+1: Day-Tight Compartments (#1326)

2022-11-07

The Place to Live to Dominate the Day In our last +1, Dale Carnegie joined us to complement some Brian Cain wisdom about the importance of focusing on THIS moment (RIGHT NOW!) to crowd out any potential stress about the past or the future that might be eliciting some feelings of depression or anxiety. As you may recall, and, don’t worry! I promise that I will continue to unapologetically repeat all the important themes we discuss to make sure we’re practicing one of the key tenets of Learning 101 known as “spaced repetition” … Here’s how Cainer put it: ...

The Place to Live to Dominate the Day

In our last +1, Dale Carnegie joined us to complement some Brian Cain wisdom about the importance of focusing on THIS moment (RIGHT NOW!) to crowd out any potential stress about the past or the future that might be eliciting some feelings of depression or anxiety.

As you may recall, and, don’t worry! I promise that I will continue to unapologetically repeat all the important themes we discuss to make sure we’re practicing one of the key tenets of Learning 101 known as “spaced repetition” …

Here’s how Cainer put it: “Remember, depression is obsession with the past, anxiety is obsession about the future, and optimal performance is obsession about the present.”

And…

Here’s how Carnegie put it: “George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: ‘The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.’ So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.”

Now…

I ended that +1 with one of my go-to lines, encouraging you to consider putting this wisdom into practice “All day, every day. Especially… TODAY!”

Which makes me think of ANOTHER Big Idea from Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

He tells: “So let’s be content to live the only time we can possibly live: from now until bedtime. ‘Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, from now until nightfall,’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. ‘Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.’"

And…

Carnegie encourages us to consider living in what he calls “Day-tight compartments.”

He tells us: “Shut the iron doors on the past and the future. Live in Day-tight compartments.”

Then…

He tells us to ask ourselves THESE questions:

“Do I tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to yearn for some ‘magical rose garden over the horizon’?
Do I sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the past—that are over and done with?
Do I get up in the morning determined to ‘Seize the day’—to get the utmost out of these twenty-four hours?
Can I get more out of life by ‘living in day-tight compartments’?
When shall I start to do this? Next week? ... Tomorrow? ... Today?”

Those are some GREAT questions.

And…

Reflecting on those is the focus of Today’s +1.

Let’s spend a moment doing so now…

“Do you tend to put off living in the present in order to worry about the future, or to yearn for some ‘magical rose garden over the horizon’?
Do you sometimes embitter the present by regretting things that happened in the past—that are over and done with?
Do you get up in the morning determined to ‘Seize the day’—to get the utmost out of these twenty-four hours?
Can you get more out of life by ‘living in day-tight compartments’?
When shall you start to do this? Next week? ... Tomorrow? ... Today?”