I Get To…

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of your­self.

—Robert F. Bennett, U.S. Senator, Utah (1933– )

Do you start your day by thinking about all the things you “have to” do? Do you “have to” get up, “have to” go to work, and then “have to” take care of all the things on your ever-lengthening (have) TO DO list? Have you ever consid­ered how much power you give this simple phrase to trash your happiness?

To live as though you “have to” is to live without free will. Saying that you “have to” incites in the imagination a vision of a marionette forever hanging from strings manipulated by some­one else. And, indeed, that can be what it feels like when you are forever doing only what you “have to” do. Then, either in your mind or in your daily affairs, you wage war against those people you imagine are making you do what you “have to” do.

As you learned from playing the MASTER HYPNOTIST Game, you are always your own hypnotist. Whatever you tell yourself becomes the trance you live. Because of this, the language that you use makes your daily life either a drudgery of painful duties or an adventure of self-determined choices. Notice how it feels to think about what you “get to” do. Even when it’s exactly the same task, just replacing “have to” with “get to” changes your emotional state and your mental attitude.

Play the I GET TO… Game and see how wondrously sim­ple rewriting your own story can be. Release yourself from the illusion that you “have to” do anything.