Living as Though Today is Your Last Day

When you truly live as though today is your last day on Earth, you wake up the next day not very motivated to try it again. Instead, live each day as though your life can make a difference, no matter how long or short it may be.

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    • Living as though today was your last day on Earth is the epitome of scarcity (“today is all there is”). Gratitude is the opposite of scarcity. If we live in scarcity, we don’t do things with our time that make us feel grateful the next day. Instead, we feel silly for having wasted our time reveling in scarcity. Living in gratitude is living in abundance and when we live in abundance we don’t live as though today was our last day, but as though each moment has everything we need.

  1. I agree with your quote, however, I have a slightly different view of the quote:

    Instead of living everyday as though it’s your last day on earth, live each day as though that particular day might be your last day on earth.

    • Thank you, Enwil. I agree with your view of the quote, but as I mentioned to Sandra above, I feel that we need to do away with the whole idea of ‘last day on Earth’ and instead embrace the reality that each moment has everything we need, that staying present matters more than ‘getting everything done in the time we have available’.

  2. Definitely agree with this. This reminds me of a story from Kevin Kelley on the first episode of This American Life. He spent six months living as if he was going to die in six months, and when he woke up after believing that he would die on Halloween night, it was just another day. That was bliss to him.

    Also, if you live every day like it’s your last, you’ll never work towards something in the long run. You’ll never become an expert writer, programmer, or whatever you wanted, because every day is your “last day.”

    I say judge your life based on realistic expectations. You probably have a lot of years ahead of you, maybe even forever [with the rate science is going at].

    • Yes, absolutely. I sometimes try to imagine that I will live forever (or at least a really long time) and that I can accomplish so much in my life, but I always balance that out with a heavy dose of the reality that I could die at any moment, that each day I go to bed could be the last day I will ever see.

      I live one day at a time with a whole lifetime in mind.

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