don’t wait until tomorrow

In my 20s, there were certain times when I would tell and even encourage myself to make mistakes. My excuse was: “Hey, I’m in my 20s and still young, these are not my wise years, it’s my time to make mistakes.” I used to believe that “there’ll come a time in the future when I’ll be wise and sorted out, but for now I can keep making mistakes; I still have time to improve and if anything worse happens, I’ll redeem myself in the future.”

There was a voice within me that told me it’s best to take the better path, but I ignored it believing I was too young to be so wise. In a way, I was much wiser than other people, but yet I stopped myself again and again from going on the right path thinking I would regret not making the mistakes that had to be made (I know this sounds complicated). I was essentially choosing the paths that I knew would not serve me the best in the long run. I was running after short-term pleasures, setting traps for myself and delaying my personal growth and development thinking everything would get magically sorted out and my life will get on track in the future. In simpler words, I was running away from taking responsibility — for myself, for my actions and for the circumstances I was in. 

I’m sure you would have gone through a similar, if not the same, tug of war as well, where you know you need to take responsibility and walk on the correct path, but still you delay it for tomorrow or some point in the future that would be more opportune for you. But what I’ve learned from my experience is that you need to take charge right here, right now. Today is the day. 

The truth is that we always know what the right thing to do is, but the tricky part is actually doing it. Steven Pressfield refers to the invisible force that stops us from taking the right actions as Resistance. In his book The War of Art, he explains, “Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ Instead, we say, ‘I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.”

A majority of us choose tomorrow as the day when they are finally going to reform and take the actions that they are supposed to take. As the Spanish proverb goes: “Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week.”

Marcus Aurelius also wrote about the human tendency to procrastinate in Meditations: “You get what you deserve. Instead of being a good person today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.”

Let go of tomorrow. Today is the day when we can choose to be good and take the right path. We need to take charge of ourselves, our success and our life. It’s all cause and effect after all; the better you’re today, the better your tomorrow becomes. 

We never truly know what our future has in store for us, so why not choose the right path today? Why not be good and wise right now?