The Art of Unpopularity, Liberation from Societal "Musts" and "Shoulds”
The courage to be you and living life with fewer obligation or duties
One of the biggest obstacles in dealing with life’s undesirable and unavoidable tasks, aka, musts and shoulds, is their relation to other people. If no other person existed besides you, there’d be no musts or shoulds. Without others, you’d have no reference and thus wouldn’t face a must or should. Sounds nice, but we don’t live in a world where you’re the only living person.
Instead, we're part of society and communities, where we form relationships and bonds with people for various reasons. Musts and shoulds translate into duties, obligations, or responsibilities acting like guardrails within those communities and societies. These guardrails serve the purpose of creating a functional society, maintaining order, promoting ethical behaviour, and securing the well-being of communities.
I’m inviting you to see that dealing with life’s musts and shoulds is really about dealing with other people, or being comfortable with being unpopular.
Embracing Unpopularity
Doing more of what you want, meaning less of the musts and shoulds, will make you fall from grace. Some of your choices and behaviours will be considered unpopular. It’s the nature of doing things your way. If someone disapproves of your choice or behaviour, it means you’re living on your own terms. If you were popular by everyone’s opinion, you’re not honouring what’s true to yourself, doing things that make your spirit happy. Instead, you’d be stuck putting everyone else’s wants and needs before your own.
To handle life’s musts and shoulds, become comfortable with being unpopular. This would increase time for our own wants and needs.
Imagine you're a young professional who decides to quit your high-paying corporate job to pursue your passion for environmental activism. Many colleagues and family members might disapprove, seeing it as irresponsible. However, by embracing this 'unpopular' decision, you might find deep life satisfaction and make a real difference in conservation efforts.
Navigating Disapproval And Staying True To Yourself
Being comfortable with unpopularity is just the first step. The next challenge is navigating others' opinions and expectations, especially from close people. The real work begins in maintaining our authenticity while preserving important relationships.
To do more of what you want and make your spirit happy, be true to yourself and handle potential disapproval. Understand the nature of opinions and preferences. Every person is full of subjective opinions and preferences based on their perspectives. While everyone has them, these opinions and preferences aren’t objectively true. This is why there really are no absolute musts or shoulds. When you think there are certain musts or shoulds, recognise they’re merely subjective opinions or preferences of others, sometimes promoted and conditioned for centuries.
When faced with someone’s opinion or preference, try saying: “That says more about YOU than me.” This phrase has helped me deflect others’ projected opinions, preferences, or expectations for a long time. Whenever someone expresses their opinion, (which is every time we open our mouths), you can avoid sacrificing your wants and needs for their projected musts and shoulds by seeing how the opinion is a snapshot of that person’s beliefs or preferences. It’s simply their belief. Recognising this creates distance between your habitual behaviour of pleasing and accommodating and makes room for your own preferences.
Take Nancy, a newly graduated chef who chose to open her own soup restaurant despite her parents’ insistence on a safer option like a local chef job. When faced with their disapproval, Nancy reminded herself that their opinions reflected their own fears and experiences, not her potential or passion. She respectfully (and patiently) explained her choice, showing how it aligned with her skills, career goals, and passion, ultimately gaining their support.
It’s not that you should never care or listen to what someone else is saying, especially with the people that you care about. Once you untangle the issue of whose opinion is whose, ask yourself: What’s the grain of truth in what they’re saying? Can I see it? Is it true for me? These questions can help you avoid arrogance or ignorance in relationships.
Applying a healthy dose of scepticism towards accommodating others’ opinions or preferences will help you live with fewer musts or shoulds, and less obligations or responsibilities.
Harsh or demanding opinions and preferences can be met with compassion. Recognising that musts and shoulds are just subjective opinions, you can meet them with an understanding that we all have them. If you want to be entitled to having a personal preference, you might want to be willing to extend the same courtesy to others. Unless you want to live in a world where you think and act like everyone else, you want the right to exercise your free will and choose. If you want that for yourself, how could you not let others have the same right?
A powerful quote by Voltaire comes to mind here: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it.
What they say, believe, and prefer says more about them than you!
Understanding Personal Responsibility In Relationships
Building on the idea of meeting others' opinions with compassion and recognising them as subjective preferences, it's crucial to understand where your responsibility ends and others' begins. What people think and prefer isn't your business, just like what you think and prefer isn't somebody else's business. Musts and shoulds get tricky when we mix up whose responsibility is whose.
This confusion often stems from our desire to be popular or well-liked. If I think someone's opinion of me is somehow my responsibility, I'll work tirelessly to be popular. And tirelessly is what is required here, because it's an endless pursuit, the pursuit of popularity.
You can do everything right, and still people will have their opinions, preferences, and judgments. It’s never up to you what people think, so it can’t be your responsibility. Relationships get complicated when we mix up responsibilities. If you think someone else is responsible for your happiness, they will also be responsible for your unhappiness: She who gets the credit gets the blame. This mix-up lies at the heart of interpersonal relationship complexities.
Yana felt responsible for Caleb’s happiness, which strained their relationship. After Yana accepted a career opportunity, the couple had relocated, and Caleb struggled with settling in. Yana constantly tried to anticipate and meet Caleb’s needs, often at the expense of her own. This led to exhaustion and resentment. When Yana realised that Caleb’s happiness wasn’t her responsibility, she was able to focus on her own needs and communicate more openly, ironically improving their relationship.
The Paradox Of Selfishness
Living a life with fewer musts and shoulds comes with the risk of being perceived as being selfish. “Don’t be selfish!” is what’s typically said as a way to get people back into conformity. Through generations, much has been done in order to make selfishness shameful, as a way to, again, achieve the well-being of the community.
However, I’ve seen how the fear of being selfish has harmed both the community and the self due to the deficit when one’s wants and needs aren’t met. An individual whose wants and needs go unmet can experience overwhelming frustration and depression, pushing them to do whatever to realise them. Their main objective becomes, “What can I get from this?” Moving through life with this goal is selfish, self-centred, and self-absorbed. Paradoxically, you end up being selfish!
When you seek someone’s approval or admiration to stay popular and liked, you’re being selfish! You end up appeasing others to gain their liking. Being overly focused on being liked and popular leads to sacrificing your wants and needs, leaving you feeling depleted, inauthentic, and possibly resentful. Ultimately, you’re fostering relationships based on who you think they want you to be, which is manipulative and tragic — tragic because you’re sentencing yourself to a life of disconnect with yourself and others due to the lack of authenticity.
Wanting to be popular rather than true to yourself is self-centred and selfish. It often comes at the expense of your true happiness and fulfilment, eventually ending up being counterproductive when you feel resentful or drained around the people you care about, always looking for what you can get from every interaction.
In 2009, I was burned out for the first time. I was doing everything that I could to do a good job in my career. If I’m being honest, all the hard work had less to do with a drive to create more value for anyone. Instead, it was my dysfunctional way of getting the approval and sense of accomplishment that I needed to feel good about myself. I never said “No” to my boss or the company in general. I was the first to arrive and the last to leave the office. I would work 60-70 hours a week at stressful periods. All because I wanted to be helpful and well-liked. It was all about me. But I was telling myself it was all for them.
I eventually burnt out because I had been ignoring my own needs and pushing myself too hard for too long. I blamed my company for my situation, since I had done it all for them! So when my boss told me that I needed to be back at work or be replaced I felt angry and abandoned, because I felt that they didn’t appreciate all my hard work that I had done for them! Working my way back from being burnt out I could see that it was never that they had expected or requested that I work so hard or so much. That was all my own doing in the pursuit of gaining popularity with my employer — only because without it, I didn’t feel worthy.
In my experience, the antidote to this paradoxical selfishness is to embrace that both doing what you want or doing what others want is selfish. However, only one can fill your cup, making you happy and content. Happy and content individuals whose needs are met are more productive, safe, and contributing, since they’re not preoccupied with trying to figure out ways to get what they want. It’s simply easier to pour from a full cup than an empty cup.
I’m inviting you to fill your cup by doing more of what makes you happy and keep filling it until it overflows. What overflows is what you can give abundantly, freely, and unconditionally. That way, when you’re making sure to meet your own wants and needs, doing more of what you want, you’re becoming even more giving to those around you.
Growing, performing or succeeding from inside your comfort zone means that you do more of that which feels good and what you like instead of what you must or should do. Filling up your cup enables you to be authentic and see where you can contribute and improve instead of pursuing popularity. This leads to deeper and stronger relationships. Instead of wishing that you were the only person in the world, to avoid life’s complexities, you will enjoy your connections even more — and so will they. Perhaps making you not so unpopular after all.
I want to hear from you!
Leave a comment or send me a DM, let me know what you’re struggling with or what you liked about this article.
What is your struggle when it comes to doing more of what you want to do?
How do you deal with people’s disappointment or expectations?
How do you make sure to fill your own cup, what’s your self-care?