A New Way to Live: An Interview with Dr. B

Dr. Bustamante, I've been reading your blog and I have to be honest with you. Some of these titles are alarming. "The Night I Told My Kids to Do Whatever They Want." "Spoil the Tantrum." You're a licensed psychologist. What is going on?

I get that reaction a lot. Keep reading.

I did keep reading. That's why I'm here. Let's start at the beginning. You talk about something called the 4 LAWS. What are they?

They're not rules I invented. I didn't sit down one day and decide these would be a good idea. They're natural laws — the way gravity is a natural law. You don't argue with gravity. You don't negotiate with it. It just is.

The 4 LAWS govern trust. Inside yourself and with other people. They determine the nature and quality of every connection you have. They determine how long a relationship lasts before it breaks. They protect four fundamental needs that every human being is wired to require — safety, possession, belonging, and self-determination.

Safety, possession, belonging, self-determination. Those sound like basic human rights.

They are. And when any one of them gets violated — when you don't feel safe, when what's yours gets taken, when you feel like you don't belong, when your right to make your own choices gets crushed — trust breaks. Every time. Without exception. That's not my opinion. That's how the operating system works.

You said they're natural laws. What makes them different from the rules most families and institutions already have?

Here's the difference. Most rules are vertical. They come down from the top. The boss decides. The parent decides. The teacher decides. Obey or suffer the consequences.

The 4 LAWS are horizontal.

What does that mean practically?

It means they apply to everyone in the room equally. The parent and the child. The boss and the employee. The warden and the prisoner. Same four laws. Same four rights. Nobody above them, nobody below them.

But hierarchy still exists. A boss is still a boss.

Of course. I'm not dissolving authority. A parent still leads the home. What I'm saying is — enforce these laws, honor them in the people around you, and something happens that no vertical system can produce. The heart opens. Trust flows. People begin to work together naturally. Not because they have to. Because they want to.

That sounds idealistic.

Does it? Think about the last time someone genuinely protected your safety. Respected what was yours. Made you feel like you belonged. Let you make your own choice without punishing you for it. How did you feel about that person?

...Point taken.

That's not idealism. That's the operating system running correctly.

So why don't more people live this way?

Because we grew up inside a very different culture. Every family has rules — most of them unspoken, none of them voted on. And the oldest human culture on earth says one thing: obey the alpha. The strongest, the most capable, the best hunter runs things. Everyone else falls in line. We absorb that the way we drink water. We don't decide to. It just becomes us.

And you think that's a problem.

I think it's a problem when the alpha has twisted belief systems and nobody has the standing to say so. When "just do what I say" is the whole philosophy. When "because I said so" is the explanation. When the boss is wrong and everyone has to swallow it — because there's no check on right and wrong. Just rank. Just power.

That describes a lot of workplaces. A lot of families.

A lot of everything. And people survive it. But they don't thrive in it. They comply. They perform. They wait for it to be over.

So what do you do? You can't change the whole system.

You become the culture. And it starts smaller than people think.

It starts in your home. In your closest relationships. You begin with talent — you become a talent scout. You watch for the fire in the people around you. You name it out loud. You feed it with attention and encouragement. That's the Law of Talent coming to life.

And something happens. They start to show you what they've created. They make themselves vulnerable — they bring you the current state of their pearl, still rough, still unfinished. That's trust. Real trust. Not performed trust. Not compliance. The real thing.

Then you run the Law of Respect like a filter. You give your full attention to whoever approaches with calm and dignity. Arguments, negative attitudes, contempt — they get nothing from you. Not punishment. Just nothing. Attention gives life. You control where it flows. People feel that. They gravitate toward your form of attention because it's different from anything they've experienced.

You activate the Law of Responsibility — you contribute, you solve problems, you prevent losses before they happen. When you make a mistake you make it right. When something breaks you fix it. You become someone people want in the room.

And you stop violations. Quietly, firmly, without drama. Nobody's rights get trampled in your presence. Not yours. Not anyone else's.

People watch that. They feel it. They imitate it. They adopt it. And the culture grows — the way elements grow in a petri dish in a biological experiment. You don't force it. You just introduced the right conditions. And life does what life does.

Not everyone responds. Some people have a hard heart — they persist, they violate, they take. With those, you enforce your limits quietly and look for the door. The Law of Talent points the way out. Your freedom is in your fire.

And the alpha — the boss, the rigid authority — what happens to them?

They change. Not because you confronted them. Not because you won an argument. Because the 4 LAWS are wired into the operating system of every human being. Even the most rigid, top-down authority figure carries those four needs inside them. When they encounter someone living the 4 LAWS consistently — someone who protects safety, respects possession, creates belonging, honors self-determination — something in them recognizes it. Deep inside. And the relationship begins to transform.

Last question. You said these laws determine how long a relationship lasts before it breaks. Are you saying most relationships are already broken?

I'm saying most relationships are running on borrowed time — because they're built on compliance instead of trust. And compliance is fragile. The moment the pressure is gone, the moment the authority loosens, the moment someone gets a choice — they leave. Or they stay and they're hollow.

Trust is different. Trust built on the 4 LAWS doesn't need enforcement to hold. It holds because both people chose it.

That's a different way to live.

It's not even new. Every ancient culture that survived long enough to matter — every tribe, every village, every family line that held together across generations — was built on some version of these four laws. Safety inside the group. What's yours is yours. You belong here. You have a voice. When those four things were honored, the culture held. When they got violated — by a corrupt chief, a broken family, a cruel institution — the culture collapsed from the inside.

We didn't invent distrust. We inherited it. And we can choose something different.

Explore the 4 LAWS framework at 4lawsacademy.com/learn. Ready to go deeper? Start with The Chain That Changes Everything.

Eduardo M. Bustamante, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist (MA PSY3644) with 35+ years of experience specializing in disruptive disorders, ADHD, and oppositional defiant disorder. He is the creator of the 4 LAWS of Trust and Talent and founder of 4 LAWS Academy. Learn more at 4lawsacademy.com.