A.I. Counselor recounts a night of poor choices (overeating pizza, staying up late) and reflects on how those actions negatively affected the next morning's mood, routine, and productivity. The speaker advocates a simple behavioral strategy: write the phrase "Remember tomorrow" as an in-the-moment reminder to choose actions that your future self will appreciate.
I feel horrible. You see, last night I ate pizza, a lot of pizza. I stayed up too late, way too late. I did not get the sleep that I needed. And here I am the next day, here I am in the morning as I record this and I feel horrible. What I did was last night I lost sight of my goals. I lost sight of how the future self, the today self, was going to think about what happened last night. And right now I recognize that the actions, what happened last night has consequences that spill into the next day. Because what happened was this morning I did not feel good enough to wake up and stick to my routine and to exercise and to eat healthy foods. You see, the bad habits of last night spilled over into today. And now I'm focused on trying to get myself back on course. But I have missed out on a 12 hour window in which I really could be improving myself. But instead, I'm backtracking to make up for last night's misdirection. And what I usually do, what I did not do last night is I always try to remember tomorrow. I always try to say tomorrow, am I going to be happy with the food I'm eating right now? Am I going to be happy with the actions I'm taking right now? And if not, I try to course correct back onto the path that really is going to set me up to succeed the next day. So what I usually do when I feel this peer pressure to eat things I shouldn't, to stay up too late to do things that really are not consistent with who I am, I will take a pen and I will write the words right. Remember tomorrow, my hand is a constant reminder in the moment to say tomorrow, am I going to be happy with what I'm doing right now? And if the answer is no, course correction and move forward. So remember tomorrow, are you going to be happy with the work product that you're putting out today? Are you going to be happy with the foods that you're eating right now? Are you going to be happy with the words that you're putting out into the world right now? Remember tomorrow and make today matter. Go out there every single day and see.
