Avoiding the Woulda, Coulda, Shouldas

The other day I was waiting in line in the bank and an ad for refinancing your auto loan at a lower interest rate came on their TV screen.  The ad showed a young woman with startled eyes and a mouth open in chagrin, the words woulda, coulda, shoulda written in big bold letters above her head.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda was what she was thinking about having let the opportunity to refinance her car loan slip by, and at the bottom of the screen it said, Don’t you lose out. 

I thought about how powerful those woulda coulda shouldas are in all of our lives, that it’s those woulda coulda shouldas that are sapping our energy and adding guilt and anxiety and consternation to our every waking moment.   And the shoulds, the havetos, and the I-better-not-forgets aren’t helping any either.

And I thought about how I hardly have any of those woulda-coulda-etcetera feelings in my life any more.  I know that if there’s something that I would, could, and should do, I’ll use my harnessing time system to find a way to do it.  If I can’t fit the thing into my plan today (which is most likely), I’ll write something down in my notebook, knowing that tomorrow or the day after that or whenever, I’ll figure out when I can do it with the least amount of difficulty – combine it with another errand or find some way to make it painless -- and put it in my plan that day, and then I’ll do it. 

For example, at the moment there’s a postcard sitting on my desk from my optometrist telling me to call them to confirm an appointment I made a year ago, for my yearly eye exam.  The other day I looked at it and felt a stab of anxiety – oh, I should call them, but I’m in the middle of something else, should I stop what I’m doing now or what? – and then I instantly relaxed, because I knew that I’d find a way to fit that phone call into my day sometime soon. And yesterday when I was driving somewhere it came to me I need to get my oil changed, and instead of getting tense about it as I might have earlier, I simply made a mental note of it, knowing that I would fit it into my day sometime in the near future.   And that made me feel good – confident, solid, empowered – instead of anxious and sort of guilty, the way I felt in other years when I thought about how long it had been since I’d had my oil changed and then thought about how I should do it, needed to do it, and probably wouldn’t do it unless I did something about it in that moment.

I can relax now, knowing that eventually it will get done, and that I have the power – the system – to do whatever I need to, whenever I need to, and I can forget about it until then.