After I finished high school, I worked in a bookstore for a year.
One night, while I was working the register, I noticed we had these chocolate-covered coffee beans for sale.
I grabbed a bag, ripped it open, and threw one of these suckers into my mouth.
Of course, it was sweet and smooth chocolate on the outside. But when I bit through it, I got to the bitter, chalky coffee bean in the middle.
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
Ok, no problem. I just had another chocolate-covered coffee bean — and the bad taste was instantly fixed.
The sweet chocolate on the outside took care of the bitterness left lingering from earlier.
But then again, I was left with that charcoal-like coffee bean in the middle.
The rest of the evening was a blur. When I came to, hours later, I noticed a half dozen empty bags of chocolate-covered coffee beans all around me. I was sweating, scratching my face, glancing furiously at customers who avoided making eye contact with me.
I hadn’t thought about this scene for years but for some reason it connected to a quote I read recently. It comes from Eric Hoffer who wrote:
“There is no more potent dwarfing of the present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future.”
Hoffer was writing about how leaders of mass movements get people to make big sacrifices. We were great once, these leaders say, and we will great again one day. Whatever is happening right now is nothing in the cosmic scale of history.
This attitude is effective at the mass movement level because it is effective at the individual level. At least for the right profile of person.
For example, I personally had a big realization over the past year.
I realized I spend a lot of time daydreaming about how glorious life will be after I just achieve a few more things. And I wince when I think back on the times when I was more productive, successful, or happy than I am right now.
The fact is, that’s how I feel much of the time, regardless of what’s going on in my life externally.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you that it’s not worthwhile working to achieve anything.
The fact is, working towards a goal is one of the sure-fire ways I’ve found to feel positive in life.
But what I am telling you is:
You’ve gotta learn to enjoy the present now, as much as you can. This includes the process of working to achieve anything.
Otherwise, you might come to, years later, with a half dozen completed projects all around you… and find yourself sweating, scratching your face, and thinking furiously of the next fix that can take the bad taste out of your mouth.
And now for business:
If you are working to achieve anything, you might find you need good marketing and writing ideas to help your project become a success. In that case, you might like my newsletter, because these are topics I write about on most days. You can sign up here.