Do you find yourself having a very rigid attitude towards your own life, not allowing yourself to have what you truly need and want because you think there is something else, more important, that you SHOULD be doing or having?
There is almost nothing more destructive, more limiting to the freedom of self expression than the living according to shoulds.
What do I mean and what does that look like?
We all know the narrative in our heads that goes like this "I should be working now, instead I'm doing this" or "I should feel X instead of Y", "I should do Z instead of Y" etc.
This "should" life philosophy is usually accompanied by a physical sensation of constriction, anxiety, fear or even dread.
If we were to reverse engineer this attitude towards life, it starts in childhood, like every other pattern.
As someone who has been leading their lives by this motto, as a child you probably had pretty strict parenting, with caregivers who allowed little room for enjoyment for the simple sake of enjoyment.
Your parents self worth was interwoven into productivity, duty & the right things to do. When this happens, you learn that what feels right and true for you is not what you should do. However, you should look for other standards, standards outside of your internal guiding system for what is true and right for you to do. You learned you can't do, be, have, feel, think what comes naturally for you because there is something always more important and more valuable than your own personal truth- the truth of others.
What the "should" philosophy teaches us is to disown our personal truths, our feelings, our intrinsic motivations, our desires etc. etc. To distrust our body's wisdom, our intuition and innate intelligence.
As a child looking to belong and be safe in the society you grew up, being subjected to what you "should" do instead of being taught how to listen, process, understand and follow your own truth, you internalized the voice of the parent who chronically corrected you into doing, being and having the things that you should do, be or have.
What this means is that an aspect of your consciousness fragmented in order to police you, correct you and make you conform into the "should" mindset so that you're finally worthy of love. Because at the end of the day, the unspoken need behind doing, having, being or feeling what you "should" is to eventually be good enough to be loved and accepted by your parents & the group you're a part of.
This aspect within you manages and monitors everything you do, keeping you in check by stirring guilt or shame within you whenever you veer off the right course of action. This inevitably makes you feel miserable, resentful and even feeling stuck or trapped.
Yes, there are and will be things and situations in your life that will not feel good to do and yet you will find yourself needing to do them (like taxes, paperwork, dealing with the government institutions etc). This requires you to reframe how you look at these specific things, but these specific situations are not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about here is a way of life, a life style where every day, no matter what, you are guided by what you should be doing.
Basically in short whenever you say I should do something, you say "I choose to do this at the expense of who I truly am and what I truly want".
Whenever you do what you should do and when you behave how you should behave, you betray yourself. Everytime you embody who you "should" be, which is the self that your society/family expects you to be, you take one more step away from your truth.
A person who does what is expected of them (which is what "shoulds" are, external expectations) is not only living inauthentically, they also have no idea who they actually are at the core.
If you live according to shoulds, here's some tips for you:
1. Talk to the part in you that is policing you around the things you should do.
This practice is one I live and I've done myself. Close your eyes and drop into your heart center. Ask for the part in you that manages and controls your life to fit into other people's expectations to come forth and tell you why it feels the need to do so. What is it afraid you might do or might happen if you followed what your heart/your truth guides you to do?
What needs does it have and how can you meet them?
Have a deeper conversation with this aspect, listen to it and the wisdom it has to share.
2. Replace should with choose to in order to empower yourself
We use should when we're afraid of the consequences of doing what is true for ourselves. But we have choice. Just because you don't see a different choice at the level of consciousness you are at, it doesn't mean there is none.
There's a better option for everything that we genuinely hate doing. The universe wants to give us the opportunity to choose better, but it is simply waiting for us to admit to and acknowledge and own to the truth of the fact that we hate doing, being, having or feeling what is expected of us to. Until then we feel trapped and choiceless. You will never be given a choice that you're not ready and open and willing to make.
If you have a window in front of you that you think you should jump in order to get out of a house and you are convinced it is your only choice simply because it's all you see before your eyes, you can't be open to exploring the possibility that in that room there may be a door that you could use as a better and simpler way to get out of that house.
Once you say I'm tired of using this window to leave the house, I want to find a different way, then the Universe will hear you & start rearranging itself to assist you and guide you to finding that door. But it all starts with the decision that you want better for yourself.
So anytime you catch yourself saying I should, replace it with I choose to. Then you'll become more aware of the fact that you are more empowered than you give yourself credit for.
3. Choose to do things differently than how you've always done them.
Once you understand you have a choice in the matter, ask yourself:
Where is my power in this situation?
How can I choose differently in a way that would bring me closer to my truth in this situation?
In the end, I want to leave you with this: shoulds are not a life sentence. Your power lies in knowing that you have the freedom to choose, even if at face value & in the moment you can't yet see what else is available for you.
Much love to you :)
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