“Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.”

“The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today makes the strongest falter. Waste of energy, mental distress, nervous worries dog the steps of a man who is anxious about the future. Shut close, then the great fore and aft bulkheads, and prepare to cultivate the habit of a life in “day-tight compartments.”

~ Sir William Osler addressing Yale students in the spring of  1913 (Watson, 1988, p. 216).

Sir William Osler’s words resonate with me more than ever today, 105 years after he first spoke them to a group of students at Yale University in 1913.  I was initially introduced to the phrase “living in day-tight compartments” approximately 6 years ago from someone who attended a Dale Carnegie course and who was so moved by the words that they shared them with me.  Dale Carnegie is the author of  How To Stop Worrying and Start Living, a great read that continues to be extremely relevant today.  If you are interested in learning more, some of the helpful strategies he shares in his book are mentioned in this Business Insider online article. 

So often we focus on things that we cannot change, the things that have happened in the past or what is going to happen tomorrow.  As a kid growing up in Ontario, there was always a large digital billboard on the QEW highway heading into Toronto that would post a different quote each day.

www.bestsayingquotes.com

One day, as a young teen  on my way home with my parents from church, it read, “Worrying is like a rocking chair. It keeps you busy, but doesn’t get you anywhere.”  I grew up in a time when everyone I knew in school seemed to be petrified about the threat of a nuclear bomb annihilation and doomsday.  Something that as a kid, I lost sleep over.  That quote has stayed with me years after I first saw it.  I think about how much time I have spent consumed with worry over things that I have very little if zero control over.

It is during moments of overwhelming stress in my life, that I am always reminded of the need to “live in day tight compartments” and if it is too much, then I go hour by hour or minute by minute.  I lived this strategy when my Dad passed away and I can honestly say that it really did help.

When issues or problems arise, I ask myself “What is the absolute worst that can happen?” and then I try really hard to follow the very simplistic yet wise advice in the following chart:

Courtesy of Google Images

One of the classes that I teach is a mandatory life transition class for all Grade 12’s. The purpose is to help prepare students for life after high school and the ‘real world’. We talk a lot about stress and ways to help reduce it. If you stop to imagine for a moment that unconsciously  we are all carrying around backpacks filled down with the weight of all that we do in a day, all that we still have to do and all the people we care and worry about, the bags would be overwhelmingly heavy. Now, what if we took all of that out, and filled it only with one small immediate task at a time, the bag would suddenly feel light as air and not be so oppressive. This is what Sir William’s message to the Yale students about living in day-tight compartments is all about.

I appreciated the reminder of what it means to live in “day tight compartments” and to not waste energy worrying about things that I can’t control. That doesn’t mean that I don’t take the time to plan for the future, or forget to acknowledge my regrets or lessons from my past; it just means that I focus more on the gift of each day.  As Sir William Osler said my goal is to let each day “absorb my interest, energy and enthusiasm” (Watson, 1988, p. 216).

Charles Macomb Flandrau as quoted by Watson (1988) sums it up nicely when he states:

The greatest gift is the realization that life does not consist either of wallowing in the past or of peering anxiously at the future; and it is appalling to contemplate the great number of often painful steps by which one arrives at a truth so old, so obvious, and so frequently expressed. It is good for one to appreciate that life is now. Whatever it offers, little or much, life is now – this day – this hour.

(Watson, 1988, p. 218)

The time has come to acknowledge that we are the captains of our individual ships, and as captains, we are the ones in charge of shutting off parts of our day or life into watertight compartments so that we can do what needs to be done to the best of our abilities.

References

Carnegie, D.,  (1948). How to stop worrying and start living. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Lebowitz, S., (2015, Sept. 22).  5 Strategies for conquering fear and anxiety, from one of the most successful self-help authors in history. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/dale-carnegies-advice-on-worrying-2015-9.

Watson, L.E. (1988). Light from Many Lamps, (1st Fireside Edition). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.