I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.

I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time. – Charles Schultz

The butterfly doesn’t dread the end of summer. Why is it that we waste so much of our time on the dread of the inevitable?

What does that mean?
This is a great quote from Charlie Brown, one of the author’s more famous characters from the Peanuts comic strip. He always seems to have the worst possible luck. Nothing ever seems to work out for him. Everything he touches, breaks. His baseball team always loses. He can’t even kick a football (although in his defense, the holder keeps moving the ball on him).

In this quote, he says that he’s done worrying about the future, and that he will only worry about one day at a time. Hopefully (as it isn’t explicitly stated), the day that he will dread is today, not tomorrow. I hope Charlie Brown can stay focused on the most important day of his life, today.

Now that said, he’s just a cartoon character. However, we can learn from his trials and tribulations. Dreading things that are not yet here is a great waste of energy, and certainly makes it harder to focus on what you need to be doing today, right.

Why is today important?  
Today. This is a very important concept, yet one I have never had taught to me, other than in passing. You can’t change yesterday. Tomorrow isn’t here yet. Today is the only thing you can work on, and the only time you can work on something is today. It sounds kind of obvious, but take a moment and think about it.

“But I have to plan for tomorrow, and learn from yesterday,” you might say. And I would agree with you. However, action only happens today (and in a specific sub-section of today, “right now”). You may be acting to correct a mistake made yesterday. You may be laying the groundwork for tomorrow. But the work is being done today.

Worry, in any way, shape, or form is a tremendous waste of energy and emotion, and rarely does anything to help anyone. Yes, you will take time to think about yesterday, and learn from it. Yes, you will take time to consider the possibilities, and plan for tomorrow. But all your action, that happens today.

Where can I apply this in my life?
What in your life are you focused on, that isn’t happening today? What are you worried about, even obsessing about, even though there’s nothing you can do about it today? How does that make you feel? How useful is this expenditure of energy and emotion?

What if you could harness all that energy, all that emotion, all that dread and direct it into doing something right now? Even if it’s not related to what you are worried about, it will get something useful done, right? And that’s better than nothing, right?

So often when we dread something, we turn our focus and our energy to something we can do nothing about, so we end up doing nothing. So not only are we wasting our energy and emotion, but we are wasting time. Time that could be used for anything we want to do (or even things we don’t want to do, but should be done anyway).

Grab some paper and write down a couple things you are dreading. It might be your next report card, the next holiday (and the formal family meal), or Monday Morning. Which of the things on your list can you actually do change, modify, alter, improve or otherwise do something about?

Make some kind of mark next to those, and now turn your attention to the other items on your list. If you are certain there is nothing you can do to avoid, alter, or improve them, why are you dreading them? What benefit do you get from dread? Or is it just a colossal waste of your time, effort, and emotion? If you dread it now, you are simply suffering twice, right?

Going back to the items on your list with marks next to them. Take a moment and consider what specifically you can do about each. Take a moment and write down a plan in a couple sentences, and the first step you would take to start that the plan.

If you are going to try to raise your grades, this quarter may be a loss, but there is the whole rest of the year. The plan may be to make sure all homework is done (and handed in), that any extra projects are completed (to take a shot at every possible point), and that studying will be ranked higher than partying. The first step might well be to not wait until the next quarter, but begin immediately.

When you have a feel for what you need to do for each item, select which one you will start first, and which of the others might be started sooner, rather than later. But it all starts today, so find out what the very first thing to do is, and do it. In the case of grades, go find the book, and read a chapter or two.

Whatever you wish to accomplish, you start now, you have to get started today.

From: Twitter, @PictureBlogs
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/charlesms137427.html
Photo by loco’s photos

On October 2nd, 1950, the comic strip Peanuts was first published. The rest, as they say, is history. Thanks for all the great laughs.