Everyday I wake up with a daunting, audacious goal at the forefront of my mind. The goal isn’t going to be accomplished today or tomorrow or the next day, it’s a goal that exists somewhere in my future. It’s a place in life that I’ll exist in. The road to that place in the sun is an arduous one. It’s a long road that will test my mettle, determine whether I am a persistent individual or not, and ask the question daily, How bad to I want it?
I wake up with this future existence in my mind, but I can’t stay there. To stay there would mean the death of my dream. The only place I can be is in the only place that exists; today.
Do I come back to the present all of the time? No. Sometimes I stay in the future, and my present is ruined as a result. But I do consciously come back to the present and do what I can to ensure that the future is as I want it to be. But, again, to think about, be in, or worry about the future is to stab my goals, dreams, and aspirations in the back like a coward too afraid to face the reality that is his present.
Opportunity looks a lot like hard work.
Many of us look for opportunity but fail to realize that where we are right now, in the present, is our opportunity. If only we’d work, hustle, and create in the present, the opportunity will become more vivid and exciting. Hard work isn’t exciting. But if hard work isn’t done today, we’ll never have what we want tomorrow.
Just for Today
When you finally muster up the testicular fortitude to walk into rehab, they don’t talk about being sober for the rest of your life, they talk about being sober for just one day. I’ve never been to rehab, and I never will have to walk through those doors, though I am rehabbing daily as a dreamer who loves to be in the future. To dream about the future is to bring worry into your life.
Worry is the most useless emotion we can bring into our minds. It isn’t real. It’s never real. And when that which we worry about becomes real, it’s never as bad as we’d worried it would be. But that’s what being in the future brings: worry.
So as a person walks into rehab worried that they’ll never be able to stay away from alcohol for the rest of their lives, they’re setting themselves up for failure. You are setting yourself up for failure when you look at the daunting road ahead.
When you set the goal of getting ripped and muscular, you automatically look to the future and see the limitations that this goal will impress on your life. And then you fail. You failed not because you didn’t have the capacity to stay the course, but because you worried about the finish line before you even took your first step.
The finish line doesn’t exist in the race of life, only the first step, then the second, then the third. To concern yourself otherwise is to kill your goal immediately.
How the Warriors Do It
Miyamoto Musashi wrote that “the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.” When death is accepted, life can begin. Worry is taken out of the equation when the worst possible outcome is accepted. Your worst possible outcome may not be death, it may be failure. Accept it and move forward.
Never resist. If you fail, who cares? Failure teaches us. We need failure to get better, stronger, and more successful. If we didn’t fail, we’d never evolve. Just like the sword fighter needs to be cut a few times to understand where his weaknesses lie, we need to fail to understand how to get better.
This is the way of the warrior, accepting the worst possible outcome as a possible reality, and moving forward, only concerning ourselves (not worrying about) today, the moment, the present battle we’re engaged in.
It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand days as a lamb.
Most of us live our lives as sheep. We take in information and we regurgitate it without thinking on our own. We follow without setting our own course. We run when danger peeks its head into our lives. We cower in the face of struggle, we flea from tribulation, we are amongst a flock that has nowhere to be, go, and nothing great to do.
There are, though, a few who live life as a lion. The key, however, is not to think of living life as a lion, but being a lion for merely one day. Continue Reading on Page 2>>>
