(Written version)
Last week we talked about the “I should know” of it all, and how to ask ourselves to create some space between our emotional experience in the midst of big changes and identifying the next move. The key question I brought up then was what remains true about ourselves at our core, despite any changes happening around us.
There is a side of the “shoulds” that we also need to acknowledge: who is in charge of them.
See, what happens when we find ourselves saying “I should do X” or “I should care about Y” is that often the presence of the “should” in those statements suggest that they come from somewhere else. Why? Because the “should” is a yardstick we use to measure who we are in a moment against an idea of us that is often not ours to begin with.
Here is an example of my own. Many years ago, I dealt with a pretty heavy “should”: “I should publish (more).” While I was in graduate school and then as I continued my career as a researcher, I encountered many “shoulds”, one of them being that I needed to publish in academic journals if I wanted to succeed. The problem? I dreaded the process, and I was not invested in doing it just for the sake of doing it. I even told my chair before going into the job market that I would be okay not ever publishing an academic paper at all (and this was way before I ended up publishing at a top-3 journal in Political Science).
Where was that “should” coming from? There are a few layers to it. First, it was coming from the idea of success that I was following, which meant that success was becoming a scholar and scholars need academic publications to succeed. But I felt like I was bending and shapeshifting to fit that definition of success that did not feel mine (in fact, it was not). So the should was haunting me, making me feel inadequate because academic publishing was not something I was invested in per se (I feel differently about collaborations, but that’s a different story…) and I was haunting myself with it because the idea of success I was holding up did not speak to me, either.
Who was in charge of this “should”? My mentors and environment at the time, the one I wanted to belong to and continue to engage with.
But when I asked myself the question of who I am to my core, and what I care about, I started to realize that the definition of success that I was holding up to then was not entirely compatible with who I was or what I cared about the most.
If you see yourself in this story, I have good news for you. It might feel uncomfortable for a while, but you can change your “shoulds” into your “get to.” I no longer abide by the “I should publish” because the “I get to research about subjects I am deeply interested in with people I enjoy working with” informs what I do now. Yes, you might still find one “should” or two circling around in your calendar and your mind. But the goal here is not to eliminate them all: it is for you to be the one in charge of which ones stick around and why.
What is one “should” that comes to your mind as you hear/read this today? Who is in charge of it? I look forward to hearing from you.
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. Through this Sunday 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 as I include below.
See you next week!
