I talk about this a lot, and for as much as it is a difficult practice, it is one I am committed to.

You can have an impact today. You can give others what you want others to give you. You can show a different way. You don’t have to fall into despair if the world around you is not the way you’d like it to be. You can be present, here and now, learn, grow, and take others with you along the way.

[…] people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “What is the secret of success?” when they should be asking, “What prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth takes place. To walk around asking, “Am I a success or a failure?” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to an answer is to say that everyone is both a success and a failure.

One way to renew an obsessive preoccupation with success is to alter the idea that the present is a means and the future is an end. The problem with this way of thinking is that, when the future comes, then it too becomes just another present that is yet another means to yet another future.

Karl Weick, How Projects Lose Meaning: The Dynamics of Renewal

P.S.: thanks to Ed Batista for this fantastic article about the topic.