{"id":14818,"date":"2021-11-20T03:37:44","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T19:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=14818"},"modified":"2025-01-14T00:14:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T16:14:22","slug":"better-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/better-place\/","title":{"rendered":"“Shouldn’t I want to make the world a better place?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following is a section I cut from an old draft of INTROSPECT<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m inclined to say no. Not until you\u2019re ready to handle such a heavy burden. As with weightlifting, carrying too much can hurt you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould\u201d is one of those words that seems fairly innocuous, but can end up becoming a very invasive part of your thinking. I\u2019ve spoken with dozens of people over the years who are utterly tyrannized by the Shoulds in their heads. It\u2019s possible to get so caught up in what you think you \u201cshould\u201d do, that you lose all sense of what you really think, what you really feel, what you really want. Young people seem especially susceptible to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you begin the journey of introspection, I highly, highly recommend that you experiment with suspending all Shoulds from your thinking and writing. If really necessary, you can always reintroduce them later. This might be difficult in the early stages, so it\u2019s secondary to the principle of \u201cjust write as fast as you can and don\u2019t worry about it\u201d \u2013 you can then subsequently re-read your writing, highlight all of the Shoulds that crop up, and question them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll never have a shortage of people telling you what you Should or Shouldn\u2019t do, how you Should or Shouldn\u2019t be. Sometimes this messaging will be explicit, often it will be implicit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s really possible to completely erase the word \u201cshould\u201d from your vocabulary, or if that\u2019s necessarily desirable. It can be useful shorthand sometimes. I\u2019ll definitely be using it throughout this ebook. The point really is to let go of the <\/strong>coercive<\/em><\/strong> connotation of Should. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s work through an example. You might think that you should exercise more. That\u2019s a very common thought that a lot of people have. \u201cI should be healthier. My body is a temple and I am desecrating it. I should eat less junk and I should go to the gym more.\u201d These aren\u2019t intrinsically bad thoughts to have. The thing to do \u2013 and this will be a recurring motif throughout this book \u2013 is to examine how these thoughts feel. Do they actually<\/em> motivate you to work out? Or do they mostly just make you feel bad about yourself? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crazy thing about a Should that you feel bad about is that it can actually lock you in stasis, and prevent you from achieving the very thing that you think you Should be doing. A lot of smokers think \u201cI should quit smoking\u201d \u2013 and this thought becomes a persistent, nagging voice in their head that makes them feel guilty and ashamed for smoking. Those feelings stress them out, which make them smoke more. Then they get angry at themselves, and feel helpless, which also make them smoke more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not saying that you\u2019ll quit smoking the day you stop beating yourself up about why you Should quit smoking. But if this is a pattern of behavior for you, it\u2019s very worthwhile to identify it. What Should you do about it once you\u2019ve identified it? Nothing! Whatever you like!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a section I cut from an old draft of INTROSPECT. I\u2019m inclined to say no. Not until you\u2019re ready to handle such a heavy burden. As with weightlifting, carrying too much can hurt you. \u201cShould\u201d is one of those words that seems fairly innocuous, but can end up becoming a very invasive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1371,1265],"class_list":["post-14818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unsorted","tag-copes","tag-introspect"],"yoast_head":"\n"Shouldn't I want to make the world a better place?" - @visakanv's blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/better-place\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Shouldn't I want to make the world a better place?" - @visakanv's blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is a section I cut from an old draft of INTROSPECT. 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