“I thought, “I’m going to do this for an hour today.” Then today leads to tomorrow, tomorrow leads to the next day, and you look up and it’s been a year.”
Tim McGraw, Tribe of Mentors, p. 465.
If you’ve raised or are raising children, you inherently understand how time ticks away day by day. I still remember that day my oldest son turned 10 (back in 2002). It changed the way I related with time. I saw a whole decade pass by me through my child and I wondered what I had been doing with my time. Since then, I’ve been selfish with my time.
I don’t allow anyone to take more of my time than I’m willing to let them. If I only have a few minutes, I make it clear once I start a conversation. When I meet with people, I often set a timer to remind me that it’s time to move on. And if I encounter a spontaneous conversation, I have a mental timer so I let the person know that I have to go. I also guard my activities, specifically rest because it’s important to me to maintain the level of energy that I put into my work.
Like many others who guard their time, I consider time a scarce resource. You can get back almost anything in life—money, material things, even some relationships—but not time. Once time is used up it’s gone forever. It’s important that you know how you use your time.
There is a mental balance required when you manage your time. For example, the Tim McGraw quote at the top of the page refers to working out. We set future goals like, “I’m going to work out 1-hour a day at least 3 times per week.” And when that third day comes, we’re like, “Ugh, I’ll catch up next week.” But, if you focus on just the 1-hour you have to work and not the amount of times you’ve done throughout the week it often makes your activity easier to start. You have to let go of what you’ve done and focus on what you’re doing right now. That’s what it means to live in the moment; to live day to day.
“There are good days of training and bad days of training.”
—Sensei Matt Fluty, The Aikido Center.
Just like life, we have good days and bad days. The goal is to have more good than bad. We can’t control what might happen in a day, but we can always choose how we respond to the day’s events. It starts with an awareness of our emotional response and then a mental choice on how we act. Sometimes, the right action is just to pause. To wait. To give ourselves time to sort out our emotions before we take action.
“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)
Jesus of the Bible said these words. And it may very well be one of the first claims to live one day at a time. Taken literally, get through today. Don’t worry about tomorrow, because that will be another day. All you have right now is today, so focus on what must be done today.
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