You should have a Bonsai Tree

Last week I had such a fun conversation with a fellow coach. 

She was having some drama over feeling like she needed to have an impressive hobby.

She actually said the words 

"I should because all successful people have hobbies, things like keeping bonsai trees!"

I’d like to know where it is written that successful people have Bonsai trees.

But what was interesting about it is that she kept bringing up the idea that she should be doing something different to what she IS doing. 

I SHOULD, if you haven't already noticed, is a pretty toxic thought that's probably making you feel like crap.

Because when we say 'Well I SHOULD be doing this" the underlying message is "I'm not and so something is wrong."

And it sneaks in so innocently like it's trying to help. 

After the Bonsai tree incident, I got curious and looked for all the ways in my life I tell myself I should be doing something. 

Over the course of the week, I discovered that it’s EVERYWHERE, and creates a lot of unnecessary stress!

I should always have a spotless house. 

I should get up earlier and work out. 

I should be more productive during my downtime. 

I should eat breakfast. 

I should dress in a certain way. 

I should lose weight. 

I should network more. 

I should spend more time on… Fill in the blank. 

And we often look at the whole SHOULDING business as something positive, like we’ve identified all these wonderful things that if we did them our life and somehow be better. 

But what actually happens is that the "should" basically just means "What I'm doing is not good enough."

Which of course brings up a whole host of problems and creates so much mental drama, so much stress and so much lack of confidence that the whole Shoulding on yourself is a much bigger problem than most people think. 

That doesn’t mean that you don’t do any of the things that you’re telling yourself you should, it just means you got to stop judging yourself so harshly because you’re not doing them. 

I don’t know about you, but telling myself I should do something very rarely motivates me to actually do it.

Thinking about how much I enjoy having a calm, organized and clean house is much more motivating than telling myself I should have a clean house and somehow I'm "bad" if I don't. 

It also means that on days where I don’t get round to cleaning because I have other priorities, my brain then turns it into evidence of why I’m a shit person who doesn’t have together because I SHOULD HAVE A SPOTLESS HOUSE. 

Telling myself that I SHOULD get up and start my day at 5 am because that's what "successful people do", makes me already feel like a failure as soon as the alarm goes off at 6:30. 

Not a great mindset to start the day with!

I know this seems like a really small shift, but going through my week just picking through the shoulds and weeding out the ones that really don’t need to be sitting in my head, re-framing the ones that I do actually want to do has been a very liberating experience. 

So after a week of really challenging it by asking myself "But WHY should I?" And being honest about how I feel about the reasons that come up, I've decided to just let go of "I Shoulds" permanently because it's really not actually helpful!

  Which in just a week, has left me feeling so much calmer, more confident, and so much less critical of myself as a whole.