“Shoulding” Yourself
Today, we’re talking about a thought process we often use as a form of self abuse that I refer to as “shoulding” yourself (yes, it is a real verb!).
In two of my previous blogs we talked about motivation and goals. Motivation being a major driver for what makes us want to engage in behaviors, goals being a tool that keeps us coming back to these behaviors in order to see results, rewards, and progress. Last week we talked about using our own personal antihero as a positive force for change and transformation. The tips I gave in that blog are remarkably useful in helping clarify what your values are and why they are what they are. This week, I want to dive more into this idea of values and ask you a simple but ridiculously complex question: Why?
The narrator inside of our heads may seem as though it is fixed to a singular type of story. It’s the same voice, the same tone, and the same patterns of thinking we have had for as long as we can remember. It sounds like the narrator is always reading out of the same book written by the same author. This narrator is largely driven by our social programming. We have been told a great many things in our lives, particularly when we were young. Between our family, advertisements, pop culture, media, education, and social interactions, we begin to consciously and subconsciously internalize narratives around essentially everything. How we should look, feel, socialize, what we should want, what we should spend our time doing, what we should believe, and what we should think are all programmed into us, and as children we have almost no say in the matter. There’s something important I want to point out about the last sentence: every statement begins with “should”. All of these socially programmed narratives are floating around in our conscious and subconscious mind, and they almost always appear in our heads as sentences beginning with “I should…” or “I shouldn’t…”. I refer to this as “shoulding” yourself (yes, shoulding is actually a real verb!), and I believe this habit is something worth questioning and challenging, especially as it pertains to our own personal values.
The process of questioning these “should' and “shouldn't” statements is relatively simple, but the complexity comes from the fact that everyone is uniquely individual. In conjunction, everyone’s programming was different, meaning it manifests adulthood challenges differently.
In the interest of optimizing our mental energy and space by clearing out some of these maladaptive thoughts and perhaps reframing them into an accretive pattern of thinking, here is the process that I have used time and again on myself and clients with great success:
Notice today how many times you hear in your head statements beginning with “I should…” or “I shouldn’t…”. Pay attention to the subject matter that they are concerned with. Are they concerned with how you feel, look, think, behave, believe, your goals, dreams, or desires? What are these statements telling you to do?
The second part is to ask yourself: Why? Why do I think I should do this or that? Why should I believe, look, feel, think, behave, etc. in these ways? What is the benefit and what is the cost? Why are these my values? Do these internalized values bring my life joy and purpose, or are they detrimental and draining to my energy? Ultimately, we are clarifying our values and determining whether or not these are the values we want to keep as our North star, our guiding light. Values are the bedrock of every behavior in our lives, so my hope is the values you hold are yours by choice, that they are actually what you want, and are truly important to you.
The benefit comes from the choice to compare and contrast these shoulding statements with your values. Do these statements align with your values? Are they telling you to be true to yourself or are they telling you to repress and deny your true self? Do these statements bring you closer to your goals (which we set based on our values!), or are they an attempt to keep you in line with what somebody or something else told you is acceptable? Remember that you don’t have to believe everything you’ve been told.
Through the process of clarifying your values you can begin to reframe the “shoulding” statements as they come up time and again. With a deeper understanding of your values and the decision to choose your values instead of them being arbitrarily forced upon you, you can find a greater sense of autonomy over your thoughts and create a sense of empowerment through your behavior choices, and maybe the reasons you “should” yourself moving forward can become a reminder to act and behave in accordance with your chosen values.
Today, I would like to leave you with quote from the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius:
“From the point of view of the imminence of death, one thing counts, and one alone: to strive always to have the essential rules of life present in one’s mind, and to keep placing oneself in the fundamental disposition of the philosopher, which consists essentially in controlling one’s inner discourse, in doing only that which is of benefit to the human community, and in accepting the events brought to us by the course of the Nature of the All.”
With all my heart and precious time,
Noah
