"It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission"

The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.

When I was in the Marines, I found this quite useful for dodging extra duties:

"Keep your eyes open, your mouth shut, and know where all the exits are."

Now I go by:

"Life is too short to eat at McDonalds."

Maybe not quite a rule, but I am crazy ruthless about trying to maximize the efficiency of what I am doing.
Walking somewhere? Well, on the way I could....
Going upstairs? Then I should bring....
I need to go to the dry cleaner? I should do that on X day since I will need to be in the area for this other thing...

It's good most of the time, but sometimes it gets silly if I don't want to go to the supermarket because I know I will have to go in 3 days which is when I will run out of something big and heavy and I don't have the right bags on me now.

Put Things Away. My cats taught me this rule, and even though I no longer have cats I still abide by it.

"You can catch more flies with honey". Diplomacy rules the day and always has. Nothing good can come from my taking a shitty attitude with others.

One other rule is "pick your battles". If I am in conflict with someone, I ask myself, "do I want to die on this hill?", and the answer is almost inevitably, "No".

My last rule, and perhaps the most important is "Lead with love". I don't think that one needs any explanation. Just love one another, goddammit.

Always look busy.

Everything we do has effects and repercussions well beyond the moment and our intent. This is why we should always act with kindness and understanding.

Because we are constantly presented with choices regarding our behavior, it is inevitable that we will sometimes make unfortunate choices. Redemption is simple, though: we have just learned what we don't want, so choosing future actions becomes easier. Make good of mistakes.

We make who we are in each moment. We have an infinite capacity for change. At any moment we can remake ourselves into who we want to be. Don't regret. Instead, learn.

If we go around believing we are the person we were when we did something wrong, we allow the past to become a prison sentence. In truth, the prisons we make have no gates. Walk free.

In short, always try to improve your relationship with the world, but sometimes you will fail. Don't worry about it. You can always try again.

Wow, Hugh, that's beautiful. It reads like the Desiderata or something like that.

Do your level best to leave a place better than you found it.

Thanks, Senyar! I'm flattered.

I think about these things a lot but this is the first time I've written it all down this way. Some of it seems a bit Buddhist to me.

Which reminds me, there's a 2003 Hong Kong movie called Running on Karma, featuring, among other things, the dreamy Andy Lau doing a strip show wearing a muscle suit. At first you'll be like "What a hell is going on?" but if you stick with it, it's an amazing meditation on personal growth and accepting our actions and their results.

Also it's quite funny and bewildering. I learned quite a bit from watching it. I recommend it all the time. Not sure if anybody actually watches it, though.

You can control your own behavior* but not that of others. It took me years to discover the flipside of that: that it's okay to set boundaries and enforce them boldly. You're free to do [thing I don't like], but I don't have to stick around for it.

*Another aspect of that: your behavior is voluntary; your feelings are not. You don't have to feel bad about your interior feelings, even if acting upon them would be wrong. (Though it's worth probing those feelings and figuring out where they spring from.)

Not everyone will like you; not all your friends will like each other. That's okay!

Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. Try to remember that no one else's motivations and backstory --- not strangers, not close friends --- are as clear to you as your own. Try to extend to strangers some of the same sympathy, amnesty, and forgiveness that you give yourself. (I fail at this all the time.)

It's okay to fail. It means you're trying.

"Be excellent to each other."

When I'm in a quandary, I try to ask myself "What's the right thing to do?" If it's not clear, the Right thing to do should be the Compassionate thing. Things don't always work out, but I feel like I've done what I can.

Never miss an opportunity to use the bathroom. Those of you under 40 may not fully appreciate this.

Not everybody is fighting a great battle; some people are just living their lives happily, but You Can't Tell. So, do what Eid suggests, and be Nice. I can attest that he practices this.

Be Your Best Self. We all get different gifts; use yours as well as you can.

all the answers here are awesome. bunnies are the Best!

To the far reaches of the universe, all this has all happened a very, very long time ago. So why fret?

Never miss an opportunity to use the bathroom.

*snort*

I've never tried to think specifically about my rules, but quite a few of the above fit the bill.

Be nice, be empathetic, be compassionate, be your best person. It is hard sometimes and sometimes I fail, but I figure each day is a new day to start again.

Just throw yourself out there into the world.

Mine comes from what is also my favorite quote: "Life shrinks or expands, according to one's courage." To coin a cliche, I seldom regret making an attempt; I almost always regret not trying.

It's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done. (That comes from a Butthole Surfers song.)

To the far reaches of the universe, all this has all happened a very, very long time ago. So why fret?

This may be my favorite in this thread. It reminds me a little bit of this Jewish eulogy I found on a headstone here in Atlanta, just in the way it speaks of an equilibrium with the universe.

Before acting or reacting, take a deep breath. Be present in the moment before a decision, as much as possible.

Always try to be better.

Remember you're not the center of anybody else's world.

Life is too short to finish bad books, live in lousy places, or spend more time than necessary around bothersome people.

"People are no damned good"

Also, "live and let live"

Avoid rules, except for their entertainment value.

One of my favorite rules: What's Behind Me, It's Not Important

(thanks BoPo... great headstone -- I love cemeteries myself, all those lives)

I like this one that I learned on Metafilter the other day: avoiding the second arrow.

I have been trying to move through the world with it affecting me negatively less and less. That whole bending like the reed in the wind, or moving like water over stones. It goes well, a lot. There is also this:

"Pain or damage don’t end the world, or despair, or fuckin’ beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man — and give some back."

Thanks, Al...

And lastly...this one sums it up nicely for me.

Savor each day.

Old Star Trek adage, but I love it:

Make "let me help," more important than even "I love you"

And don't hurt anyone or allow suffering to happen on your (figurative) doorstep.

I've always had a hard time going along with the idea that everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Some portion of people are fighting a hard battle right now. But other people are just having an ordinary day, some people are having a fucking great day, and still others are just plain assholes and enjoy being that way. And others are fighting a hard battle, act like assholes while doing it, and hurt other people. So I've always found that adopting it as my philosophy really stuck in my craw, because the assholes.

But fairly recently I ran across this saying, probably on Pinterest to be honest, and I thought: that's it. "Be kind to unkind people; they need it the most." That, I can get behind. There are a lot of people just being an asshole at any given time. But to be someone who acts like an asshole is to be someone with some kind of gap in their personal development. They might not be fighting any battle, but they are missing something. And kindness as a response to this something missing, rather than as a response to "hard battle," makes sense to me.

I don't know what Philo of Alexandria meant by "a hard battle," but I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that it just means "trying to live a life." Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's challenging, and you don't know from day to day which it will be. In my mind, that is the hard battle: just figuring out what kind of day it is and, if it's the latter, getting through it.

I get that this idea doesn't work for others. For me, it's crucial to allow me to extend my (often reluctant) patience to strangers.

I know it works for a lot of people. I guess it just has no utility for me, as it feels incomplete and that's frustrating, and yet it's offered so often as a catchall panacea for the "how to deal with others" problem. I needed to find some other way of conceiving it, because it just seems not to address people who are self-consciously callous or self-centered, and there are plenty of those people. I think that there are many people who feel that if life is a hard battle, then the aim is to win, as long as they're winning, then it's all cool. And really, it's not. But there are indeed people who don't look at things at all like they're just trying to get through the day. There are people who are actively antagonistic. And, for me, it takes yet another step back to recognize that yes, those people may indeed be playing a very cold game of one-upmanship, and it's not necessarily something they would construe as a "hard battle," but no matter how you slice it, it's a character issue, and to be pitied rather than feared.

It's also a frequently misattributed quotation. Here's some research on it. I was so glad to find this "quote investigator" site - it's become kind of a big thing, these social-media quotes that become unmarried from their real sources and matched up with other lonelyheart sources.

I know it works for a lot of people. I guess it just has no utility for me, as it feels incomplete and that's frustrating, and yet it's offered so often as a catchall panacea for the "how to deal with others" problem.

I needed to find some other way of conceiving it, because it just seems not to address people who are self-consciously callous or self-centered, and there are plenty of those people. I think that there are many people who feel that if life is a hard battle, then the aim is to win, as long as they're winning, then it's all cool. The quotation always seemed to fall short because apart from the majority of people who really are just trying to keep it together and get through life, there are indeed people who don't look at things at all like they're just trying to get through the day. There are people who are actively antagonistic. And, for me, it takes yet another step back to recognize that yes, those people may indeed be playing a very cold game of one-upmanship, and it's not necessarily something they would construe as a "hard battle," but no matter how you slice it, it's a character issue, and to be pitied rather than feared.

It's also a frequently misattributed quotation. Here's some research on it. I was so glad to find this "quote investigator" site - it's become kind of a big thing, these social-media quotes that become unmarried from their real sources and matched up with other lonelyheart sources.

There are times when you can only rely on yourself to make you happy. Learning to identify those times will save you a lot of heartache, disappointment, and boredom.

I wish I had a more eloquent way to put it, but honesty is the best policy. Really. At work, in your personal life - be honest with those around you and yourself. But not honest like, "Your sweater looks like a hot pile of rats." That's just mean.