Bryan Dijkhuizen

You Will Never Win if You Follow the Rules

We are trained to follow the rules.

It’s all about doing what you’re being told and more and more what we can’t do. We’re being choked by society and it’s not even a joke anymore.

People are burnt-out because they’re following the social rules.

We’re stressed about:

  • Work
  • Relationships
  • Potential career
  • Our future

Those things aren’t things a human should naturally be worried about — it causes stress.

Let’s start breaking some rules.

Do you want to work all day?

We’re all obsessed with our careers.

Our career is that we need to pick at the age of 16 when we’re still growing up and don’t want to be busy dealing with these things — we just want to be teenagers.

Most people don’t know what they want to do until the age of 23.

Once you finish your 4-year education you start working for this business at the age of 21 or 22 for the rest of your life. That’s our treat for doing something that other people want in exchange for some money.

More and more people see that this is wrong.

You shouldn’t be working full-time when you’re wrong. The things you probably want to do are:

  • Exploring the world.
  • Travel and experience other cultures.
  • Learning about several things instead of one study.
  • Experience relationships.

But unfortunately, that’s getting close to impossible if you don’t have a good job that’s bringing some money in.

You have to have a career to start exploring yourself if you don’t have rich parents or another source of income.

The bottom line is that you don’t want to work all day to breathe.

That reminds me of that one meme where aliens look at earthers and ridicule us for having created a system where we have to work jobs we don’t like to survive.

Let’s adopt another mindset.

Shift your mindset

It’s not just about money, career, or work.

A lot of stuff happens in your mindset. When we think that we are happy, we likely are going to be more cheerful, but once we start to feel a little demotivated and don’t like our lives, it gets worse.

That’s a concept in neurolinguistic programming that Tony Robbins introduced to the world on a big scale.

It says that you can change your feelings and mind about something by convincing your mind that it’s true. One great example that I always reference is talking to yourself in the mirror and telling yourself how good you are.

The more you’ll tell yourself that you’re awesome, you will feel better.

Let’s try that every morning:

  • Wake up with a cold glass of water.
  • Do some exercise.
  • Take a cold shower.
  • Look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself how awesome you are and the things you’re going to achieve today.
  • Get some work done.

And by work, I mean the work that you like doing. For example, writing for your personal portfolio, blogging, or doing something else in the creative domain.

It’s good for your mental health. It works like therapy.

Writing online for therapy

You could use creative practices for therapy purposes.

It happens a lot when you visit a psychologist and they recommend go paint or draw or write in a journal. Blogging is basically journaling that got out of hand.

At the beginning of my writing career, I was just putting some quick travel blogs on my WordPress blog that didn’t get any traction at all but I got into the feeling of writing.

I’ve been writing since that day.

Putting my feelings and frustrations about the world on paper and putting it out into the world helps to clear my mind.

It’s actually quite enjoyable job.

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

William Wordsworth

Breaking the rules

We see all these writers nowadays writing what their editors desire of them. I don’t like that. Journalists and writers should be independent in what they put to paper.

Breaking the rules in your writing is crucial to develop a voice that people will remember. If you go along with the majority of people, nobody will remember you.

If you go against the stream, people will remember what you say. Dare to be contrarian.

A lot of people are scared of that.

They don’t like publishing stuff that might get some “scary comments”. You shouldn’t care.

Just do it.

Start making money by writing today — receive my free 4-day e-mail guide here.

Become more mindful

Breaking rules is not just about money and career. It’s also about mental well-being. Becoming more mindful to be concrete.

That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 2.5 years.

My journey has been changing my life, every single day and it still does. I’m learning new things every day and I write those things down to share them with the world.

Meditation is an important aspect of that growing amount of mindfulness in my life. Just like cold showers, Wim Hof inspired me to do that.

As we experience more pressure in our daily lives, it might benefit for us to take a break that gives us a moment of peace and calm.

You don’t have to work 40 hours per week.

Find ways to satisfy your financial needs in order to not have to work that much.

Final thoughts

One article can’t fit in my complete vision of the world and how I’d like people to think about this topic.

Or at least think about living a different life from your current one.

Most people just accept the life they have, whether they like it or not. Most of them don’t.

There are so many simple ways of increasing happiness and wealth in your life by breaking social rules. Just try them out to give yourself a shot at another way of life.


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