Escaping the ‘Should’ Trap
Two of the most common reasons people come to see me are 1) lack of drive and 2) lack of impulse control. In other words, many clients come to me to try to find the motivation to do the things they think they should be doing, or to learn to keep from doing the things they think they should not be doing.
Lack of drive can be illustrated by the phrase, “I should exercise more (get a job I like –want sex with my partner – figure out what to do with my life), but I can’t seem to make myself do it.” Lack of impulse control is illustrated by the phrase, “I should stop drinking (yelling at my kids - playing computer games until 2:00 in the morning – nagging my partner). Often people tend to fall more on one side of the line or the other. If you stop to think for a moment, you may be able to identify which side of the fence you fall on. Do you struggle more with motivating yourself to DO what you should do, or with restraining yourself from NOT DOING the things you think you should not do?
Here’s the trouble. I’ve faced these two problems with many clients, and I don’t know anyone who has successfully made and sustained a change because it was a change they “should” make. Change does not grow out of “should”. Successful change grows out of “WANT”. We humans loathe a “should”.
Stop for a moment and think of how you react to the word “should”. Imagine your partner or your parent telling you, you “should” do something, or “should” stop what you are doing. Does the memory fill you with an energy and desire to comply? If you are like 99.9% of humans, the experience of someone else telling you what you SHOULD do is met with internal resistance and resentment. It is an energy-sucking experience, not an energy-giving one. Why would your response be any different when you say “should” to yourself? The word makes it LESS likely, not more likely that you will make the change you want to make, and the self-critical mind set that is carried along with the word actually tends to re-enforce the very behaviors you want to change. If you only take one thing away from this article, take the following truth: “That upon which you place your focused attention, is that which grows stronger.” When you spend your time and energy thinking about and talking about what you DO NOT want, rather than focusing on what you DO want, the very things you resist and resent grow like poisonous weeds under the potent fertilizer of you attention.
On a related side note, I have never seen anyone successfully change long term to please another person either, particularly if that other person thinks it is a change that “should” be made! Generally speaking successful, lasting changes are made for one’s self.
So the question is, how does a person achieve “WANT”? How do you get to a place of authentically wanting to exercise, quit drinking, or stop running up the credit cards? Well to begin with, stop sabotaging yourself with the word “should”! (And while you’re at it, quit directing your critical controlling eye on everyone else too! You’ll be happier in the long run!) Forget what you should be doing and start visualizing what you are beginning to create. What do you want your life to look like? How do you want to feel living inside of it? Figure out who you actually WANT to be and then be that!
The Key to Successful Change
Change happens when the things you want to embody become more attractive than the things you are leaving behind. It happens when the thing you are trying to let go of is released or extinguished in the face of something even more alluring.
Want to lose weight and keep is off? No more negative self-talk or resistant complaining. Fall in love with the identity of a fit-you. Fall in love with the experience of walking. Love it while you are doing it, the feeling of moving your body, the way you feel afterwards - all loose and warm. The way the wind feels going past your face as you book down the trail, the friendly faces of your fellow walkers as they receive you in to the camaraderie of the walking community (running, climbing, biking community). Love the way your body feels after a week - two weeks - stronger more flexible – how good it is to live inside of a moving-you. Get to know the delicious pain/pleasure of stretching out tired muscles. Notice how physically sick you feel when you park your body in front of the television for hours on end, or when you eat more than you need. Focus on the bloated, lethargic feeling and then notice how different your entire life looks to you when you have been walking every day for a week. Don’t talk about how much you hate to exercise ever again. Let that story go. It is not your story any more.
Want to quit smoking? Fall in love with the identity of being smoke-free. Flesh it out for yourself. Get to the place where you know that the new identity, ‘ex-smoker’, is sexier, cooler, and more desirable than ‘smoker’. Know it inside and out that a smoking-you is LAME and smelly, when compared with the clean-lunged white-toothed you who is coming down the pipeline. Glory in your returning sense of smell, and the fact that you can once again taste foods that haven’t had any flavor for years. Revel in your sense of freedom from domination by those little wads of burning leaves.
You get the general idea.
A life built in opposition to what you don’t want rather than based on what you DO want turns into a life that feels out of your control and direction - a trap. A life being generated from what you are supposed to do must be bodily pushed forward like a goat before a stick. Don’t run out of gas because your unconscious refuses to be driven before you by any more by ‘shoulds' or your self-critical mind set. Create a life that you are loving to live. You can start right this minute.
My son has a little button clipped to his backpack. It’s a quote from Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
"Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you
become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you'll come to
realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You'll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival."
-Osho
Two of the most common reasons people come to see me are 1) lack of drive and 2) lack of impulse control. In other words, many clients come to me to try to find the motivation to do the things they think they should be doing, or to learn to keep from doing the things they think they should not be doing.
Lack of drive can be illustrated by the phrase, “I should exercise more (get a job I like –want sex with my partner – figure out what to do with my life), but I can’t seem to make myself do it.” Lack of impulse control is illustrated by the phrase, “I should stop drinking (yelling at my kids - playing computer games until 2:00 in the morning – nagging my partner). Often people tend to fall more on one side of the line or the other. If you stop to think for a moment, you may be able to identify which side of the fence you fall on. Do you struggle more with motivating yourself to DO what you should do, or with restraining yourself from NOT DOING the things you think you should not do?
Here’s the trouble. I’ve faced these two problems with many clients, and I don’t know anyone who has successfully made and sustained a change because it was a change they “should” make. Change does not grow out of “should”. Successful change grows out of “WANT”. We humans loathe a “should”.
Stop for a moment and think of how you react to the word “should”. Imagine your partner or your parent telling you, you “should” do something, or “should” stop what you are doing. Does the memory fill you with an energy and desire to comply? If you are like 99.9% of humans, the experience of someone else telling you what you SHOULD do is met with internal resistance and resentment. It is an energy-sucking experience, not an energy-giving one. Why would your response be any different when you say “should” to yourself? The word makes it LESS likely, not more likely that you will make the change you want to make, and the self-critical mind set that is carried along with the word actually tends to re-enforce the very behaviors you want to change. If you only take one thing away from this article, take the following truth: “That upon which you place your focused attention, is that which grows stronger.” When you spend your time and energy thinking about and talking about what you DO NOT want, rather than focusing on what you DO want, the very things you resist and resent grow like poisonous weeds under the potent fertilizer of you attention.
On a related side note, I have never seen anyone successfully change long term to please another person either, particularly if that other person thinks it is a change that “should” be made! Generally speaking successful, lasting changes are made for one’s self.
So the question is, how does a person achieve “WANT”? How do you get to a place of authentically wanting to exercise, quit drinking, or stop running up the credit cards? Well to begin with, stop sabotaging yourself with the word “should”! (And while you’re at it, quit directing your critical controlling eye on everyone else too! You’ll be happier in the long run!) Forget what you should be doing and start visualizing what you are beginning to create. What do you want your life to look like? How do you want to feel living inside of it? Figure out who you actually WANT to be and then be that!
The Key to Successful Change
Change happens when the things you want to embody become more attractive than the things you are leaving behind. It happens when the thing you are trying to let go of is released or extinguished in the face of something even more alluring.
Want to lose weight and keep is off? No more negative self-talk or resistant complaining. Fall in love with the identity of a fit-you. Fall in love with the experience of walking. Love it while you are doing it, the feeling of moving your body, the way you feel afterwards - all loose and warm. The way the wind feels going past your face as you book down the trail, the friendly faces of your fellow walkers as they receive you in to the camaraderie of the walking community (running, climbing, biking community). Love the way your body feels after a week - two weeks - stronger more flexible – how good it is to live inside of a moving-you. Get to know the delicious pain/pleasure of stretching out tired muscles. Notice how physically sick you feel when you park your body in front of the television for hours on end, or when you eat more than you need. Focus on the bloated, lethargic feeling and then notice how different your entire life looks to you when you have been walking every day for a week. Don’t talk about how much you hate to exercise ever again. Let that story go. It is not your story any more.
Want to quit smoking? Fall in love with the identity of being smoke-free. Flesh it out for yourself. Get to the place where you know that the new identity, ‘ex-smoker’, is sexier, cooler, and more desirable than ‘smoker’. Know it inside and out that a smoking-you is LAME and smelly, when compared with the clean-lunged white-toothed you who is coming down the pipeline. Glory in your returning sense of smell, and the fact that you can once again taste foods that haven’t had any flavor for years. Revel in your sense of freedom from domination by those little wads of burning leaves.
You get the general idea.
A life built in opposition to what you don’t want rather than based on what you DO want turns into a life that feels out of your control and direction - a trap. A life being generated from what you are supposed to do must be bodily pushed forward like a goat before a stick. Don’t run out of gas because your unconscious refuses to be driven before you by any more by ‘shoulds' or your self-critical mind set. Create a life that you are loving to live. You can start right this minute.
My son has a little button clipped to his backpack. It’s a quote from Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
"Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you
become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you'll come to
realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You'll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival."
-Osho
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