Focusing on Tomorrow

Just last week, I met a guy living with the effects of motor neuron disease. Working with this disease is quite unlike recovering from a TBI. In many ways, I felt humbled in his presence - he was showing an incredible amount of grit and determination in dealing with his illness. However, I mentioned this blog and my quest to describe finding determination. I was lucky enough to get his and his partner's thoughts about it.

His partner described determination as not worrying about yesterday or today, but focusing on tomorrow. With a focus on tomorrow, why it happened yesterday is much less important - there's no getting caught up thinking about the if only's or blaming anyone or anything. And there's much less reason to worry about the effects of it today - there's no worrying about how one can no longer do what one once did.

Instead, a focus on tomorrow means a focus on how any situation can be improved - how stuff can be done better. Once that's decided, it's made so. Yet tomorrow is always shifting onwards so the game never ends and, while circumstances might change, there is always another day to focus on too.

The man's partner saw this as an accurate description of how he approached his illness. I would also like to think of it as a description of how I approach my TBI. Whether or not it describes my own approach, though, it seems another great way of describing what determination is. Perhaps everyone has a different way of finding determination and my search for describing it will not turn out how I meant it to. But I hope it will, at least, stimulate thinking for other recoverers.

Cheers,
Mike