“Should” is one of the most destructive words to the integration and individuation of humans.
When we leash ourselves to shoulds, we effectively close off to all possibility. Any time our conscious or unconscious functions within the parameters of a should, creativity dies and thus all magic is eliminated.
What is a should? A should is an automatic yes: a dictation that lives in the subconscious. It might look something like “I should smile when someone gives me a compliment” or “I should open the door for people” or “I should be expressing minimal emotion”
Unfortunately, the nature of our neurology is to create efficiency by whatever means necessary. This means that when shoulds are presented to us (by our parents, our religion, our culture, our media) our brain deems them both desirable and necessary. We grab on to shoulds and tend to hold onto them for dear life, clinging to the very basic premise that this should will somehow make life easier… especially for my future self.
And this might true. “I should fix my bed in the morning” might indeed make my future self’s life easier. Or it might haunt me with dread and self-criticism as I fail at this simple task. There are also much more blatantly destructive should’s. “I should be skinnier” or “I should talk less” or “I should marry and have children”
What about the sneakier shoulds? “I should love my mother” or “I should be selfless” or “I should be grateful for what they’ve given me” can also, when left unexamined, create terrible destructive boxes around our true selves.
Ultimately, shoulds carry the possibility to remove us from our own magic and from our own authenticity. Though they can be useful, an unexamined should functions as an alchemical time bomb, ticking down the moments until it wreaks havoc on your unconscious wellness.
So how do we examine our shoulds?
The first step to examining shoulds, as in all shadow work, is cultivating awareness. In order to become aware of our shoulds we have to start asking WHY we do the things we do.
Ask why. Why am I participating in X, Y, or Z routine? Why am I speaking to myself this particular way? Why am I judging someone else for this particular thing?
Notice when the answer includes a “should”: “Because I should be a high achieving person, and this is what high achievers do” “Because I should have finished this task two days ago” “Because they shouldn’t be so selfish”
Once you have cultivated this awareness, there are two directions that provide deep insight into why our unconscious mind has chosen to latch onto these particular shoulds.
The first direction is to add a second layer of why. “I should be a high achieving person because…” and then ask, where does this come from? “Because everyone I admire is a high achieving person” or “because my parents told me so” or “because if I am a low achieving person I will lose all money/success/etcetera”
Whatever your reasons, explore them. This is a great place to practice a Deep Fear Inventory if that is part of your repertoire, phrased something like “I deeply hate and resent NOT DOING THE SHOULD because I have deep fear that…”
Another excellent place to dig deeper into shoulds is to reframe and rephrase them as a benefit. Arguably, we desire everything we do to be benefiting SOMEONE. Preferably ourselves as well as whomever or whatever else. So who is your should benefiting, and is it actually?
Begin by rephrasing your should. Rather than “I should be selfless” try the phrase “It would benefit me/others/the universe for me to be selfless by…” and start listing off those benefits.
Once you have your incredible list of benefits, you can go through each of them as beliefs. You can ask yourself, “Is this really true?”, and through this process begin to eliminate the extraordinary tower of shoulds most of us balance precariously on top of.
May you find yourself free from these shoulds, wild and full of magic to bring to this world.