The dreaded 'should'
Contents:
1. Should
2. How to put this into practice
3. I'd love to hear from you
1. 'Should'
Internal pressures are all of the ways that we try and force ourselves.
In terms of the boat analogy from the last few emails (it's still working, right?): if you’re out on the ocean, and you’re a big container ship, and you can handle the waves and the winds and the distance and the load on your back, then you don’t need to spend much time questioning whether you belong where you are. Because you are made for this environment.
The rest of us, pleasure boats, speed boats, boats without engines, inflatable dinghies and such, we’re the ones who spend a lot of time trying to push ourselves into being container ships.
All of the ways that we try to push ourselves to be container ships?
In our course, Building Resilience, Rosalee and I have a name for them:
Shoulds.
We spend a lot of time working on ‘Shoulds’, in our course, because the ways that we ‘should’ ourselves are vast and varied. And, because once you learn to catch your ‘should’s and undo them, it becomes a whole lot easier to learn about what you truly want and need. To use the boat analogy, once you stop trying to become a container ship (shoulding yourself), then you can truly become the beautiful sailboat that you are. What happens then, is that you can start moving on to *your* path, onto *your* perfect waters, moving at *your* pace.
This is a key to resilience! Living the way that is right for YOU.
This isn’t about ignoring responsibilities, or giving up your work. It’s not about walking away from the important things in your life. It’s a more subtle, internal thing than that: the real shift to resilience is in stopping all the ways that you push against yourself. Pushing against yourself with ‘should’s takes so much energy, and blocks your natural ability to generate energy and restore yourself, because you’re looking for the energy in the wrong places (like, trying to chug diesel fuel because that’s what container ships use, when what you really need is wind and to let your sails out <— I’m really milking this boat analogy for all its worth).
Spotting shoulds in the wild.
Sometimes ‘should’s are simple, and easy to spot. Like: “I should be working” when it’s 6pm and you’re in the middle of making dinner, but aren’t 100% satisfied with how much you got done that day. “I should clean the house” when you know down to your bones that its your day off and you want to lie in bed and watch movies. “I should get started on that report” when you want to be out walking.
It might take some time to start catching them, but once you do, they are pretty obvious.
Sometimes, though, ‘should’s are complicated. Have you ever been in this situation:
You want to do something. Let’s say it’s a nice walk around the block. You want to do it because it’s good for you, and you enjoy walking, and you’re trying to make it a habit.
You’re also tired and want to rest.
Instead of walking, or resting, you spend the day neither walking nor resting, in an in-between state where you want to get it together to do the thing you want to do, but feel as though you’re pushing against yourself. Maybe you scroll on social media, or start a few different things that you don’t feel present for, because you are thinking about how you should be walking. Eventually, you have to do something else like make dinner, and feel as though the entire day has been wasted because you didn’t get it together to do the thing you wanted to do.
The walking that you actually want to do? That’s a ‘should’.
“But how can it be a ‘should’ when I want to do it?!’
It is a ‘should’ because while you want to do it, it isn’t the thing that you want to be doing right in that moment. There is a more pressing want, that is closer to the surface than the walk.
These ‘should’s are complicated, subtle and insistent. They are often wrapped in the pretty packaging of things that we genuinely want to be doing, so we don’t even notice that they are ‘should’s to begin with.
The solution in a moment like this, is to see which thing is actually on the surface: tiredness.
If you give the tiredness what it needs (maybe a rest, maybe a nap, maybe a meditation, maybe some coffee), then it will resolve itself, and will no longer be holding the desire to walk back.
See what I’m getting at? When we try to reach below the surface thing, to force what’s underneath, we usually spend hours battling ourselves: two conflicting wants pushing against each other. Sometimes we can summon some extra energy and force through. Often we just spend hours feeling like we’re procrastinating.
(Procrastinating, by the way, is usually a result of Shoulding).
Honesty.
The key with learning about our own shoulds is honesty, and this is why it can be so hard to find them. Because of ALL the other stuff I’ve been talking about for weeks, we have these ideas of how we want ourselves to be in our heads. When the truth of what we want is in conflict with that, then our very clever brains refuse to see or acknowledge it.
You’ve seen this in other people, right? Like, when someone says that they really want something, but you can feel that they’re just saying it because they want to be that kind of person, not because they actually are that person.
Easy to see in others.
Harder in ourselves, because it means confronting the fact that we are not always the people we want ourselves to be.
It gets easier with time.
And what emerges over time is something better than an ideal version of us, because its true, and honest, and real, and effortless. What emerges is the ability to trust our true wants, because we have learned through experience how good it feels to simply be who we are.
-Imagine feeling free of the mental pressure to be more, or different to how you are.
-Imagine being able to hear your body clearly enough that you know which wants are on the surface, so that you no longer spend hours battling yourself.
That’s what happens when you learn to let go of ‘should’!
As I mentioned above, it’s an internal shift, but it’s a shift that makes such a dramatic difference in your energy levels, and self-trust.
2. How to put this into practice:
Start paying attention to how it feels when you are ‘should’ing yourself. You’ll notice a feeling of frustration, or internal tension, that comes from pushing against yourself. You might be able to tell it’s happening when you find yourself procrastinating!
When you find it, ask yourself these questions:
1. What am I ‘should’ing myself to do?
2. What is the actual desire underneath it?
3. I’d love to hear from you:
-Do you ‘should’ yourself often?
-Do you know how it feels when you do?
-Have you had any times or experiences in your life when you felt free from the pressure of your ‘should’s?
Did you enjoy this email? Did the subject matter resonate with you? If you’re interested in exploring your ‘should’s more deeply, then you’ll *love* Rosalee and my course, Building Resilience— we have an extensive section and guided meditations to help release all your ‘should’s. Stay tuned, because Building Resilience opens tomorrow!