You should read this article if you want to be a better person.
How does reading that feel inside? Defensive? Defiant? Our words carry energy, and this energy impacts others.
I excitedly attended a men’s basketball game last month at Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of the Duke University Blue Devils. I had trouble finding the right entrance and was irritated by the 20 minutes it took to navigate security and locate my standing-room-only spot in the coveted student section – the Cameron Crazies.
The moment I arrived, a guy one row in front of me wearing a weathered ball cap turns around, sizes me up, and says, “Oh no, that’s not right. You should switch with the woman behind you. She can’t see over you. You should do the right thing and switch with her.”
Duke should win more championships with all the talent on its roster
Already irritated, I didn’t even look behind me to assess the situation. “Why don’t you switch with her? You are a row in front of me.”
He added, “You should just do the right thing. You need to do the right thing, man.” Capitulating to peer pressure and the discomfort of nearby rubbernecking fans, I meekly switched places and retreated one row in the grandstands to seethe.
The first takeaway for me was how easily I had been thrown off-balance by someone. Being ordered around, especially before I understood the situation, led to me feeling agitated and losing my composure. The reactive nature of my response means there are still unresolved issues inside of me (in the past, I have struggled to absorb instructions that seem illogical or brusquely transmitted).
If she’s standing in front of me, she should at least move her hands so I can see
The second realization was that he was ‘shouldding’ on me. My annoyance was not with his request, which is totally reasonable. It was a combination of his tone, timing, syntax, and insistence. His repeated use of ‘should’ put me on the defensive. “You should do this. You should do that.”
‘Should’ implies that I am wrong doing what I am doing, and that the situation could improve if only I would do, say, or act differently. ‘Shouldding’ someone could also come across as, “I know what’s better for you in this situation than you do.”
We should’ve checked our GPS before heading to the supermarket
Common in conversations with others, ‘should’ is also a word we direct towards ourselves internally: “I should be cleaning the house right now. I should exercise. I should change jobs. I should do something nice for my mother.” You may be using the word ‘should’ more often than you realize.
Whether coming from ourselves or others, the ‘should’ language implies that our current choice is wrong.
We ‘should’ be somewhere else, doing something other than what we are doing. This language adds pressure and stress to the situation. Other similarly charged words include ‘need to’, ‘must’, and ‘have to’.
Listen to your boss, a friend, or a family member. Do they use the word ‘should’ towards you? How does it make you feel inside?
Listen to you talking to yourself. Do you ‘should’ yourself? In what situations? When you use the word ‘should’, how does it make you feel inside?
Maybe we should’ve studied those grammar rules in school
When we are fully alive in the present moment, there is no ‘should’. We are exactly where we are supposed to be. Continually beating yourself up for doing one thing, while proclaiming you ‘should’ be doing something else, is an unproductive mindset.
In graduate school, I used to lament that I wasn’t studying – when I felt I should – and it subtracted joyful energy from what I was doing in the present moment.
When I shifted my ‘should’ thinking to ‘could’ it empowered me because then I saw possibilities for making a different choice, but I remained at peace with my current actions. I could be studying, but I’m going to throw the Frisbee for a while this afternoon, and then study after dinner.
I really shouldn’t, but okay!
How can we fix the ‘should’ epidemic? Perhaps replace the word ‘should’ with ‘could’. This promotes the idea as more of a suggestion and as less of a command. I ‘could’ run errands now, or I can choose to do them later. There is more freedom and softness in ‘could’.
‘Could’ reduces stress and introduces the idea that we ‘could’ do something if we choose to. We have a choice.
As an experiment, count the number of ‘shoulds’ voiced by yourself and others today. Immediately following, notice any reaction you have inside. Recognize that perhaps you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. By becoming more aware of our patterns, we can bring more mindfulness, gentleness, and consideration to ourselves and our relationships.
Share your own ‘shouldding’ experience in the comments below!
Louis Amoroso is a popular success and leadership coach. He assists clients in two ways, through 1:1 coaching, as well as transformational journeys with his company, TravelLight.world. He splits time between Chicago and Los Angeles. Connect with him at louisamoroso@travellight.world.