Why ‘Should’ Makes Me Shudder
Let go of the ‘shoulds’, you will feel much better for it.
Everyone has words that they love and others that they can’t stand to hear. If you want to see that in action, try shouting the word ‘moist’ in a room full of people…
My mother used to physically recoil if I exclaimed that something was ‘cool’ (when the word was indeed still cool). Her vitriol, thirty years later, is now directed at ‘lush’. Likewise, I have an irrational dislike for the word ‘anemone’ purely because I cannot for the life of me say it.
There is one word though, that I would like to see sent permanently to the sin bin. That word is ‘should’.
Life is so damn full of these pesky little ‘shoulds’. From what we should be eating and drinking to the exercise we should be getting; the money we should be saving by frequently swapping our utilities to the type of car we should be driving. Should, should, should.
Parenting ‘shoulds’ are the pits
When I became a parent there was a whole new deluge of shoulds insinuating themselves into my life. I should be able to understand this strange little creature’s needs instantly, and meet those needs graciously, whilst keeping a clean and tidy home and also managing to get washed and dressed on a regular basis. I should be able to do all this without the use of pacifiers, bottles or, heaven forbid, rocking said child to sleep. And obviously if my tiny infant is to grow up to be the next Einstein, Van Gogh, Ronaldo or Mozart, I really should be implementing a tight schedule of developmentally challenging activities and (extortionate) classes that will allow them to reach their true potential. If, heaven forbid, I fail on any of these ‘shoulds’, it goes without saying that I am a terrible parent.
Don’t even get me started on the amount of shoulds that start getting flung about left, right and center once the little darlings go to school…
“He should know his eight times table by now.”
“She really should be on the purple reading books.”
“They should be using fronted adverbials in their story writing.”
(I’ll certainly be sharing more about why, after ten years as a teacher, I decided to leave mainstream education and home educate my own children rather than send them to school.)
At home with our ‘Shoulds’
I feel that in the past year the dreaded ‘should’ has become almost as prevalent as the virus that has kept us all at home and changed our day to day lives immeasurably. I’m not talking about the advice and rules that are aimed at keeping ourselves and others safe. Rather it has been the pressure to cope with the huge changes in very particular ways that I have found draining. That pressure has come from the wealth of gurus that have popped up telling us how we should transition to this new way of living, but also, and more disturbingly, from within. Do any of these sound familiar?
“Working from home? You should still stick to your old routine; get up at the same time, shower, do your hair and make up as usual and get dressed for the office.”
“Got a garden? You really should use this time at home to start an organic vegetable garden. Oh, and then of course you should harvest the produce and create wonderful new recipes with it.”
“You should be exercising daily and ensure that everyone else in your household does too. Why not make the most of your garden by walking a marathon around its perimeter?”
“You should support local businesses such as restaurants offering takeaways, but you should also cook healthy family meals from scratch, preferable with your hoe grown organic veg.”
“You should make time for self care, whilst also maintaining a visible profile in the business whilst working from home, and also making sure that your children are not falling behind with their virtual learning tasks.”
Now you might be thinking that this all seems pretty reasonable; that these are all positive things to aim for. I won’t argue with you there. However, there is one aspect of these examples that makes me wince and that is the word ‘should’. Because it is unhealthy. It sets us up to fail and that failure can have a big negative impact on our mental health.
I hear self-imposed shoulds creeping into my friends’ conversations frequently at the moment… From childcare and homeschooling, to housework, exercise regimes and taking up new hobbies. Nearly every conversation includes a few “I really should be…” statements, often accompanied by a sigh and a sense of having let themselves down. And this is why I hate that word, it breeds disppointment.
So what do we do about it?
I am a big fan of projects and goals. I am a super-planner so I have long mental lists of things that I want to do. And that is the crux of the matter, they are things I want to do, not what I should do. I want to take my business to the next level; I want to push myself to make better and better photos; I want to support my kids to reach their potentials and become happy and healthy adults.
If your should is actually a want, take ownership of it! Don’t let your brain think in shoulds. No more “I should really phone my sister today”, or “I should change all the bed sheets and have a hoover around.” Make a decision about what needs to be done and then turn it into a want.
By using ‘should’ we become an unwilling participant, we are pushing water up a hill, we are not in control.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that there are things we need to do in our daily lives that are unpleasant, or tedious or difficult. I find the non-stop feeding requirements of my family all three of those. And making an evening meal that everyone will eat is something that easily slips into ‘should’ in my brain.
“I really should plan my meals ahead.”
“I should make more meals from scratch.”
“I should stop writing and go and start dinner.”
If I can just tweak my internal dialogue, suddenly I am the one holding the reins. When I think “I want to feel less rushed at dinner time so I am going to plan our meals a bit better” I feel in control; I am more likely to actually do it. Making active choices about the little things can really help us feel like we are masters of our own destiny. So even when things don’t go to plan, if we own it, we come out feeling like we have made a choice, not failed.
“I want to make a home made dinner from scratch but I also want to finish reading these emails. Today I choose the emails. And tomorrow, well, let’s see… Either way I am not being dictated to by nasty little ‘shoulds’, and I feel so much better for it.”
Even the worst tasks can be slightly more tolerable by changing how we think about them. “I need to clean the toilet and I really want to get it done today” is so much better for us than “ I really should clean that toilet at some point”.
So next time you get weighed down by all the things you should be doing, just try to reframe them as wants, I promise your well-being and self-worth will thank you.
