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"One needs to play with one's values . . . to determine one's level of comfort with them. They cannot feel comfortable if they are not your own. Values which don't fit are the "shoulds" - the things you don't really subscribe to deep down inside, but which keep coming up in your thinking because they are supposed to fit - probably by someone else's standards. But they don't fit. If the values don't fit, it doesn't mean they're bad or wrong. They're just not yours." - Rob Solomon, Full Esteem Ahead

It is tempting to adopt personal values from the outside world. We imagine we will fit in better if we follow a code of SHOULDs. Significant people in our lives keep telling us that we should do this or should do that, without really explaining why. The SHOULDs seem to play an inordinately important role in our decision-making.

Shouldville is the Valley of Misfits - a satanic playground where square pegs are pounded into round holes and vice versa. I have spent much of my life trapped there, and I'm working on getting in touch with what I really think, what I really feel, and what I really want to do.

When I was newly-wed and panicking over an impending social challenge, my husband would pat me on the shoulder and say, "Just be yourself." At the time, I thought it was a condescending buzz word, but I have used it many times since, on myself and others. It is just as annoyingly ineffectual as ever.

To be myself, I have to know who I am, not who I SHOULD be. Socrates pointed the way to wisdom with the maxim: "Know thyself." Is that really so wise? We all know how his story ended. Is modern society any more accepting of radical individuality than Socrates' contemporaries were?

It's no easy matter to sort out the SHOULDS from the PERSONAL PASSIONS and LEGITIMATE NEEDS from the SELF-INDULGENT WHIMS OF THE MOMENT. I feel like the heroine in the fairy tale who had to sort out a hopelessly enormous pile of mixed dried legumes before morning, or else. Success at this task is the key to the abundant life - if the Thought Police doesn't get me first.

I need answers. Please don't tell me that the answers are within me. I already know that. I want something more - an emergency airlift out of my self-defeating headspace.

Learn more about this author, Christine G..
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