This is day 3 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question: “Who or what are you ‘supposed to’ be?” More info here.

“Stop should-ing all over yourself” -a wise person

“The only thing you ‘should’ do is breathe” -my wise uncle

Sometimes life is a string of shoulds: I should work, I should go to the gym, I shouldn’t eat that ice cream. As adults, we drown in shoulds – while little kids have the answer to all our struggles. 

Open your eyes wide and ask…why? Or better yet, scream it. WHY??

Sometimes we’ll come up with a good answer, an answer from within: I should work on my blog because it’ll help me improve my writing, which is something I want. Instead of “should,” we can say, “I want to do X because…” 

But a lot of the time, the answers come from someone else – a strict parent, the faceless masses of society – or from something negative – the fear of rejection, an irrational belief. No, one ice cream probably isn’t going to chop days off my life, but shoulding all over myself very well might. 

Researcher Brene Brown says that authenticity is letting go of who you’re supposed to be and embracing who you are. “Supposed to” is, aptly, another “s” word. I’m supposed to be calm, put together, and happy. I’m supposed to be outgoing and interesting. I’m supposed to be a productivity machine, always the best and the smartest. Eight years ago, I was supposed to be a violinist…until I realized that I wasn’t.  

My high school calculus teacher called me a robot, and maybe I believed him for awhile. I could be robotic, getting straight A’s, being valedictorian, acing my SAT’s (except that one question – bad robot!). But robots have instructions written by other people. They always do what they’re supposed to be doing, but they don’t enjoy it (at least not yet). Maybe the curse of having wants is that they’re yours, and you have to own them, and you can’t just blame your instruction manual. But it’s a heck of a lot more fun than being a robot. 

Photo by Flickr user littlelostrobot