Empower Your Life with Your Personal Bill of Rights: Taking Control of Your Choices
00:00:00.000 | When I talked to Ramit Sethi about money, he has this Ramit's money rules.
00:00:05.760 | They just really simplify his decision-making about things because he just took the
00:00:10.320 | uncertainty out of it. So he says, "If someone is raising money for charity, I always give money.
00:00:16.400 | If I fly for more than five hours or whatever the number is, I always fly business class."
00:00:20.560 | And it just makes it super simple because he's thought about the decision
00:00:24.640 | abstractly from actually having to make it. He's like, "I always buy books. If I want to
00:00:29.520 | learn something and a book might have the answer, I always buy it. I never stress out
00:00:32.880 | if it's $10 or $12 or $20. I just always buy it." Talk about this Bill of Rights because it seems
00:00:37.840 | like something that I and maybe everyone listening would benefit from having.
00:00:41.840 | Yes. And we all have one. It might be a very short list of rights
00:00:47.840 | or it might be a long list of rights. The more socially not free you are, the more you're in
00:00:53.040 | the cage, the shorter your Bill of Rights. A Bill of Rights is just a statement of permissions.
00:00:58.800 | I'm allowed to. I have a right to. And you'll know what's in your Bill of Rights based on how
00:01:04.240 | you feel and what you do. So do I have a right to say no to that person requesting I come to their
00:01:09.600 | thing? Well, did you say yes when you didn't want to go? Then you might not have a right that says
00:01:15.280 | I get to say no to people's requests, people's invitations. And this gets... You might say,
00:01:22.800 | I have a right to repeatedly say no to someone's requests. That's a different thing. And here's
00:01:29.760 | some core ones that I encourage people to adopt and make sure they have on their Bill of Rights.
00:01:33.840 | I have a right to ask for what I want. I have a right to say no. I have a right to
00:01:42.560 | approach anyone, whether that's virtually or in person. Doesn't mean they want to talk to you,
00:01:50.960 | but if you stop yourself before you even allow the opening or the approach,
00:01:57.600 | you're going to limit your life significantly. And people have all kinds of stories. Oh,
00:02:02.160 | I'm going to bother them. Oh, hey, I don't know. Maybe they'll be bothered. Maybe they won't.
00:02:06.080 | Let's find out. You know, in the case of the person wanting to hire you for your services,
00:02:10.400 | right? I have a right to ask for whatever fee I want for my services, whatever feels right.
00:02:16.800 | And so the longer... Actually, it's an exercise. It's very much worth doing. And I do it with
00:02:21.440 | clients. It's like having to sit down and like, well, write it out. It doesn't have to be perfect.
00:02:25.280 | What would feel empowering to you? What as you write it, you're kind of nodding your head being
00:02:31.520 | like, yeah, all right. And then just come up with a list of five, 10. And this is your... Like a
00:02:39.920 | nation that has a Bill of Rights for its people, this is your Bill of Rights for you. And those
00:02:45.680 | must first be written and then they have to be practiced. Otherwise, they're just flowery
00:02:50.880 | language on paper if you're not actually doing them. Are there a few more examples you can give
00:02:54.400 | to inspire people as they're hopefully thinking about what would be on theirs? Yeah. I mean,
00:02:58.960 | I think one thing to break it down is just think of the different areas of your life, right? So
00:03:02.000 | you think about in your relationship, your romantic relationship, right? I have a right to
00:03:11.360 | tell my partner when something's bothering me. And now it might sound real simple, but a lot of
00:03:17.840 | people shy away. I don't want to upset them. I don't want to bother them. You know, I have a
00:03:21.440 | right to... Oh, here's a... This one I had to add to my Bill of Rights. It's a doozy. I have a right
00:03:28.800 | to disappoint people. Particularly, I have a right to disappoint my partner. Talk about that. Yeah.
00:03:35.920 | Well, that one was like, you know, I would be running around in my whole life trying not to
00:03:40.320 | disappoint anybody. I don't want to have anyone be let down. And look, you know, it's great to
00:03:45.520 | be connected with your spouse and not just constantly not give a crap and disappoint
00:03:50.720 | them all over the place. Sure. But no matter how loving you're trying to be, how generous you're
00:03:57.040 | trying to be, if you're being authentic and true to what you really want, sometimes you're going
00:04:02.000 | to disappoint them. They want you to go to that thing and you don't want to go. They want to have
00:04:06.000 | time to connect with you but you are unavailable for whatever reason. And so being able to say no
00:04:14.880 | and then withstand that discomfort of someone is disappointed in me. And the reason I created that
00:04:23.120 | Bill of Rights for myself is because I lived with this kind of chronic background anxiety that
00:04:27.120 | someone somewhere was going to be disappointed with me. And so just to be like, yeah, I have a
00:04:31.440 | right to sometimes people disappointed with me and I have a right to do that sometimes and really
00:04:36.560 | resting on that. That's what it feels like. It feels like you can rest on your Bill of Rights
00:04:40.400 | and like all as well. Like I'm allowed to do that. And it's almost like,
00:04:43.840 | like, you know, teaching a child, like, hey, you're allowed to do this, but we kind of have
00:04:49.280 | to do that for our own, our own selves now. So you can look at that relationship life,
00:04:52.480 | look at inside of your career and your work. What do you, you know, unique to your thing? I have a
00:04:56.960 | right to ask a question in a meeting. I have a right to disagree with somebody. That's a big one.
00:05:04.000 | And you can think about it socially too, right? Like I, this is a great one. I have a right to
00:05:08.560 | change the subject of a conversation. I guess nice people can get trapped on the rails, right? Oh,
00:05:15.280 | we're talking about their thing. I don't want to talk. How do I get out of this? And then they
00:05:19.200 | pause for a minute. And because you don't have a right to change the subject, instead of changing
00:05:23.040 | the subject, you say, Hmm, tell me more. And then the conversation keeps going and you're trapped,
00:05:29.280 | right? I lived in that one for a long time. So I have a right to change the subject. Ooh, here's
00:05:32.400 | a good one. I have a right to interrupt people, right? Cause sometimes you're talking to someone
00:05:36.160 | and they're going on and on and on. And you guys say, Hey, I want to ask you something. That's a
00:05:40.880 | great technique for interrupting by the way, as if it just came to you, Hey, right in the middle
00:05:45.760 | of their sentence, blah, blah, blah. Hey, I just thought of something. I wanted to ask you something
00:05:49.840 | and then boom, you can steer it a new direction.