Everything changes when your shoulds become musts

​It's true. If you've experienced any progress in life, any change, it likely came when you decided something you'd been saying you should do was actually something you must do.

"I should." There's nothing totally wrong with it. It's a wonderful start. Dreams often start with I should.

But dreams can die there too.

You can wake up a month or a year or even decades from now repeating the same I should.

I have been there. I have mastered that repeating.

Enough so that I've noticed life turns a deaf ear when it hears us spill into the world the things we think we should do. I guess life's heard more of that song and dance than any of us have.

But life, I have also noticed, like a best friend, seems to get excited when I decide my should is going to become a must.

Back in March of 2020, I decided I should write an article and share it here every morning. And because I quickly started treating those articles like they were something I must do and not something I should do, tomorrow I will write and share my 800th article since then.

800 articles. Sure, they are the result of me writing. But much more than that - at least to me - they are the result of me embracing a life that grew tired of 'I should' and started taking on the much scarier role of 'I must.'

I should doesn't give a hoot if you show up; I must insists that you do.

I should comes with no expectations; I must demands your best.

We've just passed Thanksgiving and we are rounding the corner to the new year. A time of year when we begin to wrestle with resolutions. All the things we're going to do in the new year to better ourselves.

Chances are, many of those things are things you said you should do at the start of the last new year. Things that never got to leave behind I should and embrace I must.

I want to encourage you. Just pick one. Pick one thing you are going to make a must in your life. Pick one thing about which you are absolutely tired of hearing yourself say I should.

I promise you, when you pick one I should and make it an I must, your whole life starts to feel a greater sense of urgency around making your shoulds musts.

When you daily see what happens - and how it feels - to honor your ideas and feelings and beliefs with commitment, you begin to cringe when you hear yourself think or say "I should."

You begin to see just how much you've cheated yourself in life by letting your dreams die in the world of I should.

You will see that everything changes when you decide living is something you must do, not something you should do.