I’ve broken the rules a lot in my life.

“Give your relationship the test of time before you get married.”

My husband and I were engaged within ten weeks of meeting, and married three months after that. Twenty-five years later, yes, we’re still married.

“Give your marriage the test of time before you have children.”

We conceived our first child within five months of getting married. Yes, we ended up with four of them, all planned, so we must have liked the experience.

“Have a steady career to fall back on, in case the writing gig doesn’t work out.”

Well, I didn’t, and don’t, and the writing gig has worked out fine – although, to be honest, in this changing climate of publishing, I’m telling my writer son exactly this rule that I myself broke completely!

“Don’t get an off-the-track thoroughbred for your teenage daughter’s first horse.”

She had some tough times with her bad-tempered, perpetually hungry, not-interested-in-dressage-thanks-very-much boy, but he was an amazing and hugely enthusiastic jumper and galloper on cross-country, and once their partnership was established, he gave her so much confidence and experience before soundness issues forced his early retirement.

You may have noticed that all of these rules have something in common.

They’re all about mitigating risk – risk of divorce, risk of poverty, risk of life and limb. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my family and I have been able to break these rules without any of those risks eventuating.

I think you can break the rules in life, if you’ve found other ways to mitigate the risk, or if you’ve looked honestly at what the risk is, and have decided you’re prepared to live with it for the sake of the potential gain.

That’s really what I’m advocating in today’s blog. Whether “the rules” are about dating, career, sport, successful marketing or artistic process, there are some other rules about breaking the rules that we do need to keep to.

So, without further ado, here are my five rules about breaking the rules:

1) Know what the rule is and why it exists. (e.g. the off-the-track thoroughbred plus teenage daughter rule exists because riding a horse you can’t handle is dangerous. We broke it because she’d trialled the horse enough to know she could handle him.)

2) “Because I want to,” isn’t good enough. “Because I want to,” if it’s not backed up by anything else, can lead to some of the worst mistakes you’ll ever make. (e.g. jumping into a new business venture without researching markets, costs, and competitors, or embarking on a doomed, two-timing relationship because of a fleeting attraction)

3) Know why you’re breaking it. Why doesn’t the rule apply to you? Why doesn’t it apply to this situation? What’s important enough to you that it outweighs the reason for the rule? (e.g. because you’ve learned enough from previous mistakes to get it right this time around, because you have a well-thought fall-back plan if it doesn’t work out, or because you’ve waited your whole life for this chance and you know it’s your last shot.)

4) Don’t ignore the risks of rule-breaking, mitigate them in other ways. (e.g. despite having no previous experience, you want to design and build your own mud brick eco-house, so you’ve saved enough money to give yourself two years for the task  full-time before you have to go back to your day job, and you’re running all your plans past a qualified architect or builder friend. You haven’t just rushed out and bought bags of cement for the foundations, while thinking, “I can knock this over on weekends, easy!”)

5) Be prepared for the hard yards before the reward. Breaking the rules rarely gives you the easy road, although people often break them for exactly this reason – they’re lazy and they think breaking the rules is a short cut. In fact, breaking the rules more often than not means you’re in for a longer, tougher, more emotionally challenging journey. (e.g. breaking the “Get professional help” rule, and doing all the work on your indie-published novel yourself is going to take a lot more time, effort and research than handing it over to a professional service, but it’s likely you’ll save money and keep control and be proud of what you’ve done.)

So there you are. Go forth and break rules! But don’t break these ones.