Step Five: Creating a Rules Inventory
Welcome. In Step Four, I gave you a couple essential questions to ask as you hacked your way through the gnarly relationships jungle.
You had good posture knowing that leaning in can lead to relationship enhancement. You had awareness that conflict was about rule disputes not about you or them as a person. You had a compass, the questions, to guide you as you examined your feelings, both positive and negative. Now what?
We need to begin building an inventory.
Why an inventory, you ask? Well, here is why. When a hardware store conducts an inventory, no one gives a flying f%$k about why they have 33, 425 washers. The purpose of the inventory is only to establish that there are 33,425 washers. We deal with The Why later.
In our Rules Inventory, we are using our brains- our insight- to find all the rules in our jungle expeditions. But if we get caught up in whether they should be there or not, or whether we are ashamed that they’re there or not, we are working against ourselves. Just like at the hardware store inventory, we have to account for everything we find. It is only after we have identified our rules that we then take the powerful, crucial next step.
I ask my clients to write down rules every time they find them. I could care less whether those are captured in a beautiful leather journal or on the back of a pizza box. Write them down.
This inventory is dynamic, not static. Like you, our rules are always evolving and changing. Some endure, some fade. We need to keep the inventory to increase our awareness of the rules so that in the next step, we can employ intention to speak to those rules and make decisions about which ones we keep and why, which ones we toss, which ones we modify, and where we need to write and then propose brand new rules.
Remember, rules are our values, needs, wants, desires, fantasies, and preferences. They matter because you matter. They matter because your partner matters. The rules of golf matter because they organize play. The rules of governmental institutions matter because its how shit functions or dysfunctions. The rules of your gastrointestinal system, your card game, your shopping excursions, your sleep needs, your taco Tuesday, and your bang sessions all matter. If we don’t know what the rules are, we can’t play, and certainly, we wander into conflict.
A lot of people assume everyone should know our rules and we criticize others for not knowing what we think we know. But until we communicate our rules to others and come to agreements about what the rules are and how to play, things become a mess. Fast. Never assume anyone knows your rules. Assume, instead, that they do not. And what you will find really interesting as you go through this is that there are many rules that you already have that you did not even know were there. That is compelling, because trust me: if you don’t know your own rules, there is no way anyone else knows them either.
