A friend of mine made a comment the other day that struck me as broadly applicable. We were talking about face moisturizers, and a person (who sells a certain line of expensive skincare) brought up the miracles of her product. My friend looked her in the face and said:

“If all it took were buying that product, no one would have wrinkles.”

The same applies to weight loss. If losing weight were easy, everyone would be at their ideal weight.

It also applies to productivity. If all it took to be optimally productive was to follow system X, then everyone would be doing it.

The truth is, these things aren’t easy. The same things don’t work for everyone.

So if you struggle from time to time, remind yourself that what you are trying to do isn’t easy. If it were, everyone would do it.

Photo by Jason Gulledge

This question may be resolved by a quick examination of current goals and a re-orientation in that direction, or it may be something much deeper, requiring further questions.

If you need more questions, ask yourself:

• Is this something I still want to do?
• Is this something I want to do, or is it an external expectation?
• Does this serve my best interests and the best interests of those I love?
• Does this help me be the best person I can be?
• Would this be better done by someone else? Can I let go of it?
• Is this a smaller part of a larger goal?
• Why am I attached to this outcome?
• Is the probable outcome still in line with my desires?
• Will this matter in 10 years?
• Is this moving me in the direction I want to go?
• Is this making a positive difference, to me or someone else?
• Why did I want this?
• Why did I decide to do this initially?
• How does this fit in with my life goals?
• How does this fit in with my other current goals?
• Do I need to devote more time to this?
• Do I need to change direction in pursuit of this?
• Does this need to incubate for a while?
• Is this still as important as it used to be?
• Do I need to find help to complete this?

Photo by fdecomite

You see, her conversation was peppered with “I should”.

I don’t like the word SHOULD, because it implies a sense of doing something you’re not doing, or that you feel obligated to do. Examples:

I should clean the gutters.
I should take a course in y.
I should catch up on the backlog of magazines.
I should visit my family.
I should clean out my closets.
I should exercise more.
I should eat better.

The problem with SHOULD is that it expresses an obligation. The obligation may be true, that someone expects something, or the obligation may be imaginary, in the case where we hold ourselves to something. Obligations are great, but they are better if they are a WANT.

Wants express a desire to accomplish, rather than an obligation.

Questions to Ask When You Find Yourself with “Should”

It is better to get to the root of the shoulds as soon as possible, and either convert them to wants, or discard them.

Who Says?

Who says I should clean the gutters? Is it someone that has a stake in it (like a gutter cleaning company)? Is it someone who is trying to pass off work on you because they don’t want to do it? Is it an expectation you are putting on yourself?

Figuring out who is directing the should will provide some clarity.

Is It Meaningful to You?

Is the activity meaningful to you? Is it meaningful to take a course in a new skill? Are you truly interested?

Activities that have no personal meaning are probably going to be difficult to translate into a want.

Is It Right For You?

One of my friends was pressured to go to pharmacy school because his grandfather was a pharmacist. My friend wanted to do computer programming, but took the basic courses for pharmacy. But his heart wasn’t in it, and he ended up leaving university.

I have been pressured in the past few months to take up a programming language that will doom me professionally. I was told I “should” learn this skill so that I can be more employable. However, it’s not right for me, and I know from experience that if you have the skill, people will expect you to use it.

Thinking about whether a particular task is right for who you are and where you are going can be a good indicator of whose expectation this is.

Is There Another Way?

If you should clean out the gutters, does that mean you need to do it yourself? Or would it be better to state that you will get the gutters cleaned. Sometimes a should is merely an indication of a mis-phrasing. You might not be the best person for the job.

If we examine where the shoulds come from, we can either discard them, or change them in such a way that they become desires. And once they are phrased as desires, we are more likely to make them happen.

Photo by 416style

Title: Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth
Author: Steve Pavlina
Rating (out of 10): 9
ISBN: 1401922759

Book Summary

The phenomenal blogger Steve Pavlina has become synonymous with personal development. Sharing for free his immense knowledge gathered from extensive reading and interviews, digested and assimilated in new ways, his blog is one of the top blogs in the field of personal development. And now Steve has turned his knowledge into a book. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth has just come out, and it lives up to all that I have come to expect from Steve’s writing.

Steve starts out the book explaining where he was, and how he got where he is. He then lays out what he intends to do: to reduce all principles of personal development down so that they are universal, complete, irreducible and practical. That’s a very tall order. Ultimately, I think he succeeded.

The book is laid out very logically: first covered are the three core principles of truth, love and power (which I think would be more aptly named strength), then the secondary combinations of these principles into oneness (truth plus love), authority (truth plus power), courage (love plus power) and intelligence (truth, love and power). Each concept is covered in detail in a well designed chapter, easy to read with many examples.

Review

This book can be read at two levels, and both levels should provide some benefit to the reader. The most superficial level can be obtained by a first reading, where exercises are given and the concepts presented in an orderly fashion. What I found, though, as I read this book, was that after I set the book down and thought about things for a while, I would re-read a section and find a whole other level within the ideas.

The only thing that bothered me about the book was that there were concepts put in that were not fully explained at the time. This is not a problem for someone familiar with Steve’s web articles. However, someone picking this book up without that background might be confused when the Law of Attraction is dropped into the chapter on Power without any explanation of what it means or why it was brought in.

Steve doesn’t pull any punches in this book, but tells the truth with compassion. His text flows naturally, conveying the ideas as if he were talking directly to the reader. Don’t be fooled, though. This is no fluffy “get everything you want tomorrow” book. In fact, it is the most in-depth book I have read in a long time. He thoroughly covers each of the topics, reducing it down to his criteria carefully and thoroughly.

My copy Personal Development for Smart People arrived right at a time when I have been struggling with what boils down to personal development. I can see that this book will be one I return to many times.

Overall, I would recommend Personal Development for Smart People as a must-read for anyone interested in personal development.

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with Steve Pavlina. I received a copy of his book from his publisher in order to review it.