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“Just For Today”

That’s a sign that you’ll likely find hanging somewhere in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting room.

I know – I’ve been in a few of those rooms and seen the signs or heard the words. Not as an addict, but as an observer and a presence in support of a loved one deep in the clutches of alcohol.

The phrase won’t hold much sway or meaning for the sober, man/woman on the street.

If alcohol or drugs own you, it means the world – a life-or-death mantra.

It’s a mantra that saved my loved one and sustains him today.

It saved Steve Chandler – thankfully!

Steve who?

Around 9 years ago, I stumbled across a life/business coach and author named Steve Chandler. It was a time when I was succeeding at the crazy, misguided goal of reading 6-8 books a month. It was also a time when my loved one was in the depths of his struggle.

Steve’s crisp, no-holds-barred writing style – and his personal story – gripped me and I plowed through at least a dozen of his books that year, including “Prosperous Coach”, considered to be the seminal book in the field of executive coaching.

I’m replowing. I’m committing to re-reading all the Chandler books on my shelf and in my Kindle in 2023.

I need to do that because the story is so powerful and the life-changing advice that good.

And, because I need that constant reminder that “just for today” is the best of that advice.

Chandler is an alcoholic.

My loved one is an alcoholic.

If you’ve been in or on the fringes of that world you know that recovery never stops. There are no “recovered” alcoholics.

It’s one day at a time – just for today. It’s what saves the alcoholic’s life.

But it’s a thin edge.

That’s what makes Chandler’s story so compelling. His emergence from alcoholism while raising four children as a single dad and rising to the pinnacle of the coaching profession is inspiring.

It’s why I’m thankful for “just for today” as my loved one lives by it and is recovering a lost decade of his life and succeeding beyond his, and my, expectations in business and life.

The hypnosis of linear time

I work hard at avoiding “time travel” and encourage others to avoid it as well – mentally traveling into the regrets and guilt that exist in the past and the fear that is the main resident of the future.  That’s a central message in Chandler’s writing.

He writes about the impact of this sign in his book “Wealth Warrior: The Personal Prosperity Revolution.”

“That sign never left me. I later built my whole time warrior training and coaching around that sign. It’s the most counterintuitive sign ever put up in any room anywhere. Why? Because it eliminates the future. In fact, it eliminates the hypnosis of linear time altogether, and linear thinking as well (always, in the past, a dreary cocktail mix of paranoia and regret). So, the “Just For Today” sign in the meeting hall gave me my first taste of freedom and my first flirtation with this wonderful thing I call the “higher self.”

Chandler goes further and references the great UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden:

“His method was to eliminate the future. He called it ‘Make each day your masterpiece.’ And when he got his whole team to devote all their skills and attention to today’s Wednesday afternoon practice (instead of the upcoming ‘big game), they became the Zen Masters of college basketball. Linear thinkers could not beat them. Because Wooden’s boys were always in the moment they were in.”

Would we not all be better served if we remembered this? “Give us this day our daily bread.”

There is no reference to the future in this good phrase.