Everything you want is on the other side of “should.”

It’s January 2024, and I still feel like I’m in wintering mode. I decided to move my official start of the year to the spring equinox, the energetic start of the year and — the time of my birthday. I am slowly simmering my intentions for the year ahead, well knowing — (from last year’s experience) that I might unleash an unexpected stream of events with whatever words I choose. They’re not just words; they are instructions to my subconscious — and it is listening. It definitely was last year.

My words were courage, integration and community. I thought they mainly pertained to my business, but — life had other plans, and it took me on a bit of a wild ride. Like, really wild.

Early in the year, I had an urgent existential kind of need. I had an urge to remove the external structures of my work altogether. I felt trapped, and I knew I had to do it. I wanted to birth my leadership program, Creative Catalyst, which I’ve been thinking about for years, but I didn’t want it to carry any of the pressure of “should”. It had to come from pure creativity, pleasure and joy of creating.

So, to give myself that space, I didn’t take on any new projects, and I completely got rid of all the planning, the disciplining, the shoulds, the urgent, the important, the prioritisations, the lists, and the to-do’s. In my usual fiery manner, I threw myself into it head first, figuring things out as I went.

And I realised that all these plans I was so attached to were just fake structures, and they were propping up a fake work approach, a way that wasn’t my own but a remnant of societal prescription. A prescription to keep things safe and predictable. To control the future, to ensure that things happen in a way I had imagined — or else…..

It was all a concoction of strategies like eating your frogs (a reference to Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog! which always made me feel like a failure), SMART goals, precise targets and all the rest of productivity tools (and myths). To ensure I follow my plan and “deliver” what I promised. But I’ve been promising things all my life and didn’t want to anymore. I was dead tired of promises to others. And I was dead tired of “should-ing” myself into productivity and overriding my own creative impulse and rhythm. So, it all had to go.

The courage to let go

The thing you need to know about me is that I’ve always been a terrible procrastinator for as long as I can remember, not getting stuff done until it was critical and a deadline was breathing down my neck. I was what Gretchen Rubin calls an “obliger” — a person who meets outer expectations but struggles to meet expectations they put on themselves. (Any other obligers out there? 😅)

The structures I created and the frogs I was forcing myself to eat enabled me to get stuff done and to be productive (uh, I hate what we’ve done to this word). It included my newsletter, which was a way to respond to the outer expectations of my readers since I didn’t have the discipline just to create and flow. Or so I thought.

I didn’t know until I removed all of these structures that they were just pills I was willing to swallow to remove the uncomfortable symptoms of a deeper truth. And I had no idea that they also DISABLED something in my life.

They disabled me to see myself as I really am. They disabled me from knowing the bare, hard, honest and uncomfortable truth about my inner dynamics, my impulses, my inner dialogue, my patterns and my self-sabotage. And they ultimately prevented me from dealing with the causes of those patterns and getting to the root of it all.

Not only have I gotten rid of all planning, goals, and to-do lists, but I have also let go of all routines and rituals in the “should” category. Anything that exerted any kind of pressure on me had to go. Our family structures, client coaching calls, and meetings were the only things set. I even resisted sitting at a desk, so my studio mates rarely saw me, and most of my work was done in nature, underneath trees, by the water, and sometimes in cafés, galleries, and the botanical garden. And the rest was a vast, empty space that I didn’t know how to navigate any more than I knew how to start drawing from a blank piece of paper.

So, as I was sitting on this metaphorical collapsed pile of what used to be the scaffolding of my life, I felt anxious about it. I thought it would all go to hell if I let go of control. Here I was, maybe in the most crucial year of my life. I’ve paused projects and was betting big on Creative Catalyst, so the financial uncertainty and fear of survival were real and tangible. It wasn’t made up; I didn’t know how it would all pan out. There were no guarantees. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel triumphant. It was an act of rebellion against “the system”. And it was also much deeper; it was the call of my inner wilderness. I had to answer. I had to meet all my exiled parts. So, I called on my courage to look in places I haven’t looked before and face the truth. Jung calls it the dark night of the soul, but I travelled willingly in the dark, and his The Red Book (Liber Novus) (and many others) has been a great companion on my journey.

Seeing the truth

With all this empty space in my life now and the uncertainty that came with it, my days were an intuitive flow of figuring out how to be in the world, led by my feminine energy (in coaching called “being” and in Chinese cosmology known as “Yin”, the dark). My inner masculine (the opposite — “doing” or “Yang”) had free reigns for a long time, always going, moving, hustling, doing, doing, doing. So, I needed to allow my feminine energy if I were ever to enable them to integrate into a healthy, balanced whole. I couldn’t help but feel that what was happening inside me was a reflection of our world in general — always doing, never resting.

I had to sit still for long enough to notice — and allow for — whatever was present for me. There were days when I got nothing done because I got distracted, my mind was a mess, or because there was so much inner resistance that I couldn’t get going without forcing myself. I fell into a pit of demotivation, dark, thick and endless. I constantly had urges to run away, fix it, and just will myself into doing — something. Anything. But I also knew that this was the shadow side of myself and that this was THE WORK I needed to do. I needed to stay in it if I wanted to coach others from a place of radical acceptance and knowing what it meant. I needed to walk the talk.

Into the wild

In the beginning, I judged myself. I felt weak, confused, and annoyed at my lack of willpower. And I had so much Doubt, with a capital D. I doubted I would ever come out of it again. But, if you sit long enough with the discomfort, you notice nothing is ever really still. Things are constantly moving and shifting. So, I met this shadow of mine with curiosity. I met the many sides of me that I didn’t want to acknowledge and that I was running away from. One of them was this fundamental, gut-wrenching fear. The fear of not belonging, of being ousted, of being alone. I had to reintegrate some painful experiences of my childhood and teenage years. Being the outsider, the weird one. I took too much responsibility at a young age, leaving myself behind and compromising my values just to fit in.

And here I was, in my process, all alone, years later, realising that the antidote to the fear was to meet it, to look it in the eye and ask what it wanted on my behalf. My fear was the voice of my inner child. She just wanted to feel safe. So, we sat by my inner bonfire with my inner wise elder, and I promised her that I would have her back, no matter what.

My inner dissident, rebellious teenager also had things to say. She was sticking it to “the should” and was doing everything in her power to sabotage my efforts to control and put pressure on creating the program. She was the one blocking the creation of Creative Catalyst. She didn’t want to be visible and vocal on socials; she didn’t want to perform, sing, and dance to get people in, and she didn’t want to conform to what this program was “supposed to be”. And most of all, she didn’t want to take responsibility and overexert herself (again). I know she always had my best interest at heart, so in our conversations, I assured her that I would do this in the right way and set healthy boundaries.

I had to ensure that all parts of me were included, heard and on board this journey. With presence, deep care and compassion. And when I did, the program was born. So when I say this program kicked my ass, this is what I mean. It was a massive change in my story, beliefs and identity.

By having the courage to face the shadow, I got much more than I thought I would. I also did a lot of intergenerational trauma healing, which is an essay of its own. In the process, I reconnected with the pure joy of creating. Not because I needed to arrive somewhere or achieve something but because something was looking to emerge; it was a pull of life from within. Do you know how some people “need” to write that book? Creative Catalyst is my book. However, it’s not “final” like a book; it’s a living thing that keeps evolving, has a life of its own and is currently in its second iteration.

The simple truth underneath it all

For all the depth of this process, I realised something very simple. That resistance really is just the stuck flow of life, a stuck dialogue between inner parts. An interrupted story looking to continue to be told. Unfinished conversations with ourselves and our souls. We all experience it, maybe more often than we know. And all it takes is courage to be still long enough to meet ourselves.

Through it all, I learned that:

Should is the voice of inner oppression, inevitably producing a countermeasure, an inner resistance against that should. And we cannot return to wholeness until we are willing to be in dialogue with both (and all the other parts of us).

And the same is true for our broader human system. We can become whole again when all parts and voices are included with acceptance, compassion and curiosity. And from there, we can have the thing that we most want. For me, it was to be loved, accepted, and belong — as I am.

At its core, this is regenerative leadership for me — creating conditions for life to thrive. Giving more than we take.

I am now slowly reintroducing structure and noticing if it feels conducive to life and creativity. I will always listen to the voice of “should” because it’s my voice and has something important to say, but I will never again let it dominate my life.

Now, I know that taking this time is an enormous privilege that few people have. However, what we can do is investigate how to create conditions for our lives to thrive. And there is no 3-step magical process for it, so I don’t have specifics for you. Part of the journey is being lost and embracing uncertainty.

So, how about you?

Do you have an inner “should” preventing you from living life on your terms?

What would be possible if you were free from it?

Are you willing to leap?

I am Martina, and I am a creative leadership coach and culture designer.

I grow leaders, teams and cultures for the regenerative era. ✨💚🌳

Creative Catalyst — a leadership program is now open and starts on March 18th 2024.