Twenty Rules for Life
In Appreciation for the Extraordinary Privilege of Being Alive.
These reflections speak to something fundamental about the human condition – our tendency to live as if we have infinite time while simultaneously being unaware of how fleeting our moments truly are. These have been my guiding principles over the past 80 years for living a more conscious life.
Rule 1: Live with Mortality as Your Teacher
The awareness of life's fragility isn't meant to paralyse us with fear but to liberate us from trivial worries. When you truly internalise that your time is limited, the energy you once spent on minor irritations naturally redirects toward what genuinely matters. The traffic jam becomes a moment for music or reflection rather than rage. The disagreement with a colleague loses its power to consume your evening. Mortality, paradoxically, teaches us how to live.
Rule 2: Befriend Your Body, Don't Battle It
Your body is the only vehicle you'll ever have for experiencing this world. Treating it as an enemy – criticising its shape, punishing it with restrictions, or ignoring its needs – is like sabotaging your own journey. Movement becomes medicine when you shift from exercising to punish your body to moving because it just feels good. Nourishment replaces restriction. This isn't about perfection; it's about partnership with the flesh that carries your soul through life.
Rule 3: Collect Moments, Not Objects
Objects occupy space but rarely memory. That expensive three-piece suit won't feature in the stories you tell years from now, but the weekend you skipped buying it to visit an old friend will. Experiences compound in ways possessions cannot – they become part of who you are, shaping your perspective and enriching your internal world. The sunset you watched with your young son, instead of scrolling through online shopping, becomes a permanent part of your personal gallery.
Rule 4: Practice Radical Presence
Being physically present while mentally absent has become epidemic. True presence – the kind where you notice the warmth in someone's voice, the way light falls across a room, the spark in your lover's eyes, or the taste of your morning coffee – is increasingly rare and therefore increasingly precious. When you're fully where you are, ordinary moments reveal their extraordinary nature.
Rule 5: Choose Connection Over Comfort
Helping others creates a specific kind of joy that self-focused pleasures cannot match. This isn't about grand gestures or organised charity – it's about the small frictions we often avoid. Checking in on someone going through difficulty, offering practical help without being asked, or simply listening without trying to fix anything creates bonds that enrich both lives. Generosity of spirit often costs nothing but attention and care.
Rule 6: Define Success for Yourself
Society's metrics for a worthy life – income, appearance, social media presence – are often arbitrary and externally imposed. A life spent chasing others' definitions of success is a life lived secondhand. Your heart's happiness is a more reliable compass than cultural expectations. This might mean leaving a prestigious job that makes you miserable, choosing creativity over security, or prioritising relationships over advancement.
Rule 7: Guard Your Energy Like Your Most Precious Resource
Not all activities, relationships, or commitments deserve equal portions of your life force. Learning to say no to energy drains isn't selfishness – it's stewardship of your capacity to show up fully for what truly matters. This means releasing relationships that consistently diminish you, stepping away from activities that feel obligatory rather than meaningful, and creating boundaries that protect your ability to be present for what really matters.
Rule 8: Embrace Impermanence as Freedom
Nothing lasts forever – not pain, not pleasure, not circumstances, not even life itself. This truth, rather than being depressing, can be deeply liberating. The difficult phase you're in will pass. The mistake you made won't define you permanently. The fear that feels overwhelming today will eventually lose its grip. Impermanence means you're never truly stuck, even when it feels that way.
Rule 9: Speak Love Aloud
Feelings kept inside die with us. Love expressed, even imperfectly, has the power to change someone's day, their self-perception, or even their life trajectory. The risk of vulnerability is small compared to the regret of words left unsaid. Tell people what they mean to you while they can hear it.
Rule 10: Trust the Process of Becoming
Life rarely unfolds according to our plans, but it often unfolds in ways that serve our growth better than our original blueprints would have. The detours, setbacks, and surprises aren't necessarily obstacles to overcome but experiences that shape us into who we're meant to become. This requires a certain faith – not in specific outcomes, but in the meaningfulness of the journey itself.
Rule 11: Cultivate A Beginner's Mind
No matter how much you've learnt or accomplished, approach each day with curiosity rather than certainty. The moment you think you have life figured out is precisely when you stop growing. Watch how children engage with the world – everything is fascinating, everything is possible. That sense of wonder doesn't have to diminish with age. Ask questions, admit ignorance, and let yourself be surprised. The expert's mind has few possibilities; the beginner's mind has infinite ones.
Rule 12: Honour Your Seasons
Just as nature cycles through periods of growth, harvest, dormancy, and renewal, so do human lives. There are seasons for building and seasons for releasing, times for action and times for reflection, periods of expansion and periods of contraction. Fighting your natural rhythm creates unnecessary suffering. When you're in winter, don't demand spring productivity from yourself. When you're in spring, don't hold back your growth out of fear.
Rule 13: Choose Courage Over Comfort
The most meaningful life is rarely the most comfortable one. Every significant growth, every deep relationship, and every worthwhile achievement requires venturing beyond what feels safe. This doesn't mean being reckless, but rather recognising that the discomfort of growth is temporary, while the regret of chances not taken can last a lifetime. The question isn't whether you'll face fear but whether you'll face it moving forward or standing still.
Rule 14: Practice Forgiveness as Self-Liberation
Holding onto resentment is like gripping hot coals with the intent of throwing them at someone else – you're the one who gets burnt. Forgiveness isn't about excusing harmful behaviour or forgetting boundaries; it's about freeing yourself from the poison of prolonged anger. This includes forgiving yourself for past mistakes. The person you were yesterday was doing their best with the awareness they had then.
Rule 15: Invest in Your Character, Not Just Your Reputation
Reputation is what others think of you; character is who you are when no one is watching. In a world obsessed with image management, the quiet cultivation of integrity, kindness, and authenticity becomes revolutionary. Your character is the only thing you truly own and the only thing you can take with you through every transition in life.
Rule 16: Learn the Art of Solitude
The ability to be alone with yourself without distraction is becoming extinct, yet it's essential for knowing who you truly are. Solitude isn't loneliness – it's the space where you meet yourself without the influence of others' expectations or judgements. In silence, you discover what you actually think, feel, and want rather than what you think you should think, feel, and want.
Rule 17: Understand That Comparison Kills Joy
Your journey is incomparable because it's uniquely yours. The person you're tempted to envy carries struggles you cannot see and has walked paths you have not travelled. Comparison robs you of appreciation for your own progress and blessings. The only meaningful comparison is between who you are today and who you were yesterday.
Rule 18: Accept What You Cannot Control, Influence What You Can
Much suffering comes from trying to control the uncontrollable while neglecting the areas where you actually have influence. You cannot control others' choices, life's timing, or external circumstances, but you can always control your response, your effort, and your perspective. This distinction, when truly internalised, brings profound peace.
Rule 19: Tend Your Inner Garden
Your mind is like a garden – whatever you feed grows stronger. Negative thoughts, like weeds, will flourish if left unattended. Consciously cultivate thoughts that serve your wellbeing and gently redirect those that don't. This isn't about forced positivity but about being mindful of the mental diet you're consuming and its effect on your inner landscape.
Rule 20: Remember That You Are Both Ordinary and Miraculous
You are one of billions, made of common elements, following patterns as old as humanity itself. You are also a completely unique combination of consciousness, experience, and possibility that has never existed before and will never exist again. Hold both truths simultaneously. Your ordinariness connects you to all humanity; your uniqueness is your gift to the world.
These twenty principles form a philosophy not of perfection but of conscious living. They acknowledge that life is both beautiful and difficult, that meaning is found not in avoiding struggle but in how we meet it. They recognise that wisdom isn't about having all the answers but about asking better and more profound questions and remaining open to growth until our very last breath.
Their beauty lies not in following them flawlessly but in returning to them repeatedly, using them as a compass when you feel lost or overwhelmed and as a reminder of what truly matters when the world tries to convince you otherwise. They point toward a life lived with intention, connection, and a deep appreciation for the extraordinary privilege of being alive.