The 'Should' Trap

Does self care seem like just another thing to add to your already long list of to-dos? It doesn't have to be.

Photo courtesy of Thirdman at www.pexels.com

I have a difficult relationship with the word 'should.'

The world seems constantly shout at me what I 'should' do. Get more sleep, drink more water, exercise more, quit multitasking, call my parents, redecorate the house, plan monthly dinners, pay my taxes before they're due, and so on. That's the difficulty with the word 'should' - it's squishy, can expand endlessly and means different things to different people.

What all our should-do lists have two things in common:

1. They are unique to each of us. What my brain - or social media – tells me that I should do differs from my husband believes he ‘should’ do or what you believe you ‘should’ do.

2. They change and are unpredictable. No sooner than I begin meditating 10 minutes every day than I am feeling like I 'should' be meditating longer. Or, my mind 'should' be more still. Or, I 'should' feel more clarity.

And on it goes. A never-ending, ever-changing list of what we should be doing. The list is influenced by our own selves, friends, books, magazines and social media all chock full of advice. Some of that advice is backed up by convincing research and some is pure opinion. But we are told that we should eat less meat, be getting more sleep, have a morning routine, be consuming more olive oil, be breast-feeding, or not be breast-feeding, be running, or not be running.

When we're merely trying to take better care of ourselves, this is a recipe filled with uncertainty, exhaustion, and disillusionment (not to mention the subtle feeling that the purpose of living is continual self improvement). And who are the worst people to give you advice on what you should do? Evangelists for self-care. One of whom, ahem, could be me. Pity the person who tells me that a quick cup of coffee that they’re feeling a little burned out. Give me an opening and I'll tell you what I've read, what I've done, and how fantastic this, or that teacher has been for me.

After one of these monologues, I asked a friend what time she could commit to self care. Say, half an hour a day? I then stared at her with the zeal an 80’s televangelist pleading for people to come forward to ‘give their hearts to Jesus’. “Uhhhh,” said my sleep-deprived friend who is the mother of two young children, with a full-time job who had recently evacuated her family from a war zone. “4 am?” All the self care I was recommending was just piling on to her ’should do’ list.

So how do we learn to create time for self care without it becoming another stick with which we beat ourselves?

Glennon Doyle's book, Untamed, offers some wisdom on this. The first is to acknowledge how much of what we're told we should, or shouldn't, do comes from outside of us, as dictated by society and culture. "Should and shouldn't, right and wrong, good and bad are socially built, artificial, always changing cages...hot cattle prods, barking sheepdogs to keep the majority in the herd," she says.

Our lives come with only one set of instructions: our own. However, most of us have no idea how to use them. Instead, we read other people's instruction manuals or allow others teach us how to live, but as Glennon writes later in Untamed, "I understand that no one else in the world knows what I should do…each life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers." [emphasis mine]

Do you need more sleep? To start, or get out of, a relationship? To spend a week alone walking? To meditate? Pray? Time to be creative? You are the only one who knows the answer. No one else truly ever knows what you should do. Gather opinions if you must. Turn to teachers for ideas. But, your life is your own and your own voice is the one you should listen to. And how will you know it’s your own voice? Because when you ask what you need the answer will feel like relief, or care, rather than another 'should' on the list.

Check in with yourself. Stop for a moment, close your eyes, take a deep breath and ask - what do I need right now? Not, 'what should I do next?' Not, 'what should I be doing?' But, 'what do I need'? I guarantee the answer that comes is the only ‘should’ for you. Trust that.