4 Tips to Follow Rules Your Way
Not all rules are meant to be followed to the letter
One evening, when I was a teenager, my dad hit a eureka moment and declared,
“From now on, everyone in this family will wake up at 4 am.”
We gave him a side look — half shocked, half amused.
“That is the time successful people wake up,” he explained.
I don’t know if he had just read that somewhere, talked to someone, or it was one of his midlife revelations.
We laughed. We were used to him joking or saying serious things and passing them on as jokes. Neither I nor my siblings dared to ask questions. We didn’t want to confirm whether or not he was serious. But nobody woke up at four the following morning. And we didn’t get into trouble for it. I guess it was a joke.
Our neighbours were considered successful. They had an established dairy farm with eighty cows and other livestock. They woke up at 3 am to feed them, milk the cows and deliver the milk to the dairy truck on time. We didn’t have cows. That rule made no sense for our family at the time.
Some people are ambivalent when it comes to following rules. They are neither rule-breakers nor adherents.
