What's your 'Probably Should'?

Here's the situation: You want to make a positive change in your life and you stumble across a new technique that you haven't tried before. It sounds intriguing and makes sense and you find yourself feeling a surge of hope. Maybe this is The Thing that will catapult you into the life you've always wanted.

Fast forward 3 months or so and you've finished the program or the book or the few weeks of trying The Thing and your enthusiasm has waned. You're still you. Your life is still your life. You may have had some moments of calm or of insight, but they didn't seem to lead to any remarkable changes. Maybe you blame the approach because clearly it wasn't The Thing after all. It didn't "work" and was just one more disappointment.

Sound familiar? Anyone who has embarked on a journey of self-improvement will have lived out some version of this story, often many times. The reason for this, in a nutshell, is that no approach or technique is ever the answer in and of itself. A solid technique isn't meant to be the change, it is meant to reveal the change that needs to be made by you.

Often we look to self-improvement approaches as just one more short-cut we can take, like waving a magic wand. We are not yet at peace with the idea of slow and difficult transformation. We want instant relief with minimal effort, and the marketing messages of self-improvement approaches are often all too happy to promise this, which compounds the issue.

Let me be that honest voice of reason - nothing outside of you will ever bring you the changes you desire. Only you can do that. That's the bad news. The good news is that you can do so through a variety of different techniques. There is no need to find the holy grail of all approaches, because it's all about your own willingness to do things differently. It is as simple and as difficult as that. It takes time, sustained effort and often demands that we release something that we would rather not let go.

Photo Credit: Amanda Brants

"If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down." - Buddha

One bit of advice I often give to clients is this - if you want to go on a self-improvement journey, pack light. You can't hold on to anything because you don't know what the healing journey may require you to release. Very often it's that one thing you are clinging to for dear life. And therein lies the problem. Those of us who are brave enough to begin to change will butt up against that thing that we are asked to let go of and don't want to give up or to take that one action that we've been avoiding. I call this the "probably should". Not a 'should' in that way that society says you should do this or that or your parents say you should be more this and less that. I'm speaking of what the quiet inner voice of wisdom has been telling you to do for some time but you haven't been willing.

It could be any of a myriad of things. I probably should start that new business or I probably should end this detrimental relationship or I probably should set better boundaries with my children. You'll know the 'probably should' by the intense inner resistance you feel to the notion each time you think of it, followed by your lack of action.

In doing inner work with archetypes for example, sometime during the process you will hit upon that thing that is anchoring you in place that you do not want to change. Then it is simply a choice point. Will you do it? Will you at least admit that you ought to but aren't ready to? Or will you be tempted to blame the approach as one that "doesn't work" and then move on to a different one?

This is not to say that some techniques don't suit us a little better than others. There are many different ways to reach a destination and some are more appealing or illuminating than others. It's more about that constant seeking without landing that we can sometimes get caught up in, that chronic disappointment when everything we try seems to fail, that reliance on things outside of ourselves to pull us out of situations that we've chosen to be in. It's about using "that didn't work" as a stall tactic. In reality, you may be rowing with all your might and using a perfectly good paddle but you have an anchor in the water.

In summary, many (maybe most) approaches will get you to the Probably Should, but no approach will pull you beyond it. You must choose to do the thing that's being asked of you. Only you can do it. If your boat is anchored, you must pull the anchor in order to sail. There is no other way. The choice and the power are with you, to pull up anchor and leave the shallows or to remain stuck in the same old bay.