How do I let go of the 'shoulds'?

A note from a gal who's done with trudging down the same boring ol' path and getting mad at herself for hating it.

I'm an experimental physicist. Like, officially.

It's what I did at University, turned up to labs every Monday at 9am (bullying tbh) and experimented...

Or at least that's what they said I was doing.

In reality, I was being asked to do the same thing over and over again to get the results they knew I should get.

Set up these lasers to get this diffraction pattern and if you don't go to jail.

Okay, maybe not jail, but even so, it irked me something rotten.

Because if I was an 'experimental physicist,' shouldn't I be experimenting?!

And eff me if that hasn't become a constant theme in my life.

"If you want [result], you need to do [x], [y] and [z]."

Cue internal screaming and absolute impossible to ignore desire to melt into my bed and hide under my duvet. We've all been taught it our entire lives.

We go to school to learn, but actually what we are being tested on is remembering.

We build businesses to free ourselves from the clutches of the man™ and end up locking ourselves into these patterns that make us itch.

At 34 years old I've finally been diagnosed with Autism and ADHD and honestly, I'm not surprised. I've known my whole life that my brain doesn't work in the way the powers that be expect it to... and yet I've been able to cosplay as such quite remarkably.

So I would remember what I was taught in school, I would turn up to the lab and perform the "experiments" to show I could get their results and now as a business owner I will do the things I'm supposed to do to make money.

Build an offer.

Niche down.

Write a sales page.

Build a funnel.

Yip Yap on social media until people want to buy from me.

But here I am on a cold (thank the lawd) Tuesday morning, my son has finally gone off to school and I can't even comprehend what I am supposed to be doing.

I no longer want to follow the rigid rules, I want to live my life by my values. I want to learn and be curious, experiment and play and I want to create.

With every fibre of my being I want to create.

So here I am, writing my first ever piece inside The Experiment. A blog where I'll be taking you with me on my journey.

I am a scientist, yes. I love a method, a hypothesis, and I love seeing what works. But I am also an artist, someone who loves to see what happens when we just go for it and trust that we can figure it out as we go.

And behind both of these parts of me, I'm a teacher. Someone who's built their career from being able to break things down and make them something that can be understood, processed and taken into other facets of life.

So, if you're a little bit done with the shoulds and a whole bunch of ready for let's just see what's possible, then welcome.

I don't know what's coming. But I do know, it's going to be an experiment.

(and this time, a real one)

Lauren