I think most people live in a world of shoulds : You should eat healthy food, you should not smoke, you should go to work every day, you should not hurt peoples feelings, you should love thy neighbour, etc. It all reminds me of the Henry Thoreau quote “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” as all these shoulds are present exactly because the actions are not something that comes naturally to most people and probably conflicts with their desires and passion.

These shoulds also lead to stress and frustration and if you feel stressed on a regular basis I am willing to bet you have a lot of shoulds in your life. In the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Steven Covey explains a system for lessening the amount of stress you experience and getting more done :

The idea is that you should spend most of your time dealing with things in quadrant 1 and 4, less in quadrant 2 and preferably never in quadrant 3. It is not a bad system, but did you notice the shoulds? In my opinion no such system is complete unless it also deals with transforming shoulds into woulds.

With all of the desires we experience constantly : I want to be rich, I want to be loved, I want pleasureable experiences, I want to eat great tasting food, I want to have sex, I want to be significant, etc. They are bound to clash at times with all the shoulds we are confronted with and create for ourselves (out of other desires) and since you can only do one action at any moment in time, either the “I would like to” or the “I really should” will win. If you have a habit of letting your in-the-moment desires win, no system of shoulds will work for you.

In the article “Trading In Your Freedom” I explained one way of turning a should into a would : from “I really should go to work” to “I want to go to work so I can earn money for my own place to live” by remembering what the original desire was that created the should. There are many other ways to do it : positive reinforcement, change of perspective, developing a habit to name a few. The point I really want to drive through though is this : If you do not transform shoulds into woulds you will not be completely happy no matter what action you choose to take. The reason is that engaging in a tug-of-war between a should and a would will always end with a loss on your part.

If you have a conflict between a should and a would one of them will win in the moment. If the should wins you will probably feel good about being “a good boy” (or girl) and doing what you are supposed to but at the same time you have a unfulfilled desire that nags you. If the would wins you will satisfy your desire and this will in turn make you feel good but at the same time you will feel guilty about not doing what you know you should. Of course in the moment you will think of all sorts of rationalizations for the should or would that you chose but ultimately it will always be about deferring one action to later and choosing the other now.

Instead, if you transform all your shoulds into woulds, there will be more of a competition between desires(as there always is) than a conflict and no matter what action you choose, you can be sure that you satisfy one of your desires. And as you satisfy your desire you will experience the passion and drive that satisfying a desire can give you, but being a good boy (or girl) can not. So do not settle for living a life of shoulds, instead transform them and live a life of passion and drive.