To Should Or Not To Should
My therapist tells me that I need to remove “should” from my vocabulary. But have you ever actually tried to do that? It turns out, it’s pretty freaking hard. I say it all the time — I should have woken up earlier, I should be more focused at work, I should look better in this dress.
The “should’s” of my life are some of the heaviest weights I lift — which brings me to my ultimate list of ‘should’s’:
Of course I’m aware there are a lot of things I should be doing. I should care about fitness, I should “watch what I eat”… I shouldalso know what it means to “watch what I eat.” I should want to be an extreme athlete, I should be hot AF because of all of this working-out I do…and when I’m not I should still be body positive… and then also there’s still real life.
So how do we combat these ‘should’s’? Sometimes there are cute memes that float around the internet with “advice” for people like me. I also have heard all the things that work for my friends — but their lives look different than mine! How can they say that their solution works for everyone when nothing else about our lives is similar?
And let’s talk for a second about how I should be body-positive. Trust me, I am all for it. Seriously, hands-up-emoji to body positivity and men and women everywhere who love themselves. But it seems like there isn’t a balance for what I am allowed to do. Do they want me to be motivated to work out, or just be content with what I’ve got? THEY NEED TO MAKE UP THEIR MIND. (Sidenote: who is ‘they’ anyways?!)
I think body positivity goes beyond the cute memes and Instagram captions. I think it requires knowing ourselves — I have to learn who I am and what I need every single day. I have to be body positive AND try to be better. Some days will start with being body positive in the morning, and end with letting my insecurities spill out all over. You can’t sum that up in a bumper sticker or a Tweet. And you definitely can’t neatly wrap it up in a “should.”
What are the should’s that weigh you down?
