‘The Code of the Extraordinary Mind’ Takeaway #1: Skip the ‘brules’

Recently, I came across this book summary on StoryShots of the ‘The Code of the Extraordinary Mind’ written by Vishen Lakhiani. The book has some interesting insights into how extraordinary minds perceive the world and what kind of way they think. Now, not all of the takeaways that you read about next might be something you want to adopt and apply in life but if some do sound good, let me know.

Skip the “brules”

So, Vishen starts his book by explaining the concept of “culturescape” which is essentially the world around you. It’s the society and the norms and rules they have defined for you. Vishen argues that maybe not all the rules of society might be necessary for you to reach your end goal. You might need some introspection to realize what rules help you and what don’t. It is the extraordinary minds that can tell this difference and act accordingly making others believe that they have traveled the road less traveled. He then goes on further to explain that extraordinary minds tend to skip the “brules” — bullshit rules. These could be:

1. The hard labor brule: “Work from 9 to 5, and you’ll succeed”.
2. The religion brule: “Be pious.”
3. The culture brule: “Marry within your ethnicity.”
4. The college brule: “Get good grades, and you’ll succeed.”

Now, again not all of them might be brules for you so it’s ok to choose those that hinder your path to your end goal.

The next thing that we need to address is our belief systems. Right from the time we are born, we develop a reflex system to stimuli around us. With time we also develop our reflex system for emotional stimuli which affect our belief systems — what we should do and we shouldn’t.

When we embrace our beliefs to be factual, they become real. We then proceed to construct mental models of the universe based on the events occurring in our life. Some of these beliefs might reshape our current and future experiences negatively and hence stop us from achieving our end goal. As youngsters, they may have been the product of those we admired or despised. They could be a parent, bully, or teacher. Your thoughts might need some rewiring and so Vishen suggests an interesting activity that you could do every night- reflect on these two queries:

1. Thank you for what?
2. When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

The first question helps you understand what you are grateful for and why while the second question might help you by understanding what thought processes have helped you reach up to this point and how they might or might not be useful in the future.

Might be interesting to try this out once in a while if not every night to rewire your thoughts and belief systems that might be outdated. If you have tried this self-reflection activity let me know below in the comments.

~Aditya Darekar