Do or Don’t Do
At so many different times in my life I have wondered if I was doing what I really wanted to do and should be doing. I am speaking about the everyday things I do that fill my days. I still wonder what is it I really do want to do? I know I can do many different things, but what should I focus on and what will my future become if I do one thing verses doing something different? What would or could be the outcome of doing one thing over another? How does anyone really know what their future will bring by doing this or that a year from now or five years from now?
If I keep doing what I have been doing in my past, I should be able to expect the same outcome for my future, right? This would be a logical assumption to make I think. The big question is, do I want my future to be more or less the same of what my past has brought me? If I continue to do more of what I am doing, then I will get more of what I already got. I will be the same tomorrow as I am today. Is this what I want? How can I have the future I really desire? How can I become the person I want to become? How can I change?
Consider for a minute this fishing analogy. You take out a boat on a lake and decide on a location to drop anchor and try your luck fishing. You choose your favorite rod and decide to bait your hook with a worm and a certain type of bobber and cast away. After all, its not that hard to catch a fish, right? You have seen many times how it’s done. So, you continue to float and hold your rod and wait and wait and wait some more and nothing happens, everything is still. Time goes by and you decide maybe the fish are biting on minnows and you should change your bait to a minnow. Good option, thankfully you planned a little and did bring some minnows. So, you switch out your bait to a minnow, maybe change your bobber and again cast away. There is a little more action to watch, after all your minnow is moving around a little, but still no fish biting. You keep trying, reeling in and re-casting out and same thing happens, nothing, nothing and more nothing. You begin to think its time to try a different location.
Just then another boat shows up close by and you think, good luck to them, there is nothing here. But you decide to watch them as they prep and see them cast out their bait, which is some sort of shiny lure, without any live bait or bobber attached. It looks nothing like what you have tried so far. It hits the water and they begin to crank their line in and bam, a fish hits their lure jumping and splashing around and you hear the excitement in the fisherman’s voices get louder as this new arriver reels in their first fish. You think what the heck just happened, I have been fishing here for quite a while and have caught nothing, this guy shows up, and catches a fish in five minutes. You wonder about the lure they are using, and know you need to change to that lure if you are to increase your chance of success.
Like this little fishing story, there are many options which you can choose on how you proceed in life. Some of them will lead you to success and some of them will simply occupy your time with an activity making you feel that you are trying, but in reality, are yielding you no actual production, and some literally have success lying just below the water, if only you use the right bait. Later in life you may even look back and consider some of them to have been a waste of your time, and time is something you do not want to waste. It can be true that sometimes the activity itself is the intended production and simply doing the activity is the success you are looking for. This can be time well spent and we all need some of these types of activities in our daily lives. Oddly enough, many of the options we can choose to do in life are being done or have already been done by many others. We simply need to watch them or read about how they did what they did, then follow their lead and do it as well and maybe even do it better. Just like in the fishing story, we can use the same lure others are using and expect at least a similar level of success.
Doing the same thing over and over again, in the same way and expecting different results, as they say, is insanity. To get different results from those you got in your past, you need to change how you do things today, doing more of what will lead you to the future you desire. What you choose to do today is what can change your future. That is the simple life story magic many of us realize as we get older that whatever we do each new day really does affect our future tomorrow’s and overall life story. Similarly the opposite is also true, what you don’t do today can also drastically impact your future.
Our future situation one year from now is really a combination of what we choose to do each of the next 365 days. If you decide to begin walking or running two to four miles five times each week, which means in one year from now, you will have walked or run anywhere between 520-1040 miles. If you decide to read one hour or 25 pages five times a week, that means in one year from now, you will have read about 6,500 pages or about 21 300-page books. If you choose your topics well, just think what you could learn. If you choose to listen to audio books, you can walk or run and listen at the same time. Just think how you might change over the next five years by doing something like this.
This type of thinking does not stop here. Just think if you start doing pushups, planks or yoga every day, or maybe lifting weights five times per week, or bicycling, kayaking or swimming several times per week, or changing what types of food you eat or drink each day where your health and fitness might be one year from today. What actually traveling, seeing or experiencing something new, something you have not yet seen on a monthly basis or meeting new people and maybe even working to developing a new friendship every so often, how this might change who you are in your future. What you did with all your past days can add up to where and who you are today. What you do today and each new today from now on will change who you become in your future. If you choose to do nothing today, and “a nothing day” is a zero and we all know what totaling up a bunch of zeros adds up to, zero, where will that lead you to in your future?
Many of us realize the compounding effect paid interest has on our savings accounts over time, but the compounding effect works on what we do in our everyday lives as well. The book, “ The Compound Effect”, by Darren Hardy, describes how the everyday things we do, if aligned with our goals, can build the future life we see ourselves having, one day at a time, and really is a must read for those looking to maximize their own life story.
An eighty-year life is made up of about 29,200 days which all present themselves to you one day at a time. Who you become is a combination and collection of all you have done and experienced over those days. The earlier you decide to begin making your today count towards what you want your total life experiences to be and what you want your life story to become in your future, the more chance you have to change yourself, your future and create the reality you want for yourself.
In the end, its up to you to do or don’t do, it’s your choice and your choices have consequences.
Gary J. Kiecker