Invented Shoulds
A few months ago, I enjoyed a thought provoking, and what now turns out to be a life changing, conversation with my colleague and friend Tony Atherton.
We were reflecting on the previous few years of business, a time through which Tony had started a business and I had purchased a business during an extremely volatile and challenging time, globally.
I was sharing with Tony some of the things that I thought I should have felt, should be feeling, and should be thinking.
His response: “that’s because they’re invented”.
“What are?”, I responded.
“The ‘shoulds’, they are invented shoulds”, said Tony.
It was a moment of clarity for me and opened a new way of thinking for both myself and my approach to owning and leading a business, as well as how I live my life!
I’ve spent the months since exploring this statement of ‘invented shoulds’, which started with me, personally. I have taken the time to think back to all the times the people and the world around me has created this mindset of “I should be doing x” or “I should be doing y”. Here are some of those ‘shoulds’ that I had programmed into my brain:
As a new business owner, I should be working 7 days a week, 365 days a year
As the person responsible for new business sales, during the pandemic, my entire focus should have been on aggressively driving sales, sales, and more sales
As a leader of the organisation, I should have a perfectly crafted strategy in place that lays out our 1, 2 and 3 year plan
As a Managing Director, I should be the best leader and manager in our business
As a role model, I should go to the gym 4 times a week, eat my greens, and treat my body as a temple, ensure that I am operating at peak performance every single day
As a professional, I should be fearless, and show no areas of weakness or vulnerability
These are all the result of experiences, opinions and influences that have transpired and accumulated over my 36 years on this planet and through a 20-year career, from family, friends, leaders, literature, media, social platforms, society, the news and much more. That’s not to say any or all of the above were imposed upon me outright, however many were implied, assumed or instilled through innumerable circumstances.
Now every time my brain uses the word ‘should’ an alarm goes off, and I have been building the habit of asking questions like, is that ‘should’ real? and where has that ‘should’ come from?
But the most important question I need to answer is:
Is that a should that I have deliberately created for myself?
I’ve also been using that as a discussion point with our clients and learners, and the response and feelings towards the word ‘should’ are the same.
On a recent Resilience programme I have been delivering, learners shared their feelings of pressure and stress wrapped around expectations. Together we explored whether the expectations had actually been set by anyone? Or were they ‘invented shoulds’ - this opened their minds and focused the discussion on using this thinking as a tool to investigate the source of the should, just like me.
When talking to some teams about Goal Setting, I have experienced multiple examples of ‘invented shoulds’, such as:
“I was going to write decorating my house as a goal”
“Why?” I asked
“Well, it feels like the sort of thing I should write down as a goal”
For others, the ‘invented shoulds’ went as far as, “I should have children” to “I should buy a house”. Digging deeper, into both of these things, neither of the individuals wanted them. I mean, those are some seriously big, life changing things that have been made into ‘shoulds’, both of which derive from the people around them, country cultures, sociable pressures and so on.
I encourage you to free yourself from the ‘invented shoulds’. It’s liberating because it sets you free, and it’s empowering because it helps you regain control of those things that have developed over time and are clogging up your thoughts and your mind.
Written by Luke Hall, Managing Director