Living By Your Own Rules

Kristen Letchworth
Dec 11, 2025
2 min read

Set aside the rules you were handed. Create the ones you need.

One of my biggest revelations as an adult was realizing that I have choice. I have agency. I can decide for myself.

Growing up, especially if you experience self-doubt and tend towards people-pleasing, you may have learned that your safety was dependent upon doing what you were told. You couldn't rely on your own instincts and needs. There may not have been room for your emotions or your independence.

I don't bring this up to blame or shame parents or caregivers. Most of them had the best intentions and did the best they could with the resources at their disposal. But it's important to recognize that the stories you tell yourself now may be just that - old stories.

Think back to your childhood. Want did you need that you didn't receive? How can you give that to yourself now?

My coaching certification program specialized in something they called "rulebook coaching" - a technique to identity what rules you're subconsciously living by. These rules are the thoughts, assumptions, and behaviors that you've picked up along the way in your life. Someone, such as a parent, may have told you them directly or you may have pieced them together by what you've observed out in the world.

However, not every rule we live by serves us. In fact, as adults, many of these rules hinder our growth.

The rules we lived by as children deserve another look in adulthood.

It may be difficult to recognize these rules if we've been living by them most of our lives. It can be helpful to have a trusted outsider - friend, coach, therapist - to help you piece together what rules you are subconsciously obeying. Start with the behaviors and patterns you keep repeating but no longer want.

After identifying the rule, the next step is to poke holes in it. How true is it, really? Can you find evidence that goes against this rule? Who do you know that does not obey this rule? What might that be like?

After you've disproven that this rule is universally true, you have a choice. You can decide to keep living into it, or you can see how this rule isn't serving you anymore and discard it.

And now, you can come up with a new rule, a new way of thinking that supports who you want to be and how you want to move forward.

The process is straightforward, but it takes repetition to rewrite a rule. It takes practice to notice when it's coming up again. It takes discipline to decide to put it to the side. And it takes self-love to give yourself the permission to think and live differently.

This applies to every aspect of your life: work, relationships, parenting, etc.

Where are you living by someone else's rulebook? Where can you take your power back?