Many of us think that we ‘should’ do/be/feel a certain way. These tend have been instilled in us as children. They are reinforced by the behaviour of our parents or important people as we grow up. We use these ‘should’s to gauge how we feel about ourselves, which decision to make, how others see us throughout our life, and mostly we do not realise that we are doing this.

Have you felt overwhelmed by the amount of things you need to do and keep putting things off? There are many reasons for doing this. One of the main reasons is that we don’t want to invest in that action. The thing we are putting off isn’t really an action that we think put any value on. Whilst thinking about that action, is it something you think you ‘should’ do or have told that you need to do? We are more likely to do things that we value and see the result as something we want as we have made the choice to complete that task.

Listening to how we speak to and about ourselves, our ‘self talk’, is a good way to find the ‘should’s that we live to.

When you are feeling down, listen to what your self talk is saying. Is it saying ‘I should be happy’, ‘I should be busy’, ‘I should be a better parent/friend’? Many of our negative emotions are due to comparisons of what we are experiences to what we think we ‘should’ be experiencing. Usually, we think we would be feeling much better or be more successful if we were doing what we ‘should’. These thoughts can continue and make us feel worse about ourselves.

Even when we are feeling good, our self talk could be telling us that we ‘should’ be happy because we have done something that we ‘should’ make us feel better. However, there may still be an undercurrent feeling of not quite being good enough.

We can feel resentful about doing what we ‘should’ or we put it off until we really have to do it, which cause stress whilst we are putting it off. It can reinforce the feeling of not being good enough and invalidate the feeling of success.

These ‘should’s can take us away from what we actually want for ourselves as they are based on other people’s expectations and away from what we are actually feeling or doing what we want to do for ourselves.

Changing ‘should’ to ‘could’ can change your feeling about what it is you are thinking about. This allows you to give yourself permission to do that action or to not by giving you a choice. You can give yourself the opportunity to consider alternatives which may or may not work better for you.

Being able to choice a preference in how you act, what you feel and what you do, gives you control. This control can reduce the pressure you have felt from the ‘should’ that you ‘ought’ to have been/felt/done.

Instead of doing something you should, doing something you enjoy doing will improve your feeling of worth and success, allowing you to feel good. This enables you to make more positive choices in the future.