Embrace Today

Stop Living for tomorrow; embrace today! I very much agree, and disagree with that statement there. We're going to dig in a little bit on my opinion on the importance of embracing today. It is currently 11:03 P.M. on a Wednesday night. How many of today's 18.5 hours that I've been awake have I used to make today worth my while? I want you guys to let that question sink in to your own lives for a moment. 

First thing this morning I probably spent 30 minutes getting dressed, eating breakfast, and getting ready for work. I spent a 45 minute car ride to work. I spent 10.5 hours at work, with another 45 min car ride back home. I'm now back home and ready to begin my life of focusing on my family and myself. We are currently at right around 12.5 hours of my day consumed, so a little more than half of my entire day is already gone and none of that time was spent with my family or spent not focused on the workplace. It's around 6 pm at this point after taking a shower, getting dressed, and going to pick up my son. Roughly the next 2 hours was spend hanging out with my son and waiting for my wife to get home from work. 8 o'clock rolls around and my wife is just now getting home from work and now it's time to spend quality time with her before her and the baby go to sleep (yes they co-sleep). We'll say it's close to 9 or 9:30 at this point and it's time for some Tyler time --after a full 17 hour day and having to be back up for work in 7 hours. 

As you can probably tell at this point that when I'm not at work that my family will always come first. That's the part I like about the picture up there that says "stop living for tomorrow" because when I was spending time with them I did not think about tomorrow. I tried my best the savor the moments that I had with them while I was with them. Thinking about work tomorrow or thinking about the weekend coming up isn't going to reap any benefits for me in this moment. Quality time needs to be just that, undivided attention with the intent to build a stronger relationship. I hate looking back on a situation that I was in and think that I didn't spend it like I should've. Although I tend to do it myself, I want to recommend trying not to spend a lot of time focusing back on the past and how you should have done something different. If you're going to think about it, which I'm sure you will now, keep it brief and take whatever lesson you can from it and use it to get better. Any more time spent thinking about yesterday is time that is taken away from the gift of today. Yesterday is forever gone and there is no possible way you can get it back. Just like tomorrow, today will be gone. Let's not forget to mention the mystery that is tomorrow. I don't know about any of you readers, but I can't predict the future. I can't tell you if I'll still have a job tomorrow. I can't tell you that my house won't burn down. I can't tell you that my family will all still be in good health or that I'll still be in good health. Quit taking advantage of the gifts that you were given today and the opportunities presented to you from the time that you woke up this morning all the way until you lay down to sleep. That is why you can't focus on tomorrow --too much, anyway. 

Lets back up to the timeline I had started earlier. It's now 11:45 pm and I have to be up in 4 hr and 45 min. and I'm not even sure when I'll start getting sleepy. Why am I not trying to sleep? Am I stupid or something? Of course not! I'm only thinking about my future. 

Wait, hold up! Didn't we just talk about how we shouldn't be focusing on anything but today? 

Yes and no. 

If I spent my entire day only thinking about today, then how do I expect to ever get better in my future? Today needs to fully be embraced to set your future self up for success. Every action that you make, or don't make on this day will in some way affect your future self. If I had just gone to sleep at 9:30 with the rest of the household then I would never have time to focus on myself and getting set up for my undying desire for a better future for myself and for this world. I can't speak for everyone's personal lives because I don't actually know, but I feel like so many of us talk of better times and talk of these things we would rather have. How many people are actually acting on these things TODAY? Embracing your time TODAY is necessary for changes to come later on. I completely understand getting tired and going to bed early and getting a good nights sleep and all that, I get it 100%. What you need to understand, though, is that all these changes that you say that you want will most likely not happen in the way that you want them to if you aren't willing to sacrifice comfort for change.  

So what is the lesson here that I was trying to teach? Very much live for today and don't focus a ton of time on tomorrow to the point of taking away attention from the important things today. 

On the other end of that, understand that the all of your future days will one day be 'today' and if you don't embrace this day to the best of your ability you might be disappointed that you wasted all of these today's.