Don’t Spend Your Life Preparing For Life
“The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.” ― Thomas S. Monson
Life is too short if you spend it meaningfully and do what gives you a sense of accomplishment.Life is too long if you spend all your time worrying about the unpredictable future or the regrets of the past.You know it. Everyone knows it.But strangely enough, only a few people consciously choose to live in the present every day.The future can provide hope, and the past can provide closure but focusing on either one obsessively, however, quickly becomes deteriorating to your mental and emotional health.What you exchange even an hour of your day for matters in life.Charles Darwin once said, “A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of his life.”You can be busy all your life without ever doing something meaningful.
Your ability to appreciate life can never be taken from you, so beware of the distractions of life and purposefully use your time wisely.In her collection of short essays, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard explains:How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order — willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.Life unfolding, but we are too occupied to notice.
We are too busy worried about the past and the future that we let the present slip away, allowing time to rush past unobserved and unseized.We squander to our precious seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years as we worry about the future and ruminate about what’s past.“Perhaps most simply stated, worrying is a behaviour that steals joy, affecting sleep and decision making. It’s understandable to feel more overwhelmed when facing new situations but there are simple ways to contain worry to live a more fulfilled life,” says Dr. Simon A. Rego, a cognitive behavioural psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders.You can only live one moment at a time, choose to live in the moment.“Living in the moment — also called mindfulness — is a state of active, open, intentional attention on the present,” writes Jay Dixit of Psychology Today.
By all means, plan for the future but choose to live today.Your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s are worth planning but don’t allow them to take away the precious present.Choosing to live in the past or the future robs you of truly living today because the only thing you think and worry about is what should have happened or needs to happen to make life worthwhile.The only reality is now“Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.” — Albert EinsteinStop worrying about the future because you’re missing the best time of your life in the here and now.
The future you are worried about is a mirage.We can’t change the past and we certainly can’t predict the future.The only thing within your control is today.The only important moment is the present moment.It’s natural to spend moments of thought in the past or in daydreams of the future.The danger is getting caught in both worlds.“We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says B. Alan Wallace.When your life is dictated by thoughts of the past and potential future outcomes, staying rooted in the present becomes increasingly rare.Busyness without meaning is one of the greatest distractions from living.Busy is a decision. Seneca argues:No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course.
It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king’s command or a people’s favor. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that.In the popular book, On The Shortness Of Life, a 2,000-year-old masterpiece by Seneca, Roman stoic philosopher and teacher to the emperors, he writes about time and how to best use it to ensure you lead a long and fulfilling life.Seneca wrote his 20-sections On the Shortness of Life in 49 CE, the year he returned to Rome from his exile in Corsica, as a moral essay addressed to his friend Paulinus.He argues in the book that it isn’t really the case that human life is short, but rather that most people waste a lot of it. Seneca continues by telling us that we not only refuse to accept our limited time but that we waste away what little time we do possess.The philosopher declares that we shackle ourselves to our labours, our professions.He shares a lot on how to appreciate life — and how to use it.If you haven’t read it yet, go get it now.It’s one of the most important books you will ever read about using the limited time you have on earth and living a meaningful life.It’s the most definite call to action to live a fulfilling life.Seneca believed that if we use our lives properly they are long enough.“The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”Seneca writes:It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.
But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.Seneca cautions that we fail to treat time as a valuable resource. He offers this advice for those who feel like they are wasting time.You are living as if destined to live for ever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don’t notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply — though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire… How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point at which few have arrived!From Seneca I have learned to be live in the present, and on purpose.Carpe diem! or ‘seize the day,’ in everything you choose to do.The phrase was first uttered by the Roman poet Horace over 2,000 years ago.The message of carpe diem matters more than ever today.For anyone who is deeply worried about the future, Seneca advices:Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day… Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied food which he does not want but can hold. So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbor, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.Life is long if you know how to use it.On the Shortness of Life has become one of my favourite essays on life and living it. It’s an insightful commentary on human existence.Life isn’t short if you live it to the fullest.Closing thoughtsLife can be short or long depending upon how you decide to live it. If you spend all your life preparing for life, you are not choosing to live now.Invest your energy, time, and heart in the Now, and you will naturally prevent your worst case scenarios.Living in the moment could change your life for the better, so don’t lose yourself to your thoughts on what’s next or worry about what’s happening elsewhere.Invest in the present, and the future will take care of itself.As Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”Before you go…If you enjoyed this post, you will love Postanly Weekly, my free weekly digest of the best posts about behaviour change that affect health, wealth, and productivity. Join over 30,000 people on a mission to build a better life. Courses: Thinking in Models, and Kaizen Habits.