Stay Focused On The Present

The Daily Stoic for June 19th, “Stay Focused On The Present”.

“Don’t let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you. Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.”
—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.36

In line with yesterday’s stoic, today’s passage is a clear call to action. As I mentioned yesterday, I am the kind of person that gets usually crushed by the future: What can go wrong, what can fail, the terrible consequences… That’s especially relevant for me at this moment of my life.

Why?

For quite some time now, I’ve been focusing on my last project, Companio. It’s a quite complex project, and it’s taking a lot of time and energy from me. Especially, there are many considerations in so many areas, and lots of problems to have in mind.

I’m glad that the business is growing, and everything seems to be well but, as I mentioned earlier, I’m always worrying about the future, what can go wrong, and struggling to have everything under control.

Stay Focused On The Present

That was painfully clear the other day, when suddenly three different problems arrived from three different areas of the business. As the CEO, all of them were my responsibility.

I was completely overwhelmed, especially because all of them required a lot of time and could not be solved right away. My initial reaction was panicking. It was a hard moment for me.

However, luckily yesterday’s stoic has had its influence on me. It took me some time to actually recover and think on how to face these problems, and I decided that the best approach was to take small steps and try to solve what I could solve at that very moment, and then take care of the rest thanks to the rest of the team later.

That gave me some peace of mind.

Edit: two days later, things are starting to solve, and I am feeling better. Still, I have to take care of some stuff, but I see it from a much more brighter perspective now. Lesson learned: you can’t do anything at once. Try to approach big problems step by step, and eventually, things would go well.

Conclusion

Today’s Daily Stoic, “Stay Focused On The Present”, expands on the topic of yesterday’s stoic excerpt. We need to stay focused on the present, on what we can do right now, and avoid being overwhelmed by the future possibilities.