Some people call life a game. I believe that’s partly true. But every game has rules, and so I present to you the “Rules Movie”.

Click on the image below to watch this lovely video:

Rule #1: You will be given a body.

As insignificant as this may sound, trust me when I say it’s one of the most important rule if not the most important. I’m going to reveal to you something that I used to find absolutely embarassing about myself.

When I was a kid in primary school, I was very obese. I would get teased alot about it - it was an all boys’ school - and I guess it framed my thinking about where one’s self-worth comes from.

When it was time to move on to a co-ed secondary school, I said to myself,”Saiful, you can’t look like this in front of the girls.” Maybe it was puberty kicking in but the truth was that I’ve always hated the way I looked.

I had a secret plan and by the time I stepped into secondary school, I was perfectly fit. However, as you can imagine, my sense of self-worth didn’t change.

One day, I saw a couple of students teasing an obese friend about his weight. In that instant, it was as if I had a blast from the past and I literally saw myself in him. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there and was about to continue reading my book when a girl went up to them.

She said,”Can you please stop teasing him?”

The guys laughed it off and continued teasing the poor boy but she came back with,”STOP IT ALREADY! Just leave him alone. You’re all teasing him because you’re so insecure about yourselves!”

The boys scrammed while spouting some vulgarities at her. Me? I sat there not believing what I’ve just heard.

1) I’ve never seen anyone step up to bullies so publicly before.

2) I’ve never thought of the bullies being insecure about themselves.

The truth was that nobody really treated anybody differently because of how he or she looked like - unless they’re insecure about how they look like themselves.

The above video said you may like your body or you may not and that it will be yours for the entire period of your time here. The point of telling you my story is to make you realise that what the video said is true and that your body doesn’t really matter. What really matters is understanding one truth:

“You are not a physical being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a physical experience.”

Or to quote One Tree Hill, “What’s under all the clothes?” ;)

Rule #2: There Are No Mistakes, Only Lessons.

How many times have you submitted to mediocrity because you were scared of making mistakes, my friend? I know many people who go through life in fear of making mistakes, in fear of going down the endless pit of no return. I have to admit that I make the mistake of fearing to make mistakes quite often.

Even today, as I was preparing a video to ask you to tell your friends about SaiF Improvement, I was afraid that I would not say the right things. But over the course of my time on Earth (wow, I sound so old) I’ve learnt that fear is natural.

What’s more important is feeling the fear and do it anyway!

What’s more important is realising that there’s no such thing as “the endless pit of no return”!

What’s more important is remembering to “fall down 7 times, get up 8″!

The video compared life to an experiment - that’s going to be in my vocabulary from now on. I’ve come across many words to describe life but this one suits me the best. If growth is a process of trial and error, then I’m the craziest scientist you’ll ever meet!

Rule #3: Failed Experiments Are As Much A Part Of The Process As The Experiment That Ultimately Works, Learn From Them.

Ok, I’m going with the crazy scientist theme so stay with me here.

1) A lesson is repeated until it is learned. “Why me?!” has got to be the most common phrase you and I will ever utter. Just think about it. If I’m experimenting with some chemicals and it blows up every single time, there must be a mistake. Until I learn from the failed experiments that I have to change some factor, the experiment will always blow up in my face.

Think : “Insanity is doing something over and over again while expecting a different result.” Until I learn that I have to conduct the experiment with a different set of chemicals, the failure will be repeated again and again even though I think positively! Similarly, Life will present to us the same lesson over and over again until we learn what we should do.

2) A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until have learned it. This is similar to the above but sometimes a mad scientist must realise that it’s not what you mix in the test tube, it’s how you mix it and maybe even why you have to mix it in the first place.

Similarly, mastery in life is achieved through knowing what, how and why we do some things. Until the lesson is truly learnt, Life will present it to us from different angles. For example, I recently read in John C. Maxwell’s “Becoming A Person Of Influence” that we should always put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and see how we can help them from their perspective.

Yesterday, I was about to send the long E-mail I always send new bloggers I meet to a fellow blogger that I’ve never talked to before. Suddenly, I remembered what Maxwell said in his book and immediately deleted everything and sent a few sentences instead. I finally realised why none of the bloggers I E-mailed replied.

3) When you learn it you’ll move on to the next lesson. Like in the abovementioned example, it is clear that I’ve learnt the lesson and VOILA! I move on to the next one.

Rule #4: There Is No Part Of Life That Does Not Continue Lessons.

If you know me pretty well, you’ll know that I intend to make every experience educational. Some of my friends always tell me that I’m looking for things that aren’t there.

What do you think? I think there are lessons everywhere. When I see a few kids running at the void deck, I remind myself not to take life too seriously. When I see a group of friends hanging out and having fun, I remind myself to appreciate the wonderful friends that I have and I immediately send them an SMS. Look around, my friend. It’s the biggest classroom around!

Rule #5: “There” Is No Better Than “Here”.

This is a big one. BIG LESSON HERE. I’ve personally been stuck in “the grass is greener on the other side” mentality for almost one full year! Before I got into Victoria Junior College, I was in Meridian JC conditionally. As a result, in my first year at VJC I kept thinking about how great it would have been to stay in MJC.

Luckily for me, I snapped out of it with the help of a few friends. I finally let go of it, took a look around and felt for the first time that VJC was no better than MJC. In fact, the moment I started appreciating the people, things and people around me, VJC looked much better than MJC. Moreover, I’m quite sure that if I had an opportunity to go back to MJC, I would instead be wondering what could have been had I stayed in VJC.

The fact is that we’re human and we’ll always be wondering “What if” or “What could have been” but I’ve learnt that we shouldn’t dwell on it because it makes the present reality look grim. When we start appreciating and showing gratitude for everything we already have, “here” is the best place to be at.

Rule #6: Others Are Merely Mirrors Of You.

I know you’ve heard this millions of times before. But maybe you don’t fully understand the two levels of this axiom.

1) Others Will Literally Reflect You. I experimented with this some time ago and the results did not turn out exactly as I expected. While waiting for a friend to reach the MRT station, I decided to walk around smiling at people of different moods.

Most of them had blank expressions, so I started with this group - 100% smiled. I then moved on the happy-looking people - 100% smiled sincerely. (wrinkle on eyes) Then came the group I was most apprehensive about, the pissed-off-looking people - amazingly around 80% of them smiled back.

I’ve also conducted other social experiments like taking a genuine interest in others and it all points to one conclusion - you get what you give.

2) You Only See In Others What You See In Yourself. I remember quite vividly a time when I really hated a girl. To be frank with you, I’ve never hated anyone - fine, except for this one teacher who slapped me in Primary School. Anyways, the timing of learning this lesson couldn’t have been more impeccable.

I saw this quote, “You only hate in others what you hate in yourself” somewhere online and then I started going through the traits I hated most about her and I was SHOCKED. GASP! It was true! I was stubborn, uncompromising and competitive. The moment I realised this, I apologised to her. A few weeks later, let’s just say I started growing fond of her - because I started loving those parts of myself of course! What were you thinking? ;)

Rule #7: You Have All The Tools And Resources That You Need.

In this video, there was a line that said “The answers to life’s questions live inside of you.” This was one thing I didn’t get for the longest time. Ever since I became a Personal Development Junkie, I’ve always looked for answers in books written by the greatest writers.

One day, a friend and I were debating about the usefulness of personal development books. I tried to convince him that they are very useful but I guess he decided to Super-Glue himself to his stand or something. I got one very useful lesson from that debate though.

I ended up agreeing with him that although there might only be one answer, there are many ways of getting to that answer. Just like Mathematics, some of us might look at a question one way and the others look at it another (and then there’s those who don’t even memorise the formula lol)

I believe that’s why we sometimes have to read a few books on the same topic to arrive at our solution. The fact is that different writers have different vantage points that might conflict with ours. I believe we will never get the answers to life’s questions until we truly look, listen and trust our hearts.

Talk Back To Me:

I want to know what you think of this post. I would also love to know what rules of life you wish you knew before you started this journey. Let’s all learn from you :)

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