“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
There are a lot of things I could write about from this quote. I could talk about being in the present, about how you can’t change the past so you should accept it, and a million or so variants on each of these.
Instead, I want yod to read that quote 3 times again. Then I want you to set a timer for 3 minutes to sit and think about it. You can keep your eyes on the quote so you don’t get distracted—this will be a practice in mindfulness.
During those 3 minutes, think about how you, at times, spend time worrying about the past or future. Try to think of specific times in which you do this. Remind yourself that it is wasted energy and causes stress.
Say this to yourself, “The past is gone. The only thing I can change about it are my thoughts.”
Now, commit to yourself that you are going to change your thoughts. Say, “I will be conscious of my thoughts and try to make them better.”
Ok, go ahead with the 3 minutes (do at least 1 if 3 sounds like an eternity).
***
At every point of your life, during any given moment, you can focus on the negative, on what you haven’t done, or you can focus on the positive, on what you are going to do.
Choose the latter and all your dreams will come true. Choose the former and you’ll forever be miserable.
Your brain wants to be negative, it wants to focus on the negative–it’s called negativtiy bias. There are many reasons for this, but we won’t go into those. Don’t beat yourself up if you find your doing this, just get working on fixing it.
Right now, after you finish reading this, focus on what you are going to do tomorrow to get better and make progress on what needs improving. Then, at the end of the day tomorrow, think about the things that went well. Be grateful for what went well and don’t waste a second thinking about the things that didn’t go well.
Make your every day like this.
Follow this template and you will see profoundly positive changes in your life. Really.
Disclaimer: You just read only a few hundred words about an idea that can literally change your life. I don’t want you to miss it just becuase the ideas and words used are simple. Never discount the power of simple. It’s often the most powerful things in the universe that are the simplest.