My very good friend, Becky, and I have a Scarlet O’Hara approach to life. When we don’t really want to deal with something difficult or hurtful, we shrug our shoulders and proclaim, “I don’t have to think about that today. I’ll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.” Ahhh procrastination, it’s the easy way out. You know, “why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?”
Sounds like a good plan, until tomorrow is here. Because if we are lucky, there will be tomorrows, but what we do today will set our course and the final outcome, assuming it was truly what we wanted.
Let’s take Scarlet, for example. Scarlet was beautiful, but she was also vain, self-centered, and much like a spoiled child. When her beloved, family-owned plantation, Tara, collapsed with the Civil War uprising, her sole mission was to regain control of Tara, rebuild her family home and live happily ever after with the man of her dreams, Ashley Wilkes. She had two very different courses of action, one required a plan of the mind and body for rebuilding Tara. The other required a plan of the heart for winning Ashley (for which she failed). Goals of the mind and body are easier to plan and accomplish. Unfortunately, goals of the heart usually rely upon the action(s) of another and should be avoided at all costs. But lessons must always be learned and can’t be taught. So enters Rhett Butler, the handsome, wealthy, bachelor who had his own plans of the heart for Scarlet. And it just gets uglier.
Gone with the Wind has always been and always will be one of my favorite movies (except it is a VERY long movie). I could have shortened it considerably. I just never understood why it took Scarlet the entire “long” movie to realize what she wanted all along, Tara and Rhett. And when she realized it, rather than picking herself up and fighting for it, she simply procrastinated, “Tara. Home. I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get him (Rhett) back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”
By the time she had arrived at this great epiphany, she had wasted so much time and energy on the wrong things. How sad is that? How many times do we waste bits and pieces of our life that we can never get back? We waste it on the wrong job, the wrong people, the wrong thoughts. We waste it worrying about money or things or how we do this or that?
So, what’s the point? Here it is: we can have it all, we can lose it all. Today? Tomorrow? There are no guarantees.
Now, you know I have to pull all this together and wrap it around fitness, so here it is. This week, I’ve heard a few, “Oh, I can’t afford a gym membership.” I will never understand that mentality. Taking care of yourself should be a top priority or your quality of life tomorrow will not be worth the wait.
Here’s what I say to you today my friends. Do not procrastinate on anything. Make life happen. Decide what you want and do it. Figure it out. And while taking one day at a time seems like a pretty good motto, make sure each day has a plan.
After all, tomorrow is another day!
Peace to you!