“Time is an illusion, there is only the now.” —Master Shifu

Is your life short or long?

Regardless of what you believe, it matters how you utilize both your biggest asset and number 1 motivator: time.

Imagine the moment you open your eyes in the morning, you get a notification from the bank that $86,000 has been transferred to your account. 

You’d likely be amazed.

There’s a small catch – that $86k is yours and yours entirely, but you must do whatever you want to do with it today because it’ll disappear from your account the moment you close your eyes at night.

You’d likely be excited out of your mind with the possibilities that lie in front of you. 

With a new injection of cash, investing in the stock markets, buying a new car, treating your family, friends, and loved ones with surprise gifts all seem like incredible possibilities. 

When it comes to money, we like to sit down and plan things out so much. How much we’ll retire with, how much we’ll have by the end of the year, how much are we saving by purposely buying cheaper clothes. 

What if I told you that $86,000 is the number of seconds you have every single day?

Each day we have 24 hours. 

That 24 hours is 1,440 minutes. 

86,400 seconds.

Here I’ve listed powerful pillars for a productive and meaningful day.

Suggestion One: “Begin with the end in mind”

Whenever I see some form of success in other people—say an entrepreneur and her company, a group of SEALs, or a musician nailing his concerts—I like to ask myself, “how did this person achieve that?”

History is rich with men and women who have worked towards something, which inevitably brought them attention from history. 

What led to Steve Jobs and his partners creating Apple?

What led to the success of General MacArthur and his troops in the Pacific Theater in WWII?

How did incredible artists like da Vinci and Coldplay continually push out quality content, leading to success?

I came to learn that their persistent determination and willingness to plan before anything even starts was critical to success.

By visualizing the basic end-goal, what had to be done to get to that objective, and ultimately how to reduce the friction to make that progress, any form of success can be attained.

Before you go to bed, take a couple minutes to think about your day tomorrow.

What are some objectives and initiatives or passion projects that are most important to you?

Relentlessly drive towards what you want to do and create a plan of action the night before. 

If you plan ahead, you’ll have your top priorities ready to fall in place like dominoes.

 Now enjoy your sleep, we all need it.

Suggestion Two: Just start.

To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, on the days when you have a tough time getting out of bed, keep this idea in mind—“I wake up today to carry out my work as a human being.” If I was born for this, why in the world am I to complain? Or, is this what I was created to do? To stay warm and comfortable in the warmth of the bedsheets or to live the life I wish to create and then truly live?

To start.

Some of our species’ greatest regrets are a result of not starting. 

Each and every day begins with a decision that will shape the person you are.

Will you get out of bed once you’ve slept a healthy amount?

Will you train yourself to follow a base human’s approach to life – to follow that which requires little energy and little mental fortitude?

Or will you train yourself to take an elevated approach to life? To create a lifestyle that rewards understanding what’s most beneficial, even if it causes some short-term pain?

This is your one life, afterall. 

Chilling in bed where it’s comfortable surely didn’t get our ancestors food on the table. Nor did it get Mandela as a symbol for global unity and peace or Mr. Biden as President.

Just start.

Suggestion Three: Hope for the best, work towards the best, prepare for the worst.

A fundamental truth to Buddhism is that our human existence hugely relies upon suffering. 

This is also practically true of our reality. 

Someone we know or love gets sick. Our bills go up. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across the world and our country. 

If we live our lives without a willingness to accept suffering, if we live our lives by constantly feeling anger over events that are relatively outside of our control, how can we ever break free from such a chain of thoughts to actually live our lives?

I created a method to train myself to be prepared for as many forms of difficulty and hardship in life. I refer to this as the Two A’s of Reality. 

Accept.

Adapt.

“What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?”

—Epictetus. Discourses

Suggestion Four: Begin with a Morning Practice

Throughout history, we’ve seen some of humanity’s great figures start their days with some form of a morning routine. 

Whether they journaled, went for a walk or exercised, or meditated, it’s more than likely that these people created this Morning Practice to start their day with numerous victories off the bat.

Retired Admiral McRaven has famously touted the power of making your bed first thing in the morning.

And he’s right. 

Routines can be difficult to maintain, especially during a time when COVID-19 has spread like a wildfire. But a Morning Practice—a set of matutinal actions which you find valuable to do—is an advanced system. 

For example, you start with making your bed.

That triggers your next action – doing an explosive wake-up exercise set. 

One thing leads to another, and soon, after a set chunk of time, you’ve taken care of more objectives than most people can do in their entire day. 

Personally, that’s pretty motivating stuff.

Suggestion 4.5: Remember to Live Like Today’s Your Last Day

Steve Jobs had this beautiful saying he would repeat to himself in the mirror in the mornings: 

“If today was the last day of my life, would I be happy with what I’ve planned and what I’m going to do?” 

If today is truly your last day, can you look ahead and feel proud of what you’ve laid out for yourself?

If today is truly your last day, can you imagine looking backwards and feeling proud of what you accomplished and cherished?

Each day, I take what Steve did a step further.

I ask myself, “What am I most excited to do today, and why?”

Sometimes, no matter how passionate or excited we are towards our work or responsibilities or passion projects, we may slow down and stop feeling that initial excitement. 

That’s okay. What really matters here is that you determine if what you’re doing is of value to you. And, if it is, what are you still doing not relentlessly pushing forward towards that?

Based on my years studying Stoicism, I created another personal mantra: “I will consciously choose which fire I fuel today.” 

Will you allow yourself to endlessly procrastinate?

Will you allow yourself to fall to the temptation of more ice cream than you actually desire?

Just like with Suggestion One, the prepared person is the person who conquers. 

Suggestion Five: What do you want to do? What do you get to do?

Particularly in our modern society, with stimuli no longer just around the corner but literally in our hands each moment of the day through phones and computers and other technologies, it’s easy to find things to do. 

There’s a huge difference between being busy and being productive. 

One mindset sucks the life out of you, leaving you totally empty to truly take care of what you want to, and the other empowers you to face head-on what you wish to do. 

Oftentimes, it’s easier to keep adding new work and goals and commitments because it gives a sense of being hard and work and being an efficient human being. 

I urge you to continually send probes into your mind throughout the day asking yourself whether what you’re currently working on is what you actually want to be working on.

This is certainly difficult for people who are in a job which they may not like, but have to do because bills have to be paid and food has to be put on the table.

But, for whatever else you may have in your life, consciously think about which fire you want to fuel. 

Because your 24 hours won’t be coming back ever again.

Suggestion Six: Value mental and physical well-being, close-relationships, and Monotonous Moments

Let’s say that you’re an ambitious person with tons of goals and ideas in the pipeline for execution. 

Let’s say that you’re really good at achieving all these things you’ve set out to do, but at the cost of sacrificing your health, your relationships with friends and, most importantly, family, and taking time to think. 

To what cost will you go to chase success?  

At the end of the day, money and status won’t come to the grave with us. For people who are able to comfortably put food on the table, work isn’t our life. 

While certainly important to create a vision of a future you want to live in, what I’ve come to value more in a day is cultivating my overall well-being, relationships, and chunking time to be a human being over human doing. To think.

To expand upon what a wise man once said, if we go out to the world seeking to create value, to create bridges around us, when we die, those who loved us will miss us very much. 

The inputs can lead to the outputs. 

In our society, it’s easy to strive to mainly be economically mobile—after all, our world incentives financial success over being a good human through moral success. 

Money is important, no doubt about it. How about your mind and body? And your friends and family?

If you have a Ferrari, but treat it like junk every day and feed it cheap fuel and use garbage components, won’t it break down eventually?

How is this any different than your mind and body? 

From our ancestors’ days on the African savannah, we’ve evolutionarily evolved to value being very close with small groups of people. If your money and your influence were to disappear tomorrow, who and what would you rely on then? 

We’re called human beings. Perhaps a good reminder to create a better work-life harmony.

Suggestion Seven: Journal

The journal.

In the movie Limitless, we are introduced to a near-magical pill called NZT. 

This NZT allows our brain to function at a superhuman level – writing books can become a piece of cake, learning languages will require no effort, and our tenacity to live to the fullest is exponentially increased. 

Over the years, from learning about the journaling habits of Marcus Aurelius, Frida Kahlo, Emerson, to name a few, I came to wonder: did great people take up journaling, or did regular people who took up journaling end up doing great things? 

So far, after practicing the art of journaling for a third of my life, and it is certainly the real-life equivalent to NZT. 

There are so many numerous resources around the web and Transcend Reality regarding how to optimize your journaling to lead to the best results. 

Some of the most famous and useful forms include chronological journaling, ideating, and bullet journaling. 

By being so aware of each present moment while journaling, we can come to understand both how short and how long each day truly can become. 

As a wise man said some thousands of years ago, life is not short – we just have a great tendency to often squander most of our waking moments.

It’s your turn now. Will you go to sleep cherishing each moment of your day for how it made you a stronger person? Will you work towards living with greater gratitude for the opportunity of life you were given at birth? 

The bottom line is that the world around us is quite simply created by our minds because everything that we experience is being filtered through our brains. That means our perceptions and preconceived biases may really alter each moment of our reality. In some, and most, ways, we are the controller of our fate.

Remember to keep consciously choosing which fire you fuel today.

Please leave me a comment below to let me know what you think of this post. Your feedback is so important. And, know this is an open and supporting community which does its best to propel all members forwards, together. Follow your heart, lead with your mind, and cherish with your soul. 🖖