“Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.”
Earl Nightingale
Every minute matters. Either we are being intentional with how we spend our time or we are choosing to let it slip through our fingers. I know that I have been guilty far too often in life of living in, and for, the future instead of enjoying the moment at hand.
It is easy to talk about but how do you really do it? Where do you start? One practice that I started following just over four years ago was the habit of a keeping a daily gratitude journal. I found that simply writing down the things that happened during the day for which I was most grateful for helped me connect to the moment. Looking back through those journals I have much more appreciation for how precious life is.
I still struggle with this, and I probably always will. Having a daily focus point is one way I have found to stay grounded in the power of being present? What has worked for you?
3 Responses
Great post Dusty. I recently read Seneca’s ‘On the Shortness of Life,’ and I feel it’s crazy relevant to the present-day experience of most business professionals, especially in our largely over-privileged American culture.
While all twenty sections of Seneca’s essay are quotable, your post Dusty immediately brings my mind back to section VII, “‘When will vacation time come?’ Everyone hurries his life on and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if it were his last, neither longs for nor fears tomorrow.”
With regards to your struggle–my struggle–and everyone else’s, Seneca also writes: “It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and–what will perhaps make you wonder more–it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.”
Let’s press forward to live (and not merely to exist), and Dusty my friend, keep blogging!
Anthony, that is exceptional and I appreciate greatly your sharing it. I haven’t read “on the shortness of life” but am adding it to my list now. Thank you!