Should Could & What Is

What do you think should and could be happening in your life and what is really going on? How do you feel about these discrepancies?

I think that for most us, the life we should or could have, differs from the one we actually live. For example we think we could or should earn more money, but we don't. We think our partner should and could be more loving, but s/he isn't. We think our children should and could behave more responsibly, but they don't.

When there is a difference between what 'should', 'could' and 'what is', it creates stress. We need a certain amount of stress to get us moving, but we all know that there is healthy and unhealthy stress. If we perceive the difference between 'what is' and 'what we would like', as manageable, it becomes an incentive to get us to create the life we would like to have.

If the difference is less manageable, we start fighting and become angry and frustrated. We can even be jealous of people who do have, what we would like to get.

When our current life is very different from what we believe we could or should have, we feel hopeless and helpless and we even become depressed.

The key to a happy life is to decrease the difference between 'what is' and 'what we want'. If we cannot change 'what is', then why not change 'what we want'? Before we are able to do this, we need to understand where our 'shoulds and coulds' come from.

Our wants often come from comparing ourselves with others. It 'always' seems like others have more than us. The mistake we often make is that we see what they have, but we often don't see what price they paid to get there.

A Few Examples
We see a person who seems wealthy, because she has a nice house and car. What we don't see, are her sleepless nights because she owes the bank a lot of money and she struggles to make her monthly payments.

We see the success of a CEO, but we don't see all the hard work that it took to reach that position. We also don't see how much strain his family took, because he was away so much.

We look at that person with a beautiful body, but we don't see how disciplined her eating is and how much she has to exercise to keep her body in shape.

On TV we see many rich people, with beautiful bodies, but they are not real.

When we constantly focus on how we think our life should be, we will be unhappy. It makes us feel that life is unfair and our needs are not met. It also leaves us feeling powerless and depressed.

As I said earlier, if we want to reduce our stress and be happy, we have to reduce the difference between 'what is' and 'what we want'. If we cannot change 'what is', then we have to adjust what we want.

If our current situation is not moving, regardless of our efforts, then it is for a reason. Maybe our life is going up dead-end street. We all have the innate desire to make a difference, but not many of us make that our primary life-focus. We get side-tracked by life and we concentrate on achieving worldly success. When we are confronted with a difficult 'What is' situation (crisis), it is time to re-evaluate our life. We need to ask ourselves "Where is the path of my choice going and where is my current situation trying to take me?" This means that our current situation might not be what we want, but it is what we need. It is perfect.

In Conclusion:
The comparison 'should', 'could' and 'what is', is a dangerous one, because it often creates false expectations and unhappiness. If you are unhappy, it is time to let go of the 'shoulds' and 'coulds' and embrace the 'what is', whole heartedly!

Source of article - Hanna Kok
Cell : 082-8566655
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Web Page: www.makealife.co.za

Hanna Kok is an Educational Kinesiologist. During her coaching sessions she helps you to overcome your challenges in work and life. Her techniques make the sessions very effective.

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