Should I?

“Should” is a dirty word to most of us. It denotes a kind of authoritative directive that must be done or else things will be bad or wrong. Or worse, we ourselves will be bad or wrong.

People are generally very willing to give advice, tell us what to do. We go to doctors to be told what to do for our health. Our friends hear our stories and tell us what we “should” do about it. The trouble is there are usually dissenting opinions from the various friends, doctors, mentors and cast of internal voices/characters chiming in on the matter at hand.

The challenge seems to be about becoming able to decipher the difference between a “should” that is from an external authority, an internal critic or a genuine, internal knowing (a sense of evaluated ethic). The latter is a deeper sense of what’s in line with our inner being in an authentic and resonant way. It takes into account ALL the information about the situation, including our deeper understandings, ethics, subjective perspectives, conscious and unconscious needs and motivations. That means that any one can be told what to do by an “other” or a punishing inner dialogue, but it takes great care to determine the actions and thoughts that we “should” do for ourselves on account of having worked through the judgments, social norm impositions, inner wants and needs and ethics that all inform our current situation and position.

We must filter all the input and arrive at a choice. What an enormous challenge! We face this very often, to varying degrees of intensity and importance. Within this challenge is the essence of living from a truly subjective and personal position in our lives.

TRY: Take a bit of time to consider a “should” in your life.  Run through the options and try to decipher if this is an “inner should” or a “imposed should”.  Is it a “should” from fear?  Is it a “should” arising from a deep inner knowing?