Have a Rule Book for Your Individual Standards.

I’ve been playing a lot of cribbage lately with my brother, and just recently the strangest thing happened.

For those of you who do not know the game of cribbage, it is a card game where you score points by having cards that add up to fifteen, having numerical runs, having pairs of cards, and flushes. You play these cards until you have none left in your hand, then add up the number of points in your hand.

Players start with six cards or five if you are playing with four people, and have to throw two into the “crib.” Who ever has the crib gets to see if the four cards given to them add up to any extra points.

As you can tell, the scoring can get confusing from time to time, and players have to be keenly aware of the cards they are playing and the potential points they have in their hands, and during one hand last week my brother had something that neither of us had ever seen.

He had four kings in the four cards that he had in his crib. Neither of us had seen a hand like that before, so neither of us quite knew how to score it. So, we looked at the rule book.

For those of you wondering, that particular hand added up to twelve points. Had we not had that rule book on hand, then chaos would have ensued. Chaos occurs when rules are not clearly outlined and followed. Without rules, reckless actions are taken.

So in essence, we need rules for everything. Humans crave certainty, and need it in situations in order to avoid complete chaos. It doesn’t just apply to games, it applies to people, and it applies to you. Every single human being has a subconscious rule book that they follow whether they are aware of it or not. This rule book is better known as your standards.

You, whether you are aware consciously of them or not, have standards that dictate your actions. When you act within these rules, then good things happen. When you act against these rules life cheats you.

When things are going well, whether it be your job, a personal relationship, or anything else, your standards are being met. This provides a feeling of comfort, certainty, and confidence within the specific situation as a result.

Chance are you are a normally functioning human being, and if that is the case it is normal to have problems. You want to flirt the line with chaos, but only in a controlled manner. If you don’t set boundaries for experience, then you will inevitably fail because you are inviting chaos in without a cap of control. How do you stop that from happening? Act accordingly, don’t be wishy washy, make decisions and stick to them based of what you really want. These decisions do not have to come to you right away, sometimes we need time to process things, but you have to actively be trying to be certain about your current situation with everything in life in order to keep the chaos and control balance healthy.

In short, it sounds obvious, but don’t try and force a decisive answer when you are indecisive.

My challenge to you today is to find and establish those guidelines in which you will interact with life. When you do this, you find more clarity in the uncertainty.

Stop letting life push you around when it doesn’t want to play the rules to your game. You are in complete control of what you believe you deserve and what you don’t. Don’t settle for things when you know they are not good for you. When you do this, you feel unfulfilled.

That being said, do it while respecting other individual’s rules. When you combine clear your understanding of how you want your world to operate with and understanding of the other side of things, you ultimately are able to make clear and sound decisions without second guessing.

So, next time you are unsure about a situation, take a good hard look at the rule book.