You Must!

An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity. Bern Williams (1913-2004) American writer, columnist

I feel like a little kid sometimes in my head. I want that new car, that new house, that new suit. Being subjected to over 3,000 marketing ads a day takes it’s toll. There’s a part of me that feels completely inadequate if I don’t accumulate stuff. The quest to go out and get more becomes an obsession. On top of all of that I still have to pay my bills. How in the world am I supposed to keep up with all of this?

Does this sound familiar? It happens everyday to many of us and makes us dizzy, but even worse it robs us of time. For all, time is a precious resource. For most, as they look back in the rearview mirror they long for more time. Every time I’m involved in a coaching mastermind the number one challenge always comes up as time management. However, if we take a step back and think about it, the lack of time is hardly the issue.

Every single week there are 168 hours to do as we please. So what do we really do with it. Of course let’s throw out all the sleep time and things we must do to physically survive, we are still loaded with too much time. Anybody who cares to track what they actually do throughout a day, will easily find that they procrastinate away an enormous amount of time allowing for distractions. It’s down right scary how much time is wasted on the pursuit of things that don’t even matter to us. Then we think we have the right to sit around and cry poor me and fall into a depression.

The fact is that most of us dream of what we really want. We have at least some concept of the great person that we could be…after all there is no embarrssment when we dream great things for ourselves. Yet the same person wakes up and falls into a paralytic coma as soon as confronted by the real world. Why? Because they are driven by “I wants.” You see, and “I want” is childs play. It’s really just a whim and often time comes and goes like the wind. An “I want” is the root of many start and stop attempts to improve our lives…and that will never be good enough!

The answer is to get rid of all the “I wants.” It’s time for a much more powerful mantra: “I MUST.” Back up a bit and consider our ancestors…you think they even had time for “I wants?” Of course not, they got up everday, assuming they could even sleep safely through the night, and said I Must go on the hunt and find some food because if I don’t I’m dead. They also said I Must find a way to keep myself protected from the elements and predators or I’m dead.

So of course in this modern age we have evolved certain human networks and systems that ensure most of us don’t fall through the cracks, yet it still happens all over the world where people can’t quite keep up with their Musts and die. So it’s time to get real. Stop whining and making excuses. We are all closer to life and death than we might think so let’s start being guided by our Musts. Simply put when we live with our Musts at the epicenter it’s uncanny how suddenly the noise is gone and we are constantly in motion moving towards our most important goals!