I try to be honest with myself, and realize that in most situations MA will only help to get away. The main goal of a discipline is to not fight and walk away if you can. Once in a while when I look at myself in the mirror, I have slight recurring thoughts of me being a bad ass, but then I remember all the times I got KOed in Muay Thai gym and how I'm still the silly, skrawny kid that started Kung Fu during 6th grade.
As for rules of MA, I say that the only rules worth following are the ones you believe in. I mean the things I listen to a suppose to be the "correct" way of striking and planting/shifting your stance. Those can be considered rules or not, my teacher always was pretty loose about these things. He felt that all the serious students would progress faster because they would be interested in what he has to say. All the people that take MA as a hobby would eventually stop showing up and dropout.
"Don't Focus on the Fingers or You will miss all the Heavenly Glory!"
Morbicid-"Maybe some moves are made just so that, if u somehow manage to pull them off in a fight, u get some serious bragging rights.
Many famous fighters have done this (roy jones jr, chuck norris, Morbicid, etc)"