I should'd myself into a life I didn't want

I've been paying attention to my language lately.

Not the big stuff. Not what I say on stages or write in these newsletters.

The small stuff. The qualifiers. The sneaky little words I slip into my speech without noticing - the ones that quietly shrink what I'm actually trying to say.

Things like inserting "I think" before a statement about something I absolutely know inside out. Saying "sort of" or "kind of" when neither is remotely necessary. Trailing off at the end of a sentence when a full stop and a bit of confident silence would do just fine.

And then there's the real villain: "I should."

I should be doing this. I need to do that. I must get on top of this.

Subtle little sticks to beat myself with. Quiet ways of stuffing myself back into society's neat little boxes of expectation.

I notice this habit most in women, queer folks, and neurodivergent people. In anyone who's been socialised to take up less space, soften their edges, and make their very existence more palatable.

And I very much include myself in this. I am, regrettably, a serial qualifier.

The thing is, I spent most of my life living by "shoulds".

Should get a stable job. Should earn good money. Should buy a house. Should be in a long-term relationship. Should host dinner parties, have opinions about soft furnishings and talk about weddings and babies like a normal functioning member of society.

And honestly? I fucking nailed it. Gold star. Top marks for me.

✔️ Steady agency career.
✔️ Healthy income.
✔️ Long-term, heteronormative relationship.
✔️ A house I'd lovingly renovated.
✔️ The whole respectable, photogenic, "she's really got her life together" package.

One small problem: I was miserable.

Hollow. Going through the motions. Performing a life that looked right from every angle except the inside.

Every "should" had built another brick in a wall I didn't even realise I was trapped behind. And I was too busy colour-coordinating the bricks to notice.

It took dismantling basically everything to find out what was actually mine.

Many rounds of therapy. A late ADHD diagnosis. Coming out in my early thirties. Leaving a 12-year relationship. Selling my house. Walking away from my own business.

You know, the light stuff.

And now? Now I'm a queer, neurodivergent, self-employed coach with a deeply judgemental sighthound, who splits their time between the sea and London.

I do coaching, facilitation, speaking, writing, and whatever else lights me up that quarter. I have no five-year plan. I have no "main job."

My parents think I'm slightly unhinged. I think I'm finally awake.

Someone asked me about a year ago: "What do you want your main job to be?"

And I said: I don't want a main job. I want different projects and buckets and ever-evolving ways of working.

For some people, that probably sounds like a cry for help.

For me? It's calm. It's cute. It's mine.

And my brain - my actual, beautifully chaotic, neurodivergent brain - is fizzing with ideas in a way it never once did when I was living inside someone else's blueprint. Funny, that.

Once I saw what "I should" had cost me, I started hearing it everywhere.

In my morning pages. In coaching calls. In the way friends talk about their own lives.

"I should" isn't just a harmless filler word. It's a signal. It tells you exactly where you've absorbed someone else's expectation and mistaken it for your own desire.

And "I think" does something equally annoying but in the other direction - it undermines your conviction before you've even finished your sentence. It turns a statement into a suggestion. It basically holds the door open for people to dismiss you.

We do it constantly. In meetings. In pitches. In emails. In conversations with friends. In our own heads, where frankly no one is even listening and we're still hedging our bets.

"I think" chips away at conviction. "I should" chips away at self-trust.

And both keep us playing small for the comfort of everyone except ourselves.

I don't want to play small anymore. I've tried it. The reviews were terrible.

So now I practise catching them, like tiny linguistic gremlins.

Whenever I spot "I should" in my morning pages - or hear it fall out of my mouth - I pause. I swap it.

"I should" becomes "I want to" or "I get to."

Then I check: does it still stand?

If it does, lovely. That one's mine. Carry on.

But if it snags - if "I want to" doesn't ring true - I get curious.

Where did that "should" come from? Is it something I actually care about? Or is it an expectation I picked up from school, from society, from that one relative who always asks when I’m getting a "proper" job?

From there, I can choose. Keep it, reject it, or reframe it entirely.

I'm doing the same with "I think." Unless I'm genuinely speculating - genuinely unsure - I'm trying to just say the thing. Let my words land without pre-apologising for having an opinion.

It sounds small. It is small. But small practices are how you slowly rebuild a life that actually fits, and stop accidentally building one that doesn't.

Your turn.

This week, try noticing. Not changing anything yet. Just clocking it.

Where does "I should" show up in your language? In your journal, your internal monologue, your conversations?

And when it does, ask yourself: is that actually mine? Or is it borrowed?

You might be surprised how much of your life was quietly designed by someone else's expectations while you were busy being agreeable.

With love, full stops, and absolutely zero qualifiers,

Nat x