Freedom From the Should Monster

About 30 years ago, someone lent me a book that changed my life. Books can do that if they show up at exactly the right moment with exactly the right message. This book was called The Path of Least Resistance. It was written by Robert Fritz in 1943. Fifty-six years later, I still find its message relevant and compelling. I’ve taken seminars and read other books that have taught the same concepts as if they were new. In fact, I have even taught them in my own classes. I don’t even know if Robert Fritz made them up or if he, too, adapted them from someone else’s teachings. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that these ideas still provoke thought, create change, and work.

I’ve been thinking about this book a lot lately. I’ve read it many times and highlighted it until the pages are almost solid yellow. To review it all at one would take much too much space or give short shrift to its complexity. But what I’ve been pondering these last few days is the subject of “fundamental choices”— which Fritz doesn’t even mention until page 103—and particularly one of those choices: to be free.

First, let me explain that “a fundamental choice,” in Fritz’s words, “is a choice in which you commit yourself to a basic life orientation … a state of being.” Fundamental choices are unaffected by changes in internal or external circumstances. Once you make such a choice, convenience and comfort are irrelevant. Once you make such a choice, you begin to deal with reality in an entirely new way.

Fundamental choices are not always conscious, though it’s best if they are. The ones people tend to make are to be free, to be healthy, and to be true to oneself. They all sound so simple and straightforward; yet, I have spent a great deal of time over the years contemplating what they really mean. For example, what does it mean to be free? Of course, being a writer, I looked it up. Here are a few of its meanings:

• not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or do as one wishes : a free choice.
• subject neither to foreign domination nor to despotic government : a free press.
• not or no longer confined or imprisoned : set free.
• not a slave
• able or permitted to take a specified action : free to leave.

In this country, supposedly, we have many of these freedoms, at least in a big-picture way. We are not subject to foreign domination or a despotic government, and when we think we are at risk of either one, we take action through demonstrations or at the polls. Most of us are not confined or imprisoned, and those who are long to be set free. We are not slaves, since slavery has been banned, and we are free to do anything that falls within the law. All of these points can be argued, I know, but on the surface, they are true.

So, as I contemplate the fundamental choice of being free, what else could I possibly want? I live in America, the land of the free. I am free come and go as I please. I work at a job I love. So where does this choice come into my life? Well, to tell the truth I want to be free of “shoulds,” the invisible controlling little voices that keep popping up in my mind.

What is a should? (back to the dictionary)

• A should is an obligation, a duty, a correct behavior, typically when criticizing someone else's or our own actions : You should call your mother every day; you should finish this assignment before you take a break; you should take the job because it pays well.
• A should is a desirable or expected state : You should know what you want to be by now; you should be financially stable; you should be married.
• A should gives advice or suggestions, usually unsolicited : You should lose some weight; you should tell him what you really think; you should discipline your children.

Shoulds are tyrants, very persistent, relentless little tyrants who never seem to shut up. Sometimes, they are other people—your mother, your boss, a friend, even a total stranger. But more often, they are you, talking to yourself. You may call it your conscience or your critical parent; I call it the should monster. I have recently become more aware of its ubiquitous presence in my life. You should do this; you shouldn’t do that, and on and on. What’s worse is the running dialogue I engage in with my personal little monster. I know. I know, I tell it. I should exercise, but I am so tired right now. I’ll do it later. OK?

OK? Did I really say OK? Did I ask an imaginary voice for permission to forgo exercising? Am I truly a slave to the instructions of some formless, non-thing that thinks it’s knows what I should be doing? This is embarrassing, but apparently so. I am eternally grateful to Robert Fritz for offering me a choice in the matter—a fundamental choice. So, here and now, I choose to be free of the should monster.

I feel better already.