Don't 'Should' On Yourself!

One of my favorite bits of Life and Business Coaching advice is, ‘don’t should on yourself!’

I think it’s my favorite and I like saying it because I need to follow my own advice; I ‘should’ on myself all the time. ‘Should’ implies I could be doing better, or ‘should’ be doing something else, or am missing the mark, etc. It says I’m not doing the best I can and am somehow a failure.

‘Should’ is judgmental, blameful and guilt inducing. It suggests some ‘objective’ standard outside my inner, spiritual wisdom that is superior to my inner wisdom. ‘Should’ is the ego distracting me from my reality as spirit. When I ‘should’ on myself, I’m letting appearances, conditions and opinions – fragments of the ego’s illusion of the world, drag me from my spiritual perfection.

When with spirit, I know, feel and experience the reflection of divine order in everyone and everything. I know life is a learning laboratory in which everyone and everything that happens, even the most horrible, disgusting things, especially the most horrible and disgusting things, hold the potential to awaken me to my reality as spirit, if I choose to experience them with spirit and not the ego. It’s the ego that labels things ‘horrible’ and ‘disgusting’, not spirit.
Spirit blames nothing and no one, punishes nothing and no one but rather enables us to use whatever we experience to know It better and experience Its presence, first, in ourselves, then in everyone and everything.

When I ‘should’ on myself, I deny spirit’s reality, choosing the ego instead. I deny that each person and every event is an opportunity to learn and awaken. I deny that there is an alternative to my ego’s way of experiencing the world, and arrogantly project my small amount of wisdom as the Truth.

Spirit is the Truth, the reality, ego is the lie, the illusion. Every person, even Eric Cantor and the Koch brothers, share the same need to awaken to their reality as spirit, and have the same opportunities to do so. We are all one in this essential. Shouldn’t we try to actualize it?