Stop Shoulding on Yourself
Back in my day, we didn’t have those first day of school signs that displayed our grade, teacher, and what we wanted to be when we grew up. But if we did, for the first ten or so years of my life, the answer would have gone unchanged: “When I grow up, I want to be an Olympic gymnast.” It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t realistic, despite my mad balance beam skills. But it was quintessentially me. My dream. My passion. At the time, my entire life. Similarly, my children’s signs are the stuff of dreams. My daughter, at age twelve and a whopping 4’9, has declared her dream of being a WNBA player. My son, at age nine, has decided he will be a film director and writer. He has also told me I can be his date to the Oscars. Hey, dream big my boy!
I’m not here to debate the probability of these dreams coming to fruition. I have determined and passionate kids, and you never know what could happen. An unexpected growth spurt? A serendipitous run-in with Steven Spielberg? But I am struck by the unlimited reach of children’s dreams. Unfettered by societal expectations. Untarnished by self-doubt. And blithely unburdened by the weight of comparison.
It is all too easy to compare ourselves to others. Especially in the age of social media where people curate, filter, and carefully select the parts of their lives they wish to show. We know it’s not quite real and yet we can’t help but compare our lives, our work, and our success to theirs. As a newer owner of a coaching practice, where client acquisition is necessary for a profitable business, the comparison struggle is real. I see other coaches writing books, hosting podcasts, creating prolific content on social media, and I can’t help but compare myself to them. I should be doing what they’re doing. I should be writing more. I should be making more. I should be doing more. I should. I should. I should. It’s probably the most anxiety-inducing word in the English dictionary. Should.
I recently watched a video shared by actor James Van Der Beek where he reflected on how he shifted his career goals after realizing the career he envisioned was not the one for which he was destined. With his childhood Broadway dreams in the rearview, he sought to reimagine his goals. “The Matt Damon career, that’s what I want,” he said. It didn’t take him long to realize, however, that “it’s a career that only one guy in the world gets to have, and that’s Matt Damon.”
How many of our goals are completely our own, and how many are somebody else’s? How many of our dreams are rooted in our individual wants, strengths, and passions, and how many are modeled after the dreams of others? How much time do we spend pursuing our own unique paths, and how much time do we spend forcing ourselves onto a path that doesn’t belong to us.
This curse of comparison comes up often with my clients. Feelings of inadequacy consume us because we are not accomplishing the same things as our colleagues. We are not meeting the same bar. We are not achieving the same success and recognition. But comparing ourselves to others is a trap. It sets us up for failure. Because we will never be as good as someone else at being them, living their life, fulfilling their dreams. James Van Der Beek, as talented as he is, will never be better at being Matt Damon or at having his career. But the converse is also true. No one will ever be as good at being James Van Der Beek. Not even the great Matt Damon. And his kids, his family, his friends, and his colleagues wouldn’t want anyone else but who he is.
No one will ever be as good as you at being you. You will be the best you that will ever be. Why would you try to be a mediocre version of someone else when you can be the very best version of yourself? So the question becomes: What does being the best you look like? What unique potential do you possess? What dreams do your individual strengths and abilities make possible?
The philosopher and theologian Martin Buber once said “Every [person’s] foremost task is the actualization of [their] unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.” What are your unique, unprecedented, and never-recurring potentialities? What if you could free yourself of the shoulds, and focus instead on the coulds.
Van Der Beek ended his reflection with these two questions: “How many of us out there are running around trying to accomplish goals that were set by reactive, younger, less wise versions of ourselves? And how much happier would we be if we could just erase those outdated goals, forgive ourselves for not meeting that bar, and just go do something that lights us up?” What lights you up? What’s the adult version of what you want to be when you grow up? What is the vision for yourself, that just like that first day of school sign, is purely and unapologetically you?
So stop shoulding all over yourself. Let go of what you think you should be, and dream of what you, and only you, could be.