This is the third post of a 4-part series on the danger of the word SHOULD.

In the previous posts, I talked about how my usage of the word should often create a sense of scarcity around choice and led me into living a life of chasing after other people’s expectations of me. In both of these scenarios, my way of “should-thinking” did not allow me to freely live the life of my dreams.

In this post, I want to bring to light another way that I have been using the word SHOULD, in which I feel that it has been detrimental to living a happy and fulfilled life.

“What should I be able to achieve?”, “What should I be able to do?”, “Where should I be in life?”

These are all examples of the SHOULD questions that I often asked myself to get a gauge of where I am at. This always seemed like a healthy exercise to me, to always assess where I am and where I could be. This seemed like a good way to ensure that I was not settling for mediocrity.

When I think about what I SHOULD be able to do, I am always imagining what I could achieve if I was able to do my absolute best day in and day out. These questions allow me to visualize what results I can create if I can be at the top of my game every day, with luck on my side and nothing bad ever happening unexpectedly. These are visions of the best possible outcome that is very difficult to achieve. If used properly, these images can be inspirational to push me towards creating better results.

What I didn’t realize, though, is how I would actually take these difficult unlikely scenarios to set new expectations for myself. I would tell myself that achieving those targets is simply hitting a bare minimum, and anything less is considered failure. Somehow through all these years, I have conditioned myself to always expect perfection and never celebrate excellence.

I am rarely excited about my achievements. I shrugged off praises and was always uncomfortable with compliments because no matter what I have accomplished, I can always imagine a vision of an alternative universe where I could have done at least one thing slightly better. And since I did not achieve perfection, I told myself I was not deserving of celebration just yet. So, in asking myself these SHOULD questions, I have been setting myself up in a constant cycle of disappointment and shame. 

So if this way of thinking is not serving me or bringing joy to my life, what should I do instead? What do I want to do instead?

I still want to regularly reassess my progress and accomplishment in life. I would like to continue to be inspired by the visions of what is possible. I want to practice celebrating partial success towards those perfect targets. I want to always aim for excellence and no longer be burdened by the ideals of perfection.