"Shoulds" Aren't Real
On shoulds, shouldn'ts, oughts, have-tos, musts, and similar culprits... and what to do about them
To Shape, or to be Shapeless
From Bruce Lee:
“This is what it is, okay?
I said "empty your mind"
"be formless, shapeless"
"like water."
"Now you put water into a cup"
"It becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot"
"Now water can flow, or it can crash""Be water my friend"
Bruce Lee’s advice on being formless, adaptive, and shapeless, sounds an awful lot like Taoist philosophy, which invokes bringing awareness to the natural state of the flow of the universe, and all of its patterns. Lee’s famous lines resonate in that he suggests we can aim to be formless, like the Tao, in helping us adapt to our situations and surroundings.
Yet, as written in the Tao Te Ching, the essence of the Tao is such that if it is defined, described, identified, imitated, or named, it becomes elusive and fruitless, and the meaning of the Tao is not there anymore. Its like trying to derive understanding about the mystery of life, solely by observing just our breathe. Seemingly, this identification of the Tao and its elusiveness appears paradoxical and “problematic” in a Western sense, but is beyond dualism, towards purposeful contradiction, as much of Eastern philosophy is.
In life, at times, we can be like water. By this, I mean that we can easily try to mould ourselves to what we think is the shape that we should hold.
Wait, should?
Often-times, we find ourselves moulding to situations and contexts around us, in ways that might be serving our unconscious needs, the needs of others, or simply trying to adapt to something that we perceive to be virtuous, acceptable, or socially adaptive.
However, such an approach might not always be the best for you, as the individual (even as an individual in a context, like a family system or cultural norm). For example:
-Trying to meet the expectations of our parents
“I should get married by age X, otherwise I am a failure”
-Comparing ourselves to our peers and colleagues
“I ought have a job with X salary by age Y, because people in my circle have these goals”
-Reverting to vices (addiction, maladaptive behaviours), with strict conditions
“I must quit smoking in X days, otherwise I will continue to beat myself up over it and never quit”
-Changing ourselves in hopes that others too will change, in close relationships
“I am trying my best to change for the other person, they have to see how much effort I’m putting in, and should change as well”
-Meeting cultural norms
I shouldn’t be sexually active and lie to my family, because it goes against their religion and cultural beliefs around purity, and brings shame to our family if anyone found out
These are just a few examples, but they illustrate the tension between individual desires, and expectations placed on ourselves, derived sometimes from the outside world, and sometimes from within the self.
What is real?
At times, we might find that “being like water” can lead us to mo(u)lding or adapting to a situation, context, or behaviour, because of a strong “should”, or “shouldn’t”, and not because we genuinely want to embody something different in our lives.
Whether the energy is directed towards something that should happen, or against something that shouldn’t happen, we place very strong conditional statements on ourselves, our way of life, and our expectation of others. Ultimately, this affects how we think things should operate, and we are greatly affected when things don’t hold up to these expectations and assumptions in reality.
With these should statements, what we’re uniquely working towards or working against is not as important as the strength of the energy/impact behind these statements. If you don’t actively go running and I put a gun to your head and said “you have to run 10km right now”, there is a sudden life-or-death expectation being placed onto you. Whether you kick, scream, or try to get out of it, you will somehow muster the courage to run 10km, or face the life-or-death situation, and meet your fate.
The example is silly and egregious, but at times we forget that we are often both the person staring at the barrel of the gun, paralyzed as to what happens if we don’t meet this condition, as well as the person holding the gun, setting up the condition on ourselves in the first place.
The direction of the energy is irrelevant (doing something or avoiding something). However, the strength of these should statements largely define the patterns, goals, and ways of being in our own lives.
Often, these should statements are filled with near-masochistic self-deprecation, guilt, anxiety, and crippling fear that comes from not meeting these self-prescribed expectations. For many, this can be a strong motivator to get things done. For others, these statements are crippling and freeze us into a state where we panic, get overwhelmed, and get nothing accomplished whatsoever. The shoulds become stronger, and we drift further away from the ideal version of ourselves/the situation, causing greater strife, anxiety, and negative emotion within us.
Should statements are a strong-enough motivator to keep doing something, even if deep down one might not want to pursue it (I know many medical students who want to be a family physician, just because of familial and cultural pressures that go along with a high-paying, high-education, high-status job, even if deep down they have always wanted to do something else in life).
Directing our energy towards things we want or don’t want to do in our lives is important. What is equally important, but difficult to change, is the identification with such statements (“I have to be a doctor because… Else if I don’t, I am a….”). There is an art to overcoming fear of change, adapting, or even letting go of previously held assumptions and should statements that presently may not be as helpful, or even as relevant in our lives.
Are shoulds at all adaptive?
Should statements can be well-intentioned, assist in goal-orientation, help in practicing one’s faith/belief system, avoid conflict with others, fit into social contexts, or help with living a virtuous life based on a set of prescribed principals (organized religion or personally ascribed values).
While there is inherently nothing wrong with such things, we can often find ourselves placing should statements in many other parts of our life, to the point where they can be detrimental to us. This usually revolves around popular goals surrounding our health, wealth, and happiness, but these impositions can manifest in many ways.
Humans are complex creatures, after all. Our needs and reasons for acting, thinking, and feeling are very intricate. Rationality is largely a myth, because we base a lot of our beliefs, ideas, and actions on situational emotions, contexts, and influencers. This idea that humans are complex and that life cannot be boiled down to a static, prescribed list of should statements is not intuitive, but many of us still operate under this assumption for the entirety of our lives. Looking at life through the lens of our many deeply held beliefs, it can start to make sense how such conditional statements affect us in almost every decision we make, down to the small behaviours that occupy us in our day-to-day.
Like Bruce Lee said, we can be like water, and adapt to take the shape of expectations from those around us: the desires of our parents, peers, society, and even ourselves; just as water can take the shape of a river, a glass, a bowl, or a pipe. Importantly, we can easily lose sight of the process of adapting, and begin to feel stuck — leading to an incorrect identification with the river, the glass, the bowl, or the pipe.
We easily mistake form as function. Water can take many different forms (solid, liquid, gas), but it also holds many functions in the natural world (it gives us life, after all). So too our should statements achieve their true function when they can keep form, while remaining somewhat fluid and dynamic. In this way, we can bridge form (our changing values and desires) to function (getting what we want in life, which few people have really figured out anyways).
The exact details of our self-imposed shoulds matter as much as the conditional statements that we place on ourselves. Conditional statements are helpful to an extent (“I am a Muslim, therefore I practice my faith by…”), but only as a means to the end of achieving what we ultimately want in our life.
If form becomes too rigid, so too does its function.
From Lupe Fiasco:
So when that pond thaws and it's no longer Gretzky
That's when we jetski
I gotta catch up to myself, I kind of left me
Are the windows still blocked up? Let's see
Maybe see something we couldn't view before
Been in the stu all day cooking food for thought
Now out the soup du jour for you and yours
Might find sushi for your soul, we call that moving raw
Lions won't cross the line
Cougars won't move a paw
Chickens won't cross the road
Dogs won't roof at all
Always had flow, just added a front door, roof, and walls
Hotter than the fire that into which Koopa falls
But that's only if you super dawg
Sicker than when you use your dog to do assaults
You can never really tell just who's the fraud
Truth might still be alive like true and false
That's why I never really trust unless it's Lu endorsed
Sponsored by me and of course you know who enforced
Now that's three mis, like you warming up your vocal chords
Add a fourth if your vocals hoarse
Like Mister Ed
Get out of pocket have a horse's head in your bed
Now that's what I call a good night's rest
What should I do about it? :)
Bruce Lee said “be like water”. If water takes many forms as something that is dynamic, we can often get stuck when our should statements serve limited functions and keep us from living a life that feels static. Shoulds can work, but they shouldn’t always (hah!) be statically enduring.
As the title of this blog-post suggests, there are no real shoulds. That isn’t entirely true, since we should probably eat and drink water to survive — humans aren’t living entirely in a vacuum, and there are some things that we absolutely have to do, given core biological or even social constraints (probably best to avoid breaking the law).
Still, I’m a believer that long-term change can never be forced onto someone without major compromise/adjustment, and true lasting change can only be enacted voluntarily. It’s why I’ll use this space here to tell you: You don’t have to change anything if you don’t want to — although, you probably have something in your life that you want to change or work on.
Most shoulds are largely socially constructed, culturally enforced, and individually encumbered. There are some things you can try, if you seek change and hope to break free of old shoulds that might be holding you back:
Negotiation
In truly wanting to be like water, we can learn to negotiate. Running with the metaphor here, it’s like melting a part of the self that held a certain shape for a long period of time, bringing movement from a solid block of ice > fluid, formless water, ready to take the shape of another form, with a different function. This negotiation can happen both within yourself (e.g., there may be different conflicting parts of you with different needs), as well as between yourself and others (e.g., opening up to your parents about your desire to not go to medical school).
This self-exploration and assertiveness is easier said than done, but its an important aspect of the process of change, especially as parts of you begin to shift from being static > dynamic.
Identifying Negative Thoughts
Often when we are suffering from anxiety, depression, or self-doubt, our thoughts can turn very negative. These are called “cognitive distortions”, or essentially, automatic negative thought patterns that are very absolute, critical, static, and can make us feel worse about ourselves and the situation. It can help to talk about your inner monologue with a trusted person, like a friend or a therapist.
Some examples of automatic negative thoughts:
-Black & White thinking: Using words like “always” or “never”
-Mind Reading: Thinking you know what is going on in another person’s mind, without actually verifying it yourself, and acting as if the assumption is true
-Labeling: Using words like “stupid”, “lazy”, or “loser” to describe yourself
It can also be helpful to understand where these thoughts are coming from — is my mood off, and my mind is playing games with me, or are these thoughts being enforced by people from outside of myself (external sources)?
Turning Shoulds > Wants
In therapy lingo, this is called cognitive reframing. In essence, we’re holding space for our identified should statement (e.g., I should lose weight), and turning it into something less pressing and self-enforcing.
Here, we can learn to re-frame our shoulds to wants. For example, instead of saying
“I should lose weight”,
we can try to frame this desire as
“I want to lose weight”
This is a part of negotiating with the self, and being aware of the sources of our shoulds. Do you want to lose weight for personal health reasons, or to feel like you fit in with your more athletic friends?
Wants can also be influenced by people in our enviroment. Are you wanting to lose weight because of a genuine desire for your health, or because people around you are picking on you for your weight? It’s likely not an either-or statement.
Regardless, turning a should into a want does wonders for the mind, and changes the reason behind doing something (wanting to, insteading of having to). This reduces the emotional baggage associated with the conditional statement, and makes room for error. You won’t feel as guilty for missing a workout or eating unhealthy food once in a while, if the should is replaced with a want (I want to live healthier, and its okay for me to take a break and enjoy life, instead of being guilty about it and reverting entirely back to my old habits).
Remembering Form and Function
Deeply held shoulds can stick with us for years. The form that our thoughts shape themselves into, might have been helpful or adaptive for you at some point in the past.
However, its likely that old forms have lost their underlying function and purpose in our lives, and it might help to consider whether these long-held forms serve their underlying function and purpose in our lives, today.
Don’t over-complicate it
Change is hard. Often we can find ourselves stuck in old thought patterns and ways of being, partly because of our own inner monologues, and partly because of socially reinforced norms and values.
Every new years, people envision goals for themselves that are a radical departure from their current state. The change is temporary, and eventually the person reverts back to their old ways and habits, but feeling even more guilty and down about their lack of meaningful progress. “Something has to change”, you tell yourself. But maybe imposing harsh goals in absolutist terms is what is setting us up for failure in the first place.
What “simplifying” means is different for each of us, and largely relates back to our existing norms, values, personality, environment, support network, existing shoulds, and a glimpse into the newer forms and functions we hope to embody.
With grace, self-reflection, a desire for change, and negotiating with ourselves, we can learn to choose our battles, get what we want in life, and do it all without the emotional turmoil that comes with shoulds, have-tos, musts, and oughts.