I got this whole life thing wrong. I got it wrong because I played by my original set of rules. The ones that my mother told me and my wife and I told our children.

Rules:

1. You can be anything you want to be.
2. There is nothing that can stop you.
3. You are going to change the world.
4. Just be yourself.
5. If they don’t understand you, it’s not your responsibility to teach them.
6. Your family will always be there.
7. Don’t change yourself for the people you are around.
8. If you work hard, you will get ahead.
9. There are more good people than bad.
10. Your friends will not be as loyal as your family.

There are more than ten and there are only three that are universal (by Western standards at least) rules.

The three universal rules:

1. Treat others how you want them to treat you.
2. Trust your gut.
3. Pay attention to your surroundings.

These three rules are not the ones that got me in trouble. The ones that did are the ones that justify self-belief. Those rules have not only gotten me in trouble they have also cost me opportunities I was sure I wanted, but why? Why would believing in myself, teaching my children and those around me to as well be dangerous?

It’s dangerous for the simple fact that it is a disruptive reminder. It reminds adults of childhood aspirations, teens that it’s not rebellion, it’s purpose, and the most dangerous, adults. If an adult is reminded that they can no longer be stopped from being themselves as they go after that life-long dream, what happens when they do?

If they were to cash out their stocks, sell their homes, cars, and anything else a financial entity was leveraging, it creates a butterfly effect. If it’s one person with negligible assets the impact is not wide and quickly recovered. If, however, that person is the opposite, you better believe that phone calls, meetings, experts, and more will be pulled in to express to them the consequences.

“Why would you want to put all that you have worked for in jeopardy?” or “Have you thought about…” There will be a host of other questions and the brokers or planners will reach out to close family and friends to have them talk some sense into this person who is, in their eyes, throwing it all away. Every action will look like they sincerely care and want to help. And some of them do. But if your wealth provides a livelihood for others, those others will not see your pursuit of a lifelong dream. They will see a risk to their personal security.

There are massive amounts of papers, studies, incidents, and research to support an action like this as being something that should be taken extremely seriously.

The concern is not unfounded. According to research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology using a nationally representative sample of over 34,000 U.S. adults, cumulative financial strain, including debt, unemployment, and housing loss was directly predictive of suicide attempts. Duke University researchers who led the study found that individuals experiencing multiple financial stressors faced a 20x higher probability of attempting suicide than those with none. The CDC has separately reported that roughly 16 percent of people who died by suicide in a recent study year had been dealing with financial or job-related problems. When catastrophic loss happens suddenly, the spike can be immediate. A study of the 2008 Korean stock market crash found suicide rates among male investors aged 30 to 60 increased by as much as 47 percent in the single month following the crash.

The secondary concern of extreme and uncharacteristic selling off events is equally real. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, scams targeting adults aged 60 and over caused more than $3.4 billion in documented losses in 2023 alone and the FTC estimates the true figure may have been as high as $62 billion that year after accounting for underreporting. Older adults are 60 percent more likely than younger adults to report losses exceeding $100,000. Romance scams, investment fraud, and religious affinity fraud, where con artists exploit the trust of faith communities through Ponzi schemes and false promises of spiritually-guided returns, are among the leading culprits. The FTC’s own surveys estimate roughly 10.8 percent of U.S. adults have been victimized by fraud in some form. The wealthy are not immune; they are often the target.

Getting back on topic with the presumption that none of the recently addressed real concerns are the cause. Why is it dangerous to live a life where your original set of rules is how you live? Several reasons are: a lack of real stability in life, the burden on publicly funded support systems that were established as short-term assistance becoming a life-long crutch, and some dreams just should not be realities.

Wait…what, did you read that right?

Yes. You read that the way that I wrote it. Some dreams just should not be realities.

I place these into three categories of dreams that should never come true:

1. Immoral
2. Harmful
3. Innocent

I don’t know how to get into morality and harm without sounding like I think I have the answers. Yes, I am intentionally avoiding this topic and I am okay with that. You, your community, local laws, and moral compass will have to build a list that works for you on what kind of immoral and harmful dreams should never be realized.

This brings me to the last one, innocent dreams. As irony would have it, this is the simplest to explain. Innocent dreams are ones we never outgrow. For this reason they should not be brought to life. Those dreams are bridge dreams. Bridge dreams connect your less complicated life to the present and act as the mental energy needed to get through a difficult time. If you realize it you risk not having the internal strength to endure emotional, financial, or health related hardships.

The innocent dreams provide you what money cannot. There is an allure to realize them without understanding that they are serving a need. In the book “Hell Yeah or No” by Derek Sivers he introduces the concept of how the struggle creativity embodies is made tolerable or even needed to counteract stability. In other words, the good stress of an innocent dream acts like an antidote to harmful stress.

If “innocent dream” isn’t resonating with you I will use a word I really dislike. The word is hobby, and the one who has a hobby is called a hobbyist. Those words discount the skill, dedication, and sacrifices made by anyone engaging in an activity that is not generating an income that supports daily life or a profession. If that’s the case, what happens if a programmer has a hobby of being a tiler? Remodelling their bathroom turns into helping a co-worker, then friends, and soon the weekends and even a few days of the week are spent doing construction with a word-of-mouth community.

Work starts getting a backlog with real deadlines forcing them to hire someone to do the bulk of the work during the week. They’ll come back on the weekends to handle the fine details or the very technical parts. Being a business owner wasn’t part of the plan, but they believed they could be anything because their mother and father told them so. Eventually the day comes where they have to “choose between what I love and what’s paying the bills,” but in the scenario the love is paying the bills, and salaries.

I would be a fool to assume this is a fictitious scenario. I don’t know anyone that’s done this, but I know that it’s doable. I know that in time this person would have flipped so many social norms upside-down they would not feel welcomed in their communities. Where their peers are parking Jeeps, Subarus, or even pickup trucks at the BBQ, he’s parking his work truck. Sure, it’s the same model as his friends but the tires are not shiny and the dashboard looks dull from tools being put on it.

Just being who he’s been able to relax into now brings tension into his friend space because others see that their dreams are also possible, but they will never choose to deviate from the norms of this society they are working at to fit in. By working at I do mean both definitions of working at. It’s simultaneously the workplace where co-workers are now in each other’s homes outside of working hours or days of the week. Partners enjoy co-workers’ significant others, and your children become friends.

The programmer who used to be a part of this is now playing catchup in the conversations. The most ironic part of this is that they have gotten back into programming because that work is now the relaxation tiling was at one point. Because they are free from the bondage of corporate expectations and deadlines, they are now creating in ways they would never have been able to. The relationships and networks now turn that into an income stream.

This is the most outlier or highly improbable of possibilities, but it’s only because we stopped living by the original set of verbal rules and started replicating the actions. When a parent says to their child “you can be whatever you want” there are real times that is an internal desire for themselves. Children hear that and see them reluctantly leaving for a soul-killing job and have to shoulder the blame.

“I’ve given up on my dreams for you” is a sentence that kills a child’s hope for being a superhero. A parent’s actual words of discouragement ensure that the cycle of avoiding failure to achieve success graduates another generation of donkeys focusing on one carrot as they carry the harvest.

If I had to choose between being an intellectual donkey or a mule, I choose mule. Why a mule and not a donkey? Simple… a mule cannot produce offspring. I would rather suffer and not contribute any of my actual children to the conformations of a society that only rewards parrots. When you change what others are used to seeing you do, it’s bringing an innocent dream to life in their eyes.

The real danger of self-belief is not caring whether someone else is watching when you fail. When you stop worrying about the audience, dancing in public shines light on strangers in ways that were never expected.

What set of rules are you living by?

The ones that you were told as a child, or the ones you were shown as one?

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