The fourth pattern is treating the should as more important than the want. Joe once wrote down everything he disliked about himself, forgot the list, and found it months later: everything he’d told himself he should change hadn’t moved at all, while things he never shouldded had naturally shifted. You can run the experiment yourself—whatever you’ve wanted to change for years and haven’t is almost always something you’ve been shoulding.
“Should is a form of shame… And shame’s job is to stagnate stuff. It isn’t to let stuff be free.”
Shame is built to stop people from doing things, not to start them. What actually motivates is wanting—the same engine that drives a 0-to-7-year-old through the most rapid development of their life. Joe distinguishes this from craving or neediness; it’s “the natural impulse of evolution,” the way a branch tends toward the light.
Wanting feels risky—you might not get it, and getting it would redefine you—so we slap a should on the want and kill it. And when a want seems corrupted, there’s always a good want beneath it.
“If you find a want that you think is corrupted somehow, say, ‘What’s the want behind that? What’s the real want?‘”
Related Concepts
- Should is a mechanism of shame that locks bad habits in place
- Wants are strategies for essential human needs
- Wanting is aliveness
- The difference between craving and wanting
- Owning your wants means being okay with having them