This morning, I was in a supermarket and overheard a disagreement between two shoppers. One was telling the other that they ‘should’ do something. The recipient replied that it was the other person who ‘should’ do something different.
It’s an interesting word, this ‘should’ word.
As I walked passed I thought ‘According to who exactly?’
Here’s the thing – ‘should’ is merely a reflection of that one person’s beliefs – the way they’ve been conditioned in childhood and thereafter repeated this story internally throughout their life.
The reason there are so many disagreements in the world is that a large percentage of individuals ‘believe’ that their way is right, correct, factual and that anyone who disagrees, whilst entitled to their own opinion – are ‘wrong’, mistaken, misled.
But in the majority of cases, there is no ‘right’ – there are just opinions, personal preferences, perceptions, internal rules, beliefs around what’s important, views about how people can live harmoniously together.
It’s actually quite arrogant for Person A to tell Person B that they ‘should’ comply with Person A’s view of the world.
Ironically, sometimes Person A will tell Person B that they are ‘selfish’ for not complying with Person A’s ‘belief’ about how people ‘should’ behave.
The irony of deflective selfishness.
I’m not talking about breaking the law obviously – these laws are there to protect society. I’m talking about things like telling someone else that they ‘should’ behave a certain way or do things in the way that Person A likes things done.
We can extend this to relationships – many arguments and ‘irreconcilable differences’ come from this concept – both individuals ‘believe’ that their way/beliefs are the ‘right’ ones and that opposing views are therefore ‘wrong’.
In my youth, I, like most people, thought that my beliefs were factual – of course – we wouldn’t ‘believe’ something if we didn’t ‘believe’ it was true.
But the vast majority of beliefs are not ‘true’ – it’s just programming.
There is no big rule book in the sky that has the ultimate ‘shoulds’ of human existence.
If we extend this further into business – colleagues, contractors, service providers – there can be further fallouts if their ‘shoulds’ are not the same as your ‘shoulds’. This is why it’s imperative to make decisions that are based on similar values and ways of working. Do you believe that business partners/consultants ‘should’ reply to your emails within 24 hours, or ‘should’ they be allowed at least a week to respond?
Friction and the breakdown of relationships in the professional world as well as in personal lives can be largely attributed to opposing ‘shoulds’.
If I go further still – when building a business, you’re told you ‘should’ post a certain number of times a week, you ‘should’ have a certain style, length to your post, you ‘should’ have a robust marketing strategy, do a huge amount of networking, work really hard and ‘hustle’ your way to the top if you want to ‘make it’.
Should you?
Only if you ‘believe’ that’s the only way to succeed.
Because here’s the thing about business growth and success – whatever you believe will always be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you ‘believe’ that you ‘should’ work 10X harder to grow your business, then all that’s going to do is keep you stuck in what I call ‘The Success Plateau Trap’.
If you believe that you ‘should’ bring in more marketing experts and agencies to help you scale, then that will be your truth – you won’t be able to scale without doing that – because it will keep you in what I call ‘The External Fix Illusion’.
If, like me, you prefer to choose the kind of life you want, and then eliminate all these ‘shoulds’ that are not in line with that so you can build it the way you desire, then the things to work on is not on the outside – it’s not changing other people’s ‘shoulds’ – it about changing your own.
For example – ‘should’ you, as a business owner looking to grow, or a corporate careerist wishing to build freedom through entrepreneurship, or a coach or consultant wanting to learn about iconic pricing – consider working with us here at Effortless Global?
It depends if you believe that everyone ‘should’ work really hard to succeed and that you ‘should’ put in years of trial and error to grow – or whether you desire a more effortl-less (as opposed to effort-zero) way of achieving audacious goals, compressing time and building a life of freedom.
Ultimately, the only ‘should’ to listen to, is that of your own internal GPS – your intuition.
Only YOU know what kind of a life you really want – and your intuition will tell you how to get there… before your fear-based programming jumps in with your pre-programmed ‘shoulds’.
Choose your ‘should’ wisely – there is but one life and time is the only resource that doesn’t replenish.
Effortlessly,
Guinevere