Did you win today?  Did you win just now?  How do you even know? How do you measure your day?  When do you decide that you have won?  And how does that affect you going forward?

Tough questions, right?  I don’t know about you, but the concept of winning the day was overwhelming for me.  To be able to look at an entire day and decide if i had won or lost was a challenge.  So much happens in a day.  It becomes very easy to look at one rough spot and define the day by that experience or interaction.

I needed a better way and I suspect you do as well.  I see patients all day based on fifteen-minute increments of time.  Some get two increments and some get four or more.  Depending on the procedure.  For this reason, I have defined my now as a fifteen-minute block of time.  I try to win in that little chunk of time.  If I win, great.  Move on to the next and try to win again.  A few wins in a row and you have a nice little win streak.

The challenge is when you have a time when you struggle.  And you will.  Don’t let it crush you.  You have another opportunity coming up soon.  Even the best sports teams ever took some losses.  Or at least some setbacks during their victories.  Be careful to not let that loss alter the trajectory of your day.  Get right back up.  Dust yourself off and get back in the game.

You may not find significance in the fifteen-minute block of time.  For you it might be five minutes.  It might be an hour if your day is full of meetings.  It might be a fluid amount of time if you are on the phone with people.  It might be all over the place if you are in another line of work.  Or volunteering.  Or parenting.  Or whatever it may be.

Find out your now.  Define it.  Recognize it.  And then do your best to win in that amount of time.  Once you define that time, you will be on your way to some self-awareness of your thoughts and mental state.  And self-awareness is huge.

I am wishing you all the best as you walk this journey of life.  May God truly bless you as you ponder these thoughts.