Letting Go of Shoulds and Learning to Trust Yourself

I recently was at a dinner where I heard some very familiar phrases when it came to the dessert. “I’m trying to be good” or “I shouldn’t have eaten that.” I can’t count the number of times I have said similar things when it comes to the food I choose to eat. I have struggled with my weight for years and have tried so many different diets, only to lose and then eventually end up heavier than I was before.

There’s absolutely no shame in this and it’s not why I’m sharing it. We all have our struggles for various reasons. I’ve mentioned it before that for me, having extra weight felt like a protection. That may sound strange, but it created an actual physical barrier that I felt kept people at a distance. Not to mention that food has always been a coping mechanism. The fuller I feel physically, the less I feel emotionally.

I don’t know if you have dealt with similar struggles around food and/or weight. Maybe your struggles show up in other ways. Whatever it may be, I think on some level, many of us can relate to the language of should and shouldn’t. The idea that we need to be “good.” Or my familiar phrase, “I’ve been really good and so I deserve a treat.”

Lately I’ve been paying more attention to the thoughts that rattle in my head. The thoughts that I confuse with my identity. The thoughts that often dictate what I do or how I feel. I’ve especially noticed the constant food chatter and how often I let myself be directed by the shoulds and shouldn’ts. What I’m beginning to see is how much suffering that creates.

I didn’t intend for this to be a post about food or weight. It’s just one place where this pattern of thinking shows up for me. Because what I’m really starting to understand is something deeper.

Living an authentic life, at least for me, is beginning to look like letting go of the shoulds and shouldn’ts. It’s letting go of trying to be “good” in order to earn something—whether that’s a treat, approval, or even love.

The reason I’m sharing any of this is because I’ve been thinking a lot about checklists, or requirements, that I learned at a young age of how to be “good.” I knew what I should and shouldn’t do to be deemed worthy. For me, some of these checklists were tied to who I thought God expected me to be. It’s been one of the most difficult things for me to separate those checklists from God’s love.

I know I’ve talked about this before and so maybe it will sound repetitive. But it felt important to share because it tells me I’m still struggling with this internal conflict. Every time I feel I have moved past it, I realize there are parts of me who are not on board. They want to go back to the safety of the checklists. In some ways they feel like guarantees—that if I just do everything right, then everything will be okay.

I will be completely honest here that the checklists did provide structure and even a sense of joy at times. They helped me feel more connected to God and gave me a sense of safety. So, I’m not saying they were bad. In many ways, they helped me strive to be a better person despite the trauma I endured.

But somewhere along the way, my identity became tangled up in them—the shoulds and shouldn’ts. In the belief that I needed to be good in order to receive any love in life. I followed everyone else’s expectations and slowly became disconnected from my own true nature.

So now as I continue choosing to live an authentic life, I am faced with a lot of uncertainty and fear. But there’s also something more—something that feels like hope. A sense that maybe I don’t have to earn anyone’s love. Maybe it is possible to feel loved without any strings tied to it.

If I come back to my example of food, I am learning to live with more balance. I’m stepping away from the external rules and practicing listening to what feels right for my body. If I want a dessert, than I can have it—without needing to earn it, and without commentary of should or shouldn’t.

It’s definitely a work in progress as it’s not easy to unlearn decades of thinking this way. But I’m beginning to see that the stress I carried around food was probably more harmful than the food itself.

And it’s not just about food. It’s about all the checklists I’ve been living by.

I am learning to look at each one with more honesty and curiosity. Does this feel aligned with my true nature? Or is it something I’ve been holding onto out of fear? If it feels driven by fear, then I can get curious as to why. And I’m noticing that some of these are much harder to let go of than others.

There isn’t a quick or easy answer. But there is a growing sense of freedom in asking the questions. And maybe that’s what this really comes down to. Learning, slowly and imperfectly to trust myself—to live without feeling like I need to earn my worth or love.