Don’t ‘should’ on me
Mar 14th, 2008 by spaceagesage
Time for me to move beyond “shoulds.” The problem with “shoulding on” myself or others is the amount of negatives that come with it.
It might sound good to say, “I should clean up the house, get a job, start volunteering more, save the world,” but underneath those shoulds are the idea that if I don’t get those things done or at least put out effort, then I am a bad person.
If I say “You should…” then I am judging someone else as a bad — or at least a less than perfect — person.
Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life, puts it this way: “Every time we use ‘should,’ we are, in effect, saying ‘wrong.’ Either we are wrong or we were wrong or we are going to be wrong. I don’t think we need more wrongs in our life.”
She adds that she would remove the word from our vocabulary and replace it with the word “could,” because “could” implies choice and does not come wrapped with negativity. She advocates taking our list of “I should …” and replace it with these words, “If I really wanted to, I could … get the house clean, get a job, start volunteering more, save the world.”
“If I really wanted to, I could …” — there is a lot more positive power in those words and a lot more personal responsibility. As Hay notes, this way of structuring the desire to move forward puts a whole new light on the subject.
She says she then asks people gently, “Why haven’t you?”
And it is in answering this question, that the real areas of needed change arise. Hay says people often answer, “I don’t want to,” or “I am afraid,” or “I don’t know how,” or “Because I am not good enough.” In her book, she writes, “We often find (people) have been berating themselves for years for something they never wanted to do in the first place. Or they have been criticizing themselves for not doing something when it was never their idea to begin with. Often it was just something that someone else said they ‘should’ do.”
Time to say goodbye to should, and say instead:
“If I really wanted to, I could …”
—
How about the following: (tongue in cheek) 🙂
I NEED to clean my apartment before I trip over stuff
I NEED to wash my work clothes so they will allow me in the building at work tomorrow
a good example of “should” is taking responsibilty for our debts instead of blowing the money.
I COULD go to the bars and the gambling joints but I SHOULD pay my bills because I really and truly do owe the money and I do want to do the responsible thing and pay my bills and the consequences are a good credit rating which benefits me.
Thanks, Deb, for this comment as it has stirred me to write my next post — I be workin’ on it soon…
[…] 14, 2008 by spaceagesage In my last post, I wanted to put “should” out of my vocabulary. Unfortunately, the word itself is just […]