By Mandy X. Hu
‘My life should be different.’ Bitter words and salty teardrops.
Should. During coaching sessions my single most important job is to help PhD candidates erase this word from their vocabulary. Because what does ‘should’ mean? In my experience, should either means ‘my conviction is truth’, ‘I don’t accept reality’ or ‘I don’t have a choice’. I get it. I truly do. It’s hard when your PhD, relationship or life doesn’t turn out the way you had hoped and dreamed. Holding on to shoulds gives us a sense of control. As long as we stick to our unmoving convictions, reject reality and tell ourselves who we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to behave, we think we can manage or improve the situation. But it’s a false sense of control. Holding on to shoulds is like clenching our fist around a moving rope – we get rope burn. So let me convince you to let go.
My conviction is truth
If you come to think about it, shoulds can be rather arrogant, don’t you think? When we say that our supervisors should have more expertise or empathy, that our parents should love us more unconditionally, or that our partners should be doing more in the household and spend less time on the couch, we often believe this with such conviction and righteousness. Like our world views are right and true, and those of others are clearly stupid, bad, or at least inferior. In the meantime our supervisors believe we should show more independency, our parents believe they should do whatever they can to prepare us for a dangerous world, and our partners think we should relax more and worry less about dusty furniture. No matter how much we believe in our convictions, it’s good to realize they’re only convictions – ideas and ideals in our heads shaped by our upbringing and environment – never truth and not better than those of others. Now that doesn’t mean that you should be passive and not speak up in your relationships. Of course you may express your needs and wishes – just realize that you are making a request rather than a demand and ‘no’ is a perfectly good answer. From my experience however, compared to an arrogant demand, a humble request is much more often met with a ‘yes’ :)
I don’t accept reality
That a situation or a person should be different also means that the reality is they’re not. No shit, Sherlock. But this only strengthens my point that thinking in shoulds is quite pointless. Yet we keep insisting to reject what is already here, whether it is a harsh academic environment, a trait of ourselves we don’t like, or a diagnosis that changes our outlook on life. Rather than pointlessly fighting reality, we can choose to align with reality and accept the current situation. I’m foreseeing your protests: ‘But I can’t just accept myself or people I care about getting hurt, right?’. Accepting reality doesn’t mean being passive, it just means having the attitude of allowing what’s already here, so there is space to take wise and compassionate action. You can accept that there is pain and harm in the world and do everything you can to heal the suffering. In fact, only when we stop spending our energy on fighting reality we can redirect our resources to making changes that are within our power.
I don’t have a choice
From a young age on we start building our identities: who we should be and how we should behave. We become so familiar with this identity that we hardly notice how it’s controlling our every move and dictating all our decisions. Of course we won’t quit our PhDs because we are go-getters, right? Of course we say ‘yes’ to a thousand tasks because we are pleasers, right? Of course we will chase after prestige and validation because we are our achievements… right? There is a reason why we hold on to our identities and its behaviors: it helps us fit into society and navigate through the world. That is, until it’s not sustainable anymore and being a go-getter, pleaser, or achiever means being anxious, stressed, burnt-out, unhappy… Realize that there is very little in life that you should be and should do. You do have a choice – and once you are aware of it, you can make it freely.
I eminently understand that all of this is so much easier said than done. My hands have been severely rope burnt by holding on to ideals of how my appearance, career and relationships should have been at one point in my life. Even now, I tend to grab onto the rope tightly in an inattentive moment. But every time the thought ‘It should be like this’ pops up in my head, I remind myself to let go and say ‘It’s like this and it’s okay’. I really recommend that you should too ;)
Do you recognize yourself in this article? The PhD advisors are here for you. Get in touch with us for a consultation (phdadvisor@amsterdamumc.nl).