Letting Go Of Shoulds
Living life according to your own internal wisdom means sometimes deviating from the rules.
These past two week have been tough on me emotionally. My feelings were triggered by all sorts of (in the grand scheme of life) minor things. Going to the dentist. Tax season. Social interactions that poked at old wounds. I don’t consider myself a particularly anxious person, but I couldn’t ignore my spiraling thoughts. I pulled out all the self-helpy stops to help me ground: deep breathing, meditation, yoga, going for long walks. Yes, I will alway be better off with these tools than without. But in the end what really turned the tide for me was going out and getting a fat cup of frozen yogurt with my cousins mid-week, unabashedly soaking up gossip, watching Whiplash (because I have had a huge crush on Miles Teller even pre-Top Gun abs), and mindlessly scrolling down Youtube shorts (which I think is just seven months old recycled TikTok content) until I was too tired to keep my eyes open and finally fell asleep.
I don’t know about you, but historically I have found comfort in control. Checklists, workout plans, and rules in general soothe something in my brain. But this is sometimes at odds with my desire to be open. To have wonder. To be the kind of person who can simply go with her gut. It’s taken me awhile to learn this, but living life according to your own internal wisdom means sometimes deviating from the rules. It’s knowing when you’re numbing out versus giving yourself some relief from unproductive thoughts so you can truly rest. It’s discernment.
There are obviously real consequences to sugar and screens and toxic friendships and bad habits and suspicious trends, but at what point will my infatuation with perfection turn counterproductive? Something I’ve been asking myself: how much of my suffering is not the thing/activity/reaction itself but the guilt I impose on myself afterwards? Decades ago the psychoanalyst Karen Horney termed this kind of self-berating “the tyranny of shoulds.”
Releasing the grip “shoulds” have on us, I’ve found, doesn’t have to look like big radical overhauls in career and relationships. Much of the weight I carry around all day can be lifted with a quick mental reframe or a small action. In that spirit, I tried to make note of some small anti-should moments (loosely defined) from this week:
Book Drop Off. I had a stack of acclaimed books from accomplished people that I felt I should read in order to be considered well read. But months passed and I could not muster up the interest to read them. They sat languishing on my shelf. This afternoon, I dropped them off at the Free Little Library a couple blocks away. No longer can they stare down at me from the shelf and provoke guilt for not having read them. I trust that the right books find the right people at the right time, and I have found treasures in those free little libraries, so it felt great to leave them there for the next person.
Be Careful vs. Be Aware. I heard recently a woman say how she wishes that instead of telling her children to “be careful” she would have said “be aware.” It made so much immediate sense to me. I was definitely told to be careful a lot as a kid because that’s what my parents thought I needed to be safe. But “be careful” implies a constant threat, a need to be vigilant and fearful. “Be aware” by contrast makes room for curiosity and exploration without compromising a parent’s instinct and responsibility to protect their child by teaching them the reality of cause and effect. Anyway, rewiring myself for “be aware” I think will be the kind of foundational shift that naturally neutralizes a lot of the existing “shoulds” in my life.
Tiny To Go. Okay, this last one is silly, but last night my partner and I went out to dinner at this Mediterranean restaurant and got what might be the best buttered bread I have ever tasted in my life. It was so good we ordered it twice. The second order came at the end so we only finished three quarters of it before we were full. I felt I should just eat the rest of the bread because it seemed a little ridiculous to take such a small piece home. But we got it to go anyway and let me tell you. Great decision. I heated it up in the air fryer just now and it was as good as when it was first put on the table. If I had given into that little feeling of should I would have deprived myself of a glorious snack.
What’s your relationship to shoulds? Are there any little ought tos you could let go of this week?
Until next time,
Martha ♡︎