Tag: today

Day One

Day One is full of excitement and anticipation.

The vision is strong.

The path for the day is short and straight, or at least it appears to be from where we’re standing.

Bursting with energy and promise, we stride out into the unknown: we invent; we create; we conquer.

As we get older and learn how to tread our path, we often start to coast, to relax. We take our eyes off the road.

We let ourselves get bored.

The risk then is that we just fade away.

The best way to tackle day 303 or day 3,003 on our adventure is to approach it as if it were Day One.

Accelerating into our future selves — naive and eager and ambitious — starting all the way to the end.

Wake and Bake

Here’s a recipe for a soft and delicious day:

  • One large glass of water
  • 2-4 cups of coffee
  • Walk outside
  • Touch your toes
  • Say thanks
  • Lift something heavy
  • Eat a handful of nuts and some fruit
  • Whisk up a healthy dollop of conservation.
  • Sprinkle in a bit of challenge
  • Garnish with a thin slice of luck, if you can find it.

Once that’s ready, don’t forget to set aside something for tomorrow.

Twist off a healthy goal, wrap it in a warm cloth and leave it in a dark room overnight.

You’ll be ready to bake again by morning.

 

Like that time

If you didn’t get the memo, here’s today’s agenda.

Today will be easy, like that test you thought you bombed but actually did pretty well on.

Today will be fun, like when you got chased and thought you weren’t going to get away but then you did.

Today will be interesting, like that weird show your friend forced you to watch that ended up being so good you binged the series later at home.

Today will be fast, like that unforgettable holiday that — after two weeks of — you were quite looking forward to coming home from.

Today is going to be quick, easy, and loud, like that time when…

Well, you get the idea.

 

Be done with it

Weekends are funny old times filled with all sorts of odd happenings.

Whatever the plan, it often gets left by the wayside after a couple of mimosas and a splash of spring sunshine.

And that’s no big deal. It’s why they’re there.

Whether it was a workout or work that got abandoned among the Cantalope skins and crusts, at the time, it was the only thing you could have done.

And regardless, it was the thing you did.

There’s no more sense in fretting or punishing oneself for relaxing than there is in refusing a top-up on a bottomless mimosa.

It just doesn’t make sense.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson reminded his young daughter, “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.”

Today is a whole new day, in a whole new week, and you can do whatever you want with it.

And that’s all that really matters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is important

One evening a few years back, an old Super-Bowl winner told me about a prayer his college coach made him repeat every morning.

It struck a chord so I began to repeat my own little version of it.

It’s quite long so I won’t repeat it all now. But the message that would often send a shiver down my spine is short:

Whatever you do today is important because you are about to exchange a whole day of your life for it.

Make sure you don’t regret the price you pay.

And that usually got me out of bed pretty quick.