Coulda

Last week I talked about dropping the ‘should’ from your vocabulary. Saying we ‘should’ do things can make the task feel like drudgery. And when if feels like that, it’s an uphill battle to get it done – if it happens at all.

Changing one word changes the whole feel of the task.
By saying ‘I want’ instead of ‘I should’, you are not only focusing on what you truly want to do, but it also feels lighter – more doable.

And it gets done.

But changing your focus to doing only what you want can bring up all sorts of fears about what will happen with this newfound freedom.

When I first did this, I was really nervous about it.
I thought that voice in my head telling me what I should do was the adult voice. The one keeping me in line.
Without it, I felt like a child with no supervision.

I thought if I could do what I wanted, I would eat pizza all day and never work out.

But I soon found out what I thought I was going to want wasn’t what I really wanted at all.

Although you may feel unsupervised for a little while, I promise it’s a good thing.
Because that gives you the opportunity to see that anarchy will not, in fact, happen.

You get an opportunity to claim your power. To understand that you don’t need supervision to make sure you do the right thing.

So let’s say you let yourself do what you want, and you still really want to eat the pizza. What then?
That’s when it’s important to know what you’re dealing with.

There are 2 ways to want something.
1. A desire that comes from your soul of souls.
2. A defiant, ‘I want it because I can’t have it’ craving.

Let’s say I’m sitting on the couch, with no aspiration to get up to go running.

When I tell myself I should be working out instead of sitting on the couch, it creates a conflict in my mind. It creates drama.

The drama is between an ‘adult’ voice in my head, saying
‘You shouldn’t be sitting on the couch right now’
And the ‘wild child’ voice in my head saying
‘No! I want to sit on the couch!’

This goes back and forth in my head, resulting in either me sitting on the couch in a pool of guilt, not ever relaxing or willing myself to go workout, but not really getting into it.

Either way, I lose.


Dropping the ‘should’ drops the drama.
The conflict is taken away and I’m just left with one side: What I want.

If I truly want to sit there, I will let myself sit. Relax there, guilt-free.
Feeling it.
Enjoying it.
Nothing wrong with that at all.

What will happen is that, after the fight in my head is dropped and I get what I want, it will lose its luster if it’s not what I truly want to do.
When you let yourself have what you wanted only out of sheer defiance, you won’t want it for very long.

Simple as that.

You will realize what your soul truly wants a lot faster when you let yourself choose.

Is this using reverse psychology on yourself? A Jedi mind trick?
Perhaps.

But the benefits I’ve gained from this exercise are endless:

I drop a reoccurring painful thought; the one telling me I should be doing something that I’m not doing.
I drop a whole lot of drama in my head – and I am SO not a drama queen.
I relax and enjoy what I’m doing, and learn very quickly what I really want and don’t want.
I’ve also gained a lot of energy from doing this, because drama is exhausting.

I know, I know. This is another one of those sounds simple, but hard to do things.
You’re absolutely right.

However, even doing it one time this week can give you solid evidence that there are benefits to owning what you want.

For just this week, be very mindful of dropping the drama.
And own what you want – no matter what you choose.

Notice when choices you make lose their luster when the drama is taken away.
Most importantly, notice when choices you make feel amazing and right to you.

That’s where the gold is.