It was a typical Wednesday night and I of course found myself mindlessly scrolling through Pinterest and pinning random quotes, future dream kitchens and how I want my future library to look (yes, this is truly one of my life goals). But somehow, I noticed this really pretty green square and my eyes drifted to the quote and it said, “do the next right thing”. I had to stop for a moment and reflect. The quote hit me like a ton of bricks, and it has been on my mind ever since. I can’t stop thinking about it – why has no one told me to just try and do the next right thing?
Well, it is a bit complicated because as I am sure we all understand, sometimes we don’t know what the next right thing is. We don’t know what we are supposed to do or even how we are supposed to go about it. The idea of doing the next right thing can suddenly become overwhelming.
Here’s the thing — you don’t need to do the next major thing. You just need to do the NEXT right thing and oftentimes the next thing is a small action. So that’s what I started doing, I started thinking of it in smaller bite-size pieces.
At that moment, I decided that the next right thing would be to set my alarm for the next morning, and then I eventually went to bed. Making that decision was not a massive choice, it wasn’t scary or daunting. But I did it because I knew that if I didn’t I would have a rushed morning and that would set off a chain reaction of grumpiness for the entire day. Sometimes doing the next right thing is just one small action that could make a difference in your life.
Thursday morning, I woke up with this idea still stuck in my head and throughout the day I decided that I would continue with it. I just kept thinking to myself, what is the next right thing? After getting up, the next right thing was to make myself a healthy breakfast, then it was to get ready for my zoom class and then it was that I would work out in the afternoon. But please don’t get the impression that I did everything right that day. I knew that one of the next right things was to attend my shorter zoom class, but I didn’t. I wanted to share that with you all because you should understand that doing the next right thing is not easy, and its habits we have to develop.
Oftentimes, it is the habit that we least want to keep up because it forces us to make choices that would otherwise make us uncomfortable. Doing the next right thing every day requires you to look in the mirror and deciding that today will be a day where you try to do your best, be your best and overall do the next right thing. Is this easy? No, but it can turn into a life-changing mindset.
But remember that you can start small. You don’t have to embark on this crazy idea of what the next right thing is – it could just be that the next right thing is making a healthy breakfast, going for a walk or just calling a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. The next right thing is not as daunting and big of a deal as we make it seem it just takes a shift in mindset and an ounce of courage.
Just think, at this moment, what is the next right thing you can do?
The Life We Dream Of 