There is a sentence I catch myself running about my son: he should respect me. When I am calm, I ask a different question: respect according to who? I call that question "Whose rulebook is that?" It is how you catch a rule you never chose, whether it comes from the unspoken family rules and family expectations you grew up inside, an old job, or somewhere you can't quite place.
What a rule you never chose sounds like
It nearly always arrives in one of four words: should, have to, need to, must. At work it sounds like "she should have told me by now", "I have to be the capable one" or "they need to run the meeting my way". With a partner it sounds like "he should just know". In the moment, each of these feels like a plain fact about how things are.
What I have noticed, in myself and in the people I work with, is that it is more a reaction than a response that gives it away. You flinch, almost, and you don't want the sentence questioned. I call it reacting, running on autopilot, flaring up, getting flooded. When a sentence arrives that fast and doesn't want to be questioned, it has usually come from somewhere else.
Why you picked it up
Nobody forced it on you. Most of us picked up our rulebook early, and we kept it because it helped: keep the peace, stay safe, look capable, get on. Some of that rulebook is yours, it is good, and it is worth keeping. The aim is to review it on purpose, not to burn it.
How to ask "Whose rulebook is that?"
Catch the sentence first. Then ask whose rulebook it is: a parent's rulebook, a grandmother's rulebook, a family's rulebook, an old job's rulebook. Then ask whether it is still true for you now. After that you have three choices: keep it, rewrite it, or hand it back to whoever you got it from.
Here is my own. When I parent, I am often faced with the fact that a lot of how I 'govern' my son is conditioning coming through: ideas about how things should be done that I never consciously chose, and wishes for how he should behave that may not be mine. What I got wrong before was not noticing. When he was four and pushing my buttons, I saw I was reacting from something deep inside, in a way I had disliked when it was aimed at me. That is when I thought: wait, this isn't mine. I have a long way to go.
Try it on the colleague who annoys you most. "She should have told me." Whose rulebook says you need to be told: a parent's rulebook, an old job's rulebook, your own? If it is yours, keep it. If it is not, rewrite it into something you want, such as "I'd like to be told, so I'll ask for it."
What happens when you hand one back
I don't much care what other people say about this, and chances are that attitude isn't mine either. What I do know is that it works. When people hand a rulebook back to whoever they got it from, it frees them up, and what they do next comes from what they want.
It will feel strange at first, and that is ok. By tomorrow, catch one "should", ask "Whose rulebook is that?", and then choose from your heart how you want to act.
Two small tools go with this. The sentence checker takes one of your shoulds and asks whose rulebook it is, and Handing it back is a five-minute read-aloud with a one-page sheet to print.
If you would like a second pair of ears on one of your shoulds, I keep a free 45-minute call open: peteradams.coach/call. Either way, hand one back this week. I suspect you will be excited by what opens up.