This week, until 3 January, you can purchase Seize the Day from Kevin Mayhew Ltd at a 10 per cent discount, using the code SEIZE10 when ordering the title from the company’s website. With the book normally retailing at £14.99, that’s a saving of £1.50. Just type the code into the relevant box at the online checkout between the dates given.
Here, meanwhile, is the fourth of the reflections I’ll be posting this week from the book, to run alongside this promotion.
When you fret about the future
There are more things to alarm us than to harm us,
and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
If the fight is tomorrow,
then why should you clench your fist today?
Cameroon proverb
Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow,
but only empties today of its strength.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
When you fret about the future,
questioning your ability to cope;
when you worry about work,
money,
health,
relationships,
fearful they may unravel;
when you brood about challenges you may face,
wondering whether you’re strong enough to meet
the difficulties life might bring;
when you consider the demands
that could be placed on you,
the responsibilities you may be asked to take on,
uncertain whether you have what it takes to bear them;
when you agonise over the state of the world,
and the inadequacy of anything you can do
to make things better;
when worry sits forever on your shoulder,
relentless in its pursuit of you,
disturbing even your hours of sleep –
then it’s time to stop and take stock:
to forget about tomorrow
and focus instead on today.
For why fear what may be,
when, equally well, it may not?
Why fight a battle in a war that may never happen?
If what you dread transpires,
that is the time to tackle it,
but you cannot change anything until it does.
Focus, rather, on what you can address now –
on what,
here in this present moment,
you can do to make a difference.
Do not ask yourself ‘what if?’
Consider, instead, what is.
And let that be sufficient for the day.