Words of Wisdom from a Couple of Jersey Guys

In other words, focus simply and completely on winning today.  Fleetwood Mac might have exhorted us not to stop thinking about tomorrow but believe me when I tell you that thinking about tomorrow and stressing yourself out about tomorrow are not flip sides of the same coin.  They are two different beasts entirely.  

People defeat themselves in life as often, if not more often, than outside circumstances do.  They do so – in no small part – because they fail to appreciate the difference between Fear (Rule Number Six) and Panic (Rule Number Seven).  Worse still, they treat the two concepts as if they are identical and, therefore, interchangeable.  It is a common mistake – at least as common as the one many people make with Eagerness and Anxiety.  

But I digress.

 

Fear can be a beautiful and inspirational thing.  It fuels you.  It drives you.  It hones your commitment to the task at hand.  You want to know a good, short cheat test for whether you love the most important people in your life:  Ask yourself if it scares you - even for an eye-blink - to envision your life without them in it.  See, this is not calculus.  If it was, Pop Pop could not do it.  This stuff, unlike calculus, is easy.  Also, unlike calculus, you will actually use this stuff in your day-to-day.

Panic on the other hand is an unhealthy thing. It is an emotion that can kill you - and will if you let it. It deprives you of your ability to think clearly and cogently. More importantly, it turns off the logic and common sense part of your brain, which (whether you realize it or not)you likely rely upon countless times every day. It reduces you to a stimulus/response approach to life, for which you are ill-suited. Worst of all, you stop acting and start reacting. As your panic level ratchets up, and a solution to your problem appears to be disappearing along the horizon line, you realize you are no longer standing where you once were. You are now in quicksand. The more you struggle, the faster you sink.  

Best way to avoid such a nightmare scenario? Remove panic from your day-to-day. To steal a line from the great John Lennon, "It's easy if you try."  

So try, OK?  Do not devote a moment of your day - any day - to worrying about things you cannot control.  Harness your energy into maximizing the things you can control, such as time spent with those who love you and those who you love most of all, so that you extract from that time and from those experiences every smidgen of karmic B-12 possible.  Life is a contact sport after all.  You will need all the positive juju you can get to continue powering your way through it.  

Win Today.  Just that. Nothing more.  In doing so, you will accomplish as much as anyone in recorded history has ever accomplished. No one shall ever accomplish more. At day's end, tell those you love most and those who love you most of all just how much you love them, go to sleep, and wake up the next day rested and ready to win it.  

Remember, in Hollywood and on Bow Tie Greeting Cards life appears to be comprised solely of  "tentpole moments". In the world where you and I live our day-to-day we learn quite early on that life's magic is not found in its big things.  It is found in the realization that there are no big things and what we initially believed to be big things are an incalculable amount of little things, which often go by so fast that we blink at the risk of missing them.  

Live in the moment.  Win the day.  If you are so inclined, smoke a joint to take the edge off.  

Take it from a couple of battle-tested, weathered Jersey Guys, we know of which we speak.     

-AK