Saying No To Should

3 minute read

Do you sometimes feel like life is a hamster wheel of activities and expectations? Do you ever feel burned out? Are you constantly looking over your shoulder or trying to keep up?

I blame should. A seemingly simple, yet insidious word that causes so much damage to so many women. At every stage of our lives, we are faced with “shoulds”.

From the moment we take our first tentative steps, we are being measured against society’s yardstick. She should be talking by now…can she tell the time yet? Can she tie her own shoelaces?

Then as we get older, the shoulds get bigger: we should have a partner. If we have found love, we should quickly move on to engagement, then marriage. We should get a mortgage and own our own home. If we are lucky enough to manage that herculean feat, it should be tastefully decorated. We should not have dust bunnies under our beds or smelly sponges in our bathrooms. We should have a child. Then a second. If we do, they should be well-turned out and well-behaved.

Then there are the extra shoulds – some self-imposed, some from the pressures of social media or Mommy WhatsApp groups. We should be slim and healthy. We should have the perfect capsule wardrobe. We should own a designer bag. We should be eating more avocados. We should be meditating. We should be defying time and gravity with our jawline and cleavage. We should be able to whip up a Michelin-level meal with scraps from the fridge.

We should be up to date on the latest podcasts and TikTok trends. We should be perfect friends. We should remember every significant event in the lives of our friends and family. We should write personalised Christmas cards and thoughtful thank you notes. We should be recycling everything.

We should have career success. We should have a certain amount saved in our pensions. Or at least have a pension… We should understand the stock market and cryptocurrency. We should be able to do all of this and still have the energy and enthusiasm for bedroom acrobatics with our significant other.

We have been carrying the weight of external expectations around for years, like a rucksack full of rocks. No wonder so many of us have a bad back. And that’s before you add in the stresses of work and new hybrid environments.

I have long lived by the maxim that “done is better than perfect”. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m a self-driven perfectionist, but I’ve realised I can achieve so much more if I'm not so hard on myself and focus on doing less, better.

In his award-winning podcast On Purpose, Jay Shetty suggests that when we don’t define a concept clearly, but try to pursue it, we end up being unhappy. Think about that for a second... how do you define happiness, or freedom, or abundance? Are you chasing what other people think should make you happy, or are you following your own path? Once you know what’s important, all the external shoulds will just fall away.

In another episode, Jay suggests that true work-life balance is a fallacy. That it’s not always realistic to equally distribute our time, money and energy. I find that concept freeing. None of us have unlimited time or resources, so it’s vital to define what’s important to you, and align your goals and activities accordingly to support that.

You could have that holiday if you let go of the idea that you need a whole new wardrobe for it. You could spend more time with your family if you ditch the PTA or have a chat with your manager about boundaries. You could get to that yoga class if you don’t clean the bathroom for the third time this week.

We all have choices to make every single day. The trick is to choose happiness over perfection.

For me, the secret to good mental health is understanding that all my shoulds are actually a menu of choices, not a to-do list. In reality, no one can do everything and still have time to slob in front of Netflix with a family-sized bar of Galaxy. Rejecting should is ultimately a radical act of self-care.

Over the years, I’ve learned you can have anything, but you can't have everything. No one can. So, let’s say goodbye to should and hello to could…