Toothpaste and Your Life

By Coach Tully ? January 1, 2025 ? Post a comment

So the ball has dropped and this year already feels a lot like the last one.

If you would really like to get a fresh start in 2025, forget about resolutions. You’ve tried those before and they don’t seem to last. Instead, start these 365 days with a question: What is your life about?

If that one sounds a bit harsh in these tender early days of the years, stick with me for a second. After all, not many questions mean more than the one about your purpose.

Try this thought experiment. You have to run some errands. You need toothpaste, skin cream, milk and cereal. When you get into your car and chose your route, what matters most? Time? Scenery? Efficiency? Money? Safety?

When you think about those questions, you learn about what you value. Last year I became drawn to the word “efficiency.” It means a lot to me when I can get a lot done with a minimum of wasted time. It just feels good. Nothing wrong with that.

Yet, somewhere along this ruthlessly clean trip I’ve missed something — the color of the trees, the smell of the air, the hum of nature, the actual living of the day. Snapshots from decades past intrigue me. They can show a street I know as it was 50 or even 100 years ago. And I wonder what that day must have been like for the people back then.

Well, today I’m walking the street in a photo that people will look at years from now. They will ask the same question I do — what was it like? And I’ll have to tell them that I don’t know. I was getting toothpaste, skin cream, milk and cereal. My mind was everywhere except in the day.

An ability to live in the moment ranks among life's most elite skills.

This year gives you a chance to run your errands according to what you might value: time, scenery, efficiency, money, safety. But it also gives you a chance to live, so that years from now if someone asks you what today was like, you will know.