Shoulds and oughts

How many times a day do you tell yourself "I should...." or "I ought"? Too many probably if you are unhappy. We are very often our worst critics. It is often we who make ourselves stressed or miserable, not others.



One of the first things I would suggest people do to make their lives happier is to count the "shoulds" and "oughts" they tell themselves and look at whether they could be replaced by a better word. That better word is "could". It gives us a choice. If we dont do something we ought to do or should do we feel bad about ourselves because we feel we have let ourselves down or are bad people. If we dont do something we could do then we have just chosen not to do it. It doesnt seem so bad.



Of course we do have some core responsibilities in life so a few "shoulds" are appropriate. If we have a family to support and we are lucky enough to have a job we probably should get up in the morning to go to work. But we often pile on the pressure by telling ourselves we should get up earlier and get a whole list of other things done before we leave.



One of the things that often came up when I was working with people who had suffered a bereavement was that they told me they "should have got over it by now". There seems to be a feeling sometimes that grief should be limited to a few weeks, whereas, in reality it can take years to really recover from a dreadful loss.I tell people to be kind to themselves when they are grieving and not to expect too much of themselves. Not too many "shoulds".I will talk a lot more about bereavement and loss in future posts.

Perfectionists are usually burdened with a whole list of shoulds in their lives. Nothing they do seems to be good enough for them. They often have unreasonable expectations for themselves and this can come from their childhoods when perhaps they were pushed hard to achieve or compared with a sibling.

It is not only perfectionists that have too many shoulds. Most of us, myself included, could do with reducing the shoulds and oughts in our thoughts. Try to catch yourself thinking "I should" or "I ought to" and think about whether you are being unkind to yourself. If you are being unreasonable in your expectations of yourself change your thought to " I could".