Rules are Constrictive. Principles are Constructive.
Or maybe I'm being pedantic.
Hi friends,
I’m going to be honest with you. I wrote this and immediately thought “I like this, but I think I’ve written something similar before.” So please me know in the comments if this felt fresh, or too similar to what you’ve read before. I don’t want to do essay re-runs; I don’t want to be TBS showing the same episode of Friends every week.1
Enjoy!
Reading time: 5-ish minutes.
A couple months back, I agonized over how often I published this newsletter. My writing was running dry like a spring in drought, and I made it a rule to publish weekly. If I broke my rule, what would that say about me?
“I cannot betray myself.”
It’s not the only thing I have rules about. I have rules about everything. I have rules on how much time I spend on social media (which I break often), how much cheesecake I eat per month (which I do better at), and how much I have to write per day (a minute less than my target and my inner critic dives in like a vulture).
I live by too many rules. It’s how I try to assert control over my reality and pursue a virtuous life.
At face value, rules ensure discipline. Discipline is good. You want to have discipline. It helps you stay focused on your goals, practice temperance, and prevent you from, hypothetically, playing Civilization VI for 8 hours straight.2
However, I reached a point where my list of rules was starting to become longer than the tax code. And while every rule was set with the goal of becoming a better person, I started feeling less and less like the person I wanted to be.
What were supposed to be guardrails became a prison. Rules became constrictive.
What about a life with no rules? Tempting. But I cannot run every red light, walk out of the supermarket without paying for my string cheese, or transform a Wendy’s into a vegan bistro because after all, “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”
The middle point in the rules/no-rules spectrum are principles. Principles are constructive.
Principles are more like best practices. They are beliefs that help me ensure I align my actions with my values. The main difference is that they cannot be followed blindly like a rule—they demand constant self-inquiry. It takes more mental energy, but gives you more room to act without guilt. Breaking a rule feels like self-betrayal. Not honoring my principle feels like not showing up as the best version of myself. Both are important, but I’m more inspired by the aspiration to be my best self than by the threat of my own treachery. I can see how people may be motivated by the latter—but frankly, I’m tired of self-flagellation.
I’m early in the path of going from rules to principles. It’s going to take a while. However, here are three principles that I’ve been thinking about daily over the past weeks:
1. A daily practice of awareness, gratitude, and acceptance: Awareness is the mind as a spectator. Realizing that I’m not my thoughts, even if they have a vice grip on my heart and mind.
Practicing gratitude offers a counter-narrative to yearnings, fears, and limiting beliefs. It is clearing my mind storm and seeing how whole and fulfilled I am.
Acceptance is acknowledging what is, loosening the fist and turning it into a palm ready to receive what may come. It is also taking action once reality has been accepted.
2. Optimize for authenticity: Authenticity is the reduction of the gap between my internal essence and how I show up in the world.3 Personal growth is the work to reduce the gap by finding alignment between internal and external.
I get that “closing the gap” sounds naive. After all, I live in a world where I am encouraged to wear certain social social masks, so that I can have career/financial opportunities that help me live the life I desire. But I'm starting to believe that to shine brightest I need to understand our essence and make sure that this is what people see. Not everyone is going to like my most authentic version. But I can strive to love my own authentic version. Otherwise, there is no room for love. If I don't love myself, I cannot love others.4
3. Embracing my nature: I’m curious. I’m impatient. I’m strategic. I’m an over-thinker. I’m helpful. I’m prideful. I’m thoughtful. I’m overly sensitive. I’m passionate. I’m timid. My nature has light and darkness. Rejecting both the light and the dark is to move away from authenticity—it increases the gap.
Embracing my nature doesn’t mean that I take a snapshot of my beliefs, characteristics, and values at a point in time and say “That’s it. This is me.” It is a continuous self-inquiry of the elements that create what I am, so that I gain clarity as to who I am, while giving myself room to grow into a bigger person. Two things can be true at the same time: We have certain characteristics that are immutable and we have an immense capacity to grow.
Notice I’m not saying “I should,” or “I must,” as if humans behave in absolutes. Rather, if I’m not practicing daily gratitude and acceptance, optimizing for authenticity, and embracing my nature, then I won’t look, sound, act, like the person I aspire to be. The goal then becomes trying to live each day working towards showing up as my best self. And if a bad day comes, then next day I will try again to be better.
It’s possible that I’m splitting hairs and that I just rebranded rules as principles the same way Liquid Death re-branded water. This feels right to me because it changes the focus of my mind from a negative act (betrayal) to a positive act (striving). It’s a subtle but significant shift in perception. Our mind is a garden and it is impacted by the most minimal cues.
A slight change in perspective is the difference between a withering garden or a beautiful bloom.
Post-Publishing PS. Right after I hit “send,” I thought of something that synthesized my point nicely (of course). When you don’t follow
Don’t ask me how I know.
Sadly, this was not hypothetical. But I did build Rome in one day though, so I got that going for me.
Credit to
because I’m pretty sure he’s the one that shared this definition of authenticity.Shout out to
because my correspondence with her helped me get to verbalizing authenticity this way.
My first post of 2024 was about my experience suffering the post-Christmas blues. After I wrote it but before I published, I had a sensation that I had written about this before. Curious, I searched my Substack, back to my first post of 2023 and sure enough, another post about the post-Christmas blues.
I hit send, anyway, you know why? Because it was what I had to write about. It was all I could think about, and it felt good to get it out of me. Also, my newest post was similar, but it was still cool to read how differently I wrote about it a year later.
So I don’t want your disclaimers, Camilo. If you want to write about rules and principles until the end of time, I’m here for it.
P.S. Liquid death!! I get it!
Camilo. I love this essay for a number of reasons. First, it’s so you and you offer us up your heart in a platter when you write. It’s a feast. And we promise not to eat all of it.
Second, I suspect 10 years from now I might have written about the same thing 10 times, but with a slightly different view or take. Why? Because we’re always growing and evolving as you say. And how does the saying go, “a man never sets foot in the same river twice….for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”
Third, you brought up the word “should.” Should is a “rule” word. “Could” on the other hand is a word with vast possibilities and empowerment. I’ve never thought “could” was a principle word, but now I do thanks to you.
#Grateful for you.