Did You Start with the Rule Finder?

If you took the Rule Finder quiz first and then were directed here, you’re in the right place.

If you haven’t yet taken the quiz, please do so now so you can be directed to the appropriate challenge stack.

These are the Leadership Challenges, for breaking the rule Stay in Control. Enjoy the 3 Sample Challenges

If you’ve found out from the quiz that you tend to follow the rule Stay in Control, the three sample challenges here in the leadership stack will help you get a sense of their effectiveness and what it feels like to set foot outside of Stay in Control rule prison.

I hope you’ll try a challenge of your choice, or all of them, and then consider how much more tolerable you’ll be to the rest of us once you’re actually having some fun at work. : )

To get the most out of the sample challenges, become a free subscriber (if you haven’t already).

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How to get maximum benefit from each challenge

If you follow these guidelines for this first challenge, and every other challenge you engage through Break a Rule, you’ll get enormous benefit over time.

1. READ THE CHALLENGE AND VISUALIZE DOING IT
   
   Imagine the situation where you might apply it. You may notice that just thinking about doing it generates resistance. You might feel like it’s silly, too scary, weird or uncomfortable, or a waste of time. But the act of visualizing yourself breaking the rule is like planting a seed. Even if you don’t follow through with the action, you’ll be engaging an inner work that is worthwhile. Just visualizing action is actually a step in the right direction. So don’t ever feel bad if all you do is read the challenge and think about how you’d apply it. That effort counts.

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2. TAKE ACTION HOWEVER YOU CAN
   
   If the challenge as it’s stated feels too daunting or too for steep to you, you’re always free to modify the challenge in a way that supports you to take action. Even if you decide to take on just a fragment of the challenge, cut it in half, or have to get creative with its application to your own life, please do so. Remember, this about taking charge of your own life and destiny by calling the shots for yourself, instead of blindly adopting somebody else’s rules. Use these the way a writer would use a writing prompt, as a springboard for your own creativity and self-expression. These are life prompts. Use them to move—even just a small degree—in a new direction. Stretch a little outside of your comfort zone.
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3. PARTICIPATE IN THE COMMUNITY
   
   Finally, if you want to supercharge and accelerate your growth results ten-fold, engage in the community by leaving a comment on the challenge. Share what you tried—what happened internally and externally as a result. Were you thrilled with the outcome? Disappointed? Are you mad it didn’t work? Are you shocked that such a small action could provide you with so much energy, or produce such a positive change?
   
   It will be at the community level that our work has the potential of making a huge difference, personally, and for others. You will gain more here from relationships with new friends and like-minded professionals than you will from the challenges themselves. Because we need to be surrounded by a community of authentic, inspiring, and courageous humans more than we need a library of new ideas. The ideas are just the seeds for our connection.

Last 3 useful tips

Consider working with a partner

If you really want to magnify the benefits of engaging with the platform, consider bringing a friend or colleague with you into Break a Rule and becoming accountability partners for each other in rule breaking.

This can work really well if you make heartfelt promises to each other to follow through with the challenges, and if your partner drops the ball, to shame the crap out of them for being such a loser uh, I mean, to be kind and respectful and stuff.

Tracking hack

When you find a challenge you want to work with, simply type the words, “Game On,” in the comment section below the challenge.

We’ll send a reply with words, YOUR CURRENT CHALLENGE, the challenge title, and key instructions so it will be right there in your notifications.

This way, you’ll always be able to remind yourself of which challenge you’re working on by clicking the notification icon next to your profile. (See where the arrow is pointing in the screenshot below. You have to be signed up at least as a free subscriber to do this.)

Even if other notifications have arrived, just look for the one that says: YOUR CURRENT CHALLENGE.

Subscribe to the leadership stack

If you’d like to be specifically notified whenever a new leadership challenge is added to the stack, you can subscribe directly to the leadership challenge stack by navigating to your profile, clicking on “settings”, scrolling down to subscriptions and clicking there, and then scrolling down to your notification settings where you will be able to subscribe to any of the development stacks.

This process is shown below.

Go to settings.

Choose Break a Rule from your subscriptions.

Toggle emails “on” to receive new posts to any of the stacks.

Map Someone’s Journey

This challenge is to show interest in how someone got here.​

It could be a friend, colleague, neighbor, or even a stranger.

The point is to express your genuine interest in how someone came to be doing what they're doing in the place that they're in.

Especially if someone is particularly skilled at something, ask them how they attained that degree of expertise and the journey they took to the place where they now offer their value to you.

Showing interest in a person's path is a powerful way of connecting to who they are, because you get to hear their story from their own point of view.

Mapping your own journey in response can be an equally potent way of building relationship, provided they're interested of course.

Ask somebody to connect the dots for you this week if you really want to get a true picture of a person.

Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

Give Up Your Rights

This challenge is very simply to pass up the option — just once each day — to be right about something with somebody.​

All you need to do is find one instance today where being right is just not necessary or helpful.

Just nod, smile, and enjoy the essentially good character and positive qualities of the person you're with, beyond the need to correct them.

There is an argument to be made for the fact that disconnecting from someone just because you perceive they are wrong — is wronger.

Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

Challenge Invisibility

This challenge is to provide an invitation to someone who is attempting to be invisible in your environment.​

Whether it's your waiter, cab driver, co-worker, fellow zoom participant, janitor, assistant, spouse, or anybody else who seems interested in not being known by you or others in the space—your job is to engage, ask questions, show interest, and draw out the person who’s retreating behind a curtain of privacy.

It's easier for us to control situations when the people around us are content to let us run the show, do the talking, and lead the way.

When those we're leading remain unknown to us and to the others on our team, however, we may not get very far before our plans are derailed by what we haven't learned about someone who is determined to fly under the radar.

The exceptions to this rule should be obvious, so don't:​

• Drag the puppeteer out from under the stage when you take your kid to the puppet show, or

• Demand to hear from the stenographer at a court hearing, or

• Force your IT guy to skillfully manage a press conference to explain your downtime to the general public.

You get the idea.

But do challenge the group-head of your organization by asking the last person whose opinion is ordinarily considered,

​"What do you think?"

​And listen up.

Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

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Recall the Blame

Taking responsibility for our part in the outcome of circumstances and events — or at the least simply refraining from the need to assign fault — is an act of maturity and an action of Intelligent Misbehavior that builds relationship.

"What can be accomplished moving forward?" is a question of excellence.

To address obstacles in a collaborative manner by identifying shared goals, to keep lines of communication open, and to find win-win solutions is always a possibility at work.

As soon as we tell ourselves or others that this possibility is non-existent we are assigning blame and power to an external cause and create ourselves as victims.

Excellence is deeply rewarding.

To be an excellent victim, however, is rarely fulfilling.

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Make Break a Rule an incredible tool for everyone.

Leave a comment about how you used this challenge, what you experienced, discovered, or learned.

Or let us know if you have a suggestion for how this challenge could be improved.

Last week’s free featured challenge, Help Someone Go, is now for paying subscribers only.

Annual paid subscribers unlock enough leadership challenges to practice breaking the rule Stay in Control every week for an entire year. (Monthly subscribers get the same thing, they just pay more, which according to logic makes the annual subscribers smarter people.)

But that’s not all.

For an insanely minimalistic pittance of $8.33/month you’ll get access not only to all the leadership challenges, but to every challenge for all the other rules as well!

• communication challenges

• innovation challenges

• teamwork challenges

• productivity challenges

• accountability challenges

• vision challenges

So if you want to switch challenge stacks at any time and work on breaking another rule, you can!

It’s professional development in your pocket that’s incredibly effective at a fraction of the cost of traditional training models.

• no high fees

• no time missing work

• no time away from family

• no business travel expenses

• no high-fat meeting break snacks

Any questions?

Q: “How can you possibly run a business by charging such incredibly low and affordable prices?” you ask.

Easy. You’re on your own here. As soon as you hand over your credit card I’m heading for the beach and you can figure out how this thing works on your own.

I mean . . . um . . .

I’m leveraging the power of the internet to scale our services using the marvel of systems and technology that allow for equitable transfer of high-quality services not-forth-withstanding maximum viable product restrictions that are non-taxable in Tennessee on holidays . . .

Oh, the hell with it.

I don’t know. We might go broke. But if enough of you sign up, this might just work to all of our mutual benefit.

So take advantage of this offer ($8.33/month) while you can, because likely we’ll raise prices by a thousand percent next week. And then you’ll be sorry when this costs $8,333/month.

Subscribe now

Any more questions?

Q: “What else do I get, besides 24/7 access to the whole challenge library for every rule?”

Great question!

You’ll unlock access to:

• The full text of, 7 Rules You Were Born to Break

• Recurring Use of the Rule Finder Quiz

• Quarterly Community Rule Breaking Sprints

• Comments and Questions on Challenges

• Unrestricted Reading Beyond the Paywall in Weekly Articles

• Community Chat Threads with the App

• Registration to our first convention as soon as we can find a hotel willing to host thousands of rule breakers who most definitely will not sneak into the pool after hours.

Also-

• As a paid member, you’ll receive new challenges every week

• After that, they’re stored in the communication challenge library so you’ll always have access to dozens of useful practices that will keep you from getting stuck back in Be Normal mode

• How does all that sound?

“Wow, that sounds like an incredible service!”

Yes, it is!

So what are you waiting for?

Your unique success path is waiting for you to express yourself courageously and authentically, serve a unique purpose, and enjoy sharing the real you while making a meaningful contribution to the world.

Let’s Break some Rules baby!

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