My brother won’t eat peaches. When he was about five years old he was given a slice and found the skin difficult to chew. Ever since then he has rejected them as being “horrible”.

My friend Estelle won’t borrow books from the library. When she was 11 she moved house, one of her library books got packed and she ended up with a bill for £5, which was a lot of money then. Now she worries about getting caught out again, so libraries are off limits.

My colleague Alain will never date a redhead – something about being badly hurt when he was a teenager.

You can see how, from just one experience, these people have devised a global rule that applies to the rest of their lives. It’s good to learn and apply rules that are helpful, like not touching a fire or walking carefully on ice. But in fact what these people have have done is restrict their choices in life, and they are living in their own history. The rules they are applying are not really valuable any more.

What is going on in your life that you made a rule about a long time ago? Isn’t it time to revisit that, try it out again and see what happens? Try living with today instead of living in your own history.