Where is the best place to start?
The place to start is often where you are presently located. Seldom can you return to the beginning and start the process, life, or system over. As with billiards, you are simply where you are and you have to make the best of the situation. No matter what it looks like. It’s not like you can re-boot a conversation, or a friendship. You simply start from where you are. Right now.
This morning, while thinking about the past few days, and the weeks in the near future, I kept thinking about “what if’s”… What if we could have done this…gone there…handled it this way….that way…
You know, that analysis of your past actions to determine why things are they way they are in the present. If our life is a linear progression of mileposts from our past, through the present, and into the future – then what we did yesterday matters to what the results of tomorrow might be.
But when you find yourself behind the proverbial 8 ball, then you must adapt to imperfect situations, determine the best move forward, and then do it.
The end results will most probably not be what they would have been had you thought long into the future what your actions today would produce.
While researching a particular topic, of which I will write about later, it came to mind that if we simply care for the pennies today, the dollars of tomorrow will take care of themselves. We are such a wasteful people. We do not manage those few moments, and pennies, properly, hence, we end up in the future not having made proper provisions with what we were blessed with in the past.
Example. Imagine for just a moment all of those large cash transactions that came into your life. Tax refunds, bonuses, wages, etc. If those dollars had been invested, instead of simply spent, then your retirement could look a lot different than is possible right now.
Do we learn the lesson at 10 years of possibility? Maybe. But the stress of the moment often means we blow the next 10 years of future for the satisfaction of an itch scratched today.
If my 60+ years of learning could teach me anything, it’s simply that we are not living in the present for the satisfaction of the moment. No. We are living now for what we hope to enjoy in the future.
“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.” ~Lyndon B Johnson
Essentially, we live today for the sake of tomorrow.
Think about it… What you squander today is your future. Waste it now, and you’ll have nothing then. Health. Relationships. Family. Finances. Career. Reserves.
How do you recover? Make a plan today, to be better prepared for the morrows that show up rapidly and in quick succession. The other old adage is equally important, “Fail to plan, means you plan to fail.”
Set a goal. Make a plan. Measure the steps. Adjust as needed, but never give up thinking about the possibility of your future!