How many times a day do you do things out of obligation? Because you feel like you “should” or “have to”? I’m guilty of this too…but I’m working on it.
The truth is, there is sometimes a very fine line between the things we have to do and don’t actually have to do, and that line is the value we place on the task (which is entirely subjective by the way) and the ripple effect (consequences) of not doing the thing. But oftentimes we “should” ourselves, falling prey to the opinions and recommendations of others, stuffing our own intuition (believing others know better), and telling our own needs to take a back seat in the process.
If you struggle with feeling as though your life is filled with obligations. If you’re spending your time doing things you have to do instead of things you want to do. If you’re stressed and burnt out from all of your “shoulds.” This post is for you. In it, I’ll provide four steps to help you suss out whether your “shoulds” are actually important and help you find more balance and joy in your life.
Table of Contents:
- The Benefits of Letting Go of Your “Shoulds”
- Step One: Examine Your Life
- Step Two: Identify Your Values
- Step Three: Examine The Costs and Benefits
- Step Four: Decide if the “Should” is Valid
- Step Five: Set Boundaries
The Benefits of Letting Go of Your “Shoulds”
First, let’s talk about how you benefit from letting go of your “shoulds.” In general, when letting go of their “shoulds” and honoring their needs, people generally experience:
Reduced Stress and Anxiety: Often, we place unnecessary pressure on ourselves with self-imposed obligations. Letting go of them can ease the mental load, helping to reduce stress and anxiety. You can focus on what truly matters and let go of the fear of failure or disappointing others.
Increased Mental Clarity: Without the weight of obligations that aren’t serving you, your mind becomes clearer. You can prioritize important tasks, make better decisions, and approach challenges with more focus and energy.
More Time for Personal Growth: By freeing yourself from unnecessary commitments, you gain time and space to invest in activities that align with your true goals, values, and passions. This can foster personal development, creativity, and a deeper sense of fulfillment.
Enhanced Self-Compassion: Letting go of rigid expectations and perfectionism allows you to be kinder to yourself. You can acknowledge that it’s okay to not do everything or meet every expectation, creating a more compassionate and balanced approach to life.
Improved Relationships: By releasing self-imposed obligations, you create more authentic connections with others. Instead of feeling resentful or overwhelmed by commitments, you can engage in relationships with a more open and genuine mindset.
Increased Freedom and Flexibility: Letting go of unnecessary obligations gives you more freedom to adapt to new opportunities, take risks, and live more spontaneously. You can embrace changes and surprises in life with a greater sense of ease.
Better Focus on What Truly Matters: By shedding distractions and obligations that aren’t aligned with your core values, you can channel your energy into what is truly important—whether it’s your health, passions, or meaningful relationships.
Step One: Examine Your Life
There are two approaches to start letting go of your “shoulds” to honor your needs, one being a proactive approach and the other reactive.
The Proactive Approach
If you want to begin to let go of your “shoulds” RIGHT NOW, start by taking inventory of your life. Sit down with a notebook or your journal and start to jot down all of the activities with which you regularly fill your time. Even the seemingly insignificant ones. Indicate with an asterisk or highlight each task which does not bring you joy, for further consideration later.
The Reactive Approach
If you’re running short on time or don’t want to take the time to take inventory of your life, you can analyze each “should” as it arises. However, this approach is going to require you to be very in tune with your emotions and the physical sensations or cues your body gives you when feeling emotions like: frustration, resentment, disappointment, helplessness, guilt, anger, boredom, anxiety, sadness or discontent. The reason for this being that we are oftentimes on autopilot when we are carrying out one of our “shoulds,” because we tend to see them as non-negotiable (and therefore what’s the point of fighting it – just do it). But there are always underlying emotions behind our actions… we just have to pick up on them.
If you don’t feel as though you have the emotional and bodily awareness to pick up on the emotions and physical sensations behind your actions, the recipe for building this awareness can be found in my book: Journey Within: A Guide to Strengthening the Connection with Yourself and Others. This book is a nod to shadow work. It was written to help you have healthy, harmonious relationships through implementation of healthy coping strategies which help you:
- Increase self-awareness of emotions, reactions, and triggers
- Improve emotional regulation
- Create Radical self-acceptance to neutralize your triggers
Step Two: Identify Your Values
The next step in letting go of your “shoulds” is to identify your values. Values can be either people, places or traits. They are the things, experiences, qualities and principles that you would most like to have in your life. For example, some common values include: family, friends, financial security, health, creativity, travel, honesty, adventure, curiosity, etc.
But why are they important?
- Your values form a significant part of your identity (knowing your values is knowing YOURSELF)
- Values influence your behaviors, relationships and everyday life (understanding your values helps you to better understand why you do the things you do)
- Values help create and enforce healthy boundaries for yourself and loved ones
- Values can assist you in important decision making and guide you in personal development
- Identifying your values can help you spend your time more intentionally
- We should spend more of our time doing activities that align with your personal values because that is what makes us feel more fulfilled.
Our values dictate our feelings about our lives, the people we associate with, the work we do, the activities we engage in, etc. Therefore, if we are completing a task that does not align with our values, we will have an emotional and/or physical reaction to it, whether we recognize it or not. Over time, negative emotions pertaining to a task can stack up, creating stress which can have a negative ripple effect on our lives and those we love.
If you’ve never taken the time to formally identify your values, I have a free guide to help you with this process that you can get here:
Step Three: Examine The Costs and Benefits
Next, you’ll want to reflect on the activities that you feel obligated to do (but don’t bring you joy) and identify the short term and long term ripple effect of the activity.
For each activity that you feel obligated to do but doesn’t bring you joy, ask yourself these four questions:
- What are the short term benefits I experience from this activity?
- What are the long term benefits I experience from this activity?
- What are the short term negative consequences I experience from this activity?
- What are the long term negative consequences I experience from this activity?
I find it incredibly helpful to have a visual of the answers to these questions and so I do what is called a Decisional Balance, otherwise known as a Cost Benefit Analysis [pictured here].
This was a Decisional Balance I had done last week to help me decide whether or not I should take the week off from blogging, to give myself the physical and emotional rest I needed after a very stressful and draining (previous) week. As you can see, when trying to identify the ripple effect taking the week off would have, I considered more aspects of my life than my blog alone.
Hustle culture would have me believe that it wasn’t okay to take that time off if I truly want to achieve my goals, especially since my blog is fairly new…and in the past, when I sought business coaching, I was encouraged to push myself to “make it happen,” and was made to believe if I didn’t I would fail. But when I considered the impact to my overall mental health, ability to continue to cope in healthy ways, and how becoming overwhelmed might negatively impact my important relationships, my answer was pretty clear. You see, my physical and mental wellbeing, as well as my family’s, are some of my top values, much more so than professional success. In this case, my values helped to steer my decision.
If you’d like to get the template to do your own decisional balance, you can get it (free) here:
Step Four: Decide if the “Should” is Valid
This step is pretty straight forward….
Consider how the activity supports one or more of your values (or doesn’t). Review your Decisional Balance to determine whether the benefits outweigh the consequences.
Step Five: Set a Boundary
The last step in letting go of your “shoulds” and honoring your needs is to solidify your decision by setting a boundary.
Our boundaries are meant to protect the things most important to us. They are limits you identify for yourself and apply through action or communication. This doesn’t mean you get everything you want when you want it, it means there are small things within your control that you can do to protect your time and energy.
Boundaries are NOT rules that you impose on others and expect them to follow. For example, a healthy boundary might be “I will not answer work calls after hours,” not “You will not call me about work related matters after hours.”
There are five steps to implementing boundaries:
First, determine your top priorities in life (your values). Identifying your values is SO important that it is referenced TWICE in this post. If you haven’t yet grabbed my free resource to identify your values, get it here:
Second, consider what you do and don’t have control over. What challenges might you run into when setting a boundary?
Third, list your boundaries and label them as either “hard” or “soft.” Hard boundaries are non-negotiables and soft are more like aspirations that you’re willing to compromise on and might not actually enforce. Remember to consider your values and goals when labeling your boundaries. Your values should be protected with hard boundaries.
Fourth, test out your boundaries. After you test each one out, ask yourself, “Did I achieve the outcome I had hoped for? You can always return to your old ways, but frequently people discover their old ways no longer serve them after testing their boundaries.
Lastly, commit. You’ve now had some time to test out a few ways to protect the things you value in life. Ask yourself: What did I learn? What are a couple of boundaries, that if I stick to it, would result in strong returns? Commit to these boundaries for at least a few months and see how you feel.
Thank you for reading this post! Before we say goodbye, here are some additional resources:
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