Fear Of Breaking The Rules

Some people do not like rocking the boat or challenging the status quo. This adherence to rules (both written and unwritten) is a perfectly reasonable sounding excuse to let yourself off the hook from putting a creative idea into action. “I’m not allowed to do it — it’s against the rules”. How can you creative something that could dismantle archaic perceptions if you’re afraid of breaking the very rules that protect all the old ways of doing things?

This article continues the break down of dealing with the fears that prevent people from taking action on ideas. Today’s topic is Fear of Breaking The Rules.

I think the fear of breaking rules starts in elementary school

If a student doesn’t do what the teacher says, there are punishments and detentions and parent/teacher conferences doled out with abandon. Even if when “show your work” on math problems — if you didn’t do the calculations in the same manner the teacher considers “correct” — you’ll lose points for breaking the rules even if you got the answer right. The establishment gets you used to obeying the rules of the status quo from an early age.

Breaking the rules doesn’t mean you are broken

Challenging the status quo means you’re trying something new, and frequently those new things become the new status quo. The speed limit on highways used to be 55MPH (Sammy Hagar recorded a song about it), but more highways have increased their speed limits to 65MPH and 70MPH (and higher!).

Same roads. Different rules.
The times change (so do the rules).

I don’t believe you should just randomly break the rules for the sake of causing chaos

But I do feel that part of the creative process is figuring out which rules should be broken because they are outdated and need to be brought into current context, and which rules should be broken because they never should have been rules in the first place.