Thou shalt not should thyself.
--Anonymous

When someone tells us we should do something, do we want to do it, or do we feel mad that someone else is telling us what we want to do? Sometimes we forget that these messages are not our own, but are the desires of others. It's important to listen to what we tell ourselves, to be aware of which messages we're giving ourselves and which come from others. We can make a list of all our shoulds and identify where they came from: parent, boss, friend, self. Then we can decide which shoulds are want to's, and throw out the rest. Doing what we want to is very different from doing what we should, and we can usually do a better job of it.

Have I freed myself of shoulds today?

I should have gone to work on Monday, but I had to get a flat tyre fixed and had to order a new laser printer for the office and wanted to buy the dim sum, whelks, and chilli oils that I could not buy on Sunday morning on my way home from Saturday night cos the store was not open yet. I should have bought the Hewlett Packard with the free digital camera. The printer does 33 pages a minute and holds 850 sheets and would be perfect for my needs. The camera is brilliant and has a resolution of 4.2 mega-pixels. But the bastoids at Hewlett Packard structured the deal so I should not be able to get the camera (because I should be on holiday when the invoice arrived and so should not be able to forward it together with the claim form until the end of March by which all the cameras will have gone). Should I have bought the printer even though I was being cheated out of the camera? So I ended up buying an Oki that only held 250 sheets and only did 18 sheets per minute. How much effort should I go to to tell HP that they have not just lost a customer but seriously pissed one off by not quite getting the details of their promotional offer right? Resentment, you bet. Doubt I'll be buying anything of theirs any time soon. Should one bear grudges against big corporations? Why not? When they do something good you buy their products so when they do something evil you should boycott their products. For example, I won't ever have anything made by Japanese Victor Corporation in my house becasue they used to sponsor Arsenal. Good news for Sony that they used to sponsor Juve, as I have some of their tellies, two videos,a stereo, walkman, amplifier, sports radio, aerial, speakers and digital detuner. I should got to bed cos the laser printer should arrive tomorrow and it could arrive any time between 9 am and 5 pm, but I don't usually start till 4 pm. Should be fun.

You COULD have asked a friend to help with that dang invoice submission Stan.

Crikey, an email to Aus, Canada (that where you are Phil?...somewhere that way), within the Old Country, or even across the desk to your secretary COULD have had that sorted...

But talking about what we COULD, WOULD or SHOULD have done is never much chop in hindsight.. I don't spose.

Next time, how's about you remember you're not alone? The world is full of stubborn alkies that like to pretend we have to manage things alone, but we all know deep down we can't - not if we actually want to get a head start with things, and progress. We are only too happy to help each other out with stuff. Doesn't matter what it is. Just the way it works.

 

It is amazing that a tech company like HP could not e-mail out the invoice, but that is what their sales dept said. On several occasions. A very simple solution that would have worked. I have e-mail facilities anyway in the world. Can you believe that the switchboard at HP have no idea who to put you through to if you ask for a department? Their internal directory has names only and does not contain any reference to department, job title or function. Sometimes the bigger the company the dumber it acts. British Telecom, one of the largest companies in the UK, once sent me a mailer which must have cost a fortune to produce. It had an audio or video tape with some well known stars on it saying what a fantastic service they could provide for small businesses like mine. I rang the toll free number on the packaging. The phone was answered: "What do you want". I explained that I had received the mailing and said I would like to talk to the BT representative about it. "Never heard of it, wait". I hung on for ages, getting this shitty music pumped into my ear. Eventually someone answered the phone and said "What do you want". I explained again and they took my name and number. Several weeks later I received a phone call "Its BT here, you phoned up asking for some literature do you still want it?" Of course my reply was in the negative. I will never know what fantastic services BT could have provided for my small business. What a waste of time, effort and money.