Ep 168: Breaking Free from the Cycle of 'Shoulds': Embracing Authenticity and Intention in Your Life and Career

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week .

Today I want to talk about a topic that I think we're all going to be able to relate to , and that is what happens when you're not where you think you should be in life , and it's that should word the shoulding of ourselves . That impacts all of us at one time or another . But there's definitely a lot of opportunity for that to come up in midlife .

But actually I think it can happen at any point in our lives , and for many people it's just a pattern of thought that gets really ingrained and all of this pressure that we learn to put on ourselves around the things that we think we should have or be or do by the time we get to certain places in our lives , and I want to explore it today .

I want to talk about the different ways that it shows up in our life . Where does it come from ? Because we don't just invent that pattern of thought . It comes from somewhere .

So I want to talk about that and I want to talk about some of the problems with it and the drag that it can represent in your life , and then I want to talk about where do you go from there If you want to kind of undo that pattern of thought .

I think this is going to be a really helpful episode If this is something that you find yourself thinking a lot , that you look out into the world , either on social media or maybe on LinkedIn , comparing yourself with former colleagues or whatever , or even the neighbors or whatever your family , and you look around and you think I should be here by now and I'm

not , and then making yourself feel , because of the things you're thinking , all kinds of not desirable emotions , right , which we know from this podcast . Thinking negative thoughts is going to lead to negative emotions , is going to lead to less than desirable actions , is going to lead to less than desirable results .

So getting stuck in that shooting of yourself isn't really going to get you where you want to go . So I want to talk about it today because sometimes my topics come from people that I'm coaching or whatever . And I have a client that I've worked with for a couple of months and she came to me because she's struggling a little bit .

The last , in her view , five years or maybe a little more , of her career have been very challenged in different ways and she feels like it's just been kind of one thing after another . And it started with she's always been kind of a high performer , always been someone who was sought out by recruiters , like there were always plenty of opportunities .

And then , from her perspective , there was a shift about five , maybe six , seven years ago and it got kind of tough . And it started when she went into a particular job .

But if she's honest with herself , like she was coming out of already kind of a short run of challenges proceeding that she got into this job and it was in a culture or an environment that didn't suit her , kind of pushed against , you know how she liked to work and the vibe of a culture and even the content of the job wasn't exactly what she wanted .

And she was there for several years and then , in a massive wave of layoffs that they did very recently , she found herself without a job really for the first time and she never really thought .

Given her pattern of performance and her level of contributions over her career , she never really thought that she would be one of those people handed the pink slip , and of course that happens to a lot of . High performance is not just low performance that can get you laid off in this day and age . It can literally be anything .

But regardless of the reasons , I have found from talking to colleagues , from coaching people now , that it is very challenging to work your way through a situation where you're asked to leave a company where it's not of your own accord and it does a number on your self esteem , and so she's really been struggling with that .

And as she's out in the market and networking on LinkedIn and through recruiters and things like that , she naturally finds herself spending a lot of time in the LinkedIn tool , which , as we all know , is a great peer networking tool , but it can also be an instrument of torture if you use it in a way that's not great , and what I mean by that is she's using

it to really make herself feel terrible about quote , unquote , where she is right now and the fact that she should be in a place that is much further along . That is what drove her . Not only the looking for the job , but the situation she's encountering while she's looking for the job are really what drove her to seek me out .

She really wanted to spend some time talking about how to stop torturing herself with this idea that this never should have happened . She never should have taken that job . That wasn't a great fit , and when she found out it was a great fit , she should have left much sooner . It should have been her idea , and this has really set her back .

And look at all of her former colleagues they're much further along by now .

She feels like she just should be in a completely different place , and so that , in a nutshell like as I was listening to her and as we've gone through her first kind of wave of sessions and really are starting to get deeper into it and explore it , we've discovered that this isn't a new thing for her .

This idea of should has really been with her for much of her life , and that's kind of one of the first points I wanted to make is that deciding that you're not where you think you should be , that should , is a habit that many of us form and it comes from our early programming , as so many things do .

But even more than that , I think there's a lot of things out in society today that make it easy for that .

Should I should be here , I should have achieved this , I should have made this much money , I should have this kind of a job , I should have this title , I should have this house , I should have this spouse , you know , I should have this family , I should have these friends , I should be taking that vacation like it can get into very material things , but it

can really be a lot of about foundational things of what we should have , and I think that comes in many ways . It can start , the germ of it can start in our early life from , psychologists say , fear driven cultures .

Maybe your family was a place where a lot of pressure was put on you to be perfect and that the things that you did were never quite enough .

That you should be more like your sibling or you should be doing this like the neighbor down the street , or you should be getting better grades , like maybe there was that kind of pressure , maybe there was pressure in school from some early educational figures that you had in your life .

But now , like with the age of social media and not just the perfect Instagram feeds but the LinkedIn tool , because I focus a lot on the career realm it can be an instrument of torture like you can really .

You can really start taking a look at former colleagues whose careers have really taken off and maybe yours is languishing a bit , and you can really torture yourself with that information .

Religious programming , certain religions teach us to think in ways that were never quite enough and it can lay all of this guilt and humiliation and fear and not enoughness on ourselves .

And once we get exposed to things like that , that early gem of an idea can become a way , a tool that we use to kind of galvanize us forward to do better , to be better , and for a while the shooting can work , that pressure that we put on ourselves .

It can actually in fact drive us forward to do things that can push us to do things we're a little uncomfortable or hesitant to do .

But the truth is that that doesn't work for long and there's the danger that you start overshooting , where it becomes less about just a little nudge you're trying to give yourself to drive yourself forward and it becomes the steep shaming and guilting and judgment of ourselves .

The duration where we get stuck in this idea that that nothing's ever enough , that we're not enough , that we have to be better or we should be better . That's really what's underneath it and , you know , it taps into our fears of failure and that , over time , undermines the achievement we're trying to actually go for .

The thing we're actually judging ourselves for overshutting ourselves can actually keep us stuck exactly where we are Rooted , to the place where we are , from this perspective of not being good enough and this terrible fear that we don't have what it takes to actually do or have or be the things that we think we should have , do or be .

So you know , when we're thinking things like that , you know we're thinking we're not enough . In some way we're feeling these feelings of shame and judgment and duration and fear and shame .

It leads to behaviors like procrastination we put off going for the thing we think we should be doing right Because we're afraid that we're not going to actually be able to do it .

It can lead to perfectionism and this feeling that if we don't get it perfect it's going to be too late , or can lead to feelings of like scarcity , like if you're looking at like my client is looking at opportunities in the market and she's convincing herself that there aren't enough good opportunities to go around .

That leads to this kind of scarcity , feeling like I should have this , but I'm not going to have this because you know there aren't enough of those kinds of opportunities out there and there's too many of us looking and I'm not good enough and I'm not going to stand out in the search and it's all my fault anyway , because I never should have taken that job .

And had I taken the different job , you know it would have been a better fit and I wouldn't have been laid off and everything would be different . So it leads us into a place where we're going to get ourselves into a situation where we really don't want to be , and so that is where I think the danger is especially .

It can happen at any age and , like I said , some people are programmed this way through their whole life and through their schooling years . That can drive them to be a straight , a student , or even in the early stages of their career can it can drive them to be a top performer , but it eventually catches up with us .

One of the problems with the should thing is that it isn't usually about what we actually want , it's about what we think we should want .

That , to me , is kind of part of it , the root of it , because the truth of the matter is that if we really wanted to do the thing , if we really wanted to start that business , or if we really wanted to get that next title up , but are finding ourselves kind of at an impasse at the place we're working , or if we really wanted that relationship , we'd

actually get out into the world and start taking actions that would lead us to those things .

So I think sometimes the shooting that we do like , oh , I should have the VP title , or I should have the SVP title , or I should be a C-level by now , or I should have the $500,000 business or a million dollar business , or I should have the 2.5 kids , like we start to do that to ourselves at midlife .

But I think sometimes when we're thinking a thought like that yeah , we sort of learn those , you should always be better and you're not good enough when we're young . But I think too , there's an element to the shooting that it's like well , if you really wanted that thing , like look back over your life and the things that you really wanted .

Don't you have them already ? Like I think that's part of it is that you really are in your life exactly where you were meant to be , based on who you've been up to this point , meaning the things you were thinking , the things you thought you wanted , the choices you made , the decisions you made . It all led here .

Now there's a variety of things that can happen when we make a decision or a choice , like my client who took the job and found that culture really wasn't a great fit for her . It just the vibe , the toxicity of it , it just for her wasn't a great match , and she knew that right away .

So if she had honored that observation that she had , she could have made a different choice right away . You know , instead of telling yourself , well , I should stay for a couple of years . You don't really have to . People tell you that and there's a lot of shaming that can go on in the career realm around job changes .

There are very traditional and , I think , kind of old school ways of looking at tenure . I think it's great if you find a place that's got a great culture and lots of opportunity for you and you love the people and you're having a good time and you're growing and you're like stay there for 40 years , that's great .

But usually a robust career is going to lead you on a journey and it's going to lead you and you'll navigate through some different cultures and experiences and not all of them , despite your best efforts to make a great decision , are going to be exactly what you'd hope they would be , and many times you don't have control over that .

So you can't shame yourself or should yourself into staying for a specific period of time without having that take somewhat of a toll on you , right ? And so if you're in that situation , I'm not trying to shame you . I'm just trying to ease the burden and say there are no rules really anymore

. Yes , there are still some old school thinkers who think you should stay two years or five years or seven years , like there are people who think you should stay 15 years .

But I will tell you , those are also the same people that will want to hire someone who's been in the same company for 20 years , who knows how to be successful in that culture , and they're going to want to plop them in to a senior level role in a new environment .

And those people don't necessarily if you've been in one place for 20 years , have the flexibility or the agility to be able to quickly adapt . Some can , but that's not a muscle that you've had to call upon . If you've been in a place for 20 years , right , you learn agility and flexibility and adaptability by always dealing with change .

Now , if you're in a company for 20 years that's always undergoing crazy changes or was in a very high hypergrowth mode , or maybe the opposite , maybe kind of meeting their numbers by continually laying off in years , so you're always adapting to the downward part of change , I do think you can learn adaptability and flexibility because you survived all of that , right .

But if you're kind of just in a stable environment , leaving that after a prolonged period of time and plopping into a new culture , you're going to find that there's a muscle there that you've got to build , you've got to adapt to something entirely new that probably has nothing in common with the culture that you just came out of .

So my point here is that the shooting of ourselves is just based on either what society thinks , or what your mother thinks , or what your boss thinks , or what your friends think . It's not helpful . What you have to get really clear on is what do you want and what do you think about what you want in your life ?

And what we don't want to do is we don't want to make ourselves bad or wrong for wanting something different than what the people around us have or the people who are important to us think we should want or have . They're not the ones living your life .

You need to need to decide , not where you think you should be , but you need to take a look , really add where are you right now and what do you like about that place and what do you not like about that place , and therefore , what do you want to edit out and what do you want to add in to your life ?

Where do you want to go based on what you want , not based on what societal programming or your family's programming or your friends' opinions or your spouses . It doesn't matter what anyone outside thinks . It matters what you think , and I want you to get really clear on that .

One of the most listened to podcast episodes that I have is how to Know what you Want , and I know that a lot of times , people who come to me say I just don't know what I want .

You know , we don't allow ourselves to know , I think , because we're so filled with noise about what we think we should want , and that's where this , that's part of the place where this I'm not where I should be , and all of this pressure we put on ourselves , is that we're not really allowing ourselves to say that the things that we want are of value too .

You know , instead of that and listening to that and acting upon that , you know , sometimes we instead focus on the external , like what society tells us or what Instagram's telling us , or what LinkedIn is telling us and what our friends are telling us , and so we think , well , I'm just , my life is a hot mess , it's just not where I should be .

And what I want you to get clear on is what do you want ? You know , in the area of your life , that you're judging yourself . What about it isn't quote unquote right ? You know what isn't enough about it and get really , really clear on that yourself .

Not by asking friends , not by doing anything other than just listening to yourself and your intuition and what you think about things . Because at the root of it all , beyond the guilt and the pressure and the judgment , just the negativity that we can feel when we're swimming in the shooting of ourselves at the heart of it .

I think the most detrimental part of it is that when we think things like that , it says to ourselves that we don't trust ourselves . We don't trust that what we want is actually the right thing for us .

You think we should want this other thing , and so we stop listening to ourselves because we don't trust ourselves , or if we're using the shooting to galvanize us and to drive us forward .

The fact that we think we need that kind of pressure in order to go do something is false and actually it's really unkind because it takes it does a number on our wellbeing .

Psychologists who studied this like shooting say that beyond just the mental exhaustion you can feel when you're constantly telling yourself you're not enough , is some very real physical effects . You wear down or deplete the positive hormones that we have the dopamine , which is a reward center . We do away with the oxytocin , which is about bonding .

The serotonin , which is really about your mood on a daily basis , and the endorphins that we need for the feel good factor . All of those things they call them the dose hormones dopamine , oxytocin , serotonin and endorphins .

Those things get depleted with all the negative self-talk that we can do , and what increases are the things we don't want , like the stress hormones , like cortisol , which is the fight or flight thing that kicks in when we feel like we're in survival mode , when we're just constantly pressuring ourselves to chase after the things that we think we should want or

whatever . It's not a sustainable way of motivating ourselves . So we might have learned in our younger days that when we should ourselves , that it'll spur us into action .

That can work temporarily , but it's not a sustainable way of going after really what you want and I think sort of how do you undo it is first understanding that these things that we say to ourselves around .

We're on LinkedIn and we're trying to network and we noticed that a former colleague that maybe we were ahead of has now jumped to two levels beyond us , right ? Or someone who used to work for us is now someone who's a level or two beyond us . We can look at that and we make that mean something about us and it really doesn't .

And we can look at that thing and we can say , well , they have that , I should have that . But we miss the fact that maybe that's not what we really want . Just because other people want to keep climbing vertically up the ladder doesn't mean you need to want that . You can want that , but you don't have to want that .

And the fact that you don't want that doesn't mean that you're an unmotivated underachiever . It's okay to actually want exactly what you have right , and it's okay to not want what you have . But don't let your North Star , like where you went ahead , come from outside of you .

Don't let it come from your observations of others or what society says that you should have , do or be , or what your mother says . Let it come from yourself , like it's okay to look at others and feel inspired by that and to go deep inside and say I want that too for these reasons that are important to me . That's different .

But just to say that person used to be here and I used to be above them and now they're way above me and so I have to want that .

Maybe that's not what you want , and I would argue that if it isn't where you are , there's probably one of two things holding you back from that Either fear that you're not good enough to have that self-doubt , all that , or maybe you just don't want it right .

And I think it's really important when you're looking at your life and telling yourself all of these things about where you should be and why you should be there , and all of that stuff . I think it's important when you're there to catch yourself and really ask yourself some key questions . First question is do I really want that thing ?

That is very important to explore and the best way to explore it is to do what , in my practice , we call a thought download . Just write whatever the thing is up at the top of the paper , like , if it's about a title , I think I should be an SEP by now , or I should be making 500,000 by now , or whatever your thing is . Write it down .

And then I want you to write down all your thoughts about that , all of them . Just what comes up for you when you look at that title , when you look at that income level , when you look at that relationship , when you look at that life . Write down everything you think about your own when you see that .

And then I want you to pick the most negative answer you gave and I want you to ask yourself why , like if you think that you should have a VP title by right now . Explore all the reasons why you think that . Are they coming from your own passions when you look at that list that you answered , or are they coming from things that people said to you ?

Or are they coming from an outside observation , like , well , that person has it , so I should have it . Well , that's not a great answer because really , what you should be asking is do you even want it Right ? And if you really wanted it this is the next question Wouldn't you have already done it or tried to do it Right ?

Do you really want that thing , or do you feel like you should want that thing ? And what would happen if you let go of that expectation ? What would happen ? What would it look like to let go of what you think you should be , have or do ? Whatever that thing is that you're obsessing about ?

What if you just let it go and instead replaced it with the answer to what do I really want ? Is it the SVP job ? Is it the big salary , or is it your own business ? Or is it the job you already have , right ? Is there nothing wrong with the job ? Do you enjoy it ? Do you like the people you work with ?

Do you like the quality of your job every day ? Do you like the people you work with ? Do you like the industry , like , maybe you already have what you quote unquote should have . Maybe you already have the relationship you want . Maybe you already have the friendships you should have . Maybe you already live in the place you wanna live .

Why would you wanna give that up for something that is outside of you , that you haven't really even taken the time to explore , if you even really wanted or not ?

Like , give yourself the opportunity to understand if the shooting is coming from outside factors or is the shooting coming from the fact that maybe you really do want that thing but you're really telling yourself you can't possibly have that thing because you're not good enough . Right ?

Are the things you're shooting yourself about things you're putting off because you don't want them , or are you putting them off because you think they're too hard or too impossible ? Right , that is really important .

And I feel like the should thing is just this place where all of our fears and self judgments and not enoughness and guilt , shame , humiliation all of it gets put in this should pile and I think when we learn to look and lean too much into the outside factors like what other people or what society says that we should want or where we should be , by now we

lose connection with what we want , and there's nothing worse than spending a ton of time in your life chasing something that you should be , have , or do you really want your life to be about what you want to be , have or do ?

There's nothing worse than chasing something that you think you should have , be or do you wanna spend your life going after the things that you want to have , be or do ? Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks . This is your life , and so I thought this was a meaty topic .

Today , I'm in the early stages of working with my client on helping her identify , like how does she slow down the noise around what she's telling herself about where she should be and how she got to this , what she thinks is a suboptimal place , and to start instead looking at it as a chance to reset , after first getting clear on well , what do you actually

want ? Stop looking back at five years ago or seven years ago when you took that job . That wasn't the great fit . Stop blaming yourself for staying too long . Yeah , maybe all of that was true , but it doesn't matter anymore . It's in the rear view mirror . You are where you are right now .

How can you actually be where you are right now Not where you think you should be long enough to figure out what you actually want and then go for that , so that , I think , is a great thought for my client and it's a great thought for any of you who are stuck in shooting yourself .

So , if that's , you , go back , do the thought , download exercise I gave you and ask yourself some of those questions I teed up and really spend some time discovering what you want . This is your life and it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks about it . It matters what you think and it matters what you want .

And what really matters and I think is the most actualized kind of life is actually giving yourself permission to actually go after the things you want , even if they're hard , even if they're uncomfortable , even if other people don't think they're worth it . What matters is what you think and what you want . So with that I'll leave you till next time .

Make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach . I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level Inside . We take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then we'll go through it .

So I'm going to go through it and I'm going to go through it and I'm going to go through it and study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash Next Level . Don't forget the thepurposefulcareercom backslash Next Level . Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of . We'll see you there .