I went to brunch at some friends house a few days ago and after we ate, a couple of us were discussing some work at our church and the topic turned to “rules.” Everyone agreed that maybe there are too many rules and half the time no one really knows why the rule came into existence in the first place.
But, the fact is the world is full of rules and seems like there are more being created every day. And if you think about it, we all grew up with a fair amount of pressure to “follow the rules.” We were told such things as “no orange elephants,” and “don’t color outside the lines.” The educational system encourages rule-following. Students are usually better rewarded for regurgitating information than for coming up with new ideas and thinking originally. So we’ve just become more comfortable following the rules than challenging them.
I guess in practical everyday living, that makes sense. In order to function in our society you have to follow all kinds of rules. You can’t shout in a library, or cry out “fire” in a theater or cheat on your income tax.
The problem with all that is if you’re trying to generate new ideas, then “follow the rules” can be a mental block because it means basically, “think about things only as they are.”
Playing the revolutionary is easier said than done. I was never accused of being a “yes man,” and often questioned ideas presented at meetings or the way certain things were done. Over the years, I was mostly criticized for my attitude. But after I’d been working for a number of years, I was called in to by boss’s office one day and I figured I was in some kind of trouble. But he was very nice and he told me that one of his most difficult tasks was getting his people to challenge the rules. We had a nice talk and he complimented me for questioning a lot of the “rules.” He told me one of his favorite quotes was — “If you don’t ask “why this?” often enough, somebody will ask “why you?”
That meeting made an impression on me and I never felt bad again about questioning things.
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