It’s a trap.
Tomorrow.
Don’t fall for it!
If you do you cheat on today.
When you load all of your hopes and dreams into the future you give up your control. When you invest all of your todays in tomorrow you play a waiting game, one that is riddled with excuses and beliefs that have you playing and staying small, overwhelmed, and off-balance.
Spending time waiting for the right time is a waste of time.
NOW is your time.
NOW is the muscle you want to flex because it is in today that you can curate and direct what is next. You can curate and direct the legacy you desire. In fact, you can live it.
Skip to what is next without acting today and guess what? You miss out on your own celebrations, you miss out on the moment you are in, you miss out on today. Think about a time that you were super focused on a goal; so intent on reaching it that you almost stopped living your life. Most of us can reference that time and the sacrifice of sleep, exercise, relationships, and self-care that ensued. Even if you celebrated success in reaching your goal, there was more than likely a significant price to pay in order to have done so.
That price is what you missed while you were chasing busy and wondering “what if.”
You need to have goals, to set your GPS toward a destination and yet…what happens in today is where the magic is…because today is where your personal choice and your growth reside. Today is where your power ignites, your energy engages, and your ability to balance all the facets of your life kicks in.
What shifts if you change your focus from tomorrow to today?
What unfolds for you if you actually LIVE your legacy now rather than spinning endlessly toward “it?”
Whatever “it” is.
Can you celebrate more success in the moment?
Can you change and impact the next small step –your 1%- right now? If so, you will not only move toward your dreams and aspirations, you will be directing yourself there with the energy and power of choice that you can only EXPERIENCE in today.
How Not to Cheat on Today
Manage your attention not your time. If you are always feeling that you are chasing the clock and running behind, then you are. Our minds go where our thoughts go and if busy is a way of life; you will feel stressed and overwhelmed rather than productive and focused. Zero in on the task at hand. Manage the day, today, NOW. Imagine yourself using the day in the most meaningful way possible. What does that look like? Frame the picture, and then step into it. Paint it. What is the next logical step toward tomorrow that you can do NOW? Take that next logical step.
Emphasize what you DO want in favor of what you do not. As a society we tend to concentrate on the things that we don’t want to happen to us, so much so that we don’t emphasize the things that we do want. It is often our fears writing the ending of the story for us before we have had a moment to actually live and experience that story. If you were writing a short novel about what you most want in your life, every chapter would be important because if a chapter of your story were missing, there would not be a story at all, in fact, there would be a gap. Think of emphasizing what you DO want as a means of closing that gap. Focus on living the chapter you are in, the chapter of NOW. Now edit your story from the vantage point of today and eliminate the unknown. Today is known. What’s now and what’s next?
Replace it to face it! Imagine for a moment that you took on the task this year of losing weight. You told yourself that you would lose 15 pounds by June and it is now June and you have lost 5 pounds. Failure? Time to quit? For most of us, that may be the thoughts we would be experiencing.
Yet, who said it had to be 15 pounds that you lost, or that it needed to be by June? You? Great…then you also get to tweak that so that you can replace it to face what is next, which is what you can do NOW! Replace the future goal of 15 pounds with one more pound. Instead of fixating on pound number 15, concentrate on pound number 6! Can you lose one more pound? I bet you can. Replace the abstract, the large goal with a small and understandable next step NOW.
Previously published in another format in Mogul https://onmogul.com/stories/3-tips-to-make-now-the-new-next