Think of life as a forest:

Imagine your life is a forest composed of trees and seeds.

Each tree represents a unit of time in the past. The seeds represent the future trees you get to plant. The whole forest is your time on this planet.

Most people every day are just focused on the tree in front of them. They wake up every day, go to their job, which they mostly don’t like, finish work, go home, play with their kids or watch whatever’s on Netflix, eat, sleep and then do it all again the next day.

If that makes you happy, great. Keep doing that.

I have a feeling most people are not happy living like that because it’s boring.

It’s predictable. Most people like predictability and that’s fine. If it makes you happy and you enjoy where you are, all the power to you.

But, on your deathbed, if you’re fortunate enough to live until your 80, you will regret the things you didn’t do. The dreams you had that you let go. The moments with friends you never got to share because they passed away or you didn’t speak to them for years.

Old people filled with regret look back at all the trees they saw in their life and think about what they could’ve done differently.

Here’s my view:

You don’t know how many trees you’ll get in your life. Your forest could be composed of 80 years worth of trees, or it could all be over tomorrow. The future is unpredictable.

But, what you can do is start to plant seeds today so that if you make it 5 years from now, those seeds you planted today will grow new trees that completely change the direction of your life.

What do I mean by this? Work on yourself. Invest in yourself. Invest your time and energy into doing things today that you enjoy which could pay off years from now.

What are some examples of this? Exercising is a great one. Most people start working out, go too hard initially, get sore, stop doing it for a little while and then never get back to it.

By planting the seeds today of working out daily, even if it’s for 5 minutes, you’ll see results a year, two years or 5 years from now.

Let me give you an example from my own life.

About 3 years ago, I graduated medical school and left medicine completely. I didn’t know what I was going to do at the time but I knew it wasn’t going to be medicine.

That summer while I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, I told myself I’m going to do 3 things every day. 1. Journal. 2. Meditate. 3. Read.

Because I had time on my hands now that I wasn’t in school learning the entirety of medicine, I decided that for one year, I was going to try and read 50 non-fiction books. I planted seeds by just reading an hour a day. Sometimes I read longer, other weeks I didn’t read at all.

I didn’t know if I would ever get there but one year later, I read 52 books, one book for every week of the year.

Next year was fitness. I promised myself I was going to run a marathon and get in shape. Unfortunately Covid got in the way, so I cancelled my marathon training. But I could still get in shape.

By doing a half hour workout 5 days a week, for 6 months of the year, I lost 30 pounds and got in the best shape of my life. While doing that, I still kept journaling, reading and meditating.

Fast forward to 2021 and the goal was writing. I wanted to write 100 pieces of content by the end of 2021, no matter how good or bad it was. I finished my 100th piece of content May 1st, and now my goal is 300 by the end of the year.

The reason I’m giving these examples is I didn’t get there in one day.

I planted seeds every day that paid off in the long run. I didn’t know if I would ever get to these goals but I just told myself that if I spent a little bit of time every day, I would eventually get somewhere. Today I’m at 110 books read in the last 2.5 years, 900+ days of journaling and hundreds of hours of meditating, all by doing little things every day.

If you take away anything from this post, let it be this:

Focus on planting seeds every day that are important to you. The seeds you plant today for yourself will pay off years down the road, whether you’re alive by then or not.

You could choose to plant seeds that are like weeds. Filling your time with Netflix, social media, the news, a job you don’t like and negative people.

Or you could choose to plant seeds that grow into incredible forests populated by the beautiful trees you love. Investing in yourself, prioritizing your time, spending more time with family and friends, doing things that make you happy.

The choice is yours. Don’t waste it.