Every once and a while I give myself a treat so I’ll drive down the mountain (I live in the Rocky Mountains) to my favorite coffee shop and order myself one of those $5 or so coffee’s, my weakness is a large Caramel Mochaccino.

The owner is this beautiful lady from Australia, which gives me even more reason to visit that country (that’s another article), anyway on her counter she has two cups and above the two cups there is always a different question of the day.

I know the reason why she does this, one is to get you thinking, plus most people will toss their change into the cup with the answer they agree with, and then Kendra, this is the owners name will spilt the tips among her staff (she keeps nothing).

Well today’s question was very simple, above one cup it said “I Should” and above the other it “I Shouldn’t”

Kendra handed me my change and while I stood there watching my guilty pleasure being made by her, without hesitation and without a second thought I tossed my change into the “I Should” cup.

Maybe I should have paused for just a second because before I realized it I tossed all my change into the cup so I just gave Kendra a $4 tip on a $5 or so coffee. I just paid $9 plus for my coffee… oh well.

While I continued to wait a gentleman in front of me said I see you picked “I Should” and I said “Absolutely” and then he replied “How dull and uneventful a life it would be if you lived an I shouldn’t life”

I replied, “I would rather live an I should life because the stories you can tell are always better”
On my way home I thought about this more, and I’ve always lived an “I Should” life, and I have some great stories and it also it reminded me of that Jim Carey movie Yes Man. I know it’s just a movie but look how different his life became.

The “I Should” life can and will give you an adventurous life; I know it has given me some great experiences (good and bad).

But just think of not living a life of “I Should”. You’re going to miss out on so much. I think why many people don’t live the “I Should” life is because of fear.

Fear of failure, fear of rejection; fear of what people will think and on and on.

Personally fear of rejection is nothing to me, so what, the worst anyone can ever say to me (you) is no… big deal, like I’m not ever going to hear that word again.

Fear of failure; who cares. For every failure you learn something (if you pay attention) and that failure will take you one step closer to success. So that’s a good thing.

I love to fail, which sounds odd, but I’m smart enough to know I cannot not succeed at everything, but I’m also smart enough to know that when a failure happens it has just made me that much more knowledgeable, powerful and closer to my goals.

Failure is a good thing; if you could ask Thomas Edison about failure, he had 10,000 failures before he invented the light bulb.

The fear of what others may think. This one I absolutely laugh at, and really don’t understand.
Why would you live a life worrying what others think, if you’re doing that you’re NOT living your own life you’re living a life by other peoples standards and ideas.

I could absolutely care less what people think of me, I live my life for me. I do not intentionally hurt or offend anyone. But I know it happens and that is not in my control.

This is the real world and many people have skin as thin as an onion and no matter what you do these people have an opinion that you’re not living your life the way they think you should.
I have one reply to that… BITE ME!!

You know what the funny thing is? If people realized how little other people thought of them, they wouldn’t worry so much of what people thought them.

My point to all this is; given the choice why not live a life of “I Should”, you’re going to have more fun, and like I said earlier “Just think of the great stories you’ll have to tell”.

Now go create some fantastic stories!!

I believe in you!!
Leo