(#40 ISW) How to Stop Shoulding All Over Yourself (No Toilet Paper Required)
Should I Stay or Should I Go – The Clash
The Do Selfish Well Newsletter’s Introspection Song of the Week (ISW) series is meant to aid your self-exploration by uniquely tying songs with thought-provoking topics for you to think about yourself in new ways, and sometimes, to show you that you’re not alone. Check out the main articles for more in-depth discussions on select topics related to the Newsletter’s underlying philosophy.
Every day, people are shoulding all over themselves. On the sidewalk, in the grass, at work, at school, on the train. In. the. grocery store. It’s out of hand, gross to watch.
You tell yourself you should do this but shouldn’t say that. You should practice for 10 minutes a day, and you tell your friend they should too. You want to go here but really you should go there. You should have had the healthy option for lunch.
Everybody shoulds. Some more often than others. Some shoulds are small, some big, some messy, some clean. It’s natural. Excessive shoulding, however, is not. It means something is off. You feel depleted and knotted up inside because of it.
Thankfully, there is medicine to help, but it’s not Imodium®. The culprit behind excessive shoulding is not a virus—it’s a brain in distress. Specifically, excessive shoulding is a symptom of insecurity.
The medicine you need for that is a dose of self-acceptance and another of self-love.
The Glitchy Navigation System
When you’re insecure, you’re untethered from yourself—like a boat that’s lost its connection to the dock with no anchor and a broken navigation system. You drift around in whatever direction the current takes you, uncertain of where you'll end up or if you'll find a safe harbor.
Your brain hates this uncertainty. It doesn’t know how to help you when you're drifting around freely. It sends you anxiety, restlessness, and that uncomfortable feeling that you're somehow doing life wrong.
So you reach for whatever can get your navigation system working again to calm those feelings. Like so many others, what you find that seems to work comes in the form of rigid rules about how you "should” live your life—rules you've picked up from society, religion, your parents, social media, or whoever seems to have their life figured out.
These rigid rules give your brain structure that is otherwise lacking from your insecurity. With that structure, your brain knows how to help—guide you towards the rules—and that calms it.
With the rules in place, your navigation system is working, though still glitchy. Sometimes it guides you in the wrong direction, and other times you want to go right, but it’ll only take you left. You don’t think it’s a big deal. You’re not even sure when it’s wrong.
When you abide by the rules—following the glitchy navigation system—you can feel like you’re enough. Like you’re secure. You “should” follow where it tells you to go. Any other direction is unknown and scary.
When you don’t follow the rules, or when you think about breaking them? Your brain creates uncomfortable inner conflict until you return to the rules. Icons on the control panel start flashing until you get back on the glitchy navigation system’s route.
The navigation system does indeed guide you to places despite the glitches. You might even end up at an island where people desire to go. That makes you confident in the rules. You “should” follow them.
The reality of having a glitchy navigation system, however, is that you’re going to keep trying to eliminate the glitches. You’re going to change the rules on which it is functioning since they were never really yours to begin with.
They were a collection of what you believed to be ideal according to sources outside of you. As the information you’re exposed to changes, so does the ideal, and thus so do the rules.
In other words, at the end of the day, you’re still insecure with the glitchy navigation system despite the false sense of security that abiding by how you “should” live sometimes brings.
You’re still out at sea, vulnerable to the current, without a fully functioning navigation system to guide you where you want to go or to get you back to the dock. To get you back to yourself.
I’ve been there.
When I Started Questioning the Glitches
When I was at my most insecure, I was frequently shoulding all over myself. I didn’t think much of it though. It was just me trying to be my best—what I should do—or trying to get better for the future—what I should’ve done. They say we should always be improving, right?
But it wasn’t about being my best or improving. Every time I thought I should do something, I was referring to the rigid rules I believed I needed to follow to be good enough at work, likeable enough to be friends with, and worthy enough to be loved. Whenever I didn’t do what I thought I should do, it stuck with me as a reminder, distorting my experiences as proof that I wasn’t good enough, likeable enough, or worthy enough.
The worst though were the “should’ves”. I should have done this. I shouldn’t have said that. I should’ve gone. Before the shoulding, whatever it was simply had happened. After the shoulding, I had retroactively declared that, in fact, I wasn’t enough at that point in time.
I felt all that self-judgmental tension daily. Countless massage therapists, physical therapists, and others commented on how tightly wound my body was (and still is).
I know I’m not the only one.
What I failed to recognize about the excessive shoulding was that I was unable to sail toward what I actually wanted. I put so much pressure on myself to maintain someone else's version of who I should be that my own voice couldn’t make a sound.
It wasn’t until I was fed up with how I felt all the time that I started questioning where my glitchy navigation system was taking me. Once the questioning was underway, I began noticing myself trying to speak. That’s when the solutions for repairing my navigation system finally began to be heard.
Let’s now look at some of those repair solutions so you can start implementing them too.
How to Repair Your Navigation System
Becoming Aware and Reframing Your Shoulds
Are you aware of all the times you should during the day, or is every instance automatically flushed away? Awareness is always the first step. Start by recognizing how often “should” is included in what you say or think.
Once you’re more aware of when you’re shoulding, notice how often you get excited about what you should do. I bet it’s rare or never. It’s likely much more often that you feel you don’t want to do what you should do, which isn’t surprising because how often do you want to do an obligation?
The pull in opposite directions between what you should do and what you would rather do creates inner conflict. You might feel it as tension in your body like I did.
Let that conflict spark your curiosity. Ask yourself why you’d choose to do what you should do if it feels like an obligation you don’t want to do. Try reframing what you should do and what you would rather do like this:
“I want to __ because __, but I want to __ more because __.”
For example, saying that you should exercise today might become one of the following:
I want to exercise today because I want to be fit and healthy, but I want to take a day off more because my body feels tired and the main reason I would exercise would be to meet a weekly quota that I believe I have to hit to be fit and healthy.
I want to skip exercising today because I have so much to do, but I want to exercise before getting started more because I know I’ll feel better afterward, and I know consistent exercise is the reason I’ll have enough energy on the days I have so much to do.
In another example, thinking that you should cook dinner tonight might become one of the following:
I want to go out to dinner with friends tonight, but I want to cook dinner more because I can’t tomorrow and I want the leftovers to eat other days this week which I wouldn’t have if I ate out tonight.
I want to cook dinner tonight, but I want to go out to dinner with friends more because I haven’t seen them in a while and the meat will still be good to cook tomorrow.
If you can’t come up with a reason that feels authentic for why you want to do what you feel you should, then that’s an indication that what you feel you should do is based on a rule set by someone else. In those instances, start intentionally breaking the rule.
What I mean by that is purposefully don’t do what you feel you should. Rather than simply not do it, which has likely brought up self-criticism in the past, make a point of not doing it. Say to yourself, “I’m not going to __ because __.”
Keep in mind that you’ll likely still feel conflicted when you start breaking rules. You won’t suddenly feel free like someone just took handcuffs off you. You’ll still be repairing your navigation system, and that takes time.
Also, I’m not saying that finding a reason for why you want to exercise when you feel you should is going to make you buzz with excitement at the thought of exercising. In some instances, for some activities, it might, but that’s not the aim of this reframing.
Operating From Self-Respect
The reason I’ve found this reframing to be so helpful is that when you challenge yourself to understand why you want to or don’t want to do something based on your own values, choosing whether to do it then becomes about self-respect. Not about following rules.
When you operate from self-respect, your navigation system is repaired. You're no longer reacting to glitches telling you what you think you're supposed to do. You're in the driver's seat, making conscious choices based on what matters to you.
There's something deeply empowering about knowing you could do something—and then deciding whether you actually want to based on your own reasons. This shift puts you back in control of your life in a way that following rules never can. Rules are rigid and don't account for your unique circumstances, values, or where you are in your growth.
Instead of feeling pushed around by external pressures or paralyzed by uncertainty, you become the captain of your own decisions. You can navigate any situation because you understand not just what you're doing, but why you're choosing to do it, which makes all the difference in how those choices feel.
It's not lost on me, however, that making decisions based on self-respect might feel much easier said than done. If that's the case for you, then continue growing your self-acceptance and self-love—that's where self-respect comes from.
The work of building that foundation is what I've written about extensively in my articles on self-acceptance and self-love. If you haven't read them, or want a refresher, they'll give you the deeper dive into how to get there.
Now, if after reading this article you find yourself thinking that you shouldn’t say should so much, then, well, you’re a lost cause. Just keep shoulding all over yourself. There’s nothing you can do.
I’m kidding, of course. I’ve done that so many times and it’s been hilarious every single time, once I realized it. Habits can eventually be changed, but not overnight.
Next time you should all over yourself, wash it off with self-acceptance in a shower of self-love, and then grab self-respect to dry you off. You’ll feel much better when making a decision.
Take care of yourself,
Alex
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