You Don’t Get Back The Days You’ve Wasted

One by one I dropped them into the raging fire, each book a 90 day period of my life now consumed by the flames.

Once a year I’ll gather up the four quarterly planners I’d used to map out the previous year of my life. These books – part planner, part journal – have become important tools in keeping me aligned with the intentions I set for myself.

Prior to surrendering them to the fire, I’ll go back through each book one final time. Old planners are a great source of introspection where reviewing them tells me quite a bit about who I was for that 90 day segment of my life.

Some quarters were full of vibrant alignment with the goals I had set for myself. Some quarters had a great number of blank pages where no daily intentions were set or recorded. 

The blank pages have always taught me the most important lessons.

Each of those blank pages represented an opportunity to create, to grow, to live in alignment with the intentions I have set for this one life I will ever lead. Yet those opportunities were never capitalized upon and those days are gone forever. When I’m not proactively living my intentions I’m making space for living someone else’s intentions instead. The days get lived but was I actually living them?

The days in my planner don’t care what I do with them. But when you’re willing to hold yourself accountable for what you do with the finite remaining days of your life you tend to care greatly about what you do with them.

You don’t get back the days you’ve wasted.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash