I Can't

A speaker at a conference I attended a while back challenged us to replace "I can't" with "I choose not to."  Ouch! 

The reality is that 99.9% of the things we say we "can't" do are actually things that we choose NOT to do (that percentage is mine, not the speaker's, by the way!).  Perhaps the actual percentage of things we can't do is a bit higher that .1%, but I doubt it's much higher than that.  We all (and my hand is raised, too) have so many self-limiting beliefs that keep us stuck. 

For years I said that "I can't" stay on a diet and repeatedly told myself and others that I didn't have the willpower.  You know what?  As long as I kept telling myself "I can't", I didn't.  It wasn't that I truly couldn't do it, of course, because eventually I DID do it!  The truth was that I chose not to.

It was easier thinking that I couldn't do it rather than facing up to the fact that I kept choosing not to do it.  Thinking I couldn't kept me in a victim mindset - it really wasn't my fault because there was something defective in the wiring of my brain . . . or I somehow wasn't in line when willpower was passed out . . .   In my thinking at the time, I really wanted to, but I just couldn't do it.  That kind of thinking gave me permission to fail, so I failed again and again.  If we think we can't, we're right - we can't.  More to the point, we won't.

I'm talking to myself here, not standing on a soapbox preaching to others.  I still catch myself thinking that I can't do this or do that.  Sometimes I realize I say that out of fear of failure, sometimes it comes out of the fear of even trying.  It's much easier to say I can't and not even try than try and risk failure . . . but that's no way to live! 

When we decide that something is important to us, we WILL figure out how to get it done.  If we want it badly enough, we will make the choices we need to make to reach the goal we set.  We won't make those choices if the goal is merely something we think we should do, i.e., we know we should lose weight because our doctor had a stern talk with us.  However, once we decide that this is what we want, we not only realize that we CAN do this, but we also CHOOSE to do it.

In his wonderful book, Dr. A's Habits of Health, Take Shape for Life co-founder Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen writes about making the fundamental choice to get healthy.  Once that choice is made, then we will choose to make secondary choices that support that fundamental choice.  When we do that, the "I can't" is replaced by "I choose."  In doing so, we discover strength we didn't know we had - it's a wonderful thing!

Have you made the fundamental choice to get healthy?  If so, take "I can't" out of your vocabulary because you CAN do this and you WILL do this - one day, one meal, and one choice at a time.  Choose wisely :-)