About a month ago I decided to finally take charge of my life (for real this time) and decide what my future should be. No longer would I accept that anyone but me would control my actions. It has been a lot tougher than I imagined. Allowing oneself to truly think about what matters, what really matters is difficult. It has been somewhat earth-shattering for me, well okay, not that bad. The thing is that what I previously thought about myself seem to not be true. The things I always believed to be true, might not be.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been studying outside of work to excel at my job. I’ve been using my free time to read books about work-related stuff. I thought, this is what I’m supposed to do. Thing is, work is not me, at least not ALL of me. It’s the easy path, the one on which I know what to do. The road is paved, it’s straight and easy to follow. Sometimes it’s easy to “drive” past all those potential exits because one is so caught up in doing work. Isn’t that sad? I think so.

So about a month ago I  decided to actually start reading, and learning about myself (the blog was part of that quest). I’m not devouring everything about personal development, but rather carefully testing the waters to see which people I can relate to and believe in. Personal development certainly is a crowded business with lots of self-professed experts. I’ve discovered a few things that I seem quite passionate about, even though I have little practical experience working with them. Broadly they can be categorized as ‘Innovation’ and ‘Problem solving’.

To me, innovation is simply something that improves upon a certain idea, making it somewhat better in one aspect or more. Revolutionary innovation would be something completely new, never done before. Such as when the MRI-scanner came about. It gave us a completely new perspective on our minds, and we can now tell much, much more about how our brain and mind function.

Problem-solving is not necessarily innovation, but it usually is. You have a problem, and no tools or processes are available to solve it. A solution would, in my book, constitute some sort of innovation. I love problem-solving.

I’m getting carried away here. Let me get back on topic. Thinking, and being yourself. There isn’t much room for that unfortunately. We must comply with certain dress codes, implicit rules of conversation (especially in client facing situations). If someone asks you how you are doing ,they’re generally not interested (most of the time), you’re supposed to give the implicit answer, “Thanks fine, you?”. Boring. When someone asks me how I am doing, I generally tend to spill my life story, to their big detriment, HA!

I had a conversation with a colleague from work about this, he said that: “Well, you’re a consultant, your job is to make-pretend” I thought that was so sad. I don’t want to make pretend, I want to tell the customer the truth, not be forced to tell some lullaby about how great everything is, will be etc. I’m quite saddened that there is so little room for honesty and genuity. In some regards I actually enjoy the work I do, but not all the time. But it pains me that I can never truly be myself, because I’m not supposed to.

It seems as if people invent new rules daily, ironically that’s exactly what I’m about to do. I do however feel this particular rule is a justifiable one that actually makes a difference. If we were to collect all blogposts around the net, specifically those about “Rules”, we’d not have 3, or 5 or 100 rules, we’d have thousands. I’m going to be leaving you with one rule that applies in all situation, that will never fail you, because it’s your rule.

Rule 1: I will always make up my own mind.

This has worked wonders for me. I’m quite happy reading “Rules”-posts, but I will not remember them all, there’s just too many. But what I will remember is this one rule, to always make up my own mind. Perhaps it sounds as if I’m trivializing life in general, and perhaps I am. But whom else but ourselves is to tell us how we lead our lives. No situation is like the other, no other person has had the exact same experiences as you have. We’re completely unique. That’s why we have to have unique rules.

The above rule however, always applies. Sometimes I think to myself: “But how silly is this, always make up my own mind”, I always do that, but then again, no I don’t. In fact most people don’t. Most people sit and wait around for other people to solve their problems, to tell them how to exercise, excel in their career or become a fantastic partner. We’re in charge and that means we have to make up our own minds.

I will always make up my own mind.