Life Beyond the Shoulds: Living From Your Values Instead of The Shoulds - Part 2
It finally happened! I have been waiting, wishing, hoping, praying for an opportunity like this to come around and it finally did! After three rounds of interviews, I was offered the job for which I have been patiently waiting.
In my last post, I mentioned that I have been in a significant season of transition. This transition centered (partially) around my kiddo starting Kindergarten and me being ready to start back on my own career path after several years of being a stay-at-home mom. And let me just tell you how The Shoulds were screaming in my ear every time I saw an opportunity:
“You should pick one that gets you more money.”
“Actually, you shouldn’t even try for that one; you’re not worth that much. Plus, there’s no way you’re qualified for that.”
“You should stick to what you know; don’t try anything new or outside the box.
“You should stick with a part-time job; these years are short, after all.”
“You should, you should, you should…”
This impending career and family transition happened to follow a long season of self-reflection. After living half my life as a rule-follower, I had to go through the process of rediscovering who I am, what I want, and what I value removed from the strict confines of The Rulebook. This process of rediscovery included figuring out what I wanted to do career-wise.
With any facet of life requiring decision-making prowess—career, finances, parenting, etc.—The Shoulds will show up in a million little ways. They make it feel impossible to make any decision at all, much less the “right” one. They usually lead us to make decisions out of “have to” without any regard for what that decision will mean to our personal health and wellbeing.
In case you’re not sure what I mean by The Shoulds, they are the rules and mindsets that we follow mainly because we’re “expected” to or because we feel we have a duty to them based on societal, familial, personal, cultural, or religious pressures. Because we can rarely measure up to the long list of “shoulds,” we become prisoners of shame and completely disconnected from our true selves and others. If we aren’t aware of these pressures and how they drive us, we live our lives on auto-pilot, rolling down the well-worn roads of misery, mediocrity, obligation, false belonging, fear, and shame.
This is the path of the rule-follower—doing what is expected no matter the personal cost, following the rules and doing as they “should” for fear of losing something they don’t even realize they have already lost—themselves!
In every episode of The Next Right Thing podcast, Emily P. Freeman says, “Our daily decisions are making our lives.” And I have found this to be too true. Our lives our made from a million tiny (and sometimes big) decisions. We need navigational tools to help us in this process. Our navigational tool used to be our rulebooks, but now we know that just doesn’t suffice. Not any more. Not if we want to live a fulfilling life.
Henceforth, we are no longer rule-followers held captive by The Shoulds. We are rule-breakers. As newly evolved rule-breakers, we’re learning to ditch the “Shoulds” in exchange for a life led by our own unique values.
But how do we make this shift?
Learning to live our lives from our values involves un-learning and re-learning how to make decisions. A large part of this process is rediscovering who we are individually and uniquely. It is no easy feat because The Rulebook has disconnected us from our truest selves. We’re so familiar with the path it has laid out before us that it feels impossible to choose or forge a different path. I believe that in order to live our most fulfilled lives, we must do just that.
And we can start with learning to ask these three questions before making a decision:
1) Why am I doing this?
This question involves practicing the “Power of the Pause” as I’ve frequently heard it called. Before you act or agree to some new addition to your already full schedule, stop and think: “Why am I doing this?” Understanding what motivates you to action is essential for learning to live from your values.
For those of us who have historically responded immediately with, “yes!” to any and all requests of our time and energy, this is an incredibly necessary shift. Our time and energy are not infinite resources. Before saying “yes,” or even “no” to yet another request, I invite you to pause and ask yourself these important questions for further exploration of your “why”:
Am I doing this because it's expected of me or because I genuinely want to do it?
What are the consequences if I don't do this? Are these consequences real and significant, or are they based on imaginary fears or societal pressure? A.K.A. Is it a “should?”
How does this action make me feel? Does it bring me joy, fulfillment, and a sense of purpose? Or does it create stress, anxiety, and a feeling of obligation?
Am I doing this for myself or for someone else? Is this action motivated by my own desires and needs, or am I doing it to please others or gain their approval?
Does this align with my values and goals? Is this action consistent with who I want to be and what I want to achieve in life?
While answering these questions, you may find that you are embarrassed by your true motives. Don’t be. Your motives are absolutely normal and human. Wanting to do things because of societal pressure to do it or because you want the approval of others is completely natural. We want to belong. We want to be liked and loved. We need both, actually, but we also need to learn to give ourselves some of that needed love which is why we are also going to ask the next two questions.
2) What do I want and/or need?
By spending too much of our lives as people-pleasing rule-followers, we become completely disconnected from ourselves. We become so focused on meeting the needs of others and keeping them happy that we learn to suppress our own needs and desires. It can start to feel almost wrong to have our own dreams, desires, and needs.
Please hear me say this: You are allowed to want. You are allowed to need.
After all this time of suppressing our own wants and needs, we become numb to them. We respond too often with, “I don’t care. What do YOU want to do?” We do this so much that we begin to believe that we actually don’t care. When someone asks us how they can help us or what we want, we have no idea how to respond. Over time, this complete denial of self causes a chasm between who we actually are and who we are pretending to be.
Because of this chasm, it can feel nearly impossible to answer the question of “What do I want?” After you have denied yourself for so long, how do you reunite with this long-buried part of you—the part of you that longs for something more than what you and The Rulebook have said you’re allowed to have?
Here are a few quick ideas:
Set aside time for self-reflection and listening to your inner voice. One way to do this is to practice writing “Morning Pages.”
Experiment and explore: These are NOT cuss words as I was always taught (maybe not explicitly, but still). Exploration, experimentation, and trying new things can help us know what we want, and equally important, what we DON’T want.
Self-Dates: Take yourself on self-dates. Go by yourself and only do what YOU want to do. Go where you want to go. Eat where YOU want to eat. Don’t do anything that is a “should.” Stop and listen to your inner self. You still know what you want. You just need practice. Self-dates are a great way to practice that skill.
3) What are MY values?
Now that we are starting to understand our current motives, and we are beginning to open ourselves up to our unique wants and desires again, it’s time to make a difficult decision that will probably take some time. We have to decide what our unique values are—not what they “should” be or what they’re “supposed to” be, not what they have been in the past. On the contrary, we are asking the question, “What are my values, here and now?” This can be a difficult question to answer, but try to be as honest with yourself as possible.
How do you decide? It helped me to do a values sort much like this one. I have recommended this in previous posts, but the idea is that you sort these different values based on headings like “Very Important to Me,” “Important to Me,” “Somewhat Important to Me,” and “Not important to Me.” It seems overly simplistic, maybe, but it helped me tremendously as I tried to figure out what I value. I hope it will help you as well on your journey to living a life led by your own unique values instead of “The Shoulds.”
You may be asking, “What does all this have to do with her getting a job?” All that self-reflection I did over the last couple of years, spending time answering the above questions, showed me what I needed to look for in a new career. I was determined to find a job that:
1) allowed me to do work that I would find fulfilling and enjoyable while giving me more financial freedom. That was my why.
2) that would be in alignment with my core values of openness & compassion, personal growth, and community & connection.
3) would give me enough margin for my creative pursuits and for spending time with my family and friends.
After all that time of reflecting, I finally knew what I wanted and needed, and then this opportunity came available. It took some time, patience, and some major inner work, but I am so happy to say that I am now the Community Engagement Specialist for a local children’s advocacy center. It is important work with an organization that aligns with my values, and I am excited to be a part of it.
You may not be in the middle of a career transition, but we are always making decisions. Those decisions, however big or small, make our lives. The question is what kind of life do we want? Do we want a life led by obligation and shame, or do we want to life a truly fulfilling and authentic life driven by our values?
If you’re ready to get off the all-too-familiar path laid out by The Shoulds, I invite you to spend some time with yourself so you can find your why, be in tune with what you want and need, and be firm on what you value. It’s time, rule-breakers, to find—or create—your own unique path with your values as your guide instead of The Shoulds. There is life beyond The Shoulds, and a much more fulfilling one at that.
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