Rule of Life (11 page)

Base is home. Base is where you belong. Base is where you feel comfortable, secure, loved, restored, and trusted. Base is where you feel strong and in control. Base is anywhere you can kick your shoes off, metaphorically and physically, and rest your head safe in the knowledge you’ll be looked after.

We all lead increasingly busy, frenetic, and frantic lives. We all get caught up in the busyness of life to such an extent that we lose sight of where we thought we were going and what we thought we were going to do and what we were going to achieve. Base is going back to where you dreamed it all, planned it all out. Base is where you were before you got lost.

Base camp might well be rediscovering our roots—essential in an age when we all move around so much. Knowing who your family is, where you come from, what your real background is.

It’s OK to have ambition and move on from our roots, but it’s also important to know who we are and where we came from.

You can sometimes sense it in celebrities who have become incredibly famous or rich. Often they try to deny their past and pretend to be something else; in the process they come across as shallow and fake.

For you, base might be a place where you grew up, where you’re reminded of the feelings of growing up—the hopes and fears, the younger you. Or it might be a person who provides the base—a best friend from many years ago who can remind you of how you were before it all got so confusing.

R U L E 4 6

Of course, we might not all know where we came from, and we have to make allowances for that. You might be adopted, but you were raised somewhere. Whatever your circumstances, you will have something that makes you feel grounded if you look for it. It doesn’t have to be where you were born and raised. If you are really struggling, then it’s possible to create yourself a new base. Anywhere that makes you feel secure is fine.

We all need time with people or in places where we can be ourselves, where we don’t have to explain, justify, provide background or give a good impression. That’s the joy of touch-ing base—being somewhere you are accepted without question and everything around you reminds you of what’s really important. Touching base is something that, when we do it, we wonder why on earth we left it so long.

B A S E I S W H E R E YO U W E R E

B E FO R E YO U G OT LO S T.

R U L E 4 7

Draw the Lines Around Yourself

Personal boundaries are the imaginary lines you draw around yourself that no one should cross either physically—unless invited in—or emotionally. You are entitled to respect, privacy, decency, kindness, love, truth, and honor, to name but a few rights. If people cross the lines, blur the boundaries, you are entitled to stand up for yourself and say, “No, I won’t put up with this.”

But you have to draw the lines first. You have to know what you will stand for and what you won’t. You have to set the boundaries in your own mind before you can expect others to respect them, stick to them.

The more secure you become with your boundaries, the less power other people will have to affect you. The more clearly defined your boundaries, the more you realize that other people’s stuff is more to do with them and less to do with you—you stop taking things so personally.

You are entitled to basic self-respect. You can’t expect others to respect you unless you respect yourself. You can’t respect yourself until you have formed a clear picture of who you are and what you are. And setting boundaries is part of this process. You have to feel important enough to set those lines.

And once set, you have to be assertive enough to reinforce them.

Setting personal boundaries means you don’t have to be scared of other people anymore. You now have a clear idea of what you will put up with and what you won’t. Once someone crosses the line between appropriate and inappropriate R U L E 4 7

behavior, it gets really easy to say, “No, I don’t want to be treated like this/spoken to like this.”

Probably the best way to start this is with your own family.

Over the years, we get set in patterns of behavior. Say, for example, you might be used to going to visit your parents and coming away feeling bad because they put you down or made you feel inadequate. You can change things by saying to yourself, “I won’t put up with this anymore.” And then don’t put up with it. Speak your mind. Say you don’t like being criticized/told off/made to feel small; you are an adult now and are entitled to respect and encouragement. Setting personal boundaries enables us to resist pushy people, rude people, aggressive people, people who would take advantage of us, people who would use us unwisely and unwell. Successful people know their worth and don’t get messed around.

Successful people are the ones who can recognize emotional blackmail, people playing games with them, people on the make, people who themselves are weak and needy, people who dump on others, people who need to make you look small to make themselves feel big. Once you’ve got those lines drawn around you, it gets a whole lot easier to stay behind them and be firm, resolute, strong, and assertive.

S E T T I N G P E R S O N A L

B O U N DA R I E S M E A N S YO U

D O N ’ T H AV E TO B E S CA R E D

O F OT H E R P E O P L E

A N Y M O R E .

R U L E 4 8

Shop for Quality, Not Price

I have to admit my wife taught me this one, for which I am eternally in her debt. To me it seemed a natural thing to shop for price. Perhaps this is what men do. I would work out what I wanted and then go and buy the cheapest items I could and feel really pleased with myself for saving money. And then I was always dissatisfied with what I had. Stuff broke or didn’t work or wore out quickly or looked shoddy after a very short time. I was living in a mess—and a cheap one at that. What I needed to learn was the art of quality shopping.

Basically:

• Accept only the very best—second best is not for you, ever.

• If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it or wait and save until you can.

• If you have to have it, buy the very best you can afford.

There, that’s pretty easy, isn’t it? Well, for me it wasn’t as easy as that. It took me quite a long time to really get to grips with this one. It isn’t that I don’t—or didn’t then—admire quality or appreciate excellence; it was that I was impulsive. If I thought I needed something, I wanted it right then and there. And if I couldn’t afford the very best, I would settle for the cheapest. In fact, in a very English sort of way, I thought that “getting a bargain” was what it was all about. We don’t like to talk about money, and we don’t like to brag about how much something cost, too tacky by far—better to buy tacky in the first place. I think not.

R U L E 4 8

Going for quality doesn’t mean we’re stuck up or living beyond our means—if you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. Going for quality means you appreciate the finer things, can see the sense in buying well-made, well-produced things because they will:

• Last longer

• Be stronger

• Not break so easily

And this means they will not need to be replaced so often, which means you might actually be saving money. They will also make you look and feel better.

Now that I’ve latched on to this Rule, I really enjoy that antici-pation before I buy something. I make sure it really is the quality I am going for and not just the price. I still shop around for a bargain, though—it’s just now I look for the quality items but I’m prepared to find them at the lowest price.

I F YO U CA N ’ T A F FO R D I T , D O N ’ T B U Y I T.

R U L E 4 9

It’s OK to Worry, or to Know How

Not To

The future is uncertain, scary, hidden. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t worry about things at times. We worry about our health, our parents/kids/friends, our relationships, our work, and our spending. We worry that we are getting older, fatter, poorer, more tired, less attractive, less fit, less mentally alert, less everything really. We worry about things that matter and things that don’t. Sometimes we worry about not worrying.

Look, it really is OK to worry—just so long as there is something real to worry about. If there isn’t, then all you’re doing is putting wrinkles in your brow—and that makes you look older, you know.

The first step is to decide whether there is something you can do about whatever it is you are worrying about, or not. There are usually logical steps to take to eliminate that worry. I worry that people aren’t taking those steps, which means they are choosing to hang on to their worries rather than be free of them.

If you are worried then:

• Get practical advice

• Get up-to-date information

• Do something, anything as long as it is constructive If you are worrying about your health, go and see a doctor. If you are worrying about money, set a budget and spend wisely.

If you are worrying about your weight, go to the gym—eat less, do more. If you are worrying about a lost kitten, phone the vet/police/local animal rescue. If you are worrying about R U L E 4 9

getting older, there is simply no point—it’s happening whether you worry or not.

If there is nothing you can do about your worry (or if you are a persistent worrier, even bordering on the neurotic), then distraction is the only answer. Get absorbed in something else. A man with the rather impressive name of Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi identified something called “flow,” where you are so absorbed in a task you are doing, so fully im-mersed, that you become almost unaware of external events.

It’s a pleasurable experience, and it completely banishes worry.

He also said, “The quality of our lives improves immensely when there is at least one other person who is willing to listen to our troubles.”

Worrying may be a symptom that you don’t really want to do something about the problem. It might be easier just to carry on worrying—or looking concerned and appearing to worry—

rather than doing something about it. It is OK to worry properly, profitably, usefully. It is not OK to worry pointlessly or needlessly. Or at least, it is OK, but it’s a colossal waste of life.

… A L L YO U ’ R E D O I N G I S

P U T T I N G W R I N K L E S I N

YO U R B R OW — A N D T H AT

M A K E S YO U LO O K O L D E R ,

YO U K N OW.

R U L E 5 0

Stay Young

I did say earlier that if you were worrying about getting older, you should stop because there wasn’t anything you could do about it. It’s inevitable. So why a Rule saying Stay young?

Well, growing older physically (and temporally) is something we all have to do, and putting it off by endless surgery and the like is pointless. Better to stay young. And by this I mean mentally and emotionally. Billy Connolly made a wry observation in one of his shows when he bent down to pick something up and made a noise, a sort of bending grunt that oldies make.

And he said he didn’t know when he had started to make that noise, but it had crept up on him and he made it now. That’s what I’m talking about—all those noises and actions we make to indicate we’re old. All that wrapping up well when we go out in case we catch a cold. All that making sure we take our coat off when we come in, even if we’re going straight out again, or we won’t feel the benefit. All that, “I’d rather just have a cup of coffee if it’s all right with you” stuff. All that

“We’re going to the same place we always go on vacation—

you know what you’re getting.”

I was reading yesterday about a man who had just taken his father backpacking in the Greek islands. His dad is aged 78

and he said he had trouble keeping up with him. Now that’s staying young. I know a woman in her sixties who describes how she feels the same inside now as she did when she was 21. And it shows outside. That’s staying young.

Staying young is trying new things, not grumbling or saying all the things you know people say as they get older. It’s not R U L E 5 0

going for the safe option; it’s staying abreast of what is happening, not giving up stuff like cycling because you think you’re too old for it. (If you are very young, by the way, I do apologize for all this, but you will need it one day, believe me.) Staying young is trying out new tastes, new places to go, new styles, keeping an open mind, not getting reactionary (hmmm, I should read this again) or being disapproving of more and more things, not settling for what you’ve always had or always done. Staying young is about keeping a fresh vision of the world, being interested, being stimulated, being motivated, being adventurous.

Staying young is a state of mind.

S TAY I N G YO U N G I S

T R Y I N G O U T N E W TA S T E S , N E W P L AC E S TO G O ,

N E W S T Y L E S .

R U L E 5 1

Throwing Money at a Problem

Doesn’t Always Work

Years ago when I worked in one particular industry, whenever something was going wrong, my boss would always sigh and suggest throwing money at the problem until it went away. At work this approach often works wonders, but problems in life tend to need a more hands-on approach, a more delicate touch. We tend to think that if we just chuck enough money at things they’ll get sorted out, instead of finding ways to really sort them out that require time and attention and care.

Let’s go back to that getting older thing again. You might think that throwing money at it in the shape of cosmetic surgery might be the answer but it isn’t; it only delays things and can create worse problems than it solves. How much better to work on one’s mental approach to aging and come to terms with it in a dignified and graceful way instead. If somebody you care about seems distracted, tense, not themselves, then buying them a present might well cheer them up, but the better (and cheaper) option is to make time to take them out for a walk and ask them about themselves, give them the opportunity to talk.