Today we have Amy from Just a Titch sharing her wisdom on showing up every day.

I’m driving her home, back to her clean and sober living house, this person I love and while it’s not my story to tell, I see her fighting her demons, day by day, and she tells me she’s doing it slowly. Hourly. Sometimes by the minute, and sometimes even by the second. “It’s the only way you can do anything,” she says pointedly.

And then I read this:

When I look at the lives of the people I most admire it’s these daily decisions I honor the most. The tiny choices, the kind you make over your cup of morning coffee: Put your mug in the sink and go to the studio, it’s time to get back to work. Get out of bed and make the kids breakfast, after cereal we’ll work out what’s next. Forgive him, he’s sorry – this will set you both free. Be yourself because there is no one better.

The grand prize is that we all get to do this – we get to live here and love here and make our own way. We get to choose who we will be and what kind of bold beauty we will leave behind when we go. It takes real pluck to choose kindness and freedom and art. It takes balls to show up for your life. So I may think you’re rad if you are up for a bungee jump but I think you’re miraculous if you are up for today.

Sometimes, I get so caught up in the big things. I scheme about how I’ll make it to Paris and when/if I want a kid, whether marriage is ever in the cards for me, what my life will be like when I turn thirty in two and a half years. I struggle to arrange all the big pieces in my mind about the things that we’re told really matter: relationships, careers, living situations, goals.

Instead, perhaps I should worry about the little things. The choice to stop and really connect, to be active instead of watching another hour of Real Housewives, to snuggle the cat for just two more minutes because it makes me happy, to spontaneously go to yoga instead of calendaring for a week out. Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in the bigger puzzle pieces and waiting for the other shoe to drop that everything just blows up in my face because my mind is light years ahead of my heart and my actual, day-to-day existence.

Sometimes, I get thinking that this is the brave thing: to figure out all of the big, important stuff first and fit in the day-to-day around that. I wonder more and more if this is an escape from the minutiae that really makes up our lives. Life is not just big trips and career changes and grand gestures, it’s full of dirty dishes and feeding the cat and watching re-runs. I think more and more that what was written above is true: it takes balls to show up for your life. Anyone can show up when things are easy, fun and sparkly, but the real work is showing up when things are monotonous and safe. It’s hard to make the day to day gorgeous.

I think about the advice a good friend gave me in the middle of a turning point where she told me the thing she asks herself every time things seem frustrating: Am I good with today?

And so, minute by minute, hour by hour, and eventually, day by day, I’m asking myself: Am I good with today? And if I not, what can I do in the next few minutes to change that?

For me, this is the question I want to answer. I want the minute-by-minute to be good, not just the big decisions. I feel like the two will go hand in hand. Right?

Do you live in the future too much?

Ask yourself, are you good with today?  And if I not, what can you do in the next few minutes to change that?