How Hidden Social Rules Shape Choices And Identity

We follow a listener suggestion and look at the human rules that quietly run our days, shaping what we do, what we fear, and what we call “normal.” We keep coming back to one clean interrupt for old programming: asking “Says who?” and choosing agreements that actually serve us. 
• rules as subconscious programs learned early 
• everyday constructs like manners and family routines 
• how “good” and “appropriate” become control tools 
• age and appearance rules and the cost of self-censoring 
• time and scheduling as invisible authority 
• why belonging pressure makes people enforce conformity 
• creativity, innovation, and the people we admire for breaking norms 
Send us your questions

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

We are online.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Cloudy, but not so bad. Cold. Had some snow on the ground. Tired of that.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

We're gonna get away from the snow. Summer is fast approaching.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

The ducks on swimming around. Yeah. Water's very high.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Yeah. It's like two inches underneath the dock. Any higher, and I don't know what basically a foot, at least a foot above the normal water level.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

We had all that rain. Has to go somewhere. Ends up in the lake. I ate badly all weekend. I'm just confessing. And it's got my mind cloudy.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Both of our minds are this Monday morning. I said, Oh, are we gonna talk about this? And Les is like, oh, we're continuing the thing from last week. Like, oh my god, I totally forgot. Like it's been it's been a few days, but yeah, we're continuing.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

And it's in response to a suggestion. Maybe the the best thing to start it off is just to read that text without you know revealing names.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yeah. As you guys know on the podcast, we keep people anonymous because people want to join our lives and and we don't want to be giving out names, but we received a suggestion. They were talking to their guides, and their guides suggested that we talk about rules. They refer to all your human rules, the rules that we use to hold ourselves in patterns of thinking living and patterns of thought, and limit our ability to see things differently and without all the boundaries and rules of how life must be.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Realizing that so much of how we are controlled in this world, and I don't like using that word with negative meaning. I want to use it as a precise word. We're controlled. Controlling is to have an outside force determine something else. And if we think that our behavior comes from an inside source, from who we are, from from how we how we interact with the world, to not be flowing from that place, but be flowing from a place of rules that exists in your subconscious mind. You know, we are there's a lot of behaviors humans don't engage in because early, early on, they're taught. So here's a really innocuous, meaningless example. You know, we don't chew with our mouth open, we don't put too much food in our mouth, right? We have all these rules around sitting at a table and eating food with others, right? It's the whole thing is a construct. You know, you could look at, and we talked about this in early podcasts. You could look at any phenomenon in our society, and it is a construct, right? The family dinner is a construct, the family itself is a construct, right? And they they're constructs because they have rules. This is who is in your family, this is who is your extended family, this is who you can bring into your family if you like, but they're not quote unquote family, right? We have all these ideas that are rigid. And the rigidity comes from our own desire to adhere to the rule, because somewhere along the way, somebody who was in a position of authority told us this is the way it goes. This is the way it happens, and so you know, the family dinner becomes a construct where the members of the family get together on a particular night and they have a particular kind of food, and they sit around a table, and we even bring out particularly designated dishes as the important dishes to use. And all of these are what we call rules, and and we're all sensitive to those rules to the degree to which we've adopted those rules.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

And so I use that as a as a really innocuous example. It doesn't mean a lot. We can all sort of see through it, we can see it as a construct, we can see it as a set of rules that we all just adhere to, that we can see it as something that could change. It doesn't have to be that way. There's no absolute moral reason that it has to go that way, although it can certainly get the idea can be bound into our morality, what we think is right, what we think is wrong, what we think is good, what we think is bad. And some some people, some families can build their whole lives around these kinds of constructs, right? And they're just rules, but they're just human rules, but they control us, right? Yeah, they they control the choices we might make. When the rules are such that everyone feels benefited from the rules, they don't feel like rules, they feel like agreements because we think rule is something imposed on us, and it is imposed on us, you know, using your fork and your knife a certain way versus, you know, other places in the world where they're using chopsticks, right? Or they're using ladles, right? Like there are there's a million ways to eat your dinner. And, you know, some places it's it's about, you know, three forks and two knives and seven spoons all on the table before you begin. Three different sizes of plates, and in other places it's a bowl and a pair of chopsticks that are yours. And in another place in the world, it's a big bowl of food with a plate of bread, and the bread is the way you consume the food, and you might have a little bowl. So there's there's all these rules depending on what you eat, but getting the food from outside you to inside you is just you know what it's about. But we apply all these rules to it, and we call it good manners and bad manners. And these are rules that we all tend to like, except when you're little and you're just trying to get the food in your mouth.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

And then you reach a point where you you start rebelling. I remember there was a funny period of time in my life when I decided I was living on my own and I didn't answer to anybody. And so I started for a couple of weeks in the summer decide I was having ice cream for breakfast every day. And you know, it's funny in hindsight because it felt so rebellious, so rebellious that I told my mother I was doing it just to get her to react, right? Because I knew that I was violating rules. And I also knew that the rule around eating a good meal at the beginning of the day was a pretty worthwhile one. It was worthwhile to sort of say the first fuel I'm putting inside myself beginning a day should be something, you know, of of quality and you know, sort of whole foods and natural. But it was fun to rebel, you know, to see most of the way that you behave and your commitment to it as rules, as a program. And it's not that they're bad, it's sometimes they're just arbitrary.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Sometimes they're not, you know, morally and eternally meaningful.

unknown 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

They're just the way we do things. And that to me is the magic, right? I wrote that down last time. For many of us, the rules we adhere to, we received them when we were very young, and we were told that's just the way you do it. That was the rationale.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

So we didn't like label them as rules per se, it's just the way we did it.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Well, yeah. So that's what you were told, but you felt like it was a rule.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

You felt like to violate that methodology was to, well, you know, let's use the word was to sin. It was a sin to violate the rules. I remember being a little kid, and I'm trying to remember, I think it's the the fourth commandment or the third commandment, honor thy father and mother.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Sort of like listen to your elders or yes, but this one's read out of the Biden. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Honor thy father and thy mother. Right? Like in that one, that one was used in our house.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

And I didn't grow up with the word sin, so I don't care. But I still adhere to the rules. You have tons of rules.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

It's interesting how when people come together and they start to form families, yeah, how the rules have to find a way to blend.

Age, Appearance, And Social Policing

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Yeah. Yeah. I find rules my mind always, I don't know why it always goes here, but my mind goes to rules around the way women should look and act as they age. And not that it's something that they should do, that's not what I'm saying, but uh my mind for some reason, when I think about rules, I think about breaking those rules and how how often I see like a reel or a video of someone interviewing an older woman, and she's she's dressed like really cool. She's just, you know, I'll use the word authentic. She's just being herself. She doesn't give a damn about anything. She's bright colors, long hair, doesn't care. And and people interview them, her, you know, like them. I say them because there's reels where like there's just tons of interviews with all kinds of women that are dressed like that. And they the the just the fact that the the person goes out of their way to interview them is sort of like, wow, this is this is pushing the boundaries. This is breaking the rules, right? And and people in the comments are like, oh, I wish I could be like you when I'm older, all this stuff, right? And so I see I see them as breaking these so-called rules, even though it shouldn't be like that. You know, I I grew up hearing my Nana being told, you know, well, why don't you cut off your hair? You're at that age where you you you make your hair short, short and like a little curled, right? And she kept her hair long, still does. And but my grand grandmother went short, right? Because that's what the so-called rule was. That that was the ideal, or whatever you want to call it. So yeah, I just I just go there.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

I had a crushing moment once. I was just at a yeah, I was out on a weekend and looking around for some clothes because I don't buy clothes very often, you know, once every couple of years. Yeah. And I was looking around for some clothes and I saw this shirt that I really liked. And I said, hell then I'm buying it.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

And I put it on and I got some comments about it, but I was just really happy with it and I felt good in it. And then I got to the college and was teaching, and a student came up to me and said, That shoot, that shirt is way too young for you.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Oh my god.

Clock Rules And Daily Routines

SPEAKER_00 14:45

And I never wore it again. Oh, and it was like one of those moments where I thought, am I stepping out of my own appropriateness? Am I is there something wrong with my judgment? Um, am I supposed to be something? And although I could answer those questions in ways that suggested, no, no, I'm a I'm a free thinker, I think for myself, it still I couldn't get away from it, that that that thought. So there's a rule, right? There are there's a whole bunch of rules. Like really, there are way more rules about how we behave than we could ever try to list. Right? We accumulate those rules, not just as we're young, but we learn more rules and new rules about how other people think, and our comfort or lack of comfort in pushing through those rules, right? And there's no dimension of your life that doesn't have a bunch of rules, it can be your age, it can be your gender, it can be your occupation, it can be your family, it can be your role within an organization, it can be your role within your family. We're we we have so many rules that are used to control us, and we acquire them not just when we're young, though the core of it is really set by the time you're 10. There's an awful lot, there's an awful lot of protocol, I'll use that word, there's an awful lot of protocol well established before you're 10 years old, not the least of which, and another one that is huge, in my opinion, is you know, time, the clock. Right? We have rules, we have rules about being on time, we have rules about what you do at certain times of the day, we have rules about the day's routine, we have rules around the work day, the school day. In many respects, when you're trying to get a lot of people together, those rules are really helpful, and we would agree to those rules willingly, and many of them are just trained into us, right? You know, we're we're we're we have a lot of brand new mothers in our world, right? And they've got brand new babies, and new babies are coming, right? And the great resistance, the great difficulty is trying to get the baby to adhere to the day that suits the rest of the family. Right? This is the time we wake up, this is the time we sleep, this is the time we eat, right? And in some respects, that's really hard because for some of us, the rules are so deeply embedded in us that we resist a baby doing anything but following those rules. And then sometimes babies do resist, and other times babies just don't resist at all, and there's this dynamic, it's so subtle, but it's so powerful, I think. Just the daily routines that we go through, and wanting to get a brand new baby into those routines. And you can always see when when the mother and the baby's routine start to align well, you just see the peacefulness in the mother, and you see a calmness in the baby. And there's the this is just unspoken rules. This is how early, how instantly we come into this world, and we're subject to external controls, and we call them rules, and they have sometimes a lot of value, and so we agree to them, and sometimes we resist them, we don't like them, and yet we agree subject to our resistance, right? Yeah, I think that thinking about rules as agreements uh invites the idea that sometimes we don't agree and we want to find reasons to break the rules, we want to create exceptions to the rules, and then those exceptions to the rules become new set of rules, yeah. Anyway, uh that the subtleness of the idea of rules, we're we're so unaware of them because we're living by them from the instant we're born, and we don't think that it's a rule that everybody goes to work or goes to school, but absolutely it's a rule, yeah, right? It's an absolute rule. And does it serve everyone? Heck no.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

There are many people that don't serve at all. In fact, some of the most amazing people we think and talk about are those that find their way to navigate away from those rules and yet find for themselves success.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

Like the flamboyant old woman who says, No, I'm dressed the way I want to dress. I'm not going to be told how I'm going to be dressed. I'm not going to be told that for my age, I need this hairstyle and these clothes and this demeanor and these kinds of manners and this kind of lifestyle. I'm going to resist that. And so these are people we kind of admire because they resist the rules and find their way to navigate through the rules in a way that are offensive, but not so offensive as to be a problem. They catch people's attention, yet they're not necessarily judged as problematic. And then we start to admire those people who learn how to navigate through the rules and live differently. And we say, Oh, I wish I had, we often say, I wish I had the courage to do that.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Yeah, the guts, or right?

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I wish I could I could break through that. Well, this is the way we do things.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

I had so when I was in grade four, my mom and I went to Vancouver and we went to Salt Spring Island. And even in even uh in grade four, I was like, Oh my gosh, I free, I feel like a free free person out here. I even got a little thing put in my hair by somebody where they braided it and then put like this spiral thread of. color around the braid and I was just like living the life and I came back to Ontario and I was made fun of for the little braid spiral thing and I shut down and I wore my Orca t-shirt and people wondered what the heck is that and I was shut down and it's funny yeah it it's funny and then and then you get into this idea of like well I can't dress like that unless I'm out there or I can't act like this unless I'm you know going there or I can't you know like when I when I got into a job that was very design oriented and fun and creative I felt like I could suddenly be fun and creative right but I can't be that until I have that or I until I live there or you know funny how we do that to ourselves.

Compliance, Belonging, And Pushback

SPEAKER_00 23:06

I don't know that we do it to ourselves as much as we adopt a set of rules and then we we suffer trying to adhere to them and trying to find a way to be more of what we are naturally more of you know people talk about the authentic self trying to be more of our authentic self in a world that really just wants us to comply. It wants us to get in line wants us to follow the rules and even to the point where you know you're punished by not and you know it's it's the thing we do to others when we move out of those rules we make them incredibly uncomfortable right other people are like oh I don't know I don't know if I could do that tell people you're gonna sell your house you're gonna give up your stuff and you're gonna see what life feels like differently and people will tell you oh I don't know how could you give that up or where will you go and you say we don't know yet right and they they react to that rules you know we're gonna we're gonna do something just crazy we're gonna trust the universe right say out loud oh I'm just trusting the universe will take care of me and people will think that you've pretty much lost it yeah that's so true right so oftentimes we discover a rule when our impulse or desire is to do something other than follow the rule and other people react to it. And other people want us to get in line because it just makes us uncomfortable to have somebody out of line somebody marching at their own pace right yeah if if I had a message right now you know the last time we talked about language as a simple example of a good rule good set of rules lots of rules that are really really good and they're useful they serve us. And when there are rules that serve us we don't have a problem with them we don't really want to fight against them. We adhere to them and they facilitate our life and those are I think really easy to see as agreements and there are rules that don't necessarily serve us that are trying to make us like everybody else. Now when it comes to my language I kind of want to be like everybody else because I want people to understand me and I want to understand them. And this communication stuff is really useful. It really serves a purpose in my life but there's lots of rules in the world that don't suit me. They don't serve me they don't fit within my whatever dimensions of uniqueness that I bring to the table and those are rules that we work hard at enforcing right and then the world starts to become difficult because there will always be resistance to rules that are arbitrary just like some people will write poetry that doesn't follow grammar but has beauty of itself and is evocative and stimulates in us things that we didn't know were there. You know when we're young we're taught art is to create representation of something and we're actually rewarded by how close our art aligns to the representation of the thing that it's it's trying to reflect.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

And then as someone becomes good or proficient at drawing a bowl of fruit and it looks like the bowl of fruit then they're allowed to start making things not look like a bowl of fruit yeah and then you start to get the artists of the world that are representing things visual artists that are representing things in ways that are evocative they're not meant to be a representation of the thing it's much more meant to be an emotional stirring of the pot. Yeah we have so many rules and we need I think at this point especially at this point in world history we need to be aware of them we need to be aware that much of what we do is a rule established by others because it serves them you know I think about I think about a teacher my son had I have a son that's he wears his emotions on his sleeve and he reacts really quickly to what he perceives to be unfair always has since he was little little little and he had a a teacher that was a rule monster I'm gonna call her a rule monster she was constantly preaching rules and those that didn't adhere to them got punished and he was always I'm gonna use the word innocently he was always innocently violating her rules and she was constantly on him constantly and all of this was innocent it was just you know his his human motivations as a little boy and it was a very very hard year for him and it was a very very hard time for me because I couldn't even communicate with this teacher because this teacher's answer to everything was well that's the way it's done. So it wasn't you know I look at that answer and I understand why people give it but to me that answer is irrational. It's not logical it's not thought through it borders on being immoral because of the extent that it's about control and has absolutely no love in it at all. Right? And so I I think of the rules that we all adhere to because that's the way it's done without any thought without any reflection without any agreement you know those are the kinds of things that are going on going on in our world and they scare me. Yeah because there are those who don't know how to think through the appropriateness or inappropriateness of a rule and so they are enforcing rules that may in a modern world be illogical.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

I think we need to be you know I think there's just tons of value in asking yourself well why do I think that's the right way to do it right I remember in design school I know these are silly little examples I'm giving but like in design school I had a briefing to design a not a not a lamp I mean it could be a lamp but a a lighting fixture kind of thing.

The Power Of Asking "Says Who"

SPEAKER_02 30:43

And so I designed this light that hung from the ceiling and around it was this beautiful like flowery type opening but you could see the light bulb through it and and I didn't get I submitted it and I didn't get a good very good grade on it and I was told that you know you should you you don't see light bulbs through the like you can't see the light bulb you're not supposed to see light bulbs through these these things. And I just went with it okay whatever and and literally like two years later there's all these things in the stores these products in the stores for light that are that you can see the light bulb through it and it looked very much like what I just signed and I was like I don't know it's just again this rule silly rule design rule you're not you know at that time I guess that year you're not supposed to see light bulbs through the through the product and yeah it's just funny just funny like the little rules that we and then you see artists and designers really pushing the boundaries if you push it a little bit you're wrong but if you really push it you're you're held in high esteem that make sense like if you're really out there you start to gain a name for yourself but if you just push it a little bit you're like no no come back here I I just want to I think that this is one of the most dangerous things I can suggest oh good oh good just reply to any challenge with says who says who I mean that that probably rattles some stuff in your own mind when you think about it and you say these are this is the way I live and I live that way because I'm supposed to because it's the right thing to do because I'm a good person and this is what good people do.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

I mean you can use that to get people really worked up you know tell them what good people do. Good people don't do that and watch them react because they have a program in them that says they're supposed to be a good person. And it doesn't matter what what you choose you know oh you put that much cream in your coffee oh good people don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

What do you mean by good people?

SPEAKER_00 33:26

That's it oh you mean like conforming I'm saying that's a construction in our mind this concept of good people good designers don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

Oh I see yeah right I I think you know I again like I was I look back and I I I was like that throughout all of design school I was always pushing the boundaries when they were like design a car I was like okay I'll design a car for Mars you know design something for your thesis show okay I'm gonna design something that comes from outer space you know like I just constantly the the teachers were just I I think they they they just at the end were like yeah whatever Hillary just do whatever because I designed they said design a truck and I designed a truck that was made of not made of coral co coral per se but like had like it wasn't full physical it was it was like what would you call it porus porous yeah and it had holes in it and it was all oh my god and now I I just saw a commercial last night with a bench like that I thought wow that's interesting anyway yeah yeah I think that we admire people who find a way to break out of rules without making everybody upset yeah and at the same time what that should reflect to us what that should startle in us is our own adherence to rules yeah and when somebody tells you you know don't do that and you say why and they say because that's not the way it's done and then you say says who you everyone around has a moment when they go ah this is a rule and maybe this rule doesn't serve us and we shouldn't agree to it anymore.

Body Mind, Creativity, And New Ideas

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yeah in the chat I do want to say this one your comment says who that's basically what my guides have been saying all those human rules all those human rules this is the way it's to be done this is what a good person does this is how you and this is the big one we deal with all the time as hypnotists this is how you deserve success this is how you make yourself worthy of love this is how you make yourself good enough to be accepted and be part of things we have a desire inside us that has existed really in many respects the the the animal that we are the beast that we are we are mammals right and we are mammals that are social we require others for for survival right I always use the line you know we we're so social that we come we bud out of another human being and if they don't pick us up and take care of us that we all expire yeah and we're that reliant on others and that reliance creates a predisposition to want to belong to want to be part to to fit in and be accepted.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

And it's like they use that against us.

Normal, Norms, And Closing Questions

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Well I say they society I suppose well to the extent that we reach a point in our lives when we don't feel like we need others the way we used to when we become self-reliant right we start to venture off into things that that might not fit the best interests of the group and then the group will pull you back there is there is I always talk about the body mind versus the higher mind and the body mind is about survival the body mind is about avoiding pain the body mind is about feeling good and having your physical needs met the body mind is really programmed in fear and avoidance and the body mind really makes us want to have friends and a group and a place and a home wants consistency and there are agreements that we can enter into rules that we can enter into that facilitate that and then there is an awareness at some point that we don't need to constantly indulge the body mind that maybe there's more than just physical safety and then we push out into our own natural curiosity and creativity and those are the words I'm going to use a million times over my life now those are sort of core aspects to who you are that's in in those lie the the expression of your individuality the expression of your authenticity your genuine nature and as you start to express them you start to express your curiosity and you go exploring and you go experimenting and you go engaging and then that leads you to discoveries that cause you to create differently to create different dynamics in your life those are the things that are going to cause others to react if they're deeply embedded in the rules of how it should be but so important to remember that everything that you enjoy in your life physically and emotionally everything was at one time pushing the boundaries experimenting everything that you like in indoor plumbing for example was like are you nuts? Are you nuts? You're not gonna have a water system inside your home right and now we have that and we wouldn't have a home without it and we have you know bathrooms with five or six different appliances that we use that flow water in some way that serves us and it's because somebody said no we can create something new and everybody said are you nuts everything that we enjoy everything that we hold dear the you know I I hate talking about it but the cell phone right the cell phone who whose life isn't centered around their cell phone now right and there was a time when people thought telephones were a stupid idea nobody's gonna want one of those things ringing in their house all the time right email changes everything to the point where now you know our post services are are going out of business because people just don't use something that is that slow and that tedious and that that well just old yeah so it's the people who say says who the people who fight against well that's the way it's done are really the leaders and that leads us back to I guess you know a point of conclusion for today. I I don't think we're done this topic but oh I lost it. Point of conclusion that leads us back to my head spun up spun forward into tomorrow when I mentioned it's okay tomorrow. Well I think I just I'll just finish with says who yeah I do want to say this when you don't conform it's like you're not normal well that's that's what norms are yeah yeah norms are the the average way the average person does the average thing.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah yeah and I don't know why normal is something to aspire to yeah I don't think it is for for people I don't think it's something that they consciously say I'm gonna aspire to be normal I think it's just what we wake up into every day.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

I think it's because normal is equated to that's what good people do. Yeah that's the way it's done.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Yeah yeah yeah anyway so that's true all right so thank you for hanging out today everybody lots of questions want lots of questions yes send us your questions this is a huge topic yeah have a great have a great chocolate free day chocolate free what are you talking about did we ate all those last night bye bye all right have a good one see you later