I know it is not really Groundhog’s Day, is it? We all remember the movie starring Bill Murray playing the part of jaded newscaster Phil Connors, who has been asked to report on the ridiculous event in Punxsutawney, PA. He wakes up every morning, doomed to repeat each day. He goes through a few cycles, and soon, his cynicism really takes hold of him, and he goes rather mad. Then, he transforms himself, accepts his fate, and sets out to have the perfect day. He succeeds and, after learning the valuable lesson of how precious life is, is finally released from his prison and can carry on his new life.
So we are actually in a similar circumstance ourselves, except for the fact that one day we will not have any more days (on this earth at least). We wake up every day and, with each rising sun, have the opportunity to take on a new day and do something really lame or potentially spectacular. We can dwell in a selfish cesspool of misery, or we can go out into the wild world and try to have an impact on at least one person’s life. Phil Connors finally figured this out after countless repetitions, and so do we. If you were to rate each day that you make the attempt, how would you rate yourself?
Take a moment and create a scale from 1 to 10 in a notebook. 1 would be you are laid up in a hospital and quite literally incapable of doing anything, and 10 would be that you are leaving on a plane after selling all your possessions to live a life following in the footsteps of Mother Theresa. How would you describe the other rankings? What would your 5 be? Once you have done this, look back for the last few days. How would you score them? An even better question: how is today going? What could you do for the rest of today and this evening to raise your score a bit?
Watch my video on this subject, here
Some people would argue that life is too short to go through the agony of anything that you would not score high on this list. You should make every day awesome and treat every day as if it was your last. I think this is good motivation, but not reality. We still have to take the garbage out. We still have to pay the rent/mortgage. We still need to feed ourselves and our family. We have to learn and gain some valuable skills. However, we can elevate ourselves beyond our current view of the world and imagine where we can start making everyday count higher.
We are definitely what we decide to do every day. Our talents are one thing, but what really makes us who we are are the decisions that we make each and every day. Where do we choose to spend the hours, minutes, and seconds allocated to us? That is a decision, and that decision is under our control. Once you start realizing that the same 24 hours are granted to everyone, you will begin to truly understand that the power to change, transform, and become a better person is entirely in your playbook.
We will never have the opportunity that Phil Connors had in repeating the same exact day, every day, until he finally got it right. We also cannot be the groundhog and crawl into our hole and hide from our very shadow. We have the next best thing. We have the ability to rise again each day and try again. Each day older, wiser, mentally stronger, and more resilient. We can continuously push each day when suddenly, seemingly by a miracle, we have obtained all that we hoped for. No one will see the early morning rise, the denied sugary snacks, the extra mile of running you did when you were just about to collapse. However, you will, and slowly, over time, you will have that perfect day.
