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MAY
2007 “Shoulding”
on Yourself The following article is a modified extraction from a book co-authored by Lyn and Neil and soon to be published by Gildan Media. Without fail, I use the following model with every, every single client I work with. At some point our creative, innovative minds need a reality check. This tool is how I help these brilliant minds keep free and clear of “Shoulding” on themselves. Here’s how the madness starts, or the “shoulding” if you will. You are a thinker - an idea machine. You get a concept in your head and you can elaborate all day about how it could look and what it will do. You might be an artist who has learned how to uniquely blend the mediums of oil painting and sculpting in such a way that you are getting massive amounts of press or having invented a “new art form.” You have a vision to bring your idea to the forefront by offering week-long intensive workshops around the world at universities and collages. Or maybe you are a freelance writer and your next article fills up four pages. Your editor can only give you two. Chances are that if you can relate to these scenarios, you are or have been stuck with “should” all over yourself. You are stuck at “should” anytime you fixate on the biggest, most grandest version of your imagined outcome. When you are stuck at “should” a number of things could happen to you: You might begin to procrastinate because the idea has grown so large, it overwhelms your ability to know how and where to start. You might panic or give up the idea because you, by yourself cannot make it all happen. You constantly become too hard on yourself because you are not able to deliver on all the things you have imagined happening. Life just doesn’t come out like you thought it should (oops, there’s our word popping up again).
Here’s how it looks: Andrea may have been thinking that she wanted her Bridal Shop grand opening to include gourmet foods, fine wine, a distinguished guest list of influential folks. She may have visualized press from two local papers and flowers from the best florist in town. She could see herself making her own dress for the event and hiring out models to wear her newest line. She may have wanted to hire a hair and make-up artist to prepare the models. All this could be her vision of the event. Now we look at realistic and notice that she has only 2 months to prepare, still keep her shop running full-time to pay the bills and her budget is very, very lean. Let’s shift into Necessary for a moment. With two months to prepare and a lean budget the necessary items on her list are these: invite the most influential people she can, get the best food and wine that she can afford, arrange for dramatic yet affordable mannequins to display her new line. Hope for press and wear something from her closet that she feel’s fantastic in. From this position of Necessary in the model Andrea has peeled to the bare bone vision. If she wants to upgrade and if she has time she could add models or make her own dress. However, she has a more sane and doable picture in her mind and she is free to function without “should” spread all over the place. Conserving your resources for the necessary and realistic parts of life helps us all become successful. Shoulding on yourself eventually becomes viewed as self-inflicted nonsense that you’ll be happy to have learned to avoid.
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If
we are to get anything worth accomplishing accomplished we have to move
out of “should” thinking. We have to downshift. The most
likely place to go is the next step down in the model. Realistic
thinking is where we want to be. However to get to realistic most of
us have to peel all the way down to necessary first. 