“I should” is one of the most dangerous phrases we say or think.
Our shoulds shape the way we think about ourselves. Why? Every should that we accept is something that we either do or we don't do. When we do we have a positive image of ourselves. When we don't we feel guilt. And there is no way we can live up to all of our shoulds. The result is we are always losing. We can’t win. We may be doing 9 of our shoulds and that 1 haunts us and 4 more jump onboard.
The reason we can’t live up to all of our shoulds is because most of them are invalid. They aren’t real. They aren’t meant for us. And yet we carry them around as if they were.
What is the shortest amount of time you have stuck to a new discipline?
For me it was 1 day. I know, not proud of that. And the thing is, my mind takes note. I broke a commitment to myself. How many times have I told myself I would do something at a certain time and when that time came around I blew it off? It’s not like I am being flaky to someone else and bailing. Just myself, doesn’t matter.
But it does, a lot. Our mind rightly starts to believe that we are not trustworthy. We don’t live in integrity. We lose confidence in ourselves. We can change this.
What do you want?
Remember when you were in high school, or just graduated, maybe starting college and the world was full of possibilities? There was excitement and anticipation in the adventure of the unknown. You felt like you could do and be anything you wanted. Time was your friend.
Then life happened, plans didn’t quite work out the way we thought they would. We took a few hard knocks. Deep disappointments colored our world.
And we had responsibilities, we adulted and we got weighed down. We got practical and realistic and became dutiful and serious. And stuck. Dreams became harder to come by.
The times we started and stopped accused and defeated us. Whatever rung of whatever ladder we were climbing became our stopping place.
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Resilience means the ability to recover from set backs and adapt to change. Our perspective is a key factor to being resilient.
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When keep a commitment we made to ourselves we are teaching our brain that we can trust ourselves to follow through. We think of ourselves as a trustworthy person, we respect ourselves, we feel good. It builds our confidence in who we are as a person. As we continue to do this in different ways that positive sense of self grows.
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