist.”

Finally, I had the epiphany to create a category of posts, rather than a single, comprehensive, all-encompassing, impossible-to-write post.

Doable. (And perhaps blindingly obvious.)

So this is the first of what promises to be a series of posts dealing with the rules that don’t exist. I’d love to hear about any that you’ve encountered. Feel free to share yours in the comments section below.

In the meantime, be on guard against anyone who tells you that you can’t eat dessert first, wear pajamas outdoors, that your shoes must match, or that you can’t enjoy peanut butter from a spoon.

We recently started back on the road for a fall filled with speaking gigs. One thing Jason talks about is to “Stop living by rules that don’t exist.” This is a major way to fight your Adultitis. Living by this philosophy is exactly what gives the typical two-year-old the bad rap as “terrible.” In defense of parents of toddlers everywhere, let me point out that two-year-olds are in the business of testing everything, discovering the world around them and how they fit into it… which doesn’t always look pretty. Jason and I joke that inevitably there’s always a two or three-year-old throwing a major fit on the floor in the airport security line stubbornly objecting to take off his shoes for the TSA staff. We smile because they are the only ones who have the naivety (and guts) to stand up to the TSA, even if it is a losing battle. I secretly cheer the toddler on… how I wish I could refuse and throw a fit one of these days!

There is a lesson to be learned from the stubborn naivety of the terrible twos. You must challenge the status quo. Most of the time the “rules” that you insist on following are either insignificant or they simply do not even exist. As I think about our life, I smile at the opportunities when Jason and I have bucked the system, jumped off the conveyer belt of life, and taken our own path. It’s very childlike and with any lesson taken from our younger years, it creates a life of adventure and spunk.

Here are a few examples of how we’ve demonstrated that childlike grit by living by our own rules…

Rule: Get a job with good solid benefits. We ultimately rejected the safe school district insurance for the high deductible life of self-employment.

Rule: After you get married you should invest in a home. We chose to delay owning a home, and decided instead to invest in our business, ultimately gambling our house fund for a lifestyle that we love.

Rule: Professional speakers travel alone and keep a schedule that puts them in and out of cities in a 36-48 hour cycle. We set our own company policies that dictate both of us travel together. We fly in the day before the event and fly out the day after. If we are visiting a new area, we tack on a day or two for sightseeing. (Sidenote: Unfortunately, there is a high divorce rate in the lives of professional speakers, largely in part to their consistent absence from home.)

Rule: If you decide to move somewhere, you should have a job lined up or at least have contacts in the area to help you secure employment. Our first apartment in Madison was cosigned by our parents, because neither one of us had jobs yet. We came to Madison because we felt a strong pull to be here… it didn’t really make sense on paper but it did in our hearts. It’s been home ever since.

Rule: GenXer’s in Madison, Wisconsin must channel their generationally stereotypical cynicism towards the war, the government, and the environment. Jason and I are two of the few proud conservative thirty-somethings in this city.

Rule: You must prepare for childbirth with a doctor and deliver in a hospital. We are thrilled to have found an awesome fit with an excellent team of midwives at the Madison Birth Center.

You get the idea. It’s exciting to observe others breaking the rules as well. Jason’s brother and his wife maintain a lifestyle with two careers and yet only have one car, even though they work in different cities. They share the car, allowing them to save hundreds of dollars every single month. (Rule: You must have a car for each driver.)

Friends of ours sold their newer, four bedroom home and moved into an older, three bedroom home, so that she could quit her job to stay home with their children, avoiding daycare. (Rule: You must have two salaries to provide for your family.)

Here’s the dirty little secret… most people like it when they aren’t the only ones playing it safe, so it’s hard to find others who will challenge you to step out of your box. If someone they know starts rocking the boat, it’s often met with gossip and criticism because it challenges everyone else’s decisions. What a boring life! I’m not advocating you go to the extreme of childishness and shirk all responsibilities just to “make your own path.” Just do yourself and your loved ones a favor by asking yourself some hard and honest questions, “Why do we do things this way? Is this what’s best for me today and down the road?” Ask these questions and have the childlike spunk it takes to jump off the conveyer belt if you’re unhappy with your answers.

So, what rules are you breaking?