Rules for being human

Here is another item that appeared in the INTAD (later INTAND) Newsletter – for the International Network for Transactional Analysis (and later NLP) in Development – the forerunner of the IDTA. In the second-ever issue, in 1993, the following appeared. At the time we were advised that it was anonymous. Searching Google nowadays indicates that the rules were written by Chérie Carter-Scott as a handout for a training programme; they were circulated widely and ended up in Canfield and Hanson‘s Chicken Soup, originally marked as anonymous but subsequently credited to Carter-Scott. If you like the rules, Carter Scott has several books, including If Life is a Game, These are the Rules.
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Rules for being human

1. You will receive a body.  You may like it or you may hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of time around.  
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life.  Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons.  You may like the lessons or you may think them irrelevant or stupid.  
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.  Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation.  The "failed experiments" are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works".
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learnt from it, then you can go on to the next lesson. 
5. Learning lessons does not end.  There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons.  If you are alive there are lessons to be learned.  
6. "There" is no better than "here".  When your "there" has become a "here" you will simply discover another "there" that will, again, look better than "here".
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.  You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something that you love or hate about yourself.  
8. What you make of your life is up to you.  You have the all the tools and resources you need.  What you do with them is up to you.  The choice is yours.
9. The answers lie inside you.  The answers to life's questions lie inside you.  All you need to do is look, listen and trust.  
10. You will forget all this at birth.  

​Don’t forget that the next IDTA Online Community Gathering is running on 30 June, 1100-1500 UK time.  Free to all IDTA members – just email admin@instdta.org to book your place. See here for the programme.