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Hey, it’s Coach MK, with a microdose of MK to kickstart your day. After all, LSD is still illegal, so you can’t microdose on that!
Today’s morning mantra is: “Imma live in the WannaDo”.
“Imma live in the WannaDo.” This’ll make sense in a minute.
Anyone who has ever met me in person know that one of my defining characteristics, much to my mother’s chagrin, is my profanity. I’m incredibly profane, but I’m kind and I’m very proud of that. One of the harder things I learned, growing up in the South, is that we are exceptionally good at being civil and saying really polite things that are actually terrible. Most humans you meet don’t use profanity at all, cringe when they hear it, and make comments like, “Oh--” which involve my least favorite word, the word I find the most offensive, the one I have no patience for, is the one that is used to shut conversations down constantly - and it’s “should”. “You really should use better language. You really shouldn’t use words like that.”
I hate it. I hate it. That word has never been aimed at me to mean anything positive. And as a coach, I would argue it still doesn’t mean anything positive. It’s that word that comes out of mouth of my athletes and I kind of don’t know what to do with it, because the game’s already lost. Here’s what I mean, it’s the absence of a decision. ‘Should’ is about what someone else wants for you.
It is shaming to live in the ‘should’, it is a terrible place to be.
“I should be faster, Coach MK. I should be thinner. I should eat better. I should do more. I should be making more money. I should have more time. I should be, I should be, I should be, I should be anything other than what I am.”
It’s the absence of a decision and it’s following a path that someone has shamed or guilted you into. And I don’t have a lot of patience for that and neither should you. How much of your life is a ‘shoulddo’ and not a ‘wannado’?
As a coach, I know when someone says to me, “I really should…” whatever, it means, “I feel guilty”. It means, “I don’t wanna”. It means, “I won’t”. It means, “y’know I’m weighing my options, I really should eat two fistfulls of veggies a day, but I won’t. I don’t wanna.”
I get it. There’s something unspoken that tends to follow “I should do…” that implies you have no desire to do it or you never will do it. And it’s like, well why are we talking about it, then? We don’t have to! We really don’t have to! Go ahead, try to use ‘should’ in a sentence where you’re excited about something. I couldn’t do it, and I tried for a while before this podcast started.
So here we go, here is the change I want you to make. And your mantra for tomorrow is this: “Imma live in the wanna. It is shaming to live in the should. Imma get out of the should and into the wanna. I wanna eat better, Coach MK. I wanna feel better. I wanna be a better runner. I’ve put a lot of work in. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna.”
And don’t talk to me anymore about the ‘should do’s’, talk to me ‘wanna do’s’. The wanna do’s, I can get excited about, and so can you. I can make a path forward with wanna do’s. I can’t do anything with a whole bunch of shoulds that you don’t want to do and probably won’t do anyway. Cause that thing you should do is probably the opposite of what you need to be doing, and it’s not the change we need to make. It’s not the focus we need to have. It’s not gonna lead us anywhere good. Because shame is not a motivator, it’s a deterrent and most of us are grown.
And in case you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t stopped me from using profanity pretty much ever. In fact it makes me more profane when those friends of my mom come around.
You are coached. You are loved. And if you’re living in the wannado, you are winning at life. I dare you to go through your day and eliminate the word ‘should’. Each time you hear it start coming out of your mouth, replace it with ‘shit’.
Coach MK Fleming is the founder of Fitness Protection, LLC where she coaches all kinds of runners for $30 per month and gives marathon plans away for free. Click here to download her Marathon Selection Guide!