Stop ‘Shoulding’ on Yourself

Do you ever ‘should’ on yourself? For example ‘I should exercise”, ‘I shouldn’t be so hard on myself,” or “I should practice my NLP skills more.”  If yes, you are probably not motivating yourself in the most healthy way and there is a much better way to get yourself to do the things that are meaningful to you.

According to psychologist Aaron Beck, ‘Shoulding’ is considered cognitive distortion; A childish thinking pattern which limits our cognitive development as human beings.

‘Shoulding’ on ourselves is typically driven by the positive intentions of being better, doing things that are more aligned with our values, or the actions would move us forward to achieving our goals but paradoxically it actually limits our health, happiness and productivity.

When we ‘should’ on ourselves we are essentially putting unnecessary and self-imposed pressure on ourselves.  When we don’t do the things we feel we ‘should’ do we become more likely to beat ourselves up and even if we do follow through with the actions we spent the journey burning our vitality with unnecessary pressure.

So what is the solution?  To convert your ‘shoulds’ into preferences or wants.  

Instead of “I should” convert it to “I’d like to:”, “I’d prefer to”, or “It would be nice if I did”.

For example:

• “I should get to bed earlier” becomes ‘I’d prefer to get to bed earlier”
• “I shouldn’t be giving advice to my clients” becomes “I prefer not to give advice to my clients”
• “I should exercise today” becomes “I want to go out to exercise today.”
• “I should be practicing NLP more often” becomes “I want to practice NLP more often.”

I invite you to try this on for yourself with the above statements and notice how your neurology shifts.    When you convert your ‘shoulds’ into ‘preferences’ or’ wants’ all of the sudden all pressure gets released, even though nothing in the outside world has changed. Magic!

And with the released pressure paradoxically it becomes a lot more likely that we will follow through with the desired actions, and whether we do or whether we don’t our life journey becomes a lot more healthy and enjoyable along the way.

If there is something that you really feel that you ‘should’ be doing you might as well want to do it so I invite you to try on this new frame of mind and I look forward to hearing how this positively impacts the quality of your life.

Do you have questions or comments? Feel free to them here!