I have long held the belief that success is largely dependent upon our ability to suck it up in the present in service of our future selves.

Our actions today dictate our circumstances later. When we bear that truth in mind (and have clarity about what we ultimately desire and value), we’re better able to prioritize behaviors that don’t just feel good in a fleeting, sugar-high, dopamine-rush sort of way, but a long-term, mature way. 

Your bed may feel womb-like this morning, but will staying in it an hour longer make you feel any more accomplished and energized than getting up to exercise will?

That viral cookie may have you salivating now, but how will its 30 grams of sugar leave you feeling in an hour? And taken from a broader perspective: will the meal or snack you’re considering have the potential to be disease causing, or disease preventing?

Maintaining an organized home is wholly dependent on your ability to attend to tasks that need doing now, rather than delaying them in favor of doing most anything. 

When you make the bed in the morning, you give your evening self the gift of an elevated nightly ritual.

When you take the time to re-hang the items of clothing you tried on, but did not ultimately wear, your later self gets to return to a calm, rather than chaotic, space.

When you take five or ten minutes now to sort through a smattering of mail, you ensure your future self doesn’t have to eventually face a seemingly unending stack of papers.

When you edit regularly and maintain organizing systems, you make not only your life easier in the future, but also your loved ones’ (none of us are taking anything with us when we go!). 

Each decision you make now determines the reality your future self will inhabit.

The trouble is, it’s easier than ever before to give into a myriad of unproductive temptations that lure you away from constructive choices and towards quick-hits of pseudo-pleasure. A session of doom-scrolling when what you need is deep breathing. Seven new sweatshirts when what you need is less to launder. Overly processed fast-food when what would make you feel better is a meal with actual, green vegetables in it. Becoming one with your sofa when what would make you less depressed or anxious is to tie up your shoes and go for a walk.

Choosing the better, wiser, more long-term action requires that you persistently ask yourself the question: what will make me feel my best later on? 

Or, if avoiding the negative is a more motivating approach for you: which choice is sure to land me in circumstances (likely ones I know all too well by now!) that cause me to feel fatigued/ frustrated/sick/regretful? What can I do today to avoid that shitty feeling later? 

What you do now does not exist in a vacuum. It is a link on a much longer chain that becomes your life trajectory.

So, do it now, for you, later.

The dishes, the mail-sorting, the re-folding, the exercising, the cooking, the meditating, the planning, the putting-the-screen-down-and-for-the-love-of-homo-freaking-sapien-deep-breathing.

Like anything, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes to attend to what is necessary now. Not because it’s easiest or most entertaining or most comfortable, but because doing so makes you able to envision yourself–tonight, two weeks from now, twelve years down the road, at the end of your life–saying: thank you for caring well for me.