I recently came across the graphic that opens this post on Facebook offering “The 6 Laws of Maturity.”
You know the type of seemingly enlightened advice often propagated on social media.
Stop telling people everything.
Choose your friends wisely.
Expect nothing and appreciate everything.
Trust the process.
Control yourself instead of others.
Learn to react less.
There is quite a bit of wisdom embedded in those statements.
However, my first problem with this collection of enlightened logic is calling them laws.
Laws, at least in the way we commonly use the word, don’t leave much room for nuance.
Gravity doesn’t care about context. Human beings require considerably more qualification.
So perhaps these aren’t “laws” at all. It would be more accurate to describe this advice as a set of principles—useful ideas that can guide us toward maturity when applied with judgment rather than accepted as absolutes.
And that distinction matters.
Discretion Is Not Distrust
The first “law” tells us to stop telling people everything because most people don’t care and some secretly want us to fail.
Perhaps.
But maturity shouldn’t require paranoia.
There is wisdom in discretion. Everyone doesn’t need to know everything about you.
Some thoughts belong to you.
Some information belongs only within your marriage, your family, or your closest circle.
But the mature lesson isn’t trust no one.
It’s in knowing whom to trust with what.
Those are very different philosophies.
One produces isolation.
The other produces discernment.
Choose People Based on Character, Not Utility
We’re also told to surround ourselves with “better people” if we want to grow.
Better in what way?
More successful?
Wealthier?
Better educated?
More influential?
I prefer to surround myself with people of character—people whose values and behavior are compatible with the person I am and the person I aspire to become.
And relationships shouldn’t exist solely because someone can help us “level up.” That’s the way of a shallow, transactional mindset.
Sometimes the mature thing is recognizing that you are the person who can help someone else grow.
Friendship isn’t networking.
The latter is a means to an end. The former is a means to a deeper human connection that feeds our soul.
Expectations Are Not Entitlements
“Expect nothing, appreciate everything” sounds profound.
It’s also impractical when taken literally.
I have expectations of my wife. She has expectations of me.
I have expectations of the people I lead, just as the people I lead should have expectations of me.
Healthy relationships and functioning organizations require expectations.
The distinction maturity teaches us is to know the difference between expectation and entitlement.
I can expect someone to behave according to commitments they have made. I cannot expect the universe to arrange itself according to my preferences.
I can work toward an outcome.
I cannot demand that life deliver it.
That distinction has brought me far more peace than simply expecting nothing ever could.
Hard Work Improves the Odds. It Doesn’t Control the Outcome.
“The harder you work, the luckier you become.”
Sometimes.
Hard work matters.
Discipline matters.
Preparation matters.
Persistence matters.
But mature people should also recognize reality.
You can work hard all of your life and still fail.
You can do everything right and still lose.
You can make the best decision available based on the information you have and still get a bad outcome.
The lesson isn’t to “trust the process” blindly.
It’s to do your best, observe the outcome, learn, adapt, and continue.
Or, as Bruce Lee famously put it:
Be water, my friend.
Govern Yourself Before Trying to Control the World
Of the six principles in the graphic above, the one that resonates most strongly with me is this:
Control yourself, not others.
However, I think it requires a slight modification…
Govern yourself.
We cannot always control our initial thoughts or emotions.
We cannot prevent ourselves from feeling anger, disappointment, envy, fear—or desire.
But we can decide what authority those emotions and desires have over our behavior.
This is where a seemingly trivial example from my own life taught me something considerably larger.
For a long time, I wanted a Rolex.
My evolving perspective on Rolex was never really about Rolex.
Rolex has its business model. It has worked extraordinarily well for the company since long before I was born.
Rolex makes excellent watches. It has built tremendous brand equity, and millions of people see value in owning its products, despite the exorbitant prices they charge.
Who am I to tell them they’re wrong?
My friction wasn’t really with Rolex’s pricing.
It wasn’t with its allocation practices.
It wasn’t with people who happily pay retail—or more—to own one.
My friction was with my own desire to own one.
I had to determine whether I wanted a Rolex because a Rolex genuinely aligned with me—or because decades of cultural messaging had taught me that a Rolex was something a successful man was supposed to want.
That’s an entirely different question.
Today, I can look down at the Citizen Tsuki-yomi on my wrist and say that, for me, it is a better fit.
Notice what I didn’t say.
I didn’t say it’s objectively a better watch than a Rolex.
Watch for watch, that comparison doesn’t even make much sense. They were designed to accomplish different things in different ways.
One may celebrate traditional mechanical watchmaking. Another may prioritize light-powered technology, atomic timekeeping, titanium construction, and astronomical complications.
“Which one is better?” is an incomplete question.
Better for whom?
Better for what?
Once I understood that, I didn’t need Rolex to lower its prices. I didn’t need the company to change its business model. I didn’t need Rolex enthusiasts to agree with me.
I simply needed to understand myself.
That is the freedom that comes from governing your desires rather than demanding that the world accommodate them.
React Less. Respond More.
The final “law” says that when you master your reactions, no one can manipulate you.
I wouldn’t go that far.
Every human being has vulnerabilities. We all have biases. We all have emotional buttons that someone, somewhere, may know how to push.
Maturity doesn’t make us immune to manipulation.
It can, however, make us more difficult to manipulate.
The goal is to create enough distance between stimulus and response to ask:
What is actually happening here?
What am I feeling?
Why am I feeling it?
And what response aligns with the person I want to be?
That moment of self-reflection is where personal sovereignty lives.
Perhaps There Is a Seventh Principle
If I were rewriting the original list, I’d add one more:
Know when to change your mind.
Maturity isn’t stubbornly defending the person you used to be.
It’s allowing experience, evidence, wisdom, and self-knowledge to refine the person you are becoming.
Changing your mind doesn’t necessarily mean you were wrong before. Sometimes you’ve simply acquired information you didn’t previously have.
Sometimes your circumstances change.
Sometimes your priorities change.
And sometimes you finally realize that something you desperately wanted was never particularly well aligned with you in the first place.
You don’t have to condemn that with which you are not aligned.
That’s a problem that too many of us default to that often blocks our ability to self-reflect and see what does align with us properly.
You don’t have to convince everyone else to stop wanting what doesn’t align with you personally.
You can simply reject something or admire it—and keep walking.
Perhaps that’s one of the clearest signs of maturity I’ve discovered:
The goal isn’t to stop wanting things or condemn the things we find don’t align with us personally.
It’s to become discerning enough to decide which desires deserve your obedience.
-The Rational Ram
The Rational Ram 