A simple sentence switch could change your life. Yes, truly. This switch will empower you. Get you curious. Help you find ways to create the changes that will bring you wellness. And, with that, gain the time, money (because illness drains your wallet as well) and energy to actively enjoy the life you planned.

This slight change involves mindset, and mindset is so vital to good health. Like all the facets of wellness, making the effort to improve how you think – and speak – enables you to more easily boost the other facets without doing one thing more.

The switch? Talk about how you will fit in/do/embrace a wellness item, not if. No matter what, look at how it can happen, not if it can happen. This might seem like something your English teacher would argue about – and that really isn’t meaningful. But it is. Here are a couple examples to get you started:

You want to work in more movement. Instead of talking about if you have the time and if you have the energy and if you can afford whatever it is you want to do, talk about how you’re going to do it. In other words, approach it this way instead: “I want to start going to yoga class so I’m going to make sure I get out of work on time Tuesday so I can make the evening class.” Now, you’ve looked at how to make it happen instead of leaving it up to chance, like this: “Well, if I get out of work at a decent hour Tuesday, I’m going to try to make it to yoga class.” Can you tell the difference this would create?

Another example: “I want to clean out the closet this weekend so it’s easier to find what I want each day and feel less stressed. So, how I’m going to make sure this can happen is that I’m going to plan a simple dinner for that day so I have enough time to get unwanted items bagged up and ready to be donated.” Again, this is a how, not if you have the time or if you run out of time because dinner still has to be on the table and so on.

See what I’m saying? When you think about how you’ll do something, it gets your brain curious and fills in the blanks. It makes your decision a can-do proposition, not a maybe-if/I-don’t-know thought. You start noticing opportunities to fit in what you want, and you dwell much less on excuses. You create possibilities.