should and want

The struggle between what I should do and what I want to do will be endless. There will always be things that I should be doing when I would rather be wanting to do something else. Take this morning for example: I "let" myself sleep in by hitting the snooze half a dozen times. When I got back from taking the dog out all I wanted to do was climb back in bed and read for a while. I managed to at least talk myself into checking what my assignment for class was first and then I got hooked into facebook and a few blogs that I read. Whoosh! There went my reading time. I was still really tempted (and am even as I write this) to crack open that book and dive in for a bit. The thing is I want to change. I want my life to be different. If I don't start making changes and perhaps exchanging a few wants for shoulds then things will always be the same struggle.

It's not like I don't give myself down time, because I do. The real problem is how much down time I allow myself. It always manages to be some kind of avalanche, I say to myself I can watch one episode but then I have to get up and do something off my list. Before you know it I've watched an entire season and done nothing off my list. This, of course, leads to the overwhelmed feeling and then I feel like I can't tackle anything. So starting today I'm going to make an effort to replace more wants with shoulds. Now, I don't want to get all crazy and get rid of all my wants because let's face it whenever you go cold turkey on anything it ends in disaster.

I can't remember when, but at least 5 years ago I made a commitment to make my bed in the morning. I had started to feel like my bedroom was a constant state of disaster. I knew that I could never really commit to making sure my room was picked up all the time, but I could make a small commitment like making my bed. To this day I make my bed every day. There are only ever a handful of days that it doesn't get made and I'm okay with that. In the beginning it took a lot of concentrated effort to make it happen, but the end result was so worth it. When my bed is made I feel like I've accomplished something and my room just looks cleaner.