“Live in a way today so that you can thrive tomorrow.”

I stopped my walk after hearing this from author Carey Nieuwhof (New Hoff) on a podcast I subscribe to. I spent the rest of the 5,500 step walk trying to break it down.

On the surface, the sentiment is behind why we save money, why we go to the gym, why we eat healthy food, and why we try to get good rest. We say we do it so tomorrow will be better than today, but we actually do it because we want tomorrow to be just like today. It’s our attempt at making the future more predictable.

But what if we go beneath the surface and dig into the word “thrive.” If we do, we will see that it recalibrates our actions.

An example. Let’s say you are a saver. You aggressively save your money. Each month you chart how much you saved. Your goal is to save at least as much as you did last month, and hopefully more. On the surface we are following its logic. “Saving today will help me thrive tomorrow.” Nope.

Ask the aggressive saver when it’s OK to spend. The answer will always be tomorrow. “Tomorrow” is retirement, or it’s when we hit a certain number. But as Elvis once sang, “Tomorrow never comes.” If we are being honest, aggressive savers aren’t saving to thrive, they are saving to save.

And that’s why I have been thinking about this sentiment ever since I heard it. To live in a way today such that we thrive tomorrow means recalibrating our actions. Maybe we start taking more rest days from the gym to allow our bodies to recover so we feel better. Maybe we start limiting distractions at work so we can get important work done and off our minds. Maybe we work on losing weight but we don’t approach it like we are on the The Biggest Loser.

This is about checking and recalibrating the purpose of our actions. Live in a way today (actions) so that you can thrive (purpose of actions) tomorrow.