It’s impossible for you to control or direct your future. It’s time to stop hoping that one day you will get there, that one day life will be awesome.

You can invest all the time you like in making sacrifices now so that you eventually get to enjoy the rewards. You can skip all your favourite foods, force yourself to rigidly follow strict diets that don’t make you feel at all happy or whole, hoping that it will ‘pay off’, that if you do it properly and for long enough you will wake up one day with that perfect body. You can train your little butt off always with one eye on the future, always with the idea that if you just push that little bit harder or for that little bit longer –

Then eventually you will get there.

You can spend the next week, month, year and even decade chasing the idea of who you want to be. Pushing yourself. Putting dreams on hold as you’re not yet ready for them – or not yet worthy for them.

Or –

Or you can look back and realise that you’ve already spent the past week, month, year and even decade chasing the idea of who you want to be and yet you haven’t yet got there.

You only have today? No, actually.

You only have this moment.

The Future Doesn’t Exist

I want you to realise that the future doesn’t exist, except in your mind. And if in your mind it is a wondrous and magical place where you look freaking hot all the time, where you never eat emotionally or binge, where you have your dream body and life and job and where you’ve finally paid your dues and can enjoy your life –

You are most definitely never going to get there.

Do you see how you set yourself up for failure by always looking ahead, always promising yourself that if you only do this, if you only stop that then one day, one day, one day –

You can be happy.

Don’t you see how illogical that is?

I don’t mean to be depressing. I am going somewhere with this. But I just have this feeling that we all need a bit of a wake up call sometimes. A call to follow our dreams NOW.

And I know – it’s easy for me to talk. It’s easy to stand here and tell you that life is now, that you have to press play right away. In so many ways I’m still just as guilty as ever of projecting my dream life into a far-off time.

I still find myself often making food decisions based on what I think it will do to my body tomorrow or next week rather than what feels right for me now.

I sometimes sacrifice time with my daughter so that I can ‘get ahead’ with my business, even though I know that no matter how hard I work I will never be done. Which is actually a good thing, I realise – when I stop to remember that I do actually enjoy what I do, that it doesn’t have to be ‘checked off’.

How about you?

Look at the way you spend your days. Are you living for the moment? I don’t mean in a reckless way, but I think you know that.

What I mean is, are you engaging NOW? Are you enjoying what you do NOW? Are you present? Are you saying yes to things that make you happy, that feel right and in alignment, even if others (or you) may think you’re not yet ready for those things; that you haven’t earned it or simply don’t have time.

Are you?

Are you saying no or no more to things that are shoulds or musts, things that society or your own busy mind have told you simply have to be done. Things that you actually – if you can stop and be honest – don’t care about at all and that certainly are not part of your dream life.

Are you?

Or are you trapped by what you have to do each day?

Are you so used to paying your dues that you can’t see any other way to live, and perhaps don’t want to?

The Secret to Your Deepest Success

It’s not about who works the hardest, the longest, the most strategically.

Perhaps those things count on some level.

But only if you can find a way to enjoy them now, to be fully present and engaged and feel in flow.

The secret to your deepest success is to find a way to love what you’re doing now. Right now. Not this afternoon. Not when you’ve completed your tasks or chores.

But now.

This means, in some areas, letting go.

Is it really so important to have the house spotless or even half-tidy before you are allowed to enjoy your day?

Do you have to answer all your emails and get up to date on social media before you do the stuff that makes your heart sing?

Must you always delay creative or joyful pasttimes like writing, drawing, painting, exploring until you have time?

Just think about it.

In other areas, it means starting now.

Why can’t you wear the beautiful clothes you’d love to wear ‘if only you had the right body’?

And who said you can’t spend a day doing absolutely nothing without yet having completed every single thing you said you would do. Are you ever actually likely to have done so anyway? Have you yet?

How about the way you make a living? Do you really have to know where to start to just – start? Do you actually need a business plan or even an idea of what your business could be? I’ve written a business plan for 2013. It’s the first time I’ve ever done it. When I started online – in 2008 – I literally just started writing. No plan. No purpose. Just a desire to write.

What’s your desire?

What do you want to do ‘one day’?

What sort of life would be just so amazing and incredible that it would be ‘too good to be true’.

And why can’t it be true, now?

Don’t give me excuses. Don’t even give me reasons, or musts.

The truth is that you have complete responsibility over how you live your life. However you pass your time is 100% within your control. And you can always change things. And you can do that NOW. Those things you consider valid reasons for putting your life on hold and not yet living your dreams –

Isn’t it true that others before you have gone out and done it anyway?

And isn’t it true that if you suddenly had a month to live you’d do things vastly differently?

So why not now?

Why not today?

The truth is that it’s impossible for you to create or direct the future.

But you can create your now.

You can choose your now.

Just imagine .

If you were already living your dream life, in your dream body, doing what you loved, what would be different about today? About this moment?

It’s time for a mindset shift beautiful.

It’s time to stop putting off what you really want, who you truly long to be.

It’s time for you to face up to the fact that if not now –

Probably never.

If you choose to keep living for the future then you too, like the vast majority of people out there, will look back on a life never quite right, filled with wishes and one days.

It’s time for you to realise that there IS no other time but now and that if you’re willing to step up and choose to live and love your life today –

You probably never will be.

I want the best for you. I want you to live an incredible and magical life.

I hope you want that for you also.

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