Why You Shouldn’t Say “Should”
“Tell me what you should do and I’ll tell you what you won’t do.”
I tease my clients (kindly) about this all the time, whenever I hear them say things like:
“I should be able to pay my bills on time, everyone else does.”
“It shouldn’t be this difficult.”
“I should do my physical therapy exercises every day.”
“My office shouldn’t be this messy.”
Whenever I hear my clients utter the word “should”, my spidey senses tingle. It usually reflects something my client really wants or really feels bad about. Either way, it is a roadblock to my client’s success.
Why “Should” is an Unhealthy Word
“[Should] assumes…that all of us see the world the same way or that all of us are playing from the same playbook.”
A recent google search reaffirmed my suspicions about this word. There are articles galore including from Psychology Today and Forbes insisting “should” might be one of the unhealthiest words in your vocabulary. Liz Ryan’s article in Forbes, “Why Should is the Worst Word in Business” explains, “It assumes…that all of us see the world the same way or that all of us are playing from the same playbook.” As an ADHD coach, I agree this is one of the main reasons I dislike this word. “Should” implies a comparison, usually a comparison with what other people are doing, usually people who don’t have ADHD. Additionally, it implies that what you may see on the outside, is what is going on internally for another. Frequently my ADHD clients envision a task they struggle with to be magically simple for their coworker because that’s how it looks on the outside. But who knows? More often the ease of another is just a reflection of a system they have created for themselves that works for them. The struggle my client is facing just means we haven’t found the right system or tools yet.
Don’t Believe Me, Try This…
“Shoulding all over yourself” (thank you, Judson Brewer of www.drJud.com ) doesn’t help anything. Don’t believe me? Try this simple experiment from the article Susan Heitler, Ph.D. wrote for Psychology Today:
Say these three sentences outloud and notice how each one makes you feel:
I would like to visit my grandmother tomorrow.
I could visit my grandmother tomorrow.
I should visit my grandmother tomorrow.
““Should” revolves around shame. It revolves around an idea of perfection, the way things “Should” be.”
What did you notice? Personally I was surprised at the instantaneous sense of weight and guilt that I felt when I spoke the third sentence. (Especially since my grandmother was one of my favorite people on this planet!). “Should” revolves around shame. It revolves around an idea of perfection, the way things “Should” be. I think this is especially powerful for people with ADHD, who tend to have vivid imaginations and the ability to envision an often unattainable ideal they aspire to match.
What Do You WANT To Do?
Don’t get me wrong. Aspirations and goals are vital to our motivation to get up every morning! I talk to my clients on a regular basis about them and how to help bring them into reality. But we don’t talk about how things “should” be, we talk about what they want to create. Sure, you probably should do your PT exercises everyday, your PT would definitely like you to, but do you want to do your PT exercises everyday? Why do you want to do them? What do you hope to do once you’re healthy again? Now there’s some place to mine for motivation.
“ We get into language about what they want, what could they do, what they would like to do...those sentence feel different and are the start of some amazing coaching sessions.”
To be clear, I don’t shame my clients when I hear them use the word should. It’s a red flag for me that there is something important there for us to talk about. I do tease them a little bit about it for a couple reasons. The first, as you saw from the experiment above, “should” tends to inspire a lot of negative feelings, humor is an easy way to lighten that. Second, after a while, I find when my clients say “should” they frequently catch themselves and chuckle without me having to say a thing. Rather than stopping themselves to shame themselves (“I shouldn’t be saying ‘should’.”) they are able to laugh at themselves and reframe their sentence. Then we get into language about what they want, what could they do, what they would like to do. As you saw, those sentence feel different and are the start of some amazing coaching sessions.
I encourage you to start paying attention to your own language. Are you “shoulding on yourself”? Try a rephrase and see if that changes your feelings around that task and/or your motivation. And, please, share below!