"You know, these are the rules".
How often have you heard someone say this? Me, too many times. I have nothing against rules per se. I am certainly not fond of breaking them, even if it is sometimes necessary. But there is one thing that people often forget about rules.
They are manmade.
This sounds trivial, but it is has profound consequences. The most important is that because rules are manmade, they can be changed. People often cite rules as if they were some ancient wisdom, or even natural law. They are not - somebody made them, and it's up to us the change them. If the rules work against you, you must change them. If you can't change them, you are in the wrong system, and you should leave (e.g. your workplace). It's harder if the system is political, and the rules are the law, but it's possible - see this fascinating 16 min talk about voice and exit:
The second important consequence is that most people may actually disagree with a rule, in which case it might not be enforceable (again, this depends on the context). Think about a rule - any rule. Do you know when it was established? No matter how far back in time the rule was put in place, we now know much more about the world than people did back then. Thus, it's quite possible that the rule doesn't make sense anymore, based on the data we have now. It's for this reason that I have some respect for rules: when they were put in place, they must have made a lot of sense, and we should always assume that there was a good reason back then. At the same time, we should never stop questioning whether the rule makes sense today - and change it if the answer is no.
This brings me to the third consequence: the rule was put in place to defend and protect someone's interest. This may have been the interest of the majority of the public; the interest of a company; the interest of a lobbying group, etc. It may not be your interest. The rule may not be there to make your thrive, and in that case you need to change it.
Steve Jobs, with his uncanny ability to simplify complexity, said it best:
“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”