Why Good Today?
Life & Productivity
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Life & Productivity 〰️
It happened to me on my way home from work one Friday.
The weekend had finally arrived. It had been an unusually hard week, but it faded away in my rear view mirror as the thrill of the weekend began to hit me on my daily commute home. Before me awaited a much-needed, lazy weekend with my family to recharge before I faced another unwanted Monday morning.
With joy in my heart, I waltzed through our front door, only to realize my weekend plans had changed. Our living room was a wreck, dinner was not yet prepared, and my wonderful wife stood holding our beautiful baby as he cried (nothing shatters the idea of peace and relaxation like the sound of a crying baby).
I should have raced to aid my wife, comfort my child, or clean the house, but I didn’t. I was disappointed with the false hopes of something that didn’t happen instead of being present in the moment before me.
I think we’ve all felt something like that. That blindly optimistic feeling that things will “just fall into place eventually.” Maybe it’s:
We’ll finally have enough space once we buy that bigger house.
I’ll finally enjoy work once I get that next promotion.
Everything will be better once we have that next vacation.
It’s an easy feeling to have: to cast off the burdens of today for the future hope in a better tomorrow. But the reality is that the bigger home, the better job, the brighter future may never come, and if it actually does, that doesn’t guarantee that your life will be any richer.
Good, Not Perfect.
The reality of life is that we simply won’t know what the future holds for us. James 4:14 says that “you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” For a Little Time. That should motivate us.
Looking back on my disappointing Friday night, I think my mistake wasn’t that I had hopes in the future weekend, but rather that I was looking forward the “perfect” future to the neglect of my “good” today.
One of the core values of the Good Today co. is to focus on making the most out of what we have. We live in a world consumed by the need to have more, more, and more. People focus their energy on buying or getting more _____ (Fill in the blank) instead of enjoying and cherishing what they already have.
This made a huge difference for Kayla and me. We started to pivot our mindset from “how nice it would be to have new dishes, a new car, and a new nightstand for Matt (it needs some serious help! We’ll cover that in a different post…), and started to embrace the value of what our belongings offered us. That rickety old nightstand may not be the “dream” nightstand I yearned for, but with some elbow grease and a couple screws, I could turn it into exactly what I needed. We learned contentment, peace of mind in what we had, and even creativity as we learned to leverage what we had to serve us.
We began to think about our lives differently. We tried to make the most out of our days by learning what we valued most and started to prioritize those things as we scheduled our time. Our goal was to avoid the inevitable pitfall of trying to live life perfectly, and instead daily live an intentional life that is valuable, invigorating, and good.
Today, Not Tomorrow.
By reorienting our lives on our values daily, we have an opportunity that many never stop to consider.
Quickly imagine what your life will look like in ten years if you don’t change anything about your life. Probably, you’ll be working in a similar job that you have now, your relationships will be the same, maybe worse than what they are now, and your “dream future” may still feel ten years away. The sad part of this experiment is, unless you live intentionally, the things you care about most may still feel far away. Our deeds, not our dreams, will be what define us.
An example that is near and dear to my heart is parenthood. I have a one-year-old and another baby on the way. Let’s say that fatherhood and having a good relationship with my kids is a value, a priority, in my life. In ten years, my oldest son will be eleven (that’s crazy to imagine!). The way I see it, I have two ways I can live my life, and this choice could potentially have huge ramifications on my relationship with him.
Option One is to live passively, not thinking purposefully about how I spend my time with him, hoping that in ten years we’ll just have a good relationship. That sounds silly, but I think that’s how we can often live in a lot of ways. This option means that we don’t spend a lot of intentional time together, just catching moments together whenever they just drop into my lap, stepping in when my wife needs help with discipline or teaching, and just hoping for the best.
Option Two is to live intentionally, thinking about how I can orient my life in ways that facilitates my relationship with him to flourish, even when hard times come. I strategize. I plan. I think creatively about ways I can show my kids that I love them, I work hard to provide for them, and I’m never too busy to be there for them if they really need their daddy to be there.
One small change. One small way of thinking could have monumental impacts on what our lives will look like. Are you willing to make that change?
What do you value? What are the things that give your life purpose? In whatever season you find yourself, what are the things that you aren’t willing to sacrifice? How do you want to be remembered? Whatever your answer, those things take effort to happen.
Don’t just assume that the things you care about most will find space to fill in on your calendar.
You have one life to live, and every day you have the chance to fill your time with things that will either distract you or direct you towards a life you want to live. Don’t wait for tomorrow to start planning for these priorities. Start today.
Life, Well-Lived.
Ultimately, the Good Today Co. wants to facilitate a world in which people live and strive and dream about the things we care about most. A way of life where people live with purpose, a clear direction in which every day matters. A way of life that whenever a day like my disappointing Friday comes, I embrace it, lean into the change, and seek to make that struggle valuable.
It isn’t bad to hope for a new house (we certainly would love a few more square feet for toys and diaper storage!), a new car (my 2011 Subaru Outback has its good days and bad…), or a new job. But it is a missed opportunity to sit back and wait for those dreams to come instead of moving towards those dreams daily, motivated by the goodness of today. Life isn’t always about the destination, often times it’s the journey that matters most.
We think that’s an inspiring way to live, and we hope that you do to. That’s why we started this blog, and we invite you to join us as we seek to make every day as valuable as we can.
P.S. We are aware of the grammatical differences between “good” and “well,”
