The Future Can’t Come

Unless you make it.

I’m sure that we have all had times when we knew there was something important to be done, but instead of taking action, we decided to “do it tomorrow”. Ofcoarse come the following day, we then say “I will do it tomorrow” once again, and this pattern would begins to loop itself indefinitely around and around. No action is taken because there is always a “tomorrow” left to put things off until.

The diagram below illustrates the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the above strategy. Our self (represented by a red circle) waits for tomorrow (the future) to become today (the present) until taking action. Ofcoarse, as time goes by, “tomorrow” is as far away as it ever was. It never comes.

This way of thinking is not just limited to things like writing reports or mowing the lawn; if that were the case, then I wouldn’t waste your time writing about such things.

I’m talking about putting hugely important things off until tomorrow.  The kind of things that you would want to do more than anything else but don’t, for whatever reason.

Something that if you did do it, could become your passion and your purpose.

Logically, pursuing such a meaningful thing is no doubt one of the most important things in a person’s life, but for the woman who puts the important off until “tomorrow”, these things can never come. All that potential for living is never actualised.

The man who never takes instant action can never take advantage when opportunity briefly shows itself. A whole warehouse of opportunities is missed. What he has to realise is that the time is never right to “go for it”, and that fortune will most likely not come in the exact packaging as he had imagined.

But you don’t have the time you say? Ofcoarse you don’t! Neither do I! No-one has enough time to do everything; it is an impossibility to have done all that you can in your lifetime. It is your choice what to do with that time. What will you prioritise your time for?

Taking action, pushing personal limits, realising potential, living with burning passion; these are things only the individual can do for herself. No-one really cares if she lives out her passion; her family and friends will love her just as much wether she is “successful” or is not. Only she has a significant stake in her victory, whatever she chooses that victory to be.

I am not going to pretend that taking instant action is always an easy thing; it’s not. Sometimes that first step looks like a leap that no person could make. It is in these times that one must do whatever it takes to get herself to take one step forward, and then another, until she is finally walking. It should be kept in mind that falling over is very natural when one is learning to walk, so allowances need to be made.

Taking action is the only thing that can bring you closer to your destination. It will not come to you; you must be ready to come to it. If the destination is not known, the first action to be taken is the action of finding out where you want to be going! But then again, you could always do that tomorrow.

~Pocket