Understand Who Gets an Opinion and Who Gets a Vote

I’ve become allergic to the word ‘should’. When someone uses it on me, I recoil. The certainty behind it reveals something: the speaker has confused their opinion with my reality.

Everyone has thoughts about your life choices. Your family thinks you should call home more often. Your co-worker has strong opinions on how you should handle your disagreement with the sales manager. Your friend knows exactly how you should handle your relationship problems.

I’ve become allergic to that word: “should.” When I catch myself using it, I apologize and correct myself immediately. When someone uses it on me, I recoil. The certainty behind it bothers me. Who are you to be so sure about how I live my life? The word reveals something: the speaker has confused their opinion with objective reality, or at the very least, my reality.

Opinions are cheap and plentiful. Votes are different. Votes matter because the person casting them has to live with the consequences of the decision.

Your spouse gets a vote on where you live because they have to live there, too. Your business partner gets a vote on the company strategy because their livelihood depends on it. Your doctor has expertise you need to hear, but the final vote on your treatment is yours because you’re the one who lives in your body.

Try this: for each major area of your life, write down who actually gets a vote. Career. Relationships. Parenting. Finances. Health. The list will be shorter than you expect — most people in your life, even people you love and respect, only get opinions. Then ask where you’ve been giving votes to people who shouldn’t have them. Where are you seeking permission you don’t need? Who are you justifying yourself to when they won’t live with your choices? That second question is the harder one. It means acknowledging you’ve given away authority that was always yours.

This confusion between opinion-holders and decision-makers causes real stress. We delay important choices waiting for consensus from people who won’t live with the results. We justify ourselves to people who have no stake in the outcome. We treat advice from someone who knows our situation the same as advice from someone projecting their own fears onto it.

Workplaces make this especially confusing. Title, authority, and politics don’t always align with whose voice matters. Your boss’s peer might have organizational authority, but if you’re the one on the line for a project — whose career advances or stalls based on the outcome — then you’re the one with the real vote on how to execute it.

I worked for someone whose peer was a miserable presence in every meeting. Every win was met with “yeah, but what about…” Every proposal faced skepticism that added no value. He had opinions about everything and treated them like votes. But he had no skin in the game. No consequences either way.

Social media amplifies this confusion. Someone shares that they’re making a life change, and hundreds of people who will never be affected weigh in on whether it’s smart, risky, premature, overdue. The person making the change is the only one who will live with the results, but they’re drowning in input from people with no stake in the outcome. Platforms reward loud opinions and create the illusion that everyone’s perspective matters equally.

The messiest situations involve people who think they have votes when they only have opinions. They offer their perspective and expect you to justify your choices. They get offended when you proceed without their blessing, keep pushing after you’ve heard them out.

I’ve learned to recognize the pattern. Someone offers unsolicited advice. I acknowledge it: “I appreciate your perspective.” They continue pushing. “But have you considered…” I repeat: “I hear you.” They escalate: “I really think you should…”

That word again. Should. It’s a tell. The person has mistaken their opinion for a vote.

The clearest response I’ve found is direct without being defensive: “I’ve thought about this carefully. I’m comfortable with my decision and its ramifications.” No justification. No extended explanation. Justifying yourself to someone who doesn’t have a vote just invites more opinions dressed up as concerns.

This doesn’t mean dismissing all outside input. Sometimes the person with just an opinion sees something you missed. The friend who’s never run a business might notice something you’re too close to see. The work is knowing how much weight to give it.

The know-it-alls are often the loudest voices, most insistent that you listen and most likely to escalate from opinion to “you really should…” Their certainty feels like expertise until you realize it’s just confidence unchecked by experience.

Even people you love don’t get votes on everything. When you let the wrong people vote on your life, you build the career someone else wanted, and you stay in situations that don’t work because leaving would disappoint people who won’t live with your staying.

Every time someone tells me what I should do, I ask myself: does this person share the consequences of this decision? Usually not. Does this person have lived experience I’d be a fool not to hear out? Seldom. If they don’t share the consequences and haven’t walked this path, their certainty about what I should do tells me more about them than about my situation.

Not all relationships survived this shift. One ended because constantly hearing how I and others should live became too unpleasant. But most didn’t require cutting people out. I stopped treating their opinions like votes. I listened, thanked them, then made my own choices. Some relationships got better because I stopped needing them to validate me. Some got more distant because the person wanted decision-making power they couldn’t have.

Your life isn’t a democracy. Think of it more like a small board where voting power belongs to people who share the consequences. Choose your board carefully. And remember that in most decisions about your own life, you hold the deciding vote.