4 Steps for Creating A Rule of Life → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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A Rule of Life is the scaffolding we use to structure our time, possessions, and behaviors to become more fruitful and Christlike. With a rule of life, we grow good habits, storing up treasure in our hearts. In this episode, we talk about 4 steps to creating a rule of life that magnifies your impact for the kingdom.

S1E38 – Why You Need Space in Your Life to Truly Serve God – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

Do you feel frazzled – like you are stuck in the rat race of the modern day’s focus on productivity? In today’s episode, we are talking about why you need margin in your life to hear God’s voice and recognize the needs of those around you. Then, we are going to talk about the special ability of those who have more space in their lives to truly serve and minister to others. We need more margin people. View the full post here. Want to start a new morning routine that will give you deep knowledge of God, practical spiritual disciplines, and an appreciation for the good, true, and beautiful things? Get a copy of our NEW AMBL Collective Morning Menu: A Morning Time Practice for Thinking People! . Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode. I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Hello and welcome to episode 34 of Season 1 of A More Beautiful Life Collective podcast. This is part 2 of our show on creating a Rule of Life. You can read more about what a rule of life is and why you need to create one in the last post. Today, we are focusing on 4 steps for creating a rule of life that will help you to add habits to your life that help your life to bear much fruit for God.

Creating a rule of life is crucial if we want to be intentional about good habits that will help us to live for God.

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Can’t I just wing it?

If your rule of life will change over time, why can’t you just figure it out and hope for the best? Why take the time to do the work when you may have to change it all up when the next baby comes, the next move happens, or the next unexpected calamity occurs?

I believe we should try to live purpose-filled, intentional lives. If you aim for nothing, you will hit nothing. If you make no goals, you will reach no goals. If you don’t try to be intentional about your habits, you will have no intentional habits.

If you’ve been following along, you’ve done so much good work to solidify and clarify your beliefs and ideals. But, I think they will stay beliefs and ideals and never translate to action if you don’t do this last step of applying your beliefs to your everyday life with discernment.

I recently watched a show about a group of people who were doing experimental archaeology by ‘going back in time’ and living according to the methods and practices of ancient peoples. There are several different periods they studied, but one was the Tudor Monastery era. In one of the episodes, they were creating a painting that involved tracing out the picture before painting. I’m not an artist, and I was actually surprised to learn that one of the techniques that many art educators recommend is tracing. By tracing pictures, you get a good idea of proportions and other techniques.

Your groundwork – that foundation we’ve been talking about – is like the tracing portion of your painting of life. However, if you stop there, you will never have a beautiful picture full of hues, color, and definition. By creating a Rule of Life, you are thoughtfully considering your goals and ideals and overlaying them over the picture of your life. You then can create a beautiful picture.

Both steps are necessary. You must have the foundation, but you also must have the daily habits and actions that build the life you want.

Creating a Rule of Life?

There are four steps to creating a rule of life. A Rule of Life is a system of habits, and so it mimics our planning systems that we’ve discussed in depth on the podcast. You can check out our planning resources on the shop if you would like to see how to apply this to work and projects (with a bent on more productivity). A Rule of Life differs from a planning system in the fact that the goal of a Rule is sanctification not just getting more done.

Begin with a strong foundation.
Set your goals.
Brainstorm habits.
Map out daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms.

Step 1. Begin with a strong foundation.

Document your doctrines, virtues, and principles. Check out my other episodes in this series for why and how to do that. You can get workbooks that walk you through this process in the shop.

Visit A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop for bible studies, planners, and other resources.

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Step 2. Set your goals.

Your Rule of Life basically is just a list of habits that you want to do consistently over time based on a strong biblical foundation. It is ‘spiritual, vocational, and relational rhythms.’ When we make habits, we first want to start with our aspirations for our lives. Importantly, we should consider our aspirations in light of our full lives and the legacy that we leave behind. You should think about what you want to be known for in light of eternity. You should ask yourself three questions when creating a rule of life:

When I look back on my life and consider my legacy, what do I want my spiritual life to look like?
When I look back on my life and consider my legacy, what do I want my vocational life to look like?
When I look back on my life and consider my legacy, what do I want my relational life to look like?

Step 3. Then, you brainstorm habits and rhythms using your principles of life that help you to reach those aspirations.

I recommend you list out each principle, and keeping in mind your aspirations, you brainstorm habits from each principle. List as many as you can think of. Don’t keep them general – otherwise, you are just making a new set of principles. You want to apply them to your specific circumstances. Adding numbers, days of the week, and keeping in mind your current schedule will help you to make your specific habits actionable and achievable. These habits are what you will choose from when creating a rule of life.

Step 4. Divide your habits into daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms that emphasize balance, harmony, and order.

In our episode on creating an ideal schedule, we talked about how you should map out your days. Key to this practice was utilizing anchors to stack your habits throughout the week. First, you should choose the habits from your brainstorm that you actually want to prioritize and do. Then, you should map out your habits. In our Rule of Life workbook, we focus on dividing up our rules into spheres of life to make them organized and easier to remember. This will help you in creating a rule of life.

The areas of life that we focus on (in order) are:

Devotion & Worship
Family & Home
Work & Ministry
Play & Rest

You can get our guide on creating an ideal schedule if you would like to create a specific schedule for your day, week, and year based on your Rule of Life.

(I go into more depth on starting to keep your rule of life below.)

Creating a Rule of Life: My Example

Here is how this method would look:

I mentioned that one of my beliefs is that every good thing comes from God and is owned by God. We are only stewards of those good things.
A Christian Virtue is stewardship.
One of my principles is “I steward my time, people, possessions, and talents well to glorify God and maximize my impact on God’s kingdom.”
My aspiration is that I look back on my life and feel that I have lived it well, serving others and glorifying God. I want others to look at my life and say that it was fruitful. I want God to look at my life and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
What I’ve listed so far are those foundational beliefs. I would imagine (and hope) that many all Christians over the world and throughout the ages would feel the same as me. I am not unique in my beliefs, but what is unique is the circumstances that I am placed in. My Rule of Life based on this principle is:
- I prioritize ministry over mindless pursuits like social media and other entertainment by devoting nap time to work time.
- I give of my time and resources when I can, giving my first fruits. My first moments of the day are devoted to devotions, and my first priority in the week is devoted to church and ministry.
- I spend time honing my talents each week, and when I am asked to use them in service of ministry, I say yes if I am able. I spend time reading, singing, and teaching. If I am asked to lead, I say yes.

I could probably go on, but you can tell that each of these points I just listed is applied to my particular circumstances. I’m a part of the worship team at my church, I have a blog, and I occasionally teach at church. When I think about stewardship of ministry, I have to bring to mind my specific circumstances and apply my principles to those circumstances.

Check it out in the shop: Are you wanting to focus on habits that will create a vibrant intellectual and spiritual life? Do you want to model life-long learning for your kids? Do you want to learn the best of what Western culture has to offer? Check out our AMBL Collective Morning Time Menus. These are the perfect complement to your quiet time designed to structure those quiet moments in your day to focus on the good, the true, and the beautiful. Get our first month’s guide here!

Visit A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop for bible studies, planners, and other resources.

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How Long should a Rule of Life be?

So far in this series, I have repeatedly stressed the importance of limiting your doctrines, virtues, and principles to a smaller number so that you remember what you wrote. You want to be able to memorize these things to apply them.

A Rule of Life could potentially be a little longer because we are dealing with habits and behaviors. Lots of principles could be applied to our lives through multiple habits as you can see from my example. I would recommend keeping the number between 20-30 habits and practices. Definitely, no more than 50. But, there is more wiggle room for your Rule than the other elements we’ve discussed.

How to start keeping your Rule of Life?

Like any diet, exercise regime, or New Year’s Resolution, even the best Rule of Life can easily become a forgotten thing, covered in cobwebs in the recesses of your mind. To actually start keeping a rule of life, you need to remember the way I phrased that. You ‘keep a rule,’ not do a rule. To keep something means to maintain hold of it, to hold it close even. You can imagine a picture of a little child who is holding their toy in their clenched fist, saying, “Mine.” Or perhaps a memory chest full of treasured belongings. When you choose to keep something, you are placing a stake in the ground that this is the way that you want to be ‘come hell or high water’ so to speak. After you have done all this work creating a rule of life, you want to set up habits to help you keep that rule.

Here are some ideas to help you keep your rule of life:

Create a document – either typed or handwritten – to refer back to.
Post this document in the common areas of your house to help you stay on track.
Memorize your rule to add to the ‘sticking power.’
Focus on just one habit at a time. You may find that some are some habits of your rule you’ve done for years. Celebrate that strong foundation! Some may be new habits, which will require some work. Your Rule is not a fad diet. This is a lifetime’s work. A principle in classical education is Festina Lente, which means “Make Haste Slowly.” You want to have a sense of urgency in your life, but you don’t need to feel like you must rush through what you are doing. Master one habit at a time before adding a new one.
Keep a habit tracker. As you focus on one habit at a time, keep a habit tracker to help you note your progress. This will help you to feel more accomplished and may motivate you to keep going when the messiness of life happens.
Include your family and friends in on your Rule of Life. Yes, their own personal rules may be unique, but you’ll find that it is much easier to stick to a rule in community rather than try to go at it alone. And truly? Isn’t the Church full of people who are trying to do this? Yes, they may not use this terminology, or even really know or try to intentionally create this as a method. But, most Christians are trying to create habits that will help them live for Christ more fully. Include them in your journey.
Teach someone about it. This last step will depend on your situation, but it can be beneficial for everyone to try. You always understand content and concepts better when you teach them. So, if you really want to increase the sticking power of your rule, teach someone about it. It could be your kids (a great opportunity for family discipleship), your small group (an opportunity of Christian fellowship), or on social media or YouTube.

Benefits of Creating a Rule of Life

Ever since James Clear published Atomic Habits, creating good habits has become a central talking point in people’s lives. We know that good habits matter, and most people are looking for how to create habits that will help you change your life and meet your goals. At the same time, people know that habits are tricky to consistently do. They’re difficult to start. We often just don’t feel like it.

When we decide we are going to be creating a rule of life, we are choosing to be intentional about the habits we create. And, we are choosing to create habits that are built on a Godly way of life. These habits are biblical – and we know they are biblical not just because they are the latest fad we see on social media or something your friend is trying to do because we watched a video on TikTok. We know they are biblical because we’ve done the work of establishing a way of life that is based on the Bible from start to finish.

When we are creating Rule of Life, we are choosing how we spend our time. When something comes up, but our family rule is to have dinner at the table every night, we can say no to that conflict with purpose and ease. When we want to press snooze and skip Church on Sunday, we say no because we’ve already established that Church is a habit that we will not break. When someone asks for you to lead a bible study or work in a ministry and you are a little scared and anxious about doing it, you say yes I will because you know that the church only functions if people are willing to step in and serve.

Your Rule of Life becomes a backbone – that trellis -that guides your life and trains you up in Godliness. Through your rule, you are becoming more like Christ.

If you would like to walk through the process of creating your Rule of Life, get our workbook on the shop. You can also get a bundle of all of the workbooks we mentioned in this series in the shop. Don’t forget to check out our newest resource: Building Our Foundation. This walks you through 10 core doctrines of the Christian faith. By the end, you will be able to articulate your beliefs with confidence.

Until next week, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.

Visit A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop for bible studies, planners, and other resources.

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