What if today were the best day of your life? Imagine if you could go to sleep tonight truly fulfilled – what would that look like?
When I started the daily practice of asking this question, my answers focused on what would happen.
I’d wake up rested and unconcerned with my list for the day. I’d have a quiet cup of coffee and then my wife and kids would wake up. We’d spend some time together and eat a delicious breakfast…
What I realized as I continued to ask this question each morning is that so much of my “best day ever” depended on what happened outside of myself. Would my kids be in a good mood? Would the weather be nice and the train be on time? Would my boss say something to tick me off? Would I have time to go to the climbing gym?
When your definition of happiness requires the outside world to arrange itself according to your preferences, you’ll find very few perfect days. After all, we’re just minuscule creatures riding along on a tiny hunk of rock doing laps in the universe. There are 7 billion people on the planet. How many of them need to behave a certain way for you to be happy?
I’m trying to shift my focus from what WOULD happen to HOW it happens.
We’ll never have control over everything that happens. If our happiness depends on specific things happening, then we’ll never have control over our happiness.
The only thing we can absolutely control is how we respond to what’s happening. We control our approach, our actions, our process. The way to make today the best day of your life is to stop asking “what happened?” and start asking “did I do it well?”
Call me greedy, but I want today to be the best day of my life. And I want tomorrow to be even better.
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