“Was born to dictate, never follow orders” – Jay-Z

“We don’t care what people say” – Kanye West

“He had a Mercedes sports coupe with no license plate on it. I think he felt the normal rules just didn’t apply to him. He always kind of felt ‘I don’t succumb to authority’.” – Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs biographer on Steve Jobs.

“I know fear is an obstacle to some, but it is an illusion to me…” – Michael Jordan

“F*ck the world if they can’t adjust” – Tupac

“I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.” – Maya Angelou

Every great hustler, athlete, poet, entrepreneur, or happily married couple believes that the rules don’t apply to them; they’re correct. They don’t apply. They abandon the norms society has established for them and live the life they want. I’d like to emphasize that what the heart wants is usually different from what the mind wants. The heart is designed to want the best for us. So you must first be able to connect with that then you can proceed with breaking laws with the assurance that the heart will never steer you wrong.

I’m not saying for everyone to go out there and go do illegal things after reading this. That would be being a rebel without a cause and that’s not cool. You need a cause first. That cause could be that you want to build fast, good looking computers. That cause could be that you want to be the greatest basketball player of all time. It could be that you want to share your poetry or art with the world. It could be that you want your relationship with someone to work. Once you’ve decided on a cause, now it’s law breaking time.

You don’t so much have to break laws as much as you have to disregard them while establishing a set of your own. A set of laws that align with your goals and aspirations. There are a lot of guidelines implemented by society to keep us in check. These guidelines are by society for society in order to keep things the way they are. Not for you and I to achieve wealth, true freedom and happiness.

As Freud and many others before and after him have noted, civilization is built on the repression of individual desires. It would be impossible to maintain any kind of social order, any complex division of labor, unless society’s members were forced to take on the habits and skills that the culture required, whether the individuals liked it or not. The most effective form of socialization is achieved when people identify so thoroughly with the social order that they no longer can imagine themselves breaking any of it’s rules.

In making us work for it’s goals, society is assisted by some powerful allies: our biological needs and our genetic conditioning. All social controls, for instance, are ultimately based on a threat to the survival instinct. The people of an oppressed country obey their conquerors because they want to go on living. 

When they do not rely on pain (or punishment), social systems use pleasure as the inducement to accept norms. The “good life” promised as a reward for a lifetime of work and adherence to laws is built on the cravings contained in our genetic programs. Practically every desire that has become part of human nature, from sexuality to aggression, from a longing for security to a receptivity to change, has been exploited as a source of social control by politicians, churches, corporations and advertisers. (Paraphrased from the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

What all of that is saying is that as humans we have a natural desire to not experience pain and to be rewarded. Based on that, society is able to keep us in line by the threat of punishing us if we do certain things and to reward us if we do other things. Do “this” and you will one day be rich with a big house and happy family. Problem is most people who end up doing “this” end up anything but rich with a big house, and definitely don’t end up happy. Why? Because “this” wasn’t designed for that person. “This” was designed by society for society.

In order to experience true success and happiness, you need to develop your own set of rules and guidelines that align with your goals in life. I’m not saying drive 120mph down a busy road. Unless your goal is to die tonight or go to jail then that probably isn’t what your heart will tell you to do. What it will tell you to do are things that will have you experiencing life to the maximum which will enhance your creativity and ability to relate to others. This will in turn attract whoever and whatever you want from life.

To do this and to do it well, you have to be willing to pay the price of being out-casted, laughed at, and looked at as weird. You have to be willing to lose all you ever had in order to gain what most will never have, complete freedom and complete happiness. Not to mention probably a ton of money and recognition along the way if you so desire. If your goals are similar to that of an MLK or Malcolm X, you may even have to pay the ultimate price with your life but even then it’s still a greater life than had they conformed and lived the lives society expected of them. Imagine where you or I would be had they done that.