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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

You Don't "Have to" - You "Get to"!

9/17/2020

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Ever stop to notice how it makes you feel when you think you have to do something? Nobody likes feeling forced to do anything; in fact, most people will do the opposite when they’re told they “have to”. Just look at kids. Or adolescents. Or adults.

Why do we tell ourselves we “have to”? I have to be on a call; I have to finish this report; I have to make dinner; I have to lose weight; I have to deal with (well, you fill in the blank).

We all know what happens to our sense of enjoyment or pleasure or aliveness when we think we “have to”: gone, gone, gone. Replaced by resentment, complaint or a sense of deadness. Who wants to live that way?

It’s not really living, is it?

We’re all faced with tasks or responsibilities that we didn’t choose and yet if we don’t do them, the consequences will cause harm in some way. Or so it seems.

What if we were to take a closer look at all these “have to’s”? What I’ve realized is that when I tell myself I have to, regardless of what it is, I make myself a victim to something that is beyond my control and have no choice over. So whatever the task at hand may be, I don’t do it with any sense of possibility or discovering something new. I do it out of a sense of obligation or fear and doing it feels cramped and restricted. I resist. And I protest.

But what if we were to turn the tables on that sense of “have to”? What if negative incentive were seen as what it is: an interpretation that doesn’t allow us to really shine, or be inspired, or to discover something new about the subject or even our own possibilities? Why be a prisoner to that way of thinking?

What we can do is realize we always have a choice. If we don’t want the negative consequence we fear, it’s our choice to do whatever we think will be the right thing. But we don’t have to do it unwillingly or reluctantly.

My experience has been that whenever I’m willing to suspend that sense of “have to,” what emerges has more energy, more life and more enjoyment to it.  And each time I catch myself saying “I have to” I can choose to reframe it with I “get to”.

Then, instead of the task at hand being a forced march, it becomes an opportunity to see what’s possible, to see what can be created that gives me a real sense of inspiration and satisfaction and inspiration instead of just simply getting it done.

Try it for yourself. A simple shift in perspective can enable you to feel an aliveness that may just have been missing when you thought you "had to".
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