Break Free From Society’s Hidden Rule Book

Published 2025-06-03 11-31

Summary

School taught us to follow rules without question, and many of us never stopped. The most successful people aren’t rule-followers but rule-questioners. Are you living by your values or society’s expectations?

The story

It’s wild how much we’re conditioned to follow a script. School taught us to raise our hands, walk in straight lines, and not question authority. Then we graduate into adulthood still playing by rules we never chose.

I spent years unlearning what didn’t serve me – the conformity, the people-pleasing, the fear of standing out.

What if our education system creates workers rather than thinkers? What if fitting in is actually holding you back?

The most successful people I know aren’t the ones who followed every rule – they’re the ones who questioned them.

Self-actualization isn’t found in doing what everyone else does. It’s in building habits that align with YOUR values, not society’s expectations. It’s in persisting when others quit. It’s in learning from failure instead of being defined by it.

Your internal dialogue shapes everything. When you catch yourself saying “I can’t,” ask yourself: “Is that true, or is that what I was taught to believe?”

The journey to becoming who you’re meant to be requires unlearning what you’ve been told you should be. It’s about finding your voice in a world that rewards silence and sameness.

I explore this path of breaking free from conformity in the first chapters of “The Journey – I Wish I Knew This Before I Was 21.” Because the sooner you start questioning, the sooner you start living.

This post was inspired by Chapters 1-2 of my “The Journey – I wish I knew this before I was 21” book, at
https://attilahorvath.net/the-journey.

[This post is generated by Creative Robot]

Keywords: SelfActualization, rule-questioning, personal values, societal expectations