Stop "Shoulding" All Over Yourself!
Posted on June 07, 2013 by Leslie Bosserman, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
How many times do you say "I should..." each day? Learn how to shift away from "shoulding" and appreciate what's already in front of you.
I have always been enamored with the extraordinary – from tales of everyday heroes who saved the day to seemingly impossible events that actually happened. These stories stimulate imagination and inspire hope. This is why seeing the latest blockbuster movie or even watching the nightly news is so captivating – it presents something that is bigger than our everyday experience, something we strive and long for.
And while there is truth and value to these extraordinary moments, there is also an underlying cost.
Extraordinary examples often lead us to compare our lives to what we think they should be, instead of appreciating what they actually are.
Consider for a moment the amount of “shoulds” that you think or say every day:
I should eat healthier
I should have finished this already
I should work out
I should go to bed earlier
I should…
While some of these “shoulds” are aspirational intentions, most are laden with underlying assumptions, judgment, and criticism. What we think we should do and who we should be is actually designed by what we perceive we are lacking – our self-defined “not enoughness.”
The idea of who we think we’re supposed to be steals away the joy and value of who we actually are.
We need to shift our focus from a perspective of scarcity to one of deep and abiding sufficiency – the art and practice of realizing that what we have in each moment is truly enough. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown shares that “sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough and that we are enough.”
Take a moment to consider what “enough” is for you. Does something have to be extraordinary to have worth and value? What ordinary opportunities are you possibly overlooking?
So many of us live day-to-day waiting for the extraordinary to happen. As a result, we overlook and devalue the ordinary moments that create a life of simply “enough.” From smiling at a stranger as you cross a busy street to pausing to take a deep breath when you walk outside in the sunshine, these are the ordinary moments that make up our lives and have the potential to change lives. There is nothing more or less called for here. It simply is.
We each have the power to choose sufficiency over scarcity in each moment. Ordinary or Extraordinary.
What life do you want to create?
