Live every single day of your live as it would be your first day in life – instead of living every day as it would be your last day in life.

You might have heard this sentences many times and from many sources:

Live your life every day as it would be your last day of your life.

I don’t believe it is right to completely rely on this credo to live your life, instead I would suggest a seemingly small but significant change:

Live your life every day as it would you first day of your life.

The all-changing difference is in the term “first day” instead of “last day”.

Why is it so different? Think about what you would like to do if it would be your last day in life. You would most likely choose to

• be at the place where you like to be most, chosen among the places you have been
• Surrounded by people who you like most, of all who you have met in your life
• Eat your favourite food, of all the food you have already eaten

In short, on your last day of your life you would do all the things and see everything and everyone you are already familiar with. Thus your last day of your life wouldn’t be any different from any day of your life before. On your last day in life you wouldn’t like to risk some new food, which you may not like. You would be reluctant to meet someone new too, as it wouldn’t make any sense to you as you won’t be able to meet them again. So you’d prefer to stick to the well-known.

Would you like to relive the same day over and over, for the rest of your life?

On the contrary if you “live your live every day as it would you first day of your life“, then you have a totally different perspective of time. The future is fully open to you:

• You would dare to try something new, having the chance that it might be better than what you have done before
• You want to meet new people, as they might be interesting and you can enjoy their company for many years to come
• You will try new food, risking it’s not as good as the meals you had before but taking the chance to taste even better than what you ever had before

It would be like you were a new-born every day, curious to everything new which comes across your way. Touching, seeing, exploring new worlds, discovering life.

Of course you want to enjoy what you already have and achieved from the past. You would like to do from what you know you like it, see the people you like, eat the food you prefer. Living for the future only is a limited view on life and distracts us from enjoying the moment. But only living in the past doesn’t let us enjoy neither present nor prepare us for the future to come. It takes away the risk that something would be worse than what we had before. But it also prevents us to do something better, discover something we like even more, to meet more interesting people.

I believe, that living every day as a “first day” is a game changer in life contrary to the one-sided “live as it would be your last day in life”. Together with living in the now and living in the past, it is a necessary part of our life. There is no need to throw away the old, but it is important to put the future into one’s views on life, of all which can exist next to each other.

So, what did you do today, on your first day of all the days to come?

Sunrise on Easter Island