Did you know that the way you speak and the words you use have an incredible impact on your ability to achieve your goals? Yes, we all know we shouldn’t say “I can’t!” and instead say something like “I can, with practice!”, but I’m not talking about that word.
I’m talking about the word “should”.
See, we live in a world where society places standards on us and our family and friends lay expectations on us, so it’s common for us to do something because we feel like we should, like we’re obligated to someone and their expectations to do a certain thing.
For example: “I should go to medical school, but I really want to become a firefighter.”
Or: “I should go lift some weights, but I really like hiking more.”
The beautiful thing about life is that there are so many opportunities and so many ways that we can live it. Our challenge – and our only obligation in life – is to live it the way we want to, the way that aligns with our authentic selves. When we constantly say that we “should” do something, we’re essentially throwing away the voice of our authentic selves and saying that the expectations of someone else or the goals that someone else has set for us are more important than what we want out of life.
If you couldn’t figure it out on your own, that’s a bummer of a way to live. We’ve all done it, though. I had to work long and hard to remove “should” from my vocabulary because I was so focused on living “the perfect life”, as defined by society, and on making my parents and family members proud of me. When I removed “should” from my vocabulary, though, I started to listen to myself more and make choices that better aligned with where I wanted to go in life.
I stopped feeling trapped and started feeling like I had choices that were going to build me an authentic, successful, and fulfilling life.
Like I said earlier, though, not everyone has the same definition of authentic, successful, and fulfilling. That’s something that you have to figure out for yourself, but when you do (psst! If you need some help with that, check out my passion and purpose webinar!), those should be the only guiding “should”s in your life.
