Removing the word "should" from your self talk will change your life

Fiona: 00:02

We often think of wellbeing as one-dimensional. What if we look at it from a different perspective?

Josephine: 00:08

The possibilities are endless. All we have to do is step outside the square.

Let's walk this walk together and hold on tight for the ride.

Fiona: 00:16

My name is Fiona. I'm a corporate wellness facilitator, body image and eating psychology coach and a lover of joyful experiences.

Josephine: 00:24

And I'm Josephine, a dietitian, somatic release therapist and a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist.

Fiona and Josephine: 00:30

Welcome to Outside the Square.

Fiona: 00:35

Good morning.

Josephine: 00:37

Welcome back to another episode. Today we're talking all about the word should. In particular, we would like you to remove this word from your vocabulary and see what happens because we think it's something that could radically change your life.

Fiona: 00:56

Absolutely. Something that's also hard to do. Just this morning I got up, well I woke up and I said to myself ‘I should get dressed before we record today's podcast episode’ and then at the same time, I thought, ‘No! The episode is about not saying should’.

So I thought to myself, why? Why do I have to get changed to record the podcast? So I am indeed still in my pyjamas this morning. Happily made myself a cup of tea instead of using the time to get changed and feeling really good about it.

Josephine: 01:36

I just think that's incredible. I was sitting here laughing, hoping you would tell everyone you’re in your pyjamas. But this the new way of being, right? This is the new world, we are authentic and we can work anyway that suits us in any way that helps us show up as our true selves.

Welcome here in your pyjamas Fiona.

Fiona: 01:57

It's a wonderful thing. But I think it highlights how often and how easy that question or that doubt comes into our minds around what we should be doing.

We've had questions from some of our listeners over the last few weeks and conversations over Instagram and some of them have used that even in asking their questions. ‘How do I do this when I when I should be doing this?’ Or ‘I'd like to add this in when I feel I should be doing that’ and I'm sure this is something that everyone's going to be able to resonate with because it happens so frequently.

It might be that you're you know doing something nice for yourself but in the same time in your head you're thinking ‘I should be doing the cleaning and the laundry and the cooking’. Even though you're enjoying sitting there watching your Netflix or doing your painting or whatever it is that you do, those thoughts come through our mind of all the other things that we feel we should be getting along with so I think it's really relatable, and even as someone, as a coach and a healer who has, you know, worked on this myself, it still comes in. So don't expect perfection either.

So we're going to challenge you to think about this from a different way and think about how you can remove that should from your life, but it will likely still come in so it's how do we deal with that when that happens too?

Josephine: 03:25

It is a great episode if you resonate with the word perfectionist at all because we're talking about the expectations we set for ourselves, aren’t we? And some of the biggest, I think the biggest part of my job when people talk about their health or their personal development journey is so often just pausing and putting the breaks on and questioning why there's those expectations that actually where they are right now is not okay. Because if you're putting the, the word should is a contract, as soon as you say ‘I should do this’, you're making a promise to yourself and that's a really powerful word, and I want people to check ‘is this actually expectation I want to uphold?’ Because if you make that promise to yourself and don't keep it, that's when we see self-worth plummeting and feeling like a failure, because it's a promise and a contract and that's sacred when you say, when you say that to yourself.

Fiona: 04:24

It's when you are thinking about those things that you want to do or that you feel that are aligned with where you want to be and where you want to go, and that ‘should’, ‘I should be doing this’ is really a form of negative self-talk. It brings that guilt with it, ‘I should be doing this, but I haven't done it yet, I should be doing that’. It's that grass is always greener, it's that there's something else and what it does is it takes us away from the present moment and what's happening now, and what's happening in your body, what's happening with your emotions, are you happy with what you're doing right now? So there can be power in listening to that should, but it's about coming back to that internal power, I think.

Josephine: 05:14

Yeah, internal power is huge because often when I'm talking to clients, they're sort of like, ‘I should be walking every day because that's what the world of medical or self-help professionals say or the evidence says’, that's like, hang on a minute like, who's to say that that evidence actually suits you right now in this moment and is going to serve you.

Yeah, it's really fascinating that we do it blinded without even realising we're doing it. That seven days a week I should chain myself to doing something good for my health, when actually deep down it's not something that you really want to do.

Fiona: 05:52

Or maybe something that actually isn't beneficial for you. So I was working with a client who is a vegetarian because ‘I should stop eating red meat because red meat is bad for us’ and that was the reasoning. So people choose all sorts of different dietary spaces for lots of different reasons, but this was the reasoning for this particular person was that sense of ‘I shouldn't be eating red meat because it's bad for me’ and yet what they found and what they said to me is they said, ‘when I do have a little bit of red meat, I actually feel stronger and I actually feel in my body that it works for me’ and so we sort of had to unpack that from that perspective of what is that evidence and what is that messaging I'm getting versus what actually does make me feel good and is working for me and my body.

Josephine: 06:45

Yeah, absolutely and what if you feel good walking three days a week because that's something you can actually do? And when I see people reevaluate their goals like that to make them so much more achievable and lowering their expectations, it's so nice to see them coming back with the joy of having actually met their expectation, you know, like their whole energy lifts, they feel lighter, feel successful. So a big question to ask is, ‘am I striving for the wrong success?’

Who's to say that walking seven days is better than three days if actually it frees you up to do these other things in your life that actually bring you more joy or you’re moving your body in different ways potentially and you don't have energy for that form of exercise, it’s not the right thing for you.

Fiona: 07:31

I think you can also think about it from that space of those small goals or those achievable things, are building the foundation for those bigger goals as well.

So while you might want to walk seven days a week, and you might know that that has worked for you before, but your energy is not there at the moment, that walking three days a week might begin to build your energy and then one day you might find yourself adding a fourth day in and feel really good about that and then adding a fifth day and then maybe going back to three days and then maybe doing a week when you have seven days and… Sometimes it's that foundational piece as well that you know, to get where we want to go, you have to do that in a sustainable way and you can't go from zero to 100, it's the baby steps.

Josephine: 08:23

Yeah, and yes there may be that snowball effect that once you start, you get hooked and your desire shifts, but the critical thing there is you've removed the word should, you've just chosen to start something and then the desires kicked in and it's a choice, it’s not a should at that point.

Fiona: 08:38

And I think that's what's really important when we think about ‘I should be doing this’ is how can we challenge that? So for me this morning when that thought immediately ran through my mind of ‘I should get changed’ I immediately said to myself ‘why?’ and I didn't say, I mean, I could have come up with 100 reasons why I should get changed, but it was that ‘can I actually justify the choice that I'm making not to?’

So is there really authentically and deeply a reason why I need or need to be doing that? And that can help you challenge that space of feeling less powerful and allow you to make a plan and choose to do that next thing or choose not to and be comfortable with that. So I've chosen to stay in my pyjamas and I'm not sitting here thinking ‘oh, I should have got dressed, I really should have done that and I'm now feeling worse because I didn't do that thing’. So really, authentically challenging that why I think is a really powerful first step.

Josephine: 09:51

And how do people do that? How do they know what their authentic choice is? Like if you've been listening to everyone else, doctors, friends, TV, the public health messaging, you know, we should all walk 30 minutes a day every day. How do you start to tap into what is your internal power?

Fiona: 10:11

By working with you or I. Hahaha.

Josephine: 10:18

Hahaha. It’s hard isn’t it. Sometimes you need that external support.

Fiona: 10:22

Look, it is all jokes aside, it can be a really difficult thing to come back, I've had a lot of issues with that around ‘Can I trust what I'm saying to myself is what I think is authentic?’ You know, I don't know that I can trust that that's actually what I want and when you first start stepping into that space, when there's so much other information around you, it can be hard to think about actually ‘What is it that really works for me and where am I going in that space?’

Josephine: 10:51

And if you are choosing a practitioner, making sure you're choosing one who is getting you in touch with what your real yes is and your no right. That we're coming into your body or your desires and really questioning the assumptions that you have of what you think you should be doing right in this moment, because actually there's nothing we need to do. Like we are whole perfect human beings right in this moment even if we feel like there's things in our lives that aren't going to plan for as well as we want them to be, if we can sit there and think ‘actually this is me and I'm okay with that’ then you've already taken the pressure off what the ever you choose to do next.

Fiona: 11:35

Yeah. One of the powerful things that both you and I have done, over many times again is really sit down and work out our values, and I work in this space when I'm working in corporate workplaces as well and we look at organisational values as well as people values, and it's interesting because people often think, ‘yeah, I know what my values’ and people would say ‘yeah I have values’ and when I ask people what they are they don't actually always know, they know that intrinsically that they have beliefs that guide them, but they can't always articulate exactly what they are.

Josephine: 12:12

And sometimes our values feel really obvious like honesty, ‘I want honesty in all my relationships’ and then we turn around and use all the should language and we're not being honest with ourselves, so it's a beautiful exercise. It only takes half an hour with someone like you or I to guide you through some questions to actually bring you back to your values, even if you don't know them off the top of your head, you haven't thought about it, there is ways to guide you from your past behaviour and what feels really important to you for just five values to drop out that can start to guide you around some of these decisions.

Fiona: 12:45

Yeah, absolutely. You’ve used as well, I sent you beautiful deck of cards, when was it? Oh I can’t remember, it was a while back, Christmas.

Josephine: 12:52

You gave it to me for Christmas 2022. Thank you.

Fiona: 12:55

One of the things that I've created that I originally created just to use with clients, but I started selling them because people found them really helpful was a values activity where you have a little deck of cards where you can sit and actually prioritise your values and work out what they are, work out what really is meaningful to you and one of the things that's really helpful with it is that there's one card that is blank, so once you work out your values, you can write your values on it, it fits in your wallet and it has some questions on the back, to ask you when you're in those moments of decision or when you're in those moments of ‘I should be doing this’ or ‘I should be doing that’, you can pull that card out, visually look at your values and ask yourself ‘is doing that, would doing that technique closer towards my values?’ or ‘is doing this taking me further away from my values at the moment?’

So it's a really nice little reminder and I'm going to pop a link in the show notes for any listeners who would like to purchase a copy of the cards and I'm going to pop a discount code in there as well for our listeners to grab themselves a core values deck of cards and work out what that is to you because, as you say, that there is so much power in starting to really come back and understand the big pillars of the guiding forces that you believe and that are valuable to you.

Josephine: 14:25

And I know both of us sort of resonate with this idea of being the rebels, like you've showed up in your pyjamas this morning, and I think that's really a nice, it's something nice to think about, like yes we have these expectations from the people around us, our social circle, from the people we grew up around, maybe our schooling and our parents and our family, but we're adults now, we get to choose what we value and bring our behaviour in line with that and it might be radically different from a lot of people around you, and at least you have something to look at and redirect yourself to - those five words on the piece of paper. Sometimes we don't continually adopt our behaviour to come back to what's really important to us.

Fiona: 15:06

Yeah and I think understanding that that can change and that can be different from those values and beliefs that we that we grew up with, sometimes there's alignment there and sometimes there isn't and there can be a lot to unpack in that space as well, but it really can allow you to get to that point of rather than using the should language, so we talked a little bit earlier about challenging the should with the question Why? or Why should I?

And then once you sort of link back with your values and you have that understanding of ‘okay is this something that's going to take me towards my values’ and the answer is ‘yes’, the should then becomes a choice, so the should then becomes an and or an and I would like to or and I'm going to plan to do this as well so ‘I'm watching my TV and I'm planning to do the laundry this afternoon. I'm walking three days this week and I would like to increase that to four days in a couple of weeks when I'm ready.’ So it changes that should and that negative self-talk and that guilt into doing things, it changes it into a powerful conscious choice that you've made and aligned with your values.

Josephine: 16:28

Maybe with a tingle of excitement or passion to actually, you know, I mean, I don't get that with the laundry, haha, but sometimes on my list of ‘I would really like to’ is go to yoga and the feeling of actually doing that once a week. Getting to the class is ‘I’m just so proud of myself’ like, it’s proud of myself and grateful, you know sometimes I almost cry on the yoga mat, like ‘I made it here and I'm doing this for myself for an hour’ like how beautiful to receive this class and that's how I'd love you to feel when you're choosing to commit to something for your health. Not that like begrudgingly getting out the door to do something and then feeling guilt when it doesn't happen as often as you want to.

Fiona: 17:14

I want to talk, back to the baby steps analogy because what I love about what you just said there was that ‘I'm so proud of myself for coming to yoga. I'm almost crying, I made it here and I'm doing something and I'm so excited about it’ and when we think about baby steps, we often forget to celebrate the baby steps that you made it that yoga class and if we actually think about what happens when babies learn to walk and I've got three friends with babies at the moment who are learning to walk. What happens when a baby takes a wobbly first step? What happens to all the adults in the room?

All the adults are cheering that baby on, we’re all going ‘oh my gosh, they took a step, it's so exciting.’ Everyone is just so excited about that little wobbly step because we know that that's the foundation. By the time the child is actually walking and running, no one's celebrating the goal of that, they're celebrating the effort that it took at the beginning and in those hard moments because they know that those bits are the building blocks and the foundations of getting to the next thing, so be proud of yourself when you do that, that one thing, when you choose that in alignment with yourself and you make it. Celebrate it because that's the foundational piece.

Josephine: 18:37

Yeah, and it's not until sitting here right now, reflecting that I can think, actually, I've been wanting to go to that yoga class for four years. You know that's a long wait, that is patience, right? But I did have this sense of actually ‘I'm not ready and I know it's going to happen, I know I'm going to be a yogi in my old age’ that is like a really strong desire of mine, but actually the last four years, that’s just been a no go, it just hasn't worked.

And I waited and now it's effortless. Now, even if I forget to put my yoga gear on, I'm driving to town in the morning I'll still go in my normal clothes because I'm just like driving there on autopilot like it's happening. It's beautiful and you can wait for something like that to land and it becomes a desire and not a should.

Fiona: 19:31

I love that. One of the other things I wanted to mention is sometimes, you know, what happens when we use this should language is the, we've talked about the feeling, I guess that negative self-talk, that sense of guilt and shame for not doing things, that self-worth plummeting, that can often also be felt very much in the body as well in a stress response.

Josephine: 20:00

Yeah, absolutely. I was just speaking to a woman yesterday and we used the body intuition meditation from episode three, and this is such a good tool for understanding how these shoulds and these pressures that you put on yourself, whether it be around work, around how you parent, around your health, any area of your life, just how much of that pressure you are holding in your body. And it doesn't matter where you're feeling that pain, for this client it was her right hip, but when she tapped into breathing into area in the meditation, there was this overwhelming stress and pressure that she could feel and get that tangible sense of actually ‘I'm doing this to myself. The expectations I'm putting on myself are actually causing me physical pain’ and then you've got something really tangible to work with and you're connected to your body intuition, which can start to tell you ‘too much, too little, actually I just want you to go to bed’ or whatever your body is going to start communicating to you by being present with it and that meditation is the perfect way to start connecting in.

Fiona: 21:09

Yeah, it's one that I think about doing. I did it that week with you, Josephine, and then I think I did it again during the week, so I think it's one thing I'm going to go back and listen to again myself too.

Josephine: 21:23

You'd like to do it or you should do it?

Fiona: 21:26

Yeah, so even in just how I've said that, it's something I'm going to go back and listen to again. It's not something that I should do. It's something that I would like to do.

Josephine: 21:36

And what you would like to do might change from day to day. And that’s okay.

Fiona: 21:42

Absolutely. Such a powerful thing that word should, and it really can change your life if you can start to challenge it and move away from letting the shoulds control where you're going and what you're doing.

So, you know, making sure that you really challenge that should initially ask that question. Why? Why should I? Change that language from a should into I would like to or I'm planning to. Find out your values, really discover those. Hop online, get a card deck if you need one, find out your values, work with a practitioner if that's your way of choice, and really let that guide you.

Josephine: 22:31

Beautiful. We can put links to work with us as well if you're wanting a values session with either of us, you're more than welcome to get in touch, and as always, start with awareness. If you're doing this yourself, please just start noticing that word should in your language and do not beat yourself up if it's coming up a lot, right, awareness is the first step. Please do not underestimate how powerful it is just to start watching that word before it even changes, because that snowball we talked about, first you've got to be aware of it, and then your desire to shift it comes in and then one behaviour starts changing after the other and you'll feel it when you're ready.

Fiona: 23:12

So until next week, happy non-should-ing.

Josephine: 23:17

Hahaha. Enjoy everyone. Bye.

Josephine: 23:21

Before we finish up for today, we would like to acknowledge the original custodians of the lands on which our podcast is created, the Ngāi Tahu people of Aotearoa New Zealand,

Fiona: 23:30

and the Cammeraygal people of the Eora Nation Australia. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and to all our listeners who identify as Aboriginal, Torres Straight Islander, or Maori.

Josephine: 23:43

We love connecting with you, our listeners and talking about the topics that mean the most to you. Reach out to us on Instagram at Outside the Square Podcast and let us know what you want to hear more of.

Fiona: 23:54

Until next week, keep stepping outside your square.

I was like, What do I say? Happy what?

Josephine: 24:00

Hahaha.

Fiona: 24:05

The pyjamas threw me. Hahaha.