Michele Woodward

Powerful Coaching. Powerful Results.

shoulds

The Roots of Shame

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Let me throw some stats at you:

The average American woman stands five foot four and weighs 164.7 pounds. She wears a size 14. Her waist measures 37 inches.

The average American man stands five foot nine and weighs 195 pounds. He wears a size 44. His waist measures nearly 40 inches. (CDC stats)

And,

The recent economic downturn hit men harder than women. Forbes says, “The share of men in the United States with a job is at its lowest point ever.” And forty percent of working wives are the family breadwinner according to the Chicago Tribune.

Now, allow me to pull in some other interesting data for your perusal. According to research at Boston College, the accepted societal norms for women are to be:

Nice.

Thin.

Modest.

Use all available resources on her appearance.

Men are supposed to:

Be in emotional control.

Put work first.

Pursue status.

Be violent.

I learned this from a powerful and straightforward new TED talk by Dr. Brene Brown on the subject of shame, and vulnerability.

What got me thinking while viewing Dr. Brown’s new talk is the wide gap between what we expect ourselves to be and who we really are.

Women should be thin – but the reality is that most of us are not a size zero.

Men should put work first, and pursue status, but the recent recession put more men out of work than ever before. Hard to put something first when you don’t have it, huh?

Women should be modest, which I figure means quiet, self-effacing and non-confrontational. Exactly the recipe for career success, don’t you think?

And speaking of time, what working mom has the time or energy to put all available resources on her appearance? I don’t know about you but I find it’s easy to spend money on my kids’ clothes, shoes, haircuts, dermatologists, orthodontists and dentists, and if there’s any money left maybe I’ll get myself a new t-shirt on sale at Target. Maybe.

Yes, the gap between who society says we should be and who we are is often quite large.

And it’s right in the gap that shame nestles.

Shame keeps us a far distance from feeling real happiness and fulfillment. Because it’s shame that says, “There is something profoundly, critically wrong with you. You should be different than you are.”

[There’s that word again – Should.] You all know I have no fondness for that particular word. Because The Word That Must Not Be Named usually comes from an external source, and often is in conflict with what’s truly best for us.

“You should be a doctor.” says your father, even if you have it in your heart and hands to be a glassblower.

“You should be thin if you ever want to catch a husband,” says your mother, even if she’s heavy herself. And her sisters are heavy. And her mother was heavy. [And they’re all married, btw.]

If shame has roots in the conflict between what’s expected and what’s real, then shoulds are its potting soil.

Now, here’s what I know – if you can break the Should Habit, you’ve got a shot at breaking the round-and-round shame circle.

And it’s easy. Stop shoulds by simply substituting a wonderful word – choose.

Without any shoulds in your life, you are free to choose to be that happy, outspoken size 14 bread-winning woman that you are.

Without any shoulds in your life, you are free to choose to be that fantastic at-home dad whose size 44 suits found a new home at Goodwill.

Without shoulds, you can be you. Finally. Without any shame.

That’s what I choose. How about you?

 

I Am, I Said

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It’s nice to have friends. It’s especially nice to have friends like Lauri and Anne — the kind of friends who drop by for tea and bring great ideas. Oh, and cookies. We cannot overlook the importance of cookies.

We sat the other day, sipping, munching thoughtfully, until Anne piped up with: “OK, so we were talking about something in the car on the way over and wanted to hear what you think.”

I was actually thinking that the cookies were really good. But I’m often able to stretch my brain just a bit. “Uhmrrgh,” I responded, through cookie crumbles, which means, “Bring it on.”

“Ever notice how often we say ‘I’m not’ and how infrequently we say ‘I am’?” Anne asked.

I was struck speechless by the simplicity of Anne’s point.

Boy, we spend so much time thinking about what we’re not.

Coming from “I’m not” is coming from a lack, or a deficit. “I’m not” means not enough — not tall enough, not thin enough, not young enough, not rich enough, not smart enough, not anything enough.

“I’m not” keeps us in a continual state of stress, feeling like we haven’t/can’t/won’t get it all done. And we won’t. Because we’re not enough.

But if we could shift all those “I’m nots” to “I ams”… think of the difference. Owning your own strengths. Standing in your own power. Relying on what you’ve got, rather than what you haven’t.

“I am”… good at taking care of my aging parents. “I am” … a good mentor. “I am” … a good friend. “I am” … alive.

Recently I taught a teleclass to a group of students and heard myself saying, “I’m pretty good at networking.” And I caught myself, internally, doing a self-check: was I bragging? Didn’t Mama say, “Don’t get too big for your britches. You’re no better than anyone else?”

She sure did. But it didn’t feel like bragging. It felt like truth. And, guess what? It is.

Make a list of your “I ams”. Own your “I ams”. Treasure them. They’re your truths. They’re what makes you, you.

And every time you find yourself stuck in “I’m not”, turn it around and say a quick “I am”. Such as, “OK, I’m not a 25 year old supermodel with more money than sense and no responsibilities, but I am…“

Go ahead — fill in your own blank.

In-box Management

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Like most folks, I have a couple of different email in-boxes. One’s more for work, one’s more for fun, and one seems to be the catchall for hundreds of spam messages. That’s right, hundreds — every day.

I get messages for products — how do I put this delicately — to enhance the size and prowess of a particular body part that’s not a standard equipment on the female form. From these messages, I have learned that this particular body part requires quite a lot tending, in terms of medication, cremes, patches and powders. I had no idea. Always seemed rather straightforward to me: Stimulus. Response. Done.

Oh, and I get many touching messages from lonely young women who’d like to show me their pictures, dear things.

I had no idea that I had so many kinsmen who die in Africa, Latin America and China, leaving immense fortunes which can be mine if I cooperate with certain widowed wives of former dignitaries of said nations.

People write daily to sell me OEM software, whatever that is, and “genuine replica watches”. Let’s see, it’s “genuine” and “replica” — sounds surprisingly like “fake”.

The other day I received a message from the unfortunately named “Cosimo Kiang”, who wanted to give me $500, just for clicking a button. Where do they manufacture these names, anyway? Throwing darts at a phone book?

Every couple of days, I scan through these messages looking for an authentic message from a real person asking me a real question. This trolling and culling takes too much of my time, and I always worry that I’ve overlooked or deleted something of real importance.

I hate spam. It sucks my time and attention and gets me all distracted and fidgety.

But you know what? The deluge of stupid, time-wasting, ridiculous messages is not restricted to my email in-box. Nope, I get plenty of spam addressed to one other mailbox I sort through regularly — the in-box between my ears.

You know these kinds of spam messages: Be thinner. Be younger. Be older. Be smoother. Be tougher. Be gentler. Be taller. Be sexier. Be buff. Be wealthy. Be #1. Be as self-sacrificing as Mother Teresa.

In short: Be something other than what you are.

The spam between my ears doesn’t help me live my best possible life. It clogs me up, paralyzes me, helps me feel inadequate and unsuccessful. So, I’ve taken to sorting through and culling those messages, too. The good news is that I’ve finally arrived at the place where I receive the message, decide whether it’s something to pay attention to or not, then click that old delete button.

So satisfying.

If you have a ton of spam in the in-box between your ears, maybe it’s time to do a major purge. Better yet, set some filters so the most annoying, time consuming, distracting messages go to the trash before you ever see them!

The best messages are those that lift you up, reinforce the best part of you, remind you what makes you uniquely wonderful, prompt you to live authentically, and allow you to change that which holds you back.

The rest? A spam-like waste of time.

Need More Time?

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Need more time? Have enough time to get everything done? Are there things that remain on your to-do list — for years? Stuff you never get around to tackling, oh, like exercising, finding a new job or actually having friends?

It’s a modern predicament many of us face. But here’s a strategy that really works: simply think about your time differently.

Imagine you have 100 units of energy to spend each day. You can’t take from yesterday, because those 100 units are gone. You can’t borrow from tomorrow, because those units belong to tomorrow.

You’ve just got 100 to use today. How will you allocate them?

First, you have to assess how you’re spending your time. Take a pen and paper (or a crayon and the back of an envelope, or a Sharpie and a docile housepet) and write down everything you did yesterday. Start with what time you woke up, when you got out of bed, what you did next, and next, and next — all the way to the time you went to sleep.

Now, remember: how you use your time reveals your true priorities. How did you use your time yesterday? What does that reveal about your priorities?

Let’s say you have a priority to find a new job, but allocated no energy to that pursuit yesterday (or the day before, or the day before). Could it be that you really don’t want a new job — but that your spouse is pressuring you to make more money? Or, your daddy said you’d be successful when you made regional manager, but you’d rather not do sales at all?

When you really want something, you’ll allocate energy to it. Plain and simple.

Friends, it is also possible to use “lack of time” as a way to avoid taking action, or to avoid something unpleasant. If you think that’s the case, look at the priority you allegedly want to pursue. Do you really want it? Are you avoiding something? Is the priority yours? Or someone else’s?

A priority that someone else places upon you is called a “should” — such as: you should always put ketchup in a dish, not serve it in the bottle at dinner time; you should be a doctor and make a ton of money; you should have a housekeeper; you shouldn’t have a housekeeper; you should keep your house tidy at all times; you should be thinner, smarter, hotter or blonder.

When really all you should be is — you. Shoulds limit us. They force us to serve another person’s priorities rather than our own. We depart from who we are in an effort to meet someone else’s needs — which may not allow us to be our best. That, my friends, is the path to unhappiness. Let’s all focus on being happy, and eliminate shoulds. Agreed?

If you look at how you spent your 100 units of energy yesterday and realize that another person took 70 units, they better have a darn good reason. Most of us are ready to help another person in crisis — but when that crisis goes on for weeks, months, years, you need to take a hard look and ask yourself whether the energy suck is keeping you from reaching your own priorities. If so, set some boundaries and re-shift your energy units to serve you better.

You have 100 units of energy to spend today. How will you use them to support your priorities?