It was a cold, chilly, foggy, OK, super typical San Francisco day and I walked into work with all good intentions.  I tried to control my mind on the drive to work (slight success), and achieved some semblance of what I thought was calm.  But as soon as I hit the 5th floor of my office building and I saw the incredibly cheery and awesome receptionist, everything went into chaos. For some reason, her smiling, welcoming face triggered all of the stress and anxiety of the day before, when I last saw her as I left.  I remembered the four outstanding projects that I still needed to work on, and the meeting at noon with someone who I’m still trying to work on respecting.  So the work day goes on, and as it happens, I get less and less aware of the nature of my thoughts and I get thrown into the stream of work consciousness that I normally fall into.  It’s one meeting or another, another presentation that I need to review, some time to chat with a coworker that’s about to have her first child.  So where am I going with this?  The time at work and the nature of my thoughts at work are lost to me.  It’s the time post work that gets to me.  The time when I can get a moment of self-awareness to recognize that yes, I’m stressed and anxious.  But the work day is over, so I can relax right?

This is when the “shoulds” take over.  ”I should not watch this movie, I should be reading that smart book (Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century is gathering dust by my bed).” ” I should clean instead of checking Facebook.” “I should go to the gym.” “I should make healthier food.”  Some of the “shoulds” get done and others are left for another day of “shoulding.”  The weird thing is, except for when I’m doing something I think I should be doing, I am pretty unhappy and stressed.  I’m so focused on what I should be doing that I can’t enjoy anything that I’m presently doing.  You’d think that this would lead me to doing more of what I should be doing since it obviously makes me less stressed.  The irony is, even though I feel a sense of peace and calm when I do what I think I should, I avoid and procrastinate “The Shoulds” to the extent that I drive myself crazy.  I wait until the last possible moment to go the gym.  I still haven’t read that stupid smart book. I just sit there, not letting myself watch a TV show because I’ve determined that I should not be watching TV (minor insight here – it’s much easier to avoid what you should not do than do something you think you should, because you can stare at a wall and succeed at this).

I’ve become aware now that I “should” a lot.  And I don’t think it’s a good thing. I realize that reading better books will help me learn more about the world. But the truth is, I love young adult fiction. I love following the romance of two young people and reliving what it’s like to fall in love for the first time.  I’ve banned myself from something that makes me happy in favor of developing a constructed self that I think will make me “better.” Living a healthier life by going to the gym and eating well will help me to live a longer, disease free life.  But why does it make me so anxious and unhappy to strive for this?

I’ve come to recognize that it’s partly a sense of guilt and partly because I beat myself up.  I beat myself up when I don’t do something and judge myself for not achieving everything I want.  A dear friend of mine recently tweeted an article “6 lessons the sick can teach the healthy.”   It’s written by a woman who is suffering from an acute viral disease and shares her changed perspective as she tries to recover.  Here’s what she said about “the shoulds”:

I’m not suggesting that we can’t learn from the past or that skillful planning for the future isn’t worthwhile. But it’s wise to pay attention to when that type of thinking has become unproductive and is just adding stress to our lives. When I first got sick, I spent most of my days ruminating over a life I could no longer lead and worrying about a life I couldn’t predict with any degree of certainty. It made me miserable.  Then I remembered a book I’d read in the early 1990s: Present Moment, Wonderful Moment by the Vietnamese Zen monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. In it, he said: When we settle into the present moment, we can see beauties and wonders right before our eyes — a newborn baby, the sun rising in the sky.

Toni Bernard

Toni goes on to explain that by staying in the present moment, she feels good and less critical of herself. She practices a method which she calls “drop it” where she catches herself in a train of thought like “I should be doing x” or “I’m worried about y,” and tells herself to “drop it.” She then immediately shifts her attention to a sensory input in her surroundings.

I asked a coworker of mine to count how many “shoulds” he had over the weekend. I didn’t admit that I had never done it myself.  He came back with 32 shoulds over 2 days. I don’t know if that’s a lot.  But I do know that it’s 32 times that he was probably anxious or self critical. I’m a little scared to know how many “shoulds” that I think (yes, it’s always easier to preach than to practice).  But I’m going to start counting my “shoulds” over the next two days.  And I’ll let you know (and my coworker) my results.  The point isn’t who has more or less.  It’s more that perhaps together we can become more self aware because we’re keeping tabs and helping each. And then for happiness’ sake, we can “drop it” already.

Photo credit:  Cyril Gravelier