One Day At A Time

When I've felt stressed or down and discouraged in the past, the phrase "take it one day at a time" was often brought to my attention. This would come either by my own conscience or in the form of advice from loved ones and self help books. This used to frustrate me to tears. "How do I take life one day at a time?", I would scream either in my mind or in my pillow. To me, living in the present was impossible. How do you just ignore the future? I'm a planner, therefore, I need to schedule my life for the next five, ten and fifteen years. Although it isn't a bad thing to plan for the future, it is an unfortunate and somewhat detrimental trap if you are only living for the future. The likeliness of your disappointment is almost guaranteed. You can never be happy, because you're only thinking of what will be, not what is. The truth is, you most likely will not be happy with what will be if you are not happy with what is. The person who thinks this way, isn't truly happy. I have no doubt that the foreseeable future will be a stark improvement from your present circumstances. However, with the logic that you will only be happy when certain life events take place such as; when you move out of your parents house or when you quit your job or when you get married or when finals are over or when you graduate or when you get into a career, you will not only miss out on good opportunities to be had at this phase of life, but you may not be the best you could be when that anticipated future event arrives. In fact, it's possible you'll be disappointed with the outcome because you can only be satisfied with a better than now scenario. Right now, the present moment, may not be where we want to be forever. It may not even be where we want to be for the next 5 minutes. We hate it that much. I've been in that mind set for many years. It's possible that today is just a good day and I'll wallow in negativity tomorrow. I know how hard it is to stay positive about something that shouts discomfort, anger, disappointment and a myriad of negative emotions. This is where "take one day at a time" comes in handy. You don't have to necessarily decide that today is the last day of your life. If that were the case, I'd be doing all sorts of crazy, spontaneous and somewhat irresponsible things because there will be no tomorrow to account for it. However, in this case, there will be a tomorrow. We're just not going to think about it today. Instead, focus on how you can be productive, serve someone, learn something new, call a friend, read a book, etc. I've attempted this in the past, but failed because I allowed my mind to worry about the future. The thought of doing all these different tasks or goals everyday overwhelmed me. Now, I just focus on the present day. I'm aware of tomorrow, but it doesn't concern me right now. Today, I am doing yoga, studying my scriptures, writing this blog entry, attending the temple and calling a friend afterward. Will I do these things tomorrow? I don't know. I won't know until tomorrow.