It’s time to stop “should-ing” all over…
How cool would it be if we lived in this world where everyone understood the power of thoughts?
If we did, you would probably hear the word “should” a whole lot less often.
One time, a little over a decade ago, I was giving a lecture on mindfulness and the power of our thoughts. My son, who was just ten-years-old at the time, had already spent nearly his whole life listening to me give these lectures. That day was no different. But as he sat there in the audience, something must have clicked in his mind in a new way.
When we climbed into the car at the end of the lecture, my son looked at me and said, “So, Mommy, what you’re really saying is that you shouldn’t ‘should’ all over yourself, right?”
I nearly burst out laughing, thinking to myself, Oh, out of the mouth of babes.
“If you should all over yourself, it’s a messy mess,” he continued, in his ten-year-old logic.
But the mental image my son had conjured was exactly what I had been speaking about all along. When I’m “should-ing” all over myself and other people, it really is just as productive as throwing shit—covering myself and everyone around me with all kinds of negativity.
Ask yourself: How often do you use the word “should” in a day? About yourself, about others, about the world at large? How often do you think or say things like:
“I should have performed better.”
“He should have been nicer.”
“She should have done that differently.”
“They should have…” X, Y, or Z.
If you’re anything like most people, you probably criticize yourself and other people with the word “should” all day long—maybe without even realizing it. But “should” is nothing more than a subtle way to pass judgement on yourself and those around you, AND it serves nothing and no one.
But, as usual, I have a great bio-hack for you: swapping the negative framing of “should” for a positive framing instead.
Next time you hear yourself thinking the word “should”, try this:
Instead of… “I should have spoken up in the meeting today.”
Try… “I really would have liked to speak up in today’s meeting.”
Instead of… “You should take your shoes off when you come into the house.”
Try… “It would feel really great if you removed your shoes before stepping on the carpet.”
Instead of… “She should have spoken to me kindlier.”
Try… “It would have felt good if she had spoken kindlier.”
In other words, rather than the shame, blame, and judgement of “should” you’re not only taking responsibility for your own emotional well-being, you’re also expressing your feelings and offering a positive solution for getting your needs met. Win-win!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to “should” all over myself and I don’t want to “should” all over anyone else, either.
“Should-ing” is just one cognitive distortion that leads to negative thinking. In fact, there are ten! And we’re going to dive into them right here, with the goal of de-stigmatizing and de-mystifying them, once and for all.
- All or Nothing Thinking
How often do you look at things as either this or that, yes or no, black or white? If you’re like most people, you’re probably thinking this way most of the time. The brain is hardwired for all or nothing thinking—it wants to sort information into one absolute category or another as a way of protecting you.
- Overgeneralization
If you overgeneralize, you tend to view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. Believe it or not, this is another built-in protection mechanism of the brain—the idea that everything is going to stay the same (aka: bad) no matter what you do. It is a mental process designed to protect you, but it does not serve you in the long term.
- Mental Filter
Dwelling on the negatives and ignoring the positives is another part of being human. As the expression goes, “the brain is like Velcro for negativity and Teflon for positivity.” Studies show that negative experiences are five times more powerful than positive ones, in terms of how they each imprint on the brain. In other words, it takes five compliments for your mind to recover from one critique, or five positive experiences to compensate for one negative one.
- Discounting the Positives
If you insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities do not count or are not significant, you are discounting the positives. Do you respond to expressions of appreciation with phrases like:
“Oh, it’s no big deal; don’t worry about it.”
“It’s nothing.”
“This old thing? I just got it on sale.”
When you discount and diminish, you make yourself small.
- Jumping to Conclusions
We typically jump to conclusions in one of two ways: by mind-reading and by fortune telling.
If you mind-read, you assume that others are reacting negatively to you when there is no definite evidence for this. Have you ever received a text message that you instantly over-analyzed? By mind-reading, you assumed the text meant one thing when it may have meant something totally different. That is another neurological function: your mind trying to fill in gaps.
If you fortune tell, you tend to arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly or fail to meet your expectations. Once again, this is your brain’s way of setting the stage to protect you before any misfortune has even occurred.
- Magnification or Minimization
In this case, you either inflate situations disproportionate to their actual significance, which can cause all sorts of drama and suffering in your life, or you diminish the true importance of things in a harmful way. Both are quite common—remember, the mind loves to jump to one extreme or the other.
- Emotional Reasoning
By emotionally reasoning, you make and justify your decisions and beliefs based on your temporary feelings in each moment. You think thoughts like, “I feel like an idiot, so I really must be one,” or “I don’t feel like doing this, so I’ll put it off until I do.” As humans, it is common to mistake our feelings for truth, when really, they are just as fleeting as our thoughts.
- “Should” Statements
You are already familiar with this one! You criticize yourself or other people with “should,” “shouldn’t,” “must,” “ought to,” “have to,” or similar offenders. Whenever you say, “You should,” you are in a cognitive distortion that is likely to create a negative outcome.
- Labeling
When you misclassify a mistake as a shortcoming, instead of saying, “I made a mistake,” you might tell yourself, “I am a failure.” The brain just loves to sort and sift, label, and categorize. Good or bad, hot or cold, up or down, love or hate. We don’t know how to hold still in uncertainty, so we label—even when it hurts us.
- Personalization and Blame
If you blame yourself for something you were not responsible for, or you blame other people for situations that your own attitudes and behavior may have contributed, you are personalizing or blaming. But blame is merely a way to take your pain and let it loose on someone else, while personalization perpetuations an illusion of control in an uncontrollable world. Any time we engage in either of these, we are just mismanaging our suffering.
So why is all this important to know, anyway?
Understanding common cognitive distortions enables us to lean into softness for and acceptance of ourselves and others. Once we realize we are all experiencing similar types of thinking, we tend not to judge ourselves or others as harshly.
Recognizing when you are in a cognitive distortion is key to what is called “creating the pause” in mindfulness. When you sit still long enough to access the pause between your thoughts—rather than letting them devolve into chaos, taking you along for the ride—you create enough silence to uncover what it is you’re actually thinking.
It is in that slight pause between one thought and the next that you can recognize the cognitive distortions you’re giving into and choose to think differently.
Rather than allowing the sifting, sorting, categorizing, and labeling instincts of the brain to take over, you can allow for a multitude of things to be true, simultaneously. Rather than thinking in black-and-white, one extreme or the other, you can allow many things to be true all at once.
The mind is always busy, distracted by the chaos of thought. The brain is like a massive CPU, programmed by the busy mind. Together, the brain and the mind work day and night, trying to make sense and order out of your reality—but in the absence of information, the brain and the mind start to write their own stories. They don’t want to rest in a place of unknowing, but the product of all that story-writing is often cognitive distortions.
The good news is that through it all, your soul (or spirit, essence, authentic self, deepest truth—whatever you want to call it!) is just hanging back and observing everything. Your authentic self is that ever-present part of you who is always there, observing exactly what is going on but never imposing its will.
By learning to shut up and sit, you invite that deepest, most authentic, most loving part of yourself forward. Hopefully, with practice and intention, over time you can live your life from that place of authenticity and self-love more often.
Want to learn more? There’s a book for that! Click here to take the first step towards greater awakening, awareness, self-love, and personal transformation.
You can also bring you questions to Wind Down Wednesdays, Yedda’s weekly mindful mental break! Join her in her home (virtually!) to ask questions, learn mini-mindfulness techniques, support one another in community and self-love, and take some space JUST BE. Register to shut up and sit with Yedda, here.
