Life laws are the rules of the game. You can either ignore them and stumble—wondering why you never succeed—or learn them, adapt to them, mold your choices and behavior to them, and live effectively.
Law #1: You either get it, or you don’t.
Learn why you do what you do, and don’t do what you don’t do. If you don’t get it, you will often be found beating your head against the wall and complaining that you never get a break. Those who get it make fewer foolish mistakes because they figure out the formula for success—they acquire the knowledge and experience they need to create the results they want.
The “it” that you need to get may change from time to time, but there will be some common elements. The “it” whose code you need to break may be in relationships, self-management, or career competition. You may need to come to grips with your emotional life. Whatever “it” is, once you see how things really work, you function from a position of strength.
Law #2: You create your own experience.
You need to accept accountability for your life and your role in creating the results that are your life. You are accountable for your life. Good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, happy or sad, fair or unfair, you own your life. You create the results in your life, all of the time. If you don’t like your job, you are accountable. If your relationships are on the rocks, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable. Whatever your life circumstance, you can no longer dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is.
If you don’t accept accountability, you will misdiagnose and mistreat every problem you have. And things won’t get better. By convincing yourself that you are a victim, you guarantee no progress, no healing, and no victory. Your irresponsibility prevents you from making progress to improve your life.
Law #3: People do what works.
Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior. There may have been thousands of times that you have said or done foolish things, only to shake your head in frustration and disbelief. You may say to yourself, “What is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing that? I hate that, and I hate myself when I do it, so why do I do it?”
Good questions. The answer is that you do those things because at some level, they work. At some level, you perceive that these unwanted behaviors serve a purpose. The behavior you choose creates the results you get. You can start behaving in the positive ways necessary to have what you want—or stop behaving in ways that interfere with your having what you want. You cannot eliminate your negative behavior without understanding why you do it to begin with.
Law #4: You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.
You need to get real with yourself about your life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn’t working in your life. If you’re unwilling to acknowledge a thought, circumstance, problem, condition, behavior, or emotion—if you won’t take ownership of your role in a situation—then you cannot and will not change it. If you refuse to acknowledge your own self-destructive behaviors, not only will they continue, they will gain momentum, become more entrenched in the habitual patterns of your life.
You can lie to yourself in two ways: You can affirmatively misrepresent the truth, or you can lie to yourself by omission. Failing to tell yourself what is, is just as dangerous as misrepresenting what is. So you need to ask yourself the hard questions and to give yourself realistic answers.
Law #5: Life rewards action.
Make careful decisions and then pull the trigger. The world couldn’t care less about thoughts without actions. The responses and results that you receive from anyone, in any situation, are triggered by your behaviors. This is the only way people can get to know you, and decide whether to reward or punish you. When you choose the behavior (the action), you choose the consequences. The better the choices, the better the results; the better the behavior, the better the results. But the bottom line is that if you do nothing, you get neither. Life rewards action.
People don’t care about your intentions. They care about what you do. What determines the script of your life is what you do. In a society of “victims,” you may respond: “It’s not my fault. It’s not my job.” I’ve got news for you: You are your job.
Law #6: There is no reality, only perception.
Identify the filters through which you view the world. This law determines whether or not you are happy, satisfied, and at peace. Whatever meaning or value a circumstance has for you will be the meaning or value that you give it. To appreciate how this law works, you need to understand the difference between sensation and perception. When light waves are received by your eyes or sound waves by your ears, that is sensation: stimuli being received by your sense organs. Perception is interpreting those sensations, assigning meaning to them.
A husband and wife, looking at the same situation, can come up with totally different versions of what it means. This “incongruency of perceptions” can lead to frustration, confusion, and disharmony. There’s nothing to be gained by asking who is right and wrong. There is no reality, only perception. How you view the event is what determines its meaning to you. When it comes to how you see things, you have a choice.
Law #7: Life is managed; it is not cured.
Learn to take charge of your life and hold on. Never are you without problems or challenges. Life has to be managed. If you accept this, you are less likely to label every problem as a crisis or to conclude that you’re not handling your life successfully. Success is a moving target, and your life must be actively managed. How well your life is working five years from now will be a function of how well you actively manage yourself from now until then. As a life manager, your objective is to manage your life in a way that generates high-quality results. You may not be the only client you have, particularly if your family includes children or people who act like children. But you are your most important client. To give something in your roles, as spouse or parent, you must take care of yourself.
Law #8: We teach people how to treat us.
Own, rather than complain about, how people treat you. Learn to renegotiate your relationships to have what you want. You shape the behavior of those with whom you interact. How you interpret and react to another’s behavior determines whether or not they are likely to repeat it. You actively participate in defining your relationships.
People treat you the way they do because you have taught them, based on results, which behavior gets a payoff. Results (not intentions) influence the people with whom you interact. If the people in your life treat you in an undesirable way, you’ll want to figure out what you are doing to reinforce, elicit, or allow that treatment.
Law #9: There is power in forgiveness.
Open your eyes to what anger and resentment are doing to you. Take your power back from those who have hurt you. Hate, anger, and resentment are among the most powerful and self-destructive emotions. To carry and feel hatred changes who you are. For every thought and feeling, there is a physiological reaction, and these reactions are evident whenever you are feeling these powerful negative emotions. Hatred, anger, and resentment are incompatible with your peace, joy, and relaxation. This means that those who love you don’t get you—they get the bitter shell of who you once were. Your task is to undo the chains of hatred and anger so that you do not take those emotions with you into these other relationships. Break these bonds and cleanse your heart and mind of the poison. You do not have to be angry just because you have the right to be.
Law #10: You have to name it to claim it.
Get clear about what you want. If you cannot name, with great specificity, what it is that you want, then you can’t step up and claim it. Indecision creates inaction, and inaction leads to results that you do not want. The need for specificity applies to every goal you set. You need to know so much about what you want that whenever you are heading toward it, you know it, you feel it, and you sense it. When you know your goals, you will recognize which behaviors and choices support them.
Excellence in Action: Obey these laws of life.
