One of the reasons I love writing these daily emails?

The thought of an old English teacher of mine stumbling on an email and looking aghast at how many classroom writing rules I’m breaking.

Do I trot out a bunch of fancy vocab in these emails?

Nope.

Do I use punctuation the right way?

Do I heck.

Do I structure my emails with well thought-out paragraphs?

Clearly not. Some of my paragraphs are one word long!

Which prompts the question:

Why am I not writing the way I was taught to write?

The answer is simple.

I want to write emails I enjoy writing.

Using proper syntax & grammar is nice and all. 

But if I wrote these emails like sixth formers write English essays or like Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights, I wouldn't have nearly as much fun.

So I need to ignore and even set light to most of what my earnest English teachers taught me.

Of course, this idea of shaking off what we're taught at school goes way beyond writing.

For instance:

*** Schools reward students who do exactly what they’re told to do (arrive on time, stand quietly in line, do their homework etc). 

My suggestion is not to get too used to this. The more you do what you’re told to do, the harder it will become to tap into the right options & decisions for you

*** If you weren't good at painting or drama (like me), you might've left school thinking you're not creative. 

But every single one of us is creative. No exceptions. 

Creativity shows up in how you solve problems, how you interact with people, how you imagine your future and how you manage your energy and time. 

Unless, of course, you've decided to believe that you're not creative.

*** School treats play as a break from work and learning. But in real life, learning can be play. Work can be play too. 

If you always put work first and never work in a way that's light, fun and playful, perhaps you've got too used to the idea that play can only be a reward for hard work

*** You could leave school thinking that progress is linear, just like Year 9 leads to Year 10 leads to GCSEs and so on. 

But real life is all about loops, zigzags, treading water and suddenly...BOOM...you make a huge jump forward. If you think you're behind the curve, it might be because you're expecting your progress to move in a straight line. But that's not how progress works

*** Evaluation is everywhere at school. You get a mark on your recorder exam, you have trials for the netball team or you’re told your French accent needs improving.  But don’t get sucked into this culture of you being evaluated. It might start to lead to your own self-evaluation and the idea there’s something to fix, improve or change about you. 

Spoiler alert: there's not

*** School might have you believe that it’s important to have all the answers. But try to resist this belief (and the belief that most questions have “right” answers at all) 

To my mind, being comfortable with the unknown is a much more useful asset vs having all the answers up your sleeve, ready & waiting to be unveiled

*** Don’t overvalue your IQ. You might get a gold star from teacher, land a plush spot at a top uni or even end up working in a sexy investment bank earning enough money to hire Rylan to compère your 40^th birthday bash. 

But if you want a rich life in every sense of the word (not just one where you’re patting yourself on the back for your smarts and your ever-increasing bank balance), the key is getting out of your head, not into it

So there we have it.

And that's just school. Don't get me started on our jobs!

This is why we can add unlearning to the ever-growing list of important skills that school never taught us.  

Hence my Subtraction Method. 

The last thing we need is MORE advice, MORE rules, MORE ideas, MORE strategies, MORE thoughts and MORE beliefs in order to keep juggling plates we'd be happier without. 

Truth is, we've got all we need already. And the key to seeing that is dropping all the mental scripts that are getting in the way. 

If you're done adding more and you're curious what your life would be like without all the rules, shoulds and noise in your head, come and see what falls away over here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com