(Written version)
We start a new month, we get close to a new season, for many it is also the beginning of the summer before a new academic year. This all makes it a perfect time for the pesky side of our minds that focuses on the absolutely unrealistic yet unrelenting expectations we can place on ourselves. You know how this goes: “I should use this summer for achieving this goal” or “I should have achieved all these milestones BEFORE the summer and now here we are…” Hopefully this gives you a better sense of why I chose this topic for the month of June.
If we collectively started saying out loud all of our “shoulds”, we would probably have a very long list, and hours of “shoulds”. There is one I want to focus on today, which I find particularly important and all-encompassing: the “I should know”.
You may have come across variations of a similar meme that pokes fun at the many unprecedented times that many of us, millennials and younger generations, have encountered throughout our entire lives now. Any time we think we might be out of the woods of an unprecedented time… here goes another one.
It is exhausting. It also forces us to think really differently from what has been the usual way of going about life and careers. Being immersed in non-stop unprecedented times means that unprecedented times are no longer special, they are the norm, and what we used to think and do no longer works as our baseline. We need to meet each moment in a different way.
When structures keep failing us and falling apart, and entire industries are redefined in front of our eyes, we inevitably feel the initial panic because everything we know and have come to believe no longer is. Feel the fear, the uncertainty of what the heck is going on. We all need to face it before we can move forward. This might be a space where the shoulds pops up: “I should know what to do” or “I should have known better” are pretty common ones. This is your mind trying to outthink the situation so you do not have to face the discomfort of your feelings about it. When you hear that question come up, know that it is a normal reaction to what you are going through. But also it is an unreasonable expectation that nobody meets. We are all facing our own version of this.
We confront where we are at, we feel our feelings, and then we can make room for the question that can open space for the next step:
If most things are changing in fundamental ways, what remains true about ourselves?
One of the hardest things about facing constant big swings is that they feel terrifying, they challenge everything we know and take for granted, and they shake our sense of safety and security even within ourselves. If we suspend for a minute everything happening around us right now, what is true about you at your core? That thing that nobody or nothing can ever change because it pours out of you no matter the situation or environment. That thing you do even when you are not trying.
Let this be the first step that anchors you in the midst of the storm, so we start divesting from the biggest should of all: that you should (always) know. Because you may not know how everything will unfold, but you can know what you are made of, and that makes a world of a difference.
Massive changes feel threatening and yet can also become blank canvases to rethink what we want for ourselves and the world we live in. The challenge is acknowledging the fear, sitting with it, and then putting it to the side so we walk forward despite it, one step at a time, guided by who we are and what matters to us. When we do that, we avoid falling into a crisis of imagination and we start thinking about what we want to create.
Next time you find yourself overthinking about the shoulds, come back to these words. What is one “should” that keeps coming up in your mind lately? Reply back and let me know. Let’s unpack the “shoulds” one at a time.
That is all for today! As a reminder, AGV Lab is open for its founding members cohort. This is a space that makes coaching accessible and affordable at critical times in our careers, while building community, because of how fundamental connection and mutual support are in these processes of career exploration and development. If you have not already, you can enroll to join as a founding member using the link that I share with you below. For the next couple of weeks until June 15, subscribers to the Brewing and Community Coffee Hours get a 25% discount for the next year, so make sure to use the code I include below.
See you next week!
