“Should’ve means ‘ought to’ and ‘can’t’ means ‘won’t.’ Actions make differences that intentions don’t.”

When my boys were young I was a little league baseball coach. I would occasionally run across a kid who would tell me he couldn’t do something he was asked. “I can’t, coach,” he would protest. I would ask him, “Do you mean you can’t because you don’t know how or you can’t because you don’t want to try? If it’s the first, I can teach you how and we’ll work on it together. If it’s the second I can’t help you because you don’t want to help yourself.”

When my children grew up they told me that one of the phrases they remembered most was me saying, “I’d rather hear you cuss than to hear you say ‘I can’t.’ They knew I didn’t really want to hear them cussing but the point was driven home that a lack of effort and a lack of application was a waste of potential. Our intentions don’t shape our destiny, our actions do.

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