This is not a cliche. It is not a reminder that life is short. It is a timeless truth, a simple truth, and a truth that few people use to guide their daily thought and action.
Today is the most important day of your life.
It is the recognition that every opportunity you have tomorrow is determined by your intention, purpose, and skill today.
People tend to romanticize the past and dream of the future. It leaves them caught between a past that controls them and future that avoids them. While the past is important for education, you can’t be good yesterday. While the future is important for vision, you can’t be good tomorrow. Today is all you get.
You may believe that a day from your past was the most important or the really important part of your life hasn’t arrived yet. Don’t believe that. Everything in the future depends on what you do today.
A lot of talented people with great promise in their careers get derailed by a past they can’t change and a future they can’t know. People want to control everything: the past, the present, and the future. There’s only one thing you control, and that’s what you do today.
There is nothing you can do to change the outcome of previous circumstances and what will happen next year, next month, or next week is unknown. But what you do today brings clarity.
Tomorrow is never guaranteed and tomorrow won’t be better—unless you make it better today.
In business, there is a great principle called The Time Value of Money. Investopedia defines it like this.
The time value of money is the idea that money available at the present time is worth more than the same amount in the future due to its potential earning capacity. This core principle of finance holds that, provided money can earn interest, any amount of money is worth more the sooner it is received.
