Bear with me on this one
It’s not about transporting your body to the year 2070.
It’s about adopting an outlook that takes the future into account in a productive way.
If you have spent entire nights ruminating, you know it’s easy to fall down a hole and travel back into the past, regretting every stupid little thing your awkward past self ever did.
And if you are of this bent, you might struggle a little with accepting yourself as you are or honouring the progress you are making.
Some people will tell you that it’s important to imagine your future self and do things now that future you will be thankful for. If I do that, I never take the time to be thankful though because there is always some future Steph relying on today’s hustle. It’s never-ending and frankly a little exhausting.
What helped me re-frame this was to shrink the timeframe drastically. I have stopped stressing about whether 70-year-old Steph will live a comfortable life (or whether I will make old bones at all). For now, I focus on just three days: yesterday, today, tomorrow.
This might seem counterintuitive and lacking in long-term strategy, and I’ll take that point, but it’s where I’m at.
So how does this work?
Today, I do things that make tomorrow easier. I make sure that tomorrow-Steph has had enough sleep, has got coffee to drink in the morning, clean clothes to wear, her top three priorities for the day figured out, etc.
Before I tackle tomorrow’s needs though, I take a moment to be thankful for yesterday-Steph’s care. I like her, she’s looked out for me when she could have looked after herself or sabotaged my efforts.
If this makes me sound like I might have a split personality, then so be it. All of the Stephs seem happy with the current arrangement. Maybe one day, we’ll branch out and prep for the next week/month/year/decade/life stage. For now, we’re taking it one day at a time.
What is one small thing you can do today to make life easier for yourself tomorrow?
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