Coudla, shoulda, woulda.

I can't remember if I've posted on this topic before, but sometimes I really detest the word 'should' and the role it plays in life.

Today, Michael and I have been married for six months. And it's been wonderful. After training this morning and running some errands, I wanted to spend the day in bed with him watching Masters of Sex and reading.

But sure enough, as I got the laptop fired up and prepared by stack of magazines by the bed, it started.

You should spend this time working on your business instead of slacking off. 
Don't you have some chores to do? You should be doing those right now. 
Are you really going to spend the day in bed? You should be blogging. 

I call these guys the 'shouldas'.

Does this happen to anyone else? It's really insidious and to my mind, inextricably linked with guilt. Guilt for the things you should have done, guilt for the things you should be doing, guilt for the things that you wish you'd done later on.

In the end, it got too difficult and I gave up on my luxury day in bed. I oftentimes find on weekends if I give myself an opportunity to relax, the shouldas start up in my brain. I sometimes sit down to rest or read on weekends and end up napping. Whether this is a sign that I'm exhausted, or whether it's the only way for my body to ignore the 'shouldas' in brain, I don't know.

I often wonder if this affects highly ambitious or effective people. People who have lots of plans, goals, lists, ambitions. For those people, the shouldas are their voices calling the to action to get working on the life they want and dream of and telling them they shouldn't be complacent.

I realised today is that all the plans and goals in the world are pretty unattainable if I don't let myself off the hook now and then. When you keep thrashing yourself, it becomes harder and harder to achieve the things on that big life list.

That was the most frustrating thing about today - a day earmarked for rest and relaxation, which felt anything but.

So how do we turn that voice off? How to get to a point where we aren't a slave to the shouldas in our lives?

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