I got this sentence from Ryan Holiday’s excellent book, Stillness Is The Key. It struck me instantly as simple, attainable and a pathway to peaceful living that can be accessed at will.

We spend a lot of time trying to do the next. The next is defined differently by each of us, but it might make better sense when I say that it is not the now. When we are trying to do the next, we’re skipping over this moment, opportunity, person, situation and focusing on a future one. Oftentimes, we’re focusing on a future moment we hope will be, but don’t have any guarantee or promise that it will be. We also don’t usually have the skill to bring it about, either. We just deceive ourselves that we do. Mostly we just wish the now was other than what it is. We wish the next was now.

When we do that often enough, over a long enough period of time, we train ourselves to live lives outside of the present moment regularly. We’re not available for what is now. The pages of history are filled with the stories of those who missed a moment trying to achieve the next and accomplished neither.

I’m a racing fan, and I remember a driver who was prominent in IndyCars (CART) and NASCAR in the late eighties through early two-thousands. He had moderate success and everyone expected he would be a consistent race winner and series champion. He stayed in several major racing series for many years and always attracted big dollar sponsorship and team contracts, driving for top teams before creating and driving for his own. He just never won much and never seriously contended for a championship. Ever. I will never forget an article I read about him in a wide-scale racing publication. The quote, as best as I can recall it went something like this: “The thing about him is he is always on his way to the next thing.” He wasn’t living what could have been lived, he was living the next. His results showed that consistently over a career that spanned decades.

My oldest friend from childhood and I still stay in touch. We’re both busy with families and careers and are separated by some miles, so we call each other on our birthdays, which are spaced half a year apart. This January when it was my turn to make the semi-annual call, I got some really rotten news. She has a rare form of cancer, it’s terminal and while they can manage and extend some quality of life, they can’t say whether it will be a year, five years or twenty. Medical science doesn’t have those kind of answers right now.

When she broke the news, and we began to discuss details, I expected tears – from both of us – and hurt, sadness, “why me?” and all those things that would naturally come from a diagnosis like that. And I’m sure when she first got the news, there was probably some of that, but when we talked, she’d come to a place of acceptance. Her attitude on the phone was “this is the life I have, the hand I’m dealt and I’m going to live it until I can’t.” She is living what can be lived.

I really respect that level of maturity and admire her a lot. It brings some perspective about the things that really matter and what they are.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming about and planning for the future. We’re unwise if we fail to do either. But those are not things we do in real time. We do them in our quiet times, or with our loved ones, partners, friends and associates. We schedule planning meetings, we develop strategic plans, we have five year goals and the like. We usually establish steps along the way that need to be taken and markers we can identify to track and gauge our progress. Those are all correct and needful things to do.

But once those things are done, written down and decided upon, we get there by taking one step, then the next and the one after that. Living what can be lived is doing the thing today in the now that gets me to that future, but is focusing on the current step. Doing what can be done and doing it with excellence as though it was the goal itself. There is a saying, “How you do one thing is how you’ll do everything.” To me, that is a great summation of the point I am making. The excellence with which each step is done – done properly and in the moment – will be the quality with which the goal is reached. Most high achievers have gone beyond their goals and dreams because excellence in each moment had a compounding effect, such that when the final product was achieved it was so much better than had been hoped for.

Living what can be lived must walk hand-in-hand with acceptance. We cannot be in denial about what is and live currently, that is just obvious on its face. Yet, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve all done it from time to time. I catch myself quite often doing it. The benefit of having practiced this for some time is that I can recognize when I’m feeling unsettled and stuck in a thing I am working on and the usual culprit for me is looking beyond the present moment, denying what is now and fretting about how to get to the future. I’m finding it very beneficial to build a discipline into my daily life of taking some quiet time just to settle myself, especially my fast-running mind, do some deep breathing and just slow down and bring myself back to now, with acceptance!

Tomorrow is going to come. There is no need to hurry it up, and it cannot be slowed down or stopped. It will arrive right on time. Even Jesus told his disciples tomorrow will have its own troubles, keep your focus on today. When Peter asked Jesus about another of His disciples life and future, He told him what does it matter what happens to that guy? You do you. While He didn’t say the exact words, He said, in essence, Peter, live what can be lived, not what can’t. You can’t live the other guy’s life, so don’t worry about it, live yours.

One of my life heroes is Nick Vujicic, a man born with no limbs. He is the embodiment of living what can be lived. He’ll never play in a sports league. He’ll never run a marathon. He’ll never drive a car, fly a jet, sail a yacht or ride a motorcycle. He will however speak to over three million people, in sixty countries, on five continents, author eight books and change untold numbers of lives with his message of how to live a life without limits. He has, is and will continue to live what can be lived.

Living what can be lived is not a sell-out phrase. It’s not quitting or throwing in the towel. It is the opposite of those things. It is accepting the stark reality of exactly what is and asking a really simple question: “What can I do?” It does not consider what it cannot do, that is irrelevant and cannot lead anyone to anywhere.

Consider your present reality and add to this list. In this moment, as I’m writing this, here’s a short list of things I’ve thought of that I can’t do: I can’t race a Formula One car. I can’t play for my NHL hockey team. I can’t climb Mount Everest. I can’t out cook Gordon Ramsey, I can’t hang glide, I can’t ski, I can’t run a four minute mile….need I go on? For every one of us there is an eternal list of what we can’t do. So what, who cares? What can I do? What can you do? Do any of us want to be the next Stephen King? Then let’s live what can be lived. Start writing, take a class, sign up for masterclass.com – the list of what we can do is also eternally long.

What we choose to focus on determines so much. Attitude determines altitude. There is a part of our brain that is programmed to believe what we tell it about ourselves. Are we feeding it with the things we can’t do? Are we telling it all about what we lack, or are we giving it fuel to achieve the good things we want from life? This isn’t some glass half full/glass half empty argument I’m making. This is actual neuroscience. The lives we have today have a lot to do with the things we’ve told ourselves in our yesterdays. It’s a natural jump, then, to understanding that to have the life we want tomorrow will be better aided by what we tell ourselves today.

It’s not oversimplification, it’s choice. Nowhere on this blog will anyone hear me say that it’s simple or easy, because it’s not. It’s hard, it takes conviction and sweat and it will cost us. But you will hear me say it is possible and worth it. In spades. If anyone else ever did it, so can we. All they did was choose to pay the price, no matter the cost.

Let’s start living what can be lived today. Let’s start doing what can be done. Let’s start asking what those things are. Let’s reconnect with those lost parts of ourselves and stop denying ourselves the best life we could have when we discover that’s what we’re doing. It’s up to us, it’s about our choices. We are writing the stories of our lives. They might as well be awesome ones.