Some days go by quickly while others seem to drag on endlessly. Reminds me of a story of a man who had been told by his doctor he had only about six months to live and the doctor asked the man how he intended to live out his remaining months. He thought for a few minutes and replied, “I’m going to take my wife and my mother-in-law and get in a station wagon and travel across the United States, staying in the cheapest hotels and motels I can find, and spending as little of my money as possible. The doctor was surprised at the answer and asked the man the reason behind his thoughts. The man told the doctor, “If I do what I’ve planned and with whom I’ve planned it, I’m sure it will be the longest six months of my life.”

As your day comes to an end each day, how do you feel about what was accomplished that day? Can you say that you helped at least one person out of the many that crossed your path? Better yet, is anybody better off because of what you’ve said to them, or perhaps someone who was feeling depressed or lonely? Did you give them hope and encouragement for their future, or just think, “I’ve got enough of my own problems?”

We need to treat each day as a gift, a blessing to be used to better ourselves, our workplace, or someone else’s life. We are not to waste the day by taking it for granted, or by thinking it was for just us alone. How we spend our hours is very important, and it should be spent by making our communities, our workplace, our lives, better than they were the previous day. Did we spread kindness throughout our day or did we spread discontent? The prize or goal we should be shooting for is that at the end of our day, as our heads hit the pillow at night, we should be able to look back and hopefully see that we have not wasted our day. That we have made the world a better place by the manner in which we lived our day. If more people strived to attain that goal, this would be a much more pleasant place to live and work. If you can’t say you’ve made the world a better place today, then there is always tomorrow, a great day to start making the most of your day.