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Transcript

Drowning Out The Shoulds · The Built For More Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So last night, my wife and I were talking about whether we should put our son in jujitsu or swimming lessons.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And just for context, he's already in baseball, which is Wednesday and Saturdays.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So jujitsu is one day a week, swimming is three days a week.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as I zoom out and being a responsible parent, him learning swimming is more important.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's also three days a week.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if he's already in baseball two days a week, swimming three days a week, that's him out of the house doing something in the afternoon five days a week.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm probably shuttling him around five days a week.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And overall, this just is gonna add a lot of stress to the family.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gonna add a lot of stress to him.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though swimming's probably the right move, it's not the right move for now.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it just adds pressure to unnecessary pressure to the family.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we ended up, we're signing him up for jujitsu and starts tomorrow, and we'll see how that goes.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what I want to bring up is there's a lot of times we feel pressure to do this right thing.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for us, that pressure is largely a byproduct of like we want him to swim, and that's eventually he needs to learn that.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't need to be right now.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're going into winter.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: He can learn how to swim in the spring, and it's still going to be just as successful because it's not like we're gonna be swimming a ton in the winter.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there's still that pressure to be to put him in these things.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like as a parent, I feel that pressure for him to grow up well.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I feel the pressure for him, for me to be a great husband.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I feel the pressure to me for me to stay in shape.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's pressure for me to like make money and all the things that we do.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that pressure is rooted in a good thing.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's rooted in like I want to be at my best.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be at my best for my kids.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be at best for myself.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be at best for me as a husband for my wife.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And like it's all they're all good things.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also rooted in like I don't feel like enough because I wouldn't feel that pressure to do those things if I felt like I was doing enough.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And like I remember when I did my first half marathon, I I felt like I did a great job.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that was the furthest I had ever run in my life.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And within about half hour after finishing it, somebody's like, Hey, you did a great job.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna do a marathon next.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately I didn't have that pressure because I felt like I did good enough.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's as that was my goalpost.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I reached it, and within that half hour, my goalpost got stretched to, well, maybe I need to do a marathon.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up doing triathlons because marathons just still seem like such a long way to run.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I started doing triathlons and I ended up doing a half Iron Man a couple of years ago.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And again, after doing that, I was like, wow, this was a huge accomplishment.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then again, like within half hour and hour, I ran into somebody and they're like, Yeah, you did you did good.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna do a full Iron Man ever?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden it's like, no, I now it's the half wasn't enough.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's always this other level.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that speaks to a lot of the the shoulds that create this pressure.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of shoulds that society puts on us.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of shoulds that like our friends or people who really want to encourage us to be better again, all a good thing.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's there are a lot of shoulds in our life.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I feel like I should be a really good provider.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I should be athletic, I should be a good dad, I should be super successful.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm I would I heard Tony Robbins say, like, I'm shoulding all over myself.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as I step back and think about that, I have to ask the question, who is who's writing my story?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because if those shoulds are dictating what I use as my goal, who's really the author of my story?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's it seems like if I'm allowing those shoulds to really direct my life, everybody else is really authoring that story.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to be offering, authoring my own story.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as I start to think about how this ends up being that way, uh, there's three levels.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that first level is what I call productive numbing.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that desire to be better, the desire to improve in some way.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll listen to a podcast, I'll read a book, um, I'll scroll on social media and think like, man, that's a good workout, or this is a good recipe, or this is a good tip for me and my wife.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I I should do all these things.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where we start getting a lot of these shoulds.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is where they start at least.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I may even like write them down, I'll save them, um, I'll to listen later, whatever it is.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then I just scroll on and I do another podcast and I'll do scroll to see something else.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I I I have this whole library of shoulds that are just a byproduct of books and Instagram stories and uh podcasts and things that these are all great ideas, but I didn't really didn't take action on any of them.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: If I did, it was like one to two weeks, two to three weeks tops until I get a little bit bored or a little bit frustrated, or what often happens, because our society's just pumping out content so much, I just find the next shiny thing.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like the next thing on that list is me being like, oh, okay, this is also a great idea.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I should do this instead.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's productive numbing.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the second layer to that is let's say I do do it, and I do it for three to four weeks, maybe four to six weeks, and I start realizing that this isn't really what I want.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I call influenced action.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is me right now.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm in this high rox prep because at the probably a month from now, I'll be doing a high rocks race.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's some people in my office who wanted to do one.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was a great idea, so I signed up.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've seen a ton of other people do high rocks.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's very kind of the thing right now.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the middle of it and I don't care to train for it.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I, it is a drag to train for it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And some of it is just because I just don't value some of the things that are in it.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but still it's it's influenced action.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I really only signed up because I was influenced to sign up.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am not that person who's gonna be like a high rocks person after this.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just know it.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it was an influenced action.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I I I thought I should do one.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so like I've I'm in it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm this is that thing that you do for four to six months, and I'm glad I'm trying it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's something I'm learning from, but I'm also realizing it's not me.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then that third level, and this is where I see it the most, is what I call mistaken identity.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this one, this one is a much bigger issue because it's you are the person who is just uh overwhelmed by the shoulds.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your direction in life is a series of shoulds.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I see this a lot in the church, I see this a lot in people who struggle to get lean, whether it's through losing weight or gaining muscle.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're constantly, it's like ADD, where they're constantly bouncing to the next thing of I should do this, I should do this.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: The people who maybe something happened in their life 10, 20, 30 years ago, and they're still replaying that same victim story over and over.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're not authoring their own story.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're just waiting for someone to tell them what to do and how to live and what direction to go.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not taking accountability and ownership of their own story, and they never stop to examine, and this is probably the thing I see the most.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's core truths in their life that they never stop to say, you know what, that's that's probably not true.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably it probably didn't happen that way.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably not a story that serves me anymore, but it's easier to just replay this narrative than it is to build a new one.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna keep playing it.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's that mistaken identity.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is just living off those shoulds of other people.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so as I wrap this up, I want to give an exercise.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we all have those shoulds in our life.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: The things that we need to be doing.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the exercise is to list out all the shoulds, all the things that you that are in going through your head, whether it's work-related, family-related, um, just things that you have saved or thought about, all the things you should be doing.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then start crossing out all those shoulds which don't line up with your story, how you want to live your life.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cause I guarantee, as you start marking through all the things that other people say you should be doing that aren't really a part of your story, you're gonna end up with like three things on your on your plate.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's a probably about it.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: As you start marking out all the things that you do to impress other people, that list starts getting really, really small.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next phase of this exercise is I want you to look at what are the what is the thing or the things that you really need to be doing that's not on the list, and it's not on the list because you're too busy doing the shoulds.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's a better question to a things that I needed to be doing this, this is what produces results for me.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and pretty much everyone that comes into our coaching practice and it's in our school community, it's the meditation and journaling, like the deep work is analyzing the why you do what you do.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's that's hard.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a comfortable conversation.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of actually becoming honest with that story, we fill our life with more shoulds.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Look at me, I'm doing this thing.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we we look at, and I've talked about noble truths before, we look at it through those noble truths, that perspective.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, I'm so busy, I'm doing all these things for work.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the should for the need for work is work 40 hours a week, whatever you're doing, and plus or minus, whatever it is.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: The should all of a sudden that's influenced by maybe I should work 50, maybe I should have this extra stream of income, maybe I should do this other thing.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like none of all those are externally influenced.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: The need is you have a good job, you bring home a good amount of money, probably need to live within your budget, live within your means, and spend time with your family and figure out why your relationship isn't rock solid.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard conversation.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the shoulds drown out that need, and that's why it's not on the list.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's the podcast today.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Start analyzing the shoulds, what pressure from society has really influenced all those shoulds on your list, and then what's not on the list that was drowned out by all the shoulds.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's something to really think about.