[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:21] Emily: And today we're going to talk about the word should, which I am breaking up with. I'm divorcing it.
[00:25] Rachel: Really?
[00:26] Emily: Get out of my life. We don't have kids together. I'm divorcing you. I'm moving across the country. We're done.
[00:32] Rachel: Never have to.
[00:33] Emily: That's how I feel about that ever again. Right now.
[00:37] Rachel: Cutting you out of my life. We're going. No contact with the word should.
[00:45] Emily: We're getting. What is it called when you can't talk to a person? My brain. Mom brain.
[00:51] Rachel: You guys, restraining order is.
[00:53] Emily: I'm getting restraining order. Okay, so some context. I don't really think we need a lot of context, but we use an app called Otter AI. It's like a voice recording thing. So I have this really long voice note from. I went to drop our Christmas tree off at the Christmas tree disposal place and was, like, driving.
[01:21] Rachel: So much. All right.
[01:27] Emily: But on the way back, I had been thinking about this for a really long time. I've had a note in my notes to think about writing something about the word shit since I listened. I started listening to the Dr. Becky podcast, and it was the woman who was talking. I don't remember her name. We'll have to look it up and put it in the show notes. But she was talking about household chores and how to get into household chores, and it just stuck with me. She had this idea of trading out I should do XYZ chore with. I deserve to do blank, right? So instead of, oh, I should clean my bedroom, it's like, oh, well, since I now do yoga in here, I deserve to have a floor that's not covered in dust when I do yoga. And it takes back the agency and the empowerment. And so, ever since I listened to that episode, like, a couple of months ago, it's just been in the back of my mind, and I just keep thinking about, when in life do we use the word should when we couldn't instead use the words want, deserve, or could. Right? Like, I could do this right now, or, I want to do this right now, or, I deserve to do this right now. Right. And if you're in a situation where you're saying, I should do x and you can't use one of those other words, then why are you doing the thing?
[02:48] Rachel: Yeah.
[02:48] Emily: So that's very abstract, but let's say I should do. Let's just say my writing for today. Right. Like, I should write right now. Okay, but do I want to? Right? Why do I think I should? Why do I think I have to? Have to is like should in a different form. It's like, oh, I have to do this. I must do this. I need to do this. It's like, okay, we'll step back. Do you need to? And there are certain things where we need to do something, but in those circumstances, oftentimes we want to. Right? Like, my child is sick. I should get up and go help her. It's like, well, I need to go help her, but also I want to because she's sick. Right. I want to do that. Even though. Yeah, it doesn't sound very fun, I'm still going to do it because I want to do it because I care about her. So I feel like there are certain circumstances where that is the case and even I need to do my taxes. I should do my taxes today. Right? Okay. Well, also I want to do my taxes so that I can get my return so that I'm not like, the IRS doesn't come down on me. Right. Yes, I should do them, but do I have to do them right now, in this second? Right? Is this the moment in which I want to get that thing done? I just feel like there's so much interrogation that we should bring into our lives around saying should. Because I just feel like there have been periods of my life where I just live saying, I should do this.
[04:15] Rachel: I should do that, I should do.
[04:16] Emily: This, I should do that. As if I have no agency over my own life.
[04:20] Rachel: Yeah.
[04:21] Emily: Because the word should implies that someone else is telling you to do something. Right. It implies this externalized blame.
[04:29] Rachel: A pressure. Yeah. A blame, a pressure. A shame.
[04:33] Emily: A guilt. Yeah. Because if I can't say I want to do it, or I could do it, deserve to do it, I should clean my shower. I could clean my shower right now. Maybe I don't feel like it, right. But I deserve to clean my shower sometime today because it's nasty and I don't want to take a shower in a nasty shower. Right.
[04:55] Rachel: Yeah.
[04:55] Emily: There's just so many ways we can reframe something. And going through that mindset of, like, do I want to do it right now? Could I do it later? It brings back this. Like, I'm making decisions when I'm not using the word should. I'm making decisions about how I go through my day, that I'm owning and that I'm not just walking around, like, blaming some unseen force for my misery of having to do things when I don't want to do them.
[05:20] Rachel: Right? Yeah, that's my branch. Do you know what else is that? There is a constant push and pull with this. Please. So let's just acknowledge that chores exist. Responsibility exists. Right? Like, we know that. But, I mean, the idea of you should do something and then also choosing not to do it is a perfectly valid choice.
[05:46] Emily: Oh, 100%. I love about this woman. This woman was like, yeah, you can say I deserve. Okay, let's say it's like, evening, right? You've done dinner, all this stuff, and now you're exhausted and you just want to watch tv, and there's, like, a bunch of dirty dishes in the kitchen. So I'm going to share something potentially embarrassing about myself, which is that my husband and I used to never do the dishes after dinner. That stuff would just sit in the sink all night until morning. Yeah, every single night.
[06:17] Rachel: I remember. Okay, sometimes we wouldn't even put the food away.
[06:20] Emily: Like, I'm not even going to lie to you.
[06:23] Rachel: I just have to say for a second. The first time you told me that we were at the cabin, do you remember this? We were making dinner together at the cabin. You told me this. I had, like, an instant. Oh, my God. Emily's not perfect moment. It felt so validating to know that you're a human being. Because I had a child, we were living at the cabin. We had all sorts of. My life felt so chaotic. And for you to be like, yeah, sometimes we don't do the dishes. I was like, oh, my God. Emily's a normal human being. She's not perfect. Because even friends, I want you to know, never. Do you know how easy it is to see someone on the Internet and be like, they have their shit. Like, we. We do that to each other of, like, wow, they have their. I mean, our business is online. We see each other maybe once or twice a year, if that. And that's, like, a recent. Like, it's so easy to get into this mindset of other people. Emily is amazing, and she never has any flaws. And, like, oh, my God, I should be like her. And then you told me that, and I was like, oh, wow, I have to do the dishes if Emily doesn't.
[07:37] Emily: I just dropped my. It's so true, though. It's so true, though. And I also. My husband and I talk about this all the time. We're like, do you think other people's houses are actually. We're like, do you think people actually do the dishes? Are we just shaming ourselves, or is everybody lying to each other?
[07:58] Rachel: Everybody's lying about being perfect. Yes, they are. Everybody's lying. Nothing is real.
[08:05] Emily: Nothing is real. Okay, back to my example.
[08:08] Rachel: Yes, sorry.
[08:09] Emily: No, it's totally great, because I think that this goes to show kind of like when, for us, this is before we had Bailey. That's important. So it was just the two of us. The sink would be full of dishes. We often wouldn't even put the leftovers away that just be sitting on the stove the next day, and we would eat them. Don't worry, we've never been sick.
[08:33] Rachel: That would make will have a literal heart attack. Will would just roll over. He's not dead, but if he was, he would roll over in his grave. That gives will heart palpitations to think of not putting food away.
[08:46] Emily: So my husband, side note, used to own a composting business. So we know a lot about how food decomposes and molds. And so if you leave your food out over the night, like, in a vast majority of cases, you are fine.
[08:56] Rachel: You're going to be fine.
[08:58] Emily: Even if it's meat. Okay. We are never going to get to the story. Keep up with our rant.
[09:03] Rachel: Let's go.
[09:04] Emily: So in that circumstance, I would often be like, I should do the dishes, right? Yeah. Like, good people. Right? Society tells me good people do the dishes after dinner and they go to bed with clean kitchens.
[09:14] Rachel: Yeah.
[09:16] Emily: I didn't want to do it, right. And so we would just go watch tv and we just wouldn't do it. And that was because in that moment, we were like, we deserve to watch tv right now. We're tired. We deserve to do that. We don't really care that much about the dishes, so who cares? We'll do them tomorrow before we make dinner. It's so interesting to me because now that we have Bailey and the future is so unpredictable, I find myself doing a lot more like, I used to be, like, the kind of person who would let my whole house become a disaster. And then I would like, because I just didn't. I was like, I deserve to be doing my projects and my writing and all these things, and I just will. Whenever a guest is coming over, I'll clean my house. Deep clean it for me. Having a baby that you just don't know when you're going to get to be able to clean again. Right. You literally don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, what the night is going to be like. And so it became to me after dinner, now it's a no brainer to clean all the dishes because I deserve future me. Now I know that future, or I have decided not. No, but I have decided that future me deserves to wake up to a clean kitchen because future me might have had a really terrible night, right? And so that doesn't mean that past me was wrong or that that was a bad way to do things. I mean, from a health standpoint, the government would disagree. But if you are sitting there, that's what this woman in this podcast was saying is like with any house tour, it comes down to, you and your future self are equal partners, right? And you in this moment, deserve to do what you want to do. And that might be setting it up so that future you has a better experience. And that's only you can decide. And that's like, from a chore standpoint, like, yeah, we have responsibilities. We're eventually going to have to clean the shower and the toilet and go get groceries, right? But that's because I deserve to have a fridge full of food that I can eat. Right? And I deserve to not have to think about meals tomorrow night. And so for me, changing, even in those situations where it feels like a should, because life has required it of you, you can still reframe that narrative and take control again, you can say, I want to do this, even if it's not going to be that pleasant right now. Or I could do this. Oftentimes I just change it to, I could do this. I could write right now, I could clean the shower right now. I could do these other things. What are the pros and cons of each of those things for me right now in this moment? And what do I want to do based on that has just been so empowering to me over the last couple of months, especially with a kid, because there's so many shoulds that come with a baby. And owning that instead of resenting it has just made me feel so much better about my decisions.
[12:01] Rachel: Yeah.
[12:02] Emily: So, bye, should. We're breaking up.
[12:04] Rachel: Bye. Don't come here anymore. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the ability to take control, like you've said in both regards, of reframing to when you deserve it, you could do it, you want to do it. But also reframing in the sense of, I'm actually going to sit down for 15 minutes because I've been cooking for an hour and a half and I'm really tired. And like, I'm going to sit down rather than start the dishes in this exact moment, I will sit down and I will start the dishes in an hour or whatever it is. Offhand, I also now clean the kitchen every night and it's very important me to do so because breakfast time with a three year old who's picky, sometimes I make her two or three options. I make her pancakes and she's like.
[12:54] Emily: Oh, I'm just kidding.
[12:55] Rachel: I want oatmeal. If anybody has comments about picky toddlers, don't just stop. Don't tell them to me. I don't want to hear them. Because it started to be like I'd wake up and have a sink full of dishes, but I would also still be cooking. Like, parenthood is nonstop food preparation. It is the most annoying thing ever. That really helped me to feel less resentful in other areas of being like, oh, I have all of my tools accessible to me right now because past me knew that future me was going to need this. And thanks past me because future me appreciates going downstairs, everything's clean and I can just make breakfast. And future me doesn't have to worry about getting a child. They're ready for school while doing dishes because I already did them. That was nice. I don't mean to pick on dishes.
[13:49] Emily: But no, I think it's an easy way to illustrate it. And I think that's another thing that has really shifted for me in the last couple of months is thinking about this concept of a future me. I feel like I've had a bad relationship with future me in the past because I didn't trust my future self. I didn't trust that my future self would show up to do the things that she wanted to do. Which sounds crazy, but I would try to control future me by saying, I'm going to plan out my whole week down to the minute because I don't trust that future me is going to do the things that she needs, quote unquote, to do. Right?
[14:25] Rachel: Yeah.
[14:26] Emily: And so having changed, that relationship with future me has made it so that I actually treat future me more kindly in a lot of different ways, which is just. Yeah. Anyway, side note, we have gone now. We're getting deep into the recesses, my maternity leave thoughts. But yeah, takeaways are just catch yourself. I feel like it's such a good practice to catch ourselves, catch our thoughts. Like you were saying in the episode that we just listened to that you might not listen to first or second. Who knows how we're going to release these, but our thoughts have so much power if we can become aware of them. And I think this is one of those where as soon as you catch yourself saying I should, I need to, I must interrogating why? Who says that? Who says you should, must need to do x, Y and z because that's probably in 90% of cases like bullshit. In some cases there are responsibilities we have to do. But then you get to interrogate like, okay, but do I want to do it? This is people pleasing. Yeah, it might upset somebody to not do this, but do I want to do it? Could I do it later? Do I have to do it right now? What do I want in this moment? As soon as we start to interrogate, why we're asking should need to. Not asking, saying should need to. Must we open up a conversation to ourselves about our options and about our actual desires instead of just going around in this blind state of I should do all these things the world tells me I should do and then I'm going to resent it because I'm going to blame the external force for it. That's a crappy way to live. Take back control of your own decisions.
[16:09] Rachel: Control, rant over, be the agent of your own life and do the things you want to do when you want to do them. And don't let should dictate anything that you do.
[16:23] Emily: It's just so funny now that I've started to notice it. It's like the things that I find myself saying I should do. I'm like, says who? Yeah, my brain is like, you should do this. I'm like, why? And you passed me years ago. Me would have just done it based on some internal feeling of obligation and obligation and guilt right to this unseen force that's telling me I should do that. But it's all in my brain, it's all in my head most of the time. It's not. Nobody else is expecting you to do something right now in most cases when you have children, that's a little different.
[16:59] Rachel: And speaking of what we were saying earlier about everybody is, there's so much comparison in the should game too, of like, well, they do it, so I should too. Or if I want to be like them, I should do this. And like we were talking about earlier, everybody's just a human being trying to figure it out and everybody is shitting themselves at the same time. So whenever you have that comparison kind of should, that's a moment to be like, well, maybe their life doesn't. Maybe they've got dishes out. Maybe they're also trying to figure out when they want to do things, at what point, what's important, how are they taking care of themselves, because I think now we're going to get into a tiny little sliver of the tangent on rest. But when you make a decision on a should that compromises your ability to rest, nine times out of ten, I feel like that's the wrong decision. Wrong in my case, for me. I can't apply that to everybody. But a lot of those shoulds eat into the time purposelessly. The shoulds eat into the time that you have to be taking care of yourself and when you take care of yourself better, I think we have a stronger ability to say, I want to do this. I'm going to do this.
[18:27] Emily: That's so good. Yeah. I have a habit of getting really when I'm overstimulated or overworked or. Burnout is a heavy word, but like, the daily kind of burnout of like, oh, I'm done for the day if I haven't finished the things that I need to finish, or I get, like, finishing anxiety of like, I have to finish this thing before I can rest. And that's one of my new things for this year, is like, whenever I'm feeling that energy to literally just stop as soon as I feel like, oh, I have to finish this today, or I have to do this thing today. Very few things are emergencies, especially when it comes to writing. And if you're feeling like, I have to do this, for me, nine times out of ten, that is like a huge sign that I need to just stop. Do nothing else for the day you've reached the edge of, which is so counterintuitive because my brain is telling me, if you finish this thing, you'll calm down. Yeah.
[19:30] Rachel: Speaking of the episodes that we've recorded today that I don't know in which order you will listen to, but if it is out, you should go back. Listener, you should go back to listen to the goals setting the goals setting should go back. Choose willingly choose to go. Listen to the goals setting episode. Setting goals without guilt, free from guilt or shame. Because this has so many parallels to the conversation that we just had of doing things from a place of self love versus doing things from a place of shame. And a lot of this is wrapped up in, I need to control my life better, so I should have goals. And then it's like, well, is that really what you want? Will those make you happy? Are you sure? Is this really going to feel good? And how can you reframe that? Because I think that's the mindset shift that we talk about in that other episode. This is a really impactful way to think of your mindset shift. Because if you believe, for example, that you can't write or you can't have any creative time until you finish all of the things on your to do list, you will never do anything like you'll never you. It will be very difficult to write to make meaningful progress because it never ends. For most people, the to do list never ends. There's always something you should do or that is on the list. And if you have that mindset shift when you're approaching your writing style, or if you have that mindset when you approach your writing life. I can't do what I want until I have done all the things I should do. That's just going to set you up for failure. So how can we shift that mindset instead?
[21:22] Emily: Yeah. Interrogate it, y'all.
[21:25] Rachel: That word. Yes. Dive deep. Okay. Well, this was such a fun conversation. I'm glad that we rant for letting.
[21:33] Emily: Me rant about should. It was more fun ranting to you than to my transcriptions to your otter app.
[21:44] Rachel: We should do more podcast rants.
[21:46] Emily: We should.
[21:48] Rachel: Just imagine we're like frat boy white guys. That's what our podcast should be. We're just ranting about stuff.
[21:54] Emily: What do you want to rant about today?
[21:55] Rachel: What do you want to rant about today?
[21:56] Emily: If you guys think that's a good idea, let us know. Let us know, please. [email protected] love it.
[22:05] Rachel: Well, if you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[22:12] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[22:20] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
