Are You Shoulding Yourself?
If you’re curious as to whether your motives and actions are driven by you and your inner wisdom, or by others or some external sense of authority, real or perceived, just stop to count how many times in a day or week you catch yourself saying or thinking “I should” [fill in the blank].
It wasn’t until I became a coach and developed a keener awareness of “should” language in my own thinking and speaking, as well as in the speech of friends and clients, that I realized how insidious this mode of thinking has become in how we live and move in the world.
“Should” thinking comes from our socialized selves and the authorities in our experience. These authorities can include parents, teachers, bosses, religious figures, and culture itself which seeks to impose the should of the moment onto you.
To borrow language from Elle Luna in her delightfully profound book “The Crossroads of Should and Must”, the alternative is “must” thinking. “Must” thinking comes from within. Must thinking derives from our essential self, our deepest inner wisdom. Must thinking comes from nature, not culture.
Can we ignore our shoulds? Some yes, some no. Some shoulds keep the lights on and are part of being a responsible contributor in our communities. But other shoulds are holdovers of habit or collateral outcomes of thought patterns that haven’t been examined in a while. How can we bring forth our unique, individual contribution to this life experience if we spend our time on the shoulds that others and culture have decided are imperative? “I should call Aunt Jo” (even though she criticizes my parenting) or “I should attend this meeting” (even though we rarely accomplish anything) or “I should buy the blue car” (even though I want the red car but worry others will think I’m having a midlife crisis).
So what’s the problem with squelching musts and favoring shoulds?
Dissatisfaction. A sense that something is missing. And after enough time and repetition, a silencing of our unique voice and contribution to the world. In her book “Big Magic”, Elizabeth Gilbert shares the compelling notion that ideas come to us to be expressed; that they are disembodied, energetic life-forms that come to us with the singular goal of being manifest. And if we don’t give them the attention and oxygen and action they need to be realized, they will leave us and go find another soul who will bring them to life. Thus they become, for us anyway, unrealized musts.
Whenever you find yourself saying “I should x”, follow that up with “says who?” Where exactly is that voice coming from? If you’re a to-do-lister, take a look at your current to-do list and see how many items on the lists are shoulds and how many are musts. Leave the non-negotiable (for now) shoulds, and draw a line through the negotiable shoulds. For the musts, star them and schedule them into your calendar to give them the oxygen and action they seek. I used to keep my musts as treats for after I’d done the shoulds until I realized that life was too short and I was becoming woefully boring, to myself most of all.
Ridding ourselves entirely of shoulds might not be possible in the near future, though I think the ability or permission to do so might be the truest definition of wealth. But tipping the scale in favor of the musts is likely to open some doors to a greater sense of freedom, creativity, satisfaction, passion, and presence.