The Pressure of ‘Should’ During Lockdown

Human beings are judging machines, we can’t help ourselves.

While we hope we might see a kinder society emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, nothing positive comes from pointing out what someone else should be doing to cope and grow themselves or their businesses throughout this period.

Social media, self-help gurus, chats across the road, all throw up ideas of what we should be doing to make us better people when we all come out the other side.

Some seem to think we are all slowing down, baking bread, creating the perfect family unit. That we now have time to meditate every morning and become proficient in some new skill from the comfort of our own home. 

From the entrepreneurial icons there is no excuse for not pivoting your business right now or using this time to explore a side hustle. We ‘should’ simultaneously be home schooling, improving ourselves, working harder and smarter, meditating, reconnecting with our partners and taking on a new hobby. 

At The Healthy Working Company we have now trained and interacted with thousands of people during this crisis and what strikes me is the role of the circumstances in which many people find themselves.  The greatest challenges we see are from two extremes – those who are isolated and putting in a lot of hours of work, not stopping and not taking regular breaks; and those working in cramped spaces, with children under ten and both parties trying to work, doing their best to enjoy more time with their children, but also feeling guilty from every angle. 

To understand our responses to the current situation it is worth acknowledging that as human beings we are hard wired to respond and cope in certain ways. 

The threat responses in our brains are switched on by an abnormal situation – which might result in immediate or long term underlying (chronic) stress. Our inherent negativity bias – which from an evolutionary perspective helped to keep us alive – ensures that we place greater weight on worries than on positive events and it is hard to escape our immediate response to crisis. 

I am hard wired to move quickly and seek solutions. To work hard.  But while I may appear calm on the outside, I am like a swan scrabbling madly under the surface and driven by an underlying anxiety – will I still be able to make a living for me and my team?  Will I lose my house? Will I ever go on holiday again?

Feelings can overwhelm the best of us at times like this, but then I find a new perspective and remember that I am resourceful. I will be fine.

How would it be if instead of talking about ‘should’ we were to think about what might ‘be available’ from one course of action over another?  Instead of talking about what we must do we can think about what is workable for our situation.

These shifts in language remove judgement and emotion and allow us to be more measured in our responses to our own anxieties and to the often-wearying advice of others.  If we redefine our actions into a series of choices, can we find ourselves more empowered as a result?

The eminent psychologist Csikszentmihalyi says: “A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.”

In creating our webinars for industry-leading companies about healthy home working, we have put forward ideas for people to try. Most of them have the backing of science.  All of them are about workability.

And some of them will work better for some than others. 

Sharing diaries, breaking regularly, taking time out, eating good food for our guts, exercising regularly, going to bed at the same time each night – all of these create workability in our lives. Is it enough to point these out? No. Habits are difficult to shift and we need to support people in finding environmental nudges and to feel the buzz of success having implemented a new habit. 

Some will just not work for everyone.

So take a step back and observe how you are dealing with this crisis, because self-knowledge is a useful thing. As far back as Socrates, we have known this!

Give up the idea that any expert has the exact blueprint solution for you, but critically evaluate what might work for you if you try some of their advice. 

Give up judging other’s responses as lesser or greater than your own and feeling stung by their apparently amazing capacity to cope. I invite you to try on kindness and self-compassion for this period.

1             Consider the use of the words “what might be available from” and “what is workable” rather than “should” or “must” when it comes to what you are doing.

2              Tell the story to yourself of how you are coping in a way which underlines rather than undermines your ability to cope as a human being.

3              Know that you and those you interact with are always doing their best with the tools they have available.