Do you get distracted by the past? Do you fret over what may happen in the future? Does today get the least of your attention? Are you frustrated by stress from the past and the future? One solution is to live in day tight compartments.

This concept is derived from the function of watertight compartments on a ship. On a ship, each room (compartment) has a watertight safety door that can be sealed to prevent water from entering. In the event of a leak in the ship’s hull, the doors can be sealed to prevent water from filling the entire ship causing it to sink. With this system, the damage from any hole is limited to a small, contained area.

Without watertight compartments, even a small leak would eventually sink the largest ship. The watertight compartments allow a ship to remain afloat even if impaired. The influence of your past and uncertainty of the future are like leaks in your life.

The effects of bad experiences or fear of the future can sink your life, if you let it. If the impact of your past constantly affects each day, it is impossible to move forward. Left unchecked, this can sink you. In the most extreme cases, a person can wind up with a mental breakdown.

Worry and fear about the future also allows water to seep in. Apprehension about what will happen tomorrow impedes your progress just like a boat taking on water. Obsessive worry about the future causes mental paralysis where someone is afraid to take any proactive action.

When this happens, a person’s life is affected by the decisions of others rather than by intention. Both the influence of the past and anticipation of the future can have a debilitating impact on your life.

The ideal situation is one where you function exclusively in the present. You want to protect yourself from the encumbrance of the past and the uncertainty of the future.

This is treating each day as a day tight compartment. You focus exclusively on today and block out diversions from yesterday and tomorrow. Each new day begins when you wake up and ends when you go to sleep for the night.

Your conscious time is your day tight compartment. It is insulated from all else. Each day has two doors. One protects you from the past and the other prevents you from fretting about the future.

In a ship, water is always trying to find its way into the hull. Constant inspection and maintenance are required to ensure that a ship remains seaworthy. In your life, negative influences and thoughts are constantly trying to permeate your thinking.

Although you can’t eliminate the force of negative influences, any more than a sailor can eliminate the strength of the sea, you can close your safety doors when they begin to seep in. When you find yourself being pulled into the past or diverted by the future, close your safety doors and create a day tight compartment.

Each day the challenge to stay focused begins anew. One day you can be perfectly on track and the next day you find leaks starting to spring up. Each day you must be aware of your thoughts and feelings and what factors are impacting you.

By living each day as a separate day tight compartment, influences that at first seem overwhelming, become manageable. Everyone has the ability to get through just one day without allowing seepage from the past or the future. Once you make it through one day, you know you can make it through another.

Bryan Golden is the author of “Dare to Live Without Limits.” Contact Bryan at Bryan@columnist.com or visit www.DareToLiveWithoutLimits.com. Copyright 2022 Bryan Golden.