Time to stop should-ing myself

Jay Fox Harrington
Age of Awareness
Published in
5 min readMay 23, 2020

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Its the job that I’m not really interested in doing. But, I say to myself, I should do it, it will be a good experience and I couldn’t possibly work for myself. I should team up with this other person who is chasing me, telling me how wonderful I am, offering me a job.

Shoulds, all of them are laced with fear and anxiety. The expression of fear of not meeting other people’s expectations of our own ego. The things we should do to be liked, accepted, to achieve the goals that everyone else tells us we should want.

I should take this job because it should make my life easier. I won’t have to chase up people that way, promote myself, believe in myself and convince others to do the same. I should take the job because who am I to go out and create my own company? I should take the job because I’ll never earn any money as a writer and I need another income stream. I should work for someone else and then I can hide behind the other person, remaining in the shadows doing the work. The thing that I eventually end up complaining about in every job I’ve taken in the last 10 years. Someone else rolling around in my glory. At first, I think its a mistake, that they forgot to mention me in their speech that I wrote for them, acknowledging all the work I did for them, or that they forgot to invite me to that meeting with the client, a mistake. Soon enough I find myself avoiding them, working around having to confront them, having to articulate my feelings, in way avoid being responsible for the power, my power, that I gave over to them, freely. Eventually I usually do confront them, and a train wreck of epic proportions ensues.

I once had a boss who I confronted about her blatant plagiarism, I’d rehearsed my query about there being some ‘misunderstanding of who the work was credited too’. She shoved the small round table we were sitting back, her body rigid and her fact shrinking back into her spine and turning a grey deadish colour. She spat, literally, her indignation at my assertion, yelling her disgust at such an accusation and my clear incompetence at my question. I remember activating in my mind a force field around me, it shut down quickly in front of me like some sort of star trek scene, blocking out the poisonous energy being directed at me.

The truth is that this boss was a narcissistic nightmare, but she never hid that. I took the job, I, day after day gave away my work, my ideas, my time and energy to her, in the hope that in return I would receive pats on the head, acknowledgement and in a way a type of love or appreciation. It seems that somewhere in my life, probably in the early years, that I thought relationships and friendships involved me doing a lot of work, of demonstrating my added value, if you will, to the other person on a regular basis, because for some reason deep down inside I thought just being myself was not enough. So I began to seek out these relationships, subconsciously, ones where I would do a lot of the heavy lifting, listening for hours, travelling to random countries just for a visit, because I was thrilled, to be asked, to have a friend or partner or boss who would grace me with their presence. I felt lucky, seen and when these people weren’t able to meet my never-ending need to be valued and acknowledged, I turned on them, resented them. Obviously I was still conflict-avoidant me, so I often would disappear into the background, outwardly silent and inwardly tortured at my refusal to jump to their command. Who is going to love me, value me now? Sure enough, someone else would come along with their long list of drama and trauma and I would be there, to listen, to soothe and to martyr myself all over again.

I should be better. I should have more confidence. I should have more contacts, I should have a better reputation in the industry I work for. I repeat over and over again to myself as I click through other people’s LinkedIn profiles, marvelling and impressed by their resumes, their experience, the effort that they’ve taken to convey their qualifications, to make their labour look so appealing to the buyers, I mean employers. I flick back to my profile and become painfully aware of how skeletal it is, how anaemic my hard-earned experience is. I’ve hidden it all away, not wanting to brag, to avoid being too attractive or qualified. I’ve made myself firmly mid-level and barely interesting at all. I should change that I think and quickly find myself overwhelmed at having to think about listing out in detail the work that I’ve done. Instead I close down the tab and reaching for some m&ms that I really shouldn’t eat. I’ll only have a few I tell myself as I measure them out in a small container, hiding the large packet of m&ms at the back of the cupboard convinced that this will result in me forgetting about them. I need to eat less, I should be thinner I tell myself. After all, I’m still single and no one is going to be attracted to someone who is heavier then I am right now. I should be thinner, around the thighs mainly, less chubby and at the back of my shoulders, where the fat hangs over the back of my bra. I should do some pushups to get rid of that.

So many shoulds I think as I wrestle around in the cupboard for more m&ms, having finished my first portion in less than 30 seconds. I should eat slower that way I won’t eat so much.

Should should should. If only I was the person I should be. Instead, I need to accept the person that I am right now, at least that is what Eckhardt Tolle tells us. So I repeat to myself ‘i accept you just as you are right now’. I say it again and again. But I definitely should say it more often.

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Jay Fox Harrington
Age of Awareness

I am a writer, humanitarian and yoga teacher. I have lived in many countries and travel often. In this global pandemic I find myself in idyllic New Zealand.