Discover more from Break a Rule - Growth Challenges

The key to an incredible life—personally and professionally—is to repeatedly & playfully step out of your comfort zone. Break a Rule makes growth easy with curated micro-challenges that help you keep your edge, even when things get busy.

Communication Challenges

Speak Without a Past

Communication Challenge # 3

Rick Lewis

Mar 28, 2023

Break the Rule Be Normal using communication challenge # 3.

Speak Without a Past.

The belief systems we use to defend our limitations are held up by the pillar of the past.

The past is what we often cite when we're wanting to justify our current orientation, perceptions, actions, or decisions.

Referencing the past is how we prove that these orientations are acceptable, that they are reasonable, that we are currently fitting in with a credible pattern, trend, or established convention.

Statements prefaced with such phrases as:

I’ve never been good at . . .
He’s never supported me to . . .
I’ve given up hope that . . .
I’ve tried so many times to . . .

There are an endless number of variations of past-justified statements. Breaking the rule Be Normal requires you to start noticing how often you reference the past in your thoughts and communications, and then refrain from sharing them, or retracting them when they slip out.

Refrain from referencing anything in the past in your conversations, communications, and dialogues for the day.

How does this relate to breaking the rule Be Normal?

If we stop referencing any past at all when declaring our commitments, actions, beliefs, or desires, we are forced to stand in the reality of who we declare ourselves to be presently — not who we are "normally."

“I’m scared to give this presentation and I don’t know if I have the courage,” is the truth.

“I was forever traumatized when a clown pulled a chicken out of my underwear in front of 100 people at my Bar Mitzvah,” is a way of avoiding your truth in the moment.

Stop using the past to buffer yourself from being vulnerable and authentic about who you really are in the moment, truthfully expressive without precedent.

See if you can leave the past out of your present today.

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.