How much time do you spend thinking about things you feel you should be doing? I bet you are sitting there reading this right now thinking about all the things you should be doing today, running yourself into quite the little guilt trip.
I’ve been there more often than I can count. And, I’m not immune to visiting that place at times of stress.
Recently, I sat down and started a to-do list of things I need to get done to help me focus a little bit, but it often serves to make me feel more guilty, especially if I don’t do the things on my list on a given day and they get moved to tomorrow (or next week).
The reality, however, is that if I did not get to them today then they really didn’t NEED to be done today and I CHOSE to do something that did need to be done today, even that something was simply resting or taking care of myself in some other way.
When you get stuck in the *should* loop, ask yourself what YOU really need to do right then. What does your body need? What does your mind need? Because whatever that is, that’s what you SHOULD be doing at that moment and on that day.
[socialpug_tweet tweet=”When you get stuck in the *should* loop, ask yourself what YOU really need to do right then. What does your body need? What does your mind need? #selfcare” display_tweet=”When you get stuck in the *should* loop, ask yourself what YOU really need to do right then. What does your body need? What does your mind need? “]
Everything else will wait, and perhaps those other things didn’t need to be done at all, we just created a list in our mind of things we THOUGHT needed to be accomplished, because we thought that’s what we SHOULD do.
I often think that many of us with fibro end up here because it’s what we need. Many of us start off as the Type A “get er done” personality types, we become workaholics, and get so focused on all the little things that need to be done that we forget that we NEED to take care of ourselves.
Fibromyalgia might be our bodies way of forcing us to stop and take care of ourselves for a change. Perhaps it’s when we learn this lesson and learn to listen to our bodies enough to hear those requests for what our body and mind need, and honor them that we finally start to learn to cope with our illness in a way that let’s us continue with life.
Just a thought.
[socialpug_tweet tweet=”Stop using the word should, and think about what you could do, or better yet what you want to do. #selfcare” display_tweet=”Stop using the world should, and think about what you could do, or better yet what you want to do.”]
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Dr. T says
Julia – Did you know there were some American Indian Tribes that did not have the word “should” in their vocabulary? “So, Running Bear, are you going hunting today?” “I should.” “What? Huh? You going or not? What’s this ‘should’?”
JulieRyan says
I think I have heard that before. It’s definitely a word that we need to take out of our vocabulary.