Stop "Should-ing" All Over Yourself (and others, too)

In mindfulness practice, "should" is kind of a dirty word. Remember that mindfulness is about living in the present moment. Now think of the circumstances in which you say "should." Many times it's to express regret about something that happened in the past, for example, "I should have ordered rocky road instead of chocolate ice cream." Other times it's to set up an expectation for the future, such as when you mention to a friend "We should go to brunch next Sunday." Your friend replies, "Yeah, we should do that," but neither of you is actually committed - you haven't decided time and place and put it on your calendar. Neither of these situations are focused on the present moment. You're living in the past or in the future.

What's worse is that when we have those should-ing thoughts about the past (especially when they're more serious than choosing ice cream flavors), is that we tend to wallow in them, we experience the feelings of disappointment and potentially anger or sorrow over what we should or should not have done. We might berate ourselves for having made a bad decision or having behaved badly in a given situation. This can spiral into great exaggeration and extremes to the point you may fear you've ruined a relationship or potentially something worse. There is regret, remorse, potentially fear of repercussions, and these are all forms of suffering.

Being mindful in the moment is one way to avoid regret. When choosing your ice cream flavor, take a pause, drop into your body and breathe. Get a sense of what you really want. Be aware and observant of what you're feeling. This is creating space to make the choice that's right for you in the moment... And rocky road it is!

My other thought here is that we all make mistakes and we do naturally focus on them. Perhaps mistakes happen for a reason; generally the value in mistakes or failures is that there are lessons to be learned from them. I invite you to treat yourself like you would treat a friend in this situation -- with kindness and compassion. With a friend, you'd probably say something like, "It's OK. We all make mistakes, we're human after all." Am I right? So do that for yourself. Mindfully and with presence, firstly separate the action from the person. The action may have been a mistake but you are not a bad person because you made a mistake. Then acknowledge the mistake to yourself, allow for how that feels but be gentle with yourself and be aware of negative self-talk, identify and internalize any learnings, recognize the value of the mistake and of the learning. Finally, let it go. Release yourself from being wrapped around the axel about it. Release the bad feelings and negative self-talk. Express gratitude for the lessons learned. Commit to doing better next time.

Should-ing about the future is really about setting expectations which may lead to disappointments. When you say, "I should go to the gym today" and then bedtime rolls around and you haven't made it to the gym, you go to bed beating yourself up with "I'm a lazy slob for not going to the gym... I know I'd feel better if I had only gone to the gym...I won't sleep well tonight because I didn't exercise," etc., etc. But what's the reality? What is the truth? Maybe the truth is you were not lazy at all. Maybe you had a highly active day by doing a few loads of laundry, doing the grocery shopping and unloading it, cleaning the bathrooms, changing the sheets, taking our the trash, calling your parents and having a long catch-up, cooking a nice dinner, washing the dishes. Sounds like you got a workout, just not at the gym. Maybe you would not feel better if you went to the gym. Certainly not if you ended up standing around because you didn't feel like being there or if you injured yourself while exercising, or even worse, if you got into a car accident on your way there. And as for predicting how well you may or may not sleep, well that could end up being a self-fulling prophecy because you convince yourself that it's so. Your perception of what should happen or how things should be is just a perception and not necessarily the truth. Again, this negative self-talk can spiral.

Instead of should-ing about the future, be present, be in your body, be aware of your thoughts. Planning for the future can be a very "present moment" activity. Be fully awake and conscious as you make plans. Instead of saying to your friend, "We should go to brunch on Sunday," how about taking a moment to decide on the place and time, to write it in your calendar? In that moment, be aware of the things you have going on in your life, your other commitments, as you pause and choose to make plans for brunch with a friend.

Now we know a little bit about should-ing all over ourselves and we know we want to avoid it for our own mental well-being. What about should-ing all over other people? What do we truly know about others, with maybe the exception of the people we grew up with in our own household? (And even then, really; stop to consider if you know everything about your closest sibling since going away to college or moving into your own homes.) What traumas have they survived that they are ashamed or embarrassed to talk about? What are all the things in their childhood and adolescence (pre-conditioning) you don't know that could be at play in any given situation? We think we know people but we can't know everything about them. It's not reasonable to have expectations based on our perceptions of who they are or who we think they are. In fact it can be damaging when we do that. We hold them to a standard that may not be within their capacity to give for whatever reason. Not only does that lead to our disappointment and disillusionment of that person but could also lead to their shame for not being able to live up to our expectations of them. Disillusion and shame can spiral into resentment and right here you can see the beginning of a festering wound harkening the end of a relationship.

We frequently use the phrase "You should know better"when we admonish someone, a child in particular. Maybe they should know better but for some reason, in that moment when they should have known better, they did not. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when you know better you do better. Maybe they haven't yet developed the skill to pause in order to make a thoughtful choice in that moment so they made a bad decision. The point is your perception of them did not meet them in reality.

Mindfulness has a pillar of non-judgement. In that moment when you find yourself judging (because we all do, we are human and we are designed to make judgements in order to maintain our personal security), when you want to "should" all over yourself or someone else, whether it's regarding a past event or a future state, pause and see if you can be gentle, kind and compassionate with the understanding that your expectation, your perception, may not be aligned with the truth.