Facing A Difficult Choice? Stop Asking Yourself What You “Should” Be Doing
One right choice of word can lead to better, more creative solutions.
How many times when you were about to make a hard decision in your life — whether it’s making the right circle of friends or thinking about which career path to pursue — you ask yourself, “What should I do?”
If you’re anything like me (or most people), the answer is a lot. It’s like an essential question to ask when we’re faced with a difficult choice.
For me, asking the “should” helped me see things more objectively, looked at the situation from many perspectives, considered the ups and downs, and chose the best option I think for myself. This kind of mindset worked for most of my problems.
But what if I’ve been asking the wrong question, or more precisely, choosing the wrong word? What if I change the “should” to “could”? What if I ask:
What could I do?
Would a change of one-word offer different, better, and more creative solutions? The answer is: yes.
In fact, it changed the way I see life and dealt with difficult problems. So here, I want to give you 4 main reasons why “What could I do?” is the better question you should be asking.
#1: It improves your well-being
Asking “What should I do?” tends to make us worry about the future instead of focus on the future, resulting in us overthinking the situation which can be stressful.
However, changing one word from “should” to “could” means seeing beyond what’s possible today and focus on what’s possible in the future. Focusing on the future — a process known as prospection — can give us something to look ahead to. This can help us lead more generous and fulfilled lives.
Prospection takes you beyond the present while at the same time guides your actions in the present. You’re challenging yourself for growth while still knowing your boundaries. This can make the life that you’re living right now more meaningful and improve your physical and mental well-being.
#2: It gives more practical and creative solutions
According to studies, asking “What could I do?” instead of “What should I do?” can lead to better and more creative answers. Shifting individuals’ contemplation toward what they could do changes their perception of the dilemma and the solutions they reach.
This simple yet crucial lesson works for managerial or business too. Rather than assume a fixed contest that requires adjudication or tradeoff, with some unconventional thinking, managers can generate better solutions to ethical dilemmas, and teams can design more practical and creative solutions.
Although our natural inclination is to contemplate dilemmas with a “should” mindset, adopting a “could” mindset opens a broader range of possibilities and brings us one step closer to moral insight.
#3: It strengthens your empathy muscle
Once, I was working with a “hypersensitive” coworker, she usually asked me to give some insights about her problems. One day she told me about a problem she had with someone at work, she came to me and asked, “What I should do?”
So, I told her the right thing to do, gave her the “objective solutions” that I thought she should be doing. But the problem was more serious than I thought. She started to feel down and gotten sick because of what I’ve said (even if it was the right thing).
Asking “What should I do (to make me a better person/friend for her)?” makes “me” the subject, meanwhile asking “What could I do (to make her feel better)?” makes “her” the subject. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for ethical decisions, and things like this are hardly ever clear-cut.
Whether it’s about us or other people, the “could” question makes us more mindful of the decision. It examines our biases and makes us more empathetic toward every individual by focusing on the subjective solution.
#4: It makes you aim higher
Asking “What should I do?” usually leads us to see the situation from as many perspectives as possible. However, asking “What could I do?” doesn't mean that we see the situations from a narrow-minded point of view, instead, it makes us see beyond ourselves. We could take more risks and aim for higher values.
It’s important to look at problems from multiple perspectives to be able to see the whole picture. But by changing one word of the question — not only we can grow personally and professionally — we can influence our surroundings and make them grow together with us as a person.
To sum up
We all have different worldviews — all shaped by experiences we face in our life, our personality, values, goals, and a whole lot of other things. This leads us into our decision-making process and causes individuals to see and interpret situations in many different ways.
However, asking “What should I do?” tacitly implies that there is a right and wrong answer to that question. It means selecting one moral path that leads us to focus on weighing and choosing one of two possible courses of action. It makes us think in black and white, while most things in life are in-between shades of grey.
Life is more than just a Yes or No, Right or Wrong, This or That.
I know that it’s hard to see things clearly if there’s no “certain” answer to our problems. But isn’t that the thing about life?
One way to peacefully deal with the uncertainty of life is by asking the right question — and we have already known that one right choice of word can change us for the better.
So choose your words wisely. Next time, when facing a difficult situation, problem, or dilemma, the better and smarter question to ask yourself is: What could I do?
