When confronted with a should — whether from a boss, a parent, or the voice in your own head — only two responses are possible. The first is rebellion: an innate “no” that rises up against being controlled. This is why you haven’t done the things you’ve been telling yourself you should do for decades — you’re rebelling against your own internal dictator. The second is submission: “Oh, you’re right, I should have” — not surrender but a collapse into disempowerment, a victim posture toward your own inner voice.
Neither response produces the generative energy that actually gets things done. Rebellion creates resistance. Submission creates dependency. Both drain the very empowerment needed for creative action.
“If that should voice in your head is really strong and really loud, there is a strong case that you’re miserable whether you see it or not.”
Joe uses the roommate metaphor: if you had a roommate who spoke to you the way your inner should-voice does, you’d move out. Most people who had a boss who talked like that would quit. Yet we live with this voice and rarely question its authority.
Related Concepts
- Rebellion and approval seeking are the same coin
- Inner voice mirrors parenting
- How you treat your internal authority mirrors how you treat external ones
- Bullying yourself into action creates resistance
- Rebellion empowers the authority figure just as compliance does
- The inner critic uses the same dynamics as cults and political manipulation