My friend sent me a video the other day of the workshop she’d built for herself over the winter months. A couple years ago, her previous workshop burned to the ground in a fire.
The new one was a work of art. It’s walls were hung with organized tools above cabinets and sets of shelves on rolling casters filled with labeled bins, and a rack for storing lumber. She could rearrange her space according to whatever project she was working on. As usual, she’d done a top-notch job.
I was impressed.
I smiled as I watched the video. One of my friend’s top joys in life is designing and building things. Big things. The coop she built for her flock of chickens, for instance, is so elegant that I call it “the chicken palace.” Yet with all these achievements, she talks about herself as being lazy.
So I watched the video of her fabulous new workshop I wrote back, “Not bad for a lazy girl.”
She told me about the list of tasks she still had to complete, the final touch ups. She’d put in months of work on her project and the few loose ends weren’t exactly sparking her to get up and get them done.
But then she found the key. Instead of thinking “I have to,” she taught herself to say “I want to.”
And then, she said, “It gets done!”
It was a technique I’d discovered, too. I’ve learned to turn “have to” into “get to,” framing an obligation, responsibility, or less-than-welcome task into something I was privileged to be able to do.
I turn “should” into “could,” too. Instead of feeling pressured to do something, I claim my freedom to decide whether to do it now or not.
I consider how long it would take, how much energy it would require. I check my current intentions and priorities. I consider whether there’s something else I genuinely need to do now instead. Or maybe I’d rather do one of the other things that I could get done. All this takes place in a few seconds. Then, whatever I decide, I’m making my choice consciously and freely, and I get to do what I truly want to do.
My friend and I had both stumbled on one of the simplest and most powerful tricks for shifting into a more positive mindset: Our choice of the words we used to frame our situation.
Here’s how this magic works. Picture a triangle with the words “behavior,” “thoughts,” and “feelings” written on each of its sides. Now imagine an arrow pointing from each word to the next. What it’s telling you is that our behaviors influence our thoughts, which influence our feelings, which influence our behavior, and around and around.
If you make a change in one, each of the others will shift, too. You can try it out right now. Put a big smile on your face, or sit up straighter and see what happens to your thoughts, to the way you feel.
When you can reframe things in a more positive way, you get a lot more done and done more easily. Because you’re dissolving the stress of the oppressive thought, you free up pathways that are healthier on all levels.
Just think! It’s the beginning of a whole new season in your life – one where you get to do anything that you want to, that you could. All you have to do is notice when you’re putting off a ‘have to’ or a ‘should’ and reframe your view of it with a friendlier word. And isn’t that a fine trick to know!
Wishing you a week of inviting choices. Happy Spring!
Warmly,
Susan
Image from my friend’s video.