“The best thing
about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” -- Abraham Lincoln
A recent trip to Philadelphia yielded a conversation
during which my friend told me, “I hate it when people say, ‘Just take it a day
at a time.’ Who can do that?!” I responded, “As someone who lives that way, I
can promise you that it’s doable. Some
people are just wired that way. For
those of us who aren’t, it takes work, but it’s worth it; it makes my life much
better.”
Living life “a day at a time” is a foreign film without
subtitles to some of us. I remember the
days before I began living life one day at a time and they were not
pretty. I lived in a perpetual cycle of
fear and worry. I’ve shared with most of
you the physical part of my journey. Another
part of my healing process involved changing my mindset, not just in regards to
my health but to my entire life, too.
Figuratively, I was driving down the road at 100 MPH at night, constantly
more concerned about that which lay beyond the range of my headlights instead
of the 200 feet in front of me. If I
wasn’t concerning myself with the future, I was hyper analyzing the past. Only, I was not doing it to take away
important lessons from my mistakes and was, instead, getting stuck in a rotten
pattern of self judgment and doubt.
It was during my early days being under Upper Cervical
Care that I started becoming more aware of my mindset (being in a brain fog
kept me unaware of many things). Surrounding
myself with people that lived by the “one day at a time” mantra was
eye-opening. I had basically been
trained to anticipate the worst and hope for the best. Seeing these happy, purposeful, dynamite
personalities living their lives to the fullest allowed me to recognize the
futility in spending so much time caught up in the past – which is over – and
the future – which I cannot control.
There’s no future in living in the past.
“The past cannot be changed. You can learn from the past but you
can’t alter it,” Bryan Golden, author of Dare
to Live Without Limits, wrote in a 2009 article on this topic. “The
past is a seminar you have taken. Make note of what worked and what
didn’t. You don’t want to repeat the same mistakes. You do
want to replicate successes. Worry is a
complete waste of time and energy. You
will never achieve anything by worrying.
To make matters worse, any time spent worrying takes away from the time
you have available for dealing with today. “
It’s quite a burden, carrying the past on your back with
your mind simultaneously weighed down by the future. “Exhausting” is one word I’ve seen used to
describe that lifestyle by a fellow liver of life just a day at a time. To live anything more than a day at a time is
to approach life, energetically, like a sprint.
It takes enough energy just to get done what you need to right now. Add to that the energy required to dwell over
what already happened and brood over what could… you only have so much energy. Life is a marathon. Distance runners have to learn how to pace
themselves to make certain that they have enough stamina for an entire race. Counselors use that analogy when helping
addicts overcome their vices. Many of us
get addicted, if you will, to – as my mom often says – the woulda, coulda,
shoulda. It doesn’t begin that way, no
more than a chemical addiction does, but it can end up that way. And as they say to addicts, “When you allow
yourself to be consumed with anger and worry [or judgment and doubt, etc.] or
become embroiled in non-stop stress that you’ve accepted as a way of life, your
strength is sapped, depleting you of the energy and motivation to continue.”
The biggest thing that kickstarted my transformation to a
new way of thinking was my mentor’s favorite saying: “What you think about, you
bring about.” So, living life a day at a
time is merely an exercise in being aware of what you do want and not wasting
time or energy on what you don’t.
Intention is very important in this lifestyle. If you make clear what you want, then you
plan and think toward your goal. It
prompts you to maintain a high standard for yourself, but it’s also not about
being perfect. It’s about present time
consciousness and the acceptance of the fact that learning never stops – it’s
just part of the journey. Every day, I
wake up with a quick self note about the things that I want. Every night before I go to bed, I restate
that purpose. Everything in between is
about staying in the moment, my intentions already set.
We speak often in the office about health being a goal
that requires certain fundamentals, amongst them a good attitude. Who can realistically overcome problems
(health or otherwise) if they’re full of negative thoughts about days, week,
months, or years ago or ahead? Living
life a day at a time lays the groundwork for a less stressful existence. Today is over once it’s over. Tomorrow is a new day. You take the good things from yesterday
forward, acknowledge the previous day’s less awesome moments for learning
purposes, and embark on the next step in the journey. The only thing that you have control over is
your actions, anyway, so there’s little sense in prognosticating. From personal experience, I can vouch for
this being a very enjoyable way to live.
The great stuff is greater and the lousy stuff isn’t nearly as a
lousy.
“One day at a time-
this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and
do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the
present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.” -- Ida
Scott Taylor
Thinking good things for you, as always,
Dr. Chad
