106. From Midlife Obligation to Opportunity: The Power of Changing Two Words

In this episode of the School of Midlife Podcast, we dive into how a simple change in language can shift the way we experience our daily lives. By changing two small words, "I have to" to "I get to," you can transform your midlife mindset and unlock more opportunities in your life. This shift isn’t just about words; it’s about taking control and finding joy in everyday tasks.

Key Topics:

• The power of language and self-talk: How the words we use can shape our reality.
• Why “I have to” creates feelings of obligation, while “I get to” brings opportunity, enthusiasm, intentionality, and control.
• The science behind our subconscious mind, including how our reticular activating system helps us focus on what we believe is important.
• How reframing the tasks in your day—from dentist appointments to work meetings—can change your energy and outlook.
• A closer look at how this shift can benefit midlife women who often feel overwhelmed by responsibilities to others.
• The importance of recognizing when something shifts from being an opportunity to an obligation and how to address it.

Practical Tips:

• Start each day by reframing your “have to” tasks into “get to” opportunities.
• Use the Morning 5, 10, 5 exercise to align your mindset and prime your day for success.
• Reframe obligations into opportunities for growth and gratitude, especially for high-performing midlife women juggling multiple roles.

LINKS + MENTIONS:

The Morning 5, 10, 5 in the Best Life Planner: 5 things you’re grateful for, 10 dreams you’ve achieved, and 5 things you’re looking forward to today.

Prior episodes on limiting beliefs and their impact on our lives:

• 52. Stop Believing Everything You Think: The Truth About Limiting Beliefs
• 29. Breaking Free: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs in Midlife

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Transcript

[00:00:00] In this week's episode of the School of Midlife podcast, we're going to talk about how just a tiny word change, just changing two words in your vocabulary are going to help you go from a life that feels like an obligation to one that feels like an opportunity. Let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your [00:01:00] host, Laurie Reynoldson, and I am thrilled to have you back here today. In today's episode, I want to talk to you about a huge shift that I have made in my personal life as it relates to the words that I use when I'm talking to myself about myself and my life.

Before we get there though, a little background. I talk a lot about how the words that we use when we're talking about ourselves are supremely powerful. And that's because the person that we listen to the most, the person that we hear from the most in our lives is ourselves. So if we think we can or can't do something, if we tell ourselves that we Can't do something work for some reason, then we're limiting our ability to grow and to live in [00:02:00] a way that 

we want, and, and I know that that sounds dramatic, but it's true. We spend way more time with ourselves than anyone else. And the thoughts that we think about ourselves, so powerful. And then of course, it's one thing to think them. If we say them out loud, it's exponentially either better if they are good or worse.

Most of us. Spend a lot of time thinking thoughts to ourselves that we would never say about anyone else, right? Let's say our best friend had a presentation to give at work and she was well rehearsed.

She was well spoken. She hit all of her points. Everyone in the audience thought it was great. It completely resonated with them. Would we ever go up to our friend and say, You know, I've got some notes. That was [00:03:00] great. They, they sure liked it, but you, you stumbled on a couple of words. You lost your place at this point in the speech, you could have done this to be more impactful. We, we don't start ticking down the reasons that. She could have done better. It was a smashing success. No, no, no. We celebrate her success. But think about when we are talking to ourselves about ourselves. That was great. They all loved it.

But it would have been a lot better if you would have said this. It's too bad you lost your train of thought when you were talking about this point. If you would have maybe done this differently, it would have been more impactful. They're never going to ask you to come back. You should have known more.

 I know you know what I'm talking about. I mean, we do this all the time where we hold ourselves to standards that we would never hold [00:04:00] anyone else. But we think that for some reason, they should apply to us. No one else thinks that those standards apply to us. Only we think that we need to live up to those standards.

So when we start talking about choosing the words that we say about ourself, Using those words and choosing them carefully, I'm talking about propping ourself up instead of a constantly dragging ourself down, constantly holding ourselves to a different standard than we would hold everyone else. It gets all into limiting beliefs, what we think we can do, what we think we can have, what we think we can be.

We don't have time to get into limiting beliefs in this episode. I'll actually link a couple of prior episodes on limiting beliefs if you want to go further and understand how our talking to ourselves in a certain way, how that is. Impacts us on a [00:05:00] deeper level. So take a look in the show notes.

 I'll drop clickable links to a couple of prior episodes when we go a little bit deeper on, on limiting beliefs. And if you want to hear more about that, then shoot me an email and certainly I'll make sure that we get another episode with some newer concepts. I I'll make sure that that is in the schedule moving forward.

But suffice it to say, the words that we use about ourselves have power, and that's why these two words, just making this small little change about how I talk about a situation has changed everything for me. So let's get into that. 

Two little words. Huge, huge impact. And those are the difference between I have to do something and I get to do something. I think for so many of us, our default is I have to do this. And if you think about saying I [00:06:00] have to do this, even the way that I say it is different than I get to do this, right? That when you have to do something, there's this idea of obligation or Uh, almost an external demand on time and attention.

Like somebody is telling me that I have to do this. I have some pressure that I have to do something and it's, it's almost like a chore, right? That there, there's just one more thing to add to the to do list. 

Compare that to, I get to do something. You can hear a difference even in the way that I say it, right?

It's more enthusiastic. It's more optimistic. There's more agency. Like I'm the one making the decision to do this. So there's, a bit of control there. There is some intentionality. It's. It's motivating and it's positive and it increases [00:07:00] enthusiasm. 

Why does this matter? Why does this make such a big deal?

Well, we've talked about it before on this podcast, but whatever you look for, you will find. And that's because. Our reticular activator system in our brain on a subconscious level, we tell our brain what's important to us and our reticular activator system looks for ways to offer up the information that we have told it it is important to us.

Important.

There are millions of bits of information all around us every day. We can't possibly understand, take in all of that information. So that reticular activator system acts as a filter and it only allows in the information that we have told it is important to us. It's like proving. Our beliefs, if we think the sky is blue, our reticular activator system is going to look for ways to prove to us that the sky is [00:08:00] blue.

If we think that our spouse is not paying enough attention to us, our reticular activator system is going to find ways. To prove that to be the case, because we have told our brain, this is what I think is true. And the reticular activator system looks at all that millions of bits of information every single day, and only brings in the things that.

We have told it are important to us that, that that's a whole other reason why we have to be very careful. We can't believe everything that we think, right? Because it's that confirmation bias, the things that the thoughts that we have that are pushing us in the direction towards evidence of our beliefs.

We're just adding more information to prove that to be the case 

scientifically, that is the reason behind the morning 5, 10, 5, especially [00:09:00] that 10 part. So the morning 5, 10, 5 is in the Best Life Planner, which is how I start my day every day, five things I'm grateful for because we always start with gratitude. That's going to change the way that we are looking at our circumstances, our life.

Things that are going on in our life. And, and we start noticing that life is happening for me, not to me. So there's a difference between intentionality and control versus just sitting back and allowing whatever to happen is going to happen where we don't have any control, where we're not in control of our own life.

And, and certainly. We, we can't control everything, but we might not be able to control what happens to us, but we absolutely can control how we react to that. Makes sense. Right? 

So morning five, 10, five, five things I'm grateful for 10 dreams I achieved. And we write those things as if they have already happened.[00:10:00] 

They are the 10 big dreams. Vision goal for our life, our way of showing up in our lives, our way of being that if those came true, everything would change for us. And we write them as if they've already happened because we're telling our reticular activator system in our brain, these are important to me.

There are things like, on my 10 dreams every morning, I'm an exceptional wife. I'm a number one New York Times best selling author. I vacation annually in Europe and at the beach. I only fly first class and private. Do you see how I'm already telling myself that these things are already, I'm acting in my life as if they've already happened.

That is the power of telling your brain what's important to you because then my subconscious is going to work overtime, even when I'm not even thinking about it, to make those things a reality for me, which is pretty cool. [00:11:00] 

The last five are five things I'm looking forward to today. And this ties beautifully in with what we were talking about today in I have to do this or I get to do this.

If we start the day every day and we look at our calendar and it's full of all of these things that we don't want to do. We've got to go to the dentist or maybe we have to go get our annual exam. Uh, we've got a contentious meeting with a client. We have to Pay our taxes, it's full of things that if given a chance, we wouldn't go do.

We don't really want to do it. But if we are able to reframe those things, start the day with, I get to go do these things. I get to go to the dentist and have my teeth cleaned. I get to make sure that I don't have any cavities. I get to go get my annual exam, which means I'm going to be healthy for another year.

I get to have this final meeting with a client so that I can finally get paid so that we [00:12:00] can close the transaction and then I can finally get paid.

I get to pay my taxes, which means I have made enough money to support my lifestyle. Do you see though, how just a small little reframe, a small little shift can change everything for us. And if we do that in the morning, which is why it's the morning 5, 10, 5, then we are at least setting ourselves up to have a pretty good day. Does that mean we're going to have a great day every day?

Absolutely not. But if we are starting. At point zero, if we are starting in the morning and telling ourselves, our reticular activator system, if we are setting the intention that we're looking forward to at least five things today, then. We are programming ourself, at least in the beginning, to have a better day and that is good news.

Let's bring it back around to the difference between I have to do something and I get to [00:13:00] do something. And let's talk about in particular why that matters for midlife women. 

Let me just say that as high performing midlife women, for most of us, we have spent pretty much our whole life up until this point taking care of the needs. For everyone else around us, certainly. Yes, of course we, we do take time for ourselves, but that is usually after we've gone to work, we've made sure that the kids have everything that they need for school tomorrow, including all of their uniforms are washed.

They we've got dinner on the table. We worked all day.

And then maybe at the end of the day, when there's 15, 20, 30 minutes where we finally get a breather to ourself. Then we think, great, it's time for us. But invariably something else happens, right? Where a kid says, I've got [00:14:00] a project due tomorrow, or your spouse says. I need your help on this presentation.

Oh, and by the way, we have to either go to dinner tomorrow night, or we need to host our team over here tomorrow night.

But we have all of these obligations for other people, our family, our career, our community, our friends.

And that typically means that our personal life or the things that are important to us take a backseat because we think we need to spend our time and our attention on others. Think about it this way though, how does your life change with instead of dwelling on the things that you have to do for others?

Can we flip that? How does it change when we start thinking, I get to do this for someone else? I get to do this for myself. So it's Monday morning, I didn't sleep well on [00:15:00] Sunday, let's say, and I have to get up early to go work out. I have to get up early to go meet the trainer at the gym. I have to get up early to go out for that run.

Is it a different energy if I say, I get to go lift weights today so that I can be strong, not only in my midlife years, but midlife and beyond. I get to go work out with the trainer, which is some time that I can dedicate to myself for my personal, physical, and emotional well being. I get to go out for that run because I'm able bodied, and I am making sure that future me, future self, Lives a long and healthy life.

Do you see the difference? It's so much different, isn't it? Energetically, it's everything. What about I have to go to work tomorrow? Well, I get to use my skills and [00:16:00] experience to make a difference in the lives of others and my own life. Because if now I go to work and I get to go to work, then that means that I will be making money so that I can help send my children to college.

I am making money so that I get to retire someday and fill my life with travel and pickleball and go visit with my grandkids eventually.

It is a much different feeling. When you are in ownership, when you are taking control of what it is you want to do in your life, and it all relates back to what do you want? What does success look like to you? And what does your best life look like? How can you move forward with the things you get to do now so that you have the things that you most want in your future? How can you do that? [00:17:00] And by just changing the way that you are looking at your everyday obligations, are they obligations or are they opportunities?

We've talked about this before too, that I have always used this litmus test of when something moves in my life from an opportunity. To an obligation. So that's looking at it the opposite way. I think about a lot of times board service where I'm very excited to join the board.

But after three, four, six, 10 years of service, that opportunity, then a lot of times we'll go to an obligation where I will look at my calendar and I will say, I have to do that. I have to go to this fundraiser. I have to go to that meeting. And I, I've noticed that energetically when it goes from being an opportunity.

To an obligation, I no longer am saying [00:18:00] I get to go to that fundraiser. I get to raise money for this incredible cause that I, I think so highly about. I get to go to this meeting to make a huge impact in the mission of the organization. And

anytime something starts as an opportunity and then it becomes an obligation, I know that it's time to take a step back because it's no longer aligning with my priorities. It's no longer aligning with the way that I want to live my life. And I know I have to do something about that. It's not, it's not as simple as just saying, ah, I got to, I have a reframe here because what what's happened is it's gone from opportunity to obligation, not the other way around.

So when we talk about have to get to, most of the time we are talking about, this is something that I, I feel pressure to, to do. It's something that I feel obligated to do. It's something that there is almost this [00:19:00] external demand on my time. That's what I want to reframe. I want to go from I have to do this to I get to do this.

Because then I'm excited to do it. There's some enthusiasm involved. It's my control. I am making the decisions. It's all about me. Me when, then it then goes from have to get to back to have to, then I know I have to, I have to step back and say, you know what, maybe it's time I step away from this. Maybe it's time that somebody else can fill this role where they are still in the mindset where it is an opportunity for them.

Do you see the difference there?

How can you apply this in your own life? I think the first step is being aware of the words that you are using to describe yourself and your situation. As soon as you start saying I have to do something, take a pause. Acknowledge the fact that you have said I have to do it. [00:20:00] That you are telling yourself this is an obligation that Someone else is placing on you and your time.

It's something that you feel like you're not in control of that. There is this external pressure. It is an obligation. It is a mandate. It is a chore. It's like one more thing to add to the to do list.

And then once you acknowledge it, then you can reframe it. I get to do something and that, that change from, I have to do it to, I get to makes it more of an opportunity. It's a privilege. It's something that you want to do because you want to do it. You are being intentional. You're making the decision. 

And I would ask you then to notice how the shift in just those two little words, how does that change your feelings?

How does it change your reactions to the situation that you're facing?

Because my guess is you will [00:21:00] notice almost instantly an energetic shift. It will put you in a different frame of mind. It moves you from the obligation to the opportunity. And when we live in this opportunistic world, and I'm not saying pie in the sky, Pollyanna, rose colored glasses, although I think a lot of us could probably use a little bit more optimism in our life, but

my guess is You're going to notice that you feel differently when you start talking about yourself and your life as I get to do things. I get this opportunity. I get to do this. That moves you also from the frame of mind that Instead of life is happening to me, all around me, things are just out of my control to life is happening for me.

That gets all into [00:22:00] abundance mindset, that gets into a gratitude practice. There are so many ways that we can expand our frame of reference as something more positive. When you catch yourself saying you have to, and you change that to, I get to you've got the reframe.

I want you to notice the shift in your feelings and your reactions, because once you realize what a powerful tool this will be, you will one, you're going to catch yourself. Saying I have to and you're going to catch yourself quicker, which means you can then reframe quicker, which means energetically the entire situation changes much, much faster. I'm not saying that you will, you, you might get to the point where you never say, I have to do this again?

Probably not, I don't think that that's a reasonable expectation. But I promise you, if you commit to doing this, you're going to notice the language much quicker, [00:23:00] you're going to be able to reframe it, you're going to be able to change the situation. In a much more expedient way, which means your day to day life is going to be more opportunistic.

It's going to be more exciting, more enthusiastic. It's going to be one more of agency that you're controlling your life instead of letting life just happen to you.

At the School of Midlife, part of our mission is to give women the tools and the information and the mindset so that they can make midlife and beyond their best life ever. So I'm curious. I, I, I want to know how this reframe changes your life. How does it change the way you show up in your day to day life?

Are you finding that you almost never say I have to do something? Are you noticing that You do say it, you say it quite a bit actually, but with this just small little change of going from I have to, to I get to, [00:24:00] how does that change things for you? Please let me know, drop me a DM, take a screenshot of this episode, tag me on social, and just let me know, because we can only fulfill our mission at the School of Midlife if I know that The information that we're providing you is actually helpful.

It's actually helping you create your best life in midlife. So if you would just reach out to me, let me know how you've been able to incorporate this practice, this, the simple little word change in your own life, I would love to know. Thank you so much for being here this week. I will see you next week when the School of Midlife is back in session.

Until then take good care. 

Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most [00:25:00] importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

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