Ask a random person to identify the most important day of their life and you’ll probably hear things like the day they were born, the day they met their significant other, their wedding day, the birth of their child; any of the major milestone days of our lives.
Unless the person has a major life event scheduled on the day you ask the question, I think it’s safe to assume that no one would name today. But for each of us there is no more important day than today.
This is not to suggest that what happens today will be more consequential than a day of one of those major life events. The odds are that today will be just another day. That’s not what matters. What makes today so important, and indeed every new day we are given, is that it is the only day within our control.
Memories of wonderful days from the past give our lives meaning, but in the end they are forever behind us. Whether yesterday was amazing, depressing or entirely forgettable is irrelevant in the context of today. It’s gone now. Sealed in stone and unchangeable. What we did in our pasts led us to this present moment, but it has no bearing, or only as much as we choose to give it, on what we decide to do with today.
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The opportunity to choose how we spend today is our most precious freedom. That choice, the one each of us is presented with every morning, is so obvious and apparent that we tend to take it for granted, like the air we breathe.
Too often we allow ourselves to waste the present moment by thinking about things from the past that we can’t change, or get distracted by worries for the future, which is as equally beyond our reach as a day from the past. Or maybe we just get caught up in the busyness of the day-to-day that we don’t even think about the importance of today. And before we know it the day is gone.
On the surface that doesn’t seem like a big deal, after all, there’s always tomorrow. Yet, in the end the decision of how we spend today is so important because it is the only guarantee we have. Tomorrow is promised to no one.
The fact that our days are finite is inextricably bound to the importance of today. I realize it’s morbid to think about, but one of these days will be our last. For good reason our brains are hard-wired not to think about death. Imagine how terrifying and miserable we would be if our mortality was constantly on our minds? Yet it is that very uncertainty that makes today so important. Knowing that death is inevitable and unpredictable are powerful reminders that today, this moment, is so important.
In the context of our careers, this paradigm can be powerful. To use one example that’s all so common these days among middle aged professionals: telling ourselves that we only have X-number of years to go in a job that makes us miserable before we can retire and be happy doesn’t sound so appealing when we remember that there’s no guarantee we will be around to enjoy our retirement.
Of course, there’s a balance between a carpe diem mindset and planning for the future. Just because we may not be here tomorrow doesn’t mean that we should live our lives as if tomorrow didn’t matter. We owe it to ourselves and the people counting on us to plan responsibly.
The problem for many middle-aged professionals is that after decades of building successful careers it’s very easy to succumb to the illusion that events are within our control. Our histories and track records program us to take tomorrow for granted. Much of the value we bring to our jobs is based on our ability to make decisions that lead to better tomorrows for our businesses.
But, of course, no matter how meticulously or flawlessly we plan for the future, life offers no assurances that we will be around to enjoy it. Reminding ourselves of that fact regularly can be life changing.
What if you approached each day with the mindset that it is the most important day of your life? It’s quite possible you would choose to do today exactly what you’re doing. And that’s great. But my guess is if we reminded ourselves more often how important today is, there might be a couple of things we’d do differently. It could be something small, like calling a friend or family member we haven’t spoken with in a while or savoring the sunset for a few moments. Whatever it is, if it makes us take today a little less for granted, it will make each of our days, however many we are given, all the richer.
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