"Just do the next thing.” I love the soundness of a tidbit of wisdom imparted in just a simple phrase. Hearing such a phrase will resonate with me for days. 

Before I ever even heard of Emily P. Freeman, and years before I read her book, The Next Right Thing, I wrote a blog post where I recounted my own experience with the phrase: “Just do the next thing.” Quite honestly, in days like the ones we are living through during the pandemic, I think we often have no idea what the next right thing is! That is why at times like these, during hard times, when we have no straightforward answers, we need to just remember to do the next thing. Often, all we can manage is to do the next thing, and that is ok.

I love plain, uncomplicated, straightforward advice. True confession: I don’t like to ask for or listen to advice. That is why I am often guided by phrases, adages, proverbs, quotes, Bible verses, and sayings that stick in my head.

These phrases, such as just do the next thing, help me guide my way through a jungle of mixed up emotions, reactions, thoughts and concerns.  Simple phrases become simple instructions and act as my go to guides when I am navigating unknown territories of life.  They become mantras in my head.  They guide me forward when I don't know what to do. They move me forward when I want to crumble into a heap on the floor.

When I was working as a high school English teacher, I often faced a workload of stacks of essays to read and grade, research papers and book reports to be graded, bins full of journals to read, a blank lesson plan book that need to filled with lessons for the next week, and a list of long range goals and objectives to meet. During those times, I would get through it all by listening to my father's words that lived in my head, "Just get through it one paper at a time.” 

When I was only fifteen months into my journey through grief after my daughter’s death in 2010, I asked myself how I would ever keep on this road of heartbreak, grief, and loss.  After a year and a half, it seemed the journey had gone on way too long.  I looked down the road that spanned through the rest of my lifetime and asked myself how I would ever go on living if this feeling of having of a hole in my heart never healed. It seemed that split in my heart called heartbreak was gaping wide open swallowing up every bit of my hope for a future that had any joy or comfort in it.  The road before me suddenly seemed way too long.  The journey of living out all the days of the rest of my life seemed much longer than I had anticipated.

At the two year mark after my daughter’s death, I attended a grief recovery support group.  Truly, I was struggling to put one foot in front of the other. I had no idea how I would keep moving forward. I think I went to the recovery group looking for a road map. I wanted a step by step process. I wanted a guarantee that I would make it through the journey I was on.

Almost appearing to me as an afterthought, the last item on a collection of seven suggestions for living with grief, I noticed a brief phrase was was added to the list: Just do the next thing.

At the time, I remember thinking that the phrase certainly didn’t seem like some powerful, life changing adage, but it was for me.  At that moment, the statement just do the next thing did become a simple expression of a general truth on how to successfully complete my journey through grief.  I came away from the meeting feeling renewed and inspired.

During those early days of grief, I also began to experience multiple health and medical issues. I had no idea how to address them while I was also dealing with grief. Thankfully, I was seeing a wise and wonderful mental health professional. She said to me,

"Sally, when you are looking at such medical issues as you are, you can't look too far down the road.  You must just ask yourself, "What is the next thing?  Then do it."  

At the time, I was suffering from back and hip pain that would prove to be chronic to this day. The specialist I had recently consulted advised immediate surgery. I knew I was in no shape emotionally for such a surgery. In fact, I never had that surgery.

My mental health therapist, who was also a certified clinical nurse specialist and a registered nurse along with being an advanced practical nurse with many years of medical background wisely said,

MRIs and X-rays always look worse than the symptoms might be. Have injections and see what happens from there. Take it one day at a time. Just do the next thing.

I know that such advice of just doing the next thing is hard for some of us.

It is hard because in our professional lives, or in our academic lives, we learned a different sort of rules in order to meet the guidelines that we had laid out for us in a job description or in a syllabus.

I remember my therapist telling me that I would have to let go of many of the traits that helped me achieve the goals I had for myself when I was working or when I was in school.

She reminded me that in my professional life, I was a planner, one who got things done, one who looked down the road and anticipated what must be done and did it.  

Life in general cannot always be lived that way, she said. We can’t plan for all of life events. Life happens.  We suffer loss.  We deal with health issues.  We get hit with things we never dreamed would cross our path in this life. 

If there is one lesson that I have learned in the last decade, one filled with much loss, it is this:

• Just do the next thing.

• Take life moment by moment.

• Get up in the morning.

• Make some coffee.

• Pet the dog.

• Kiss the spouse.

• Take a shower.

• Take a walk.

• Fix a piece of toast.

• Put some butter on it. (Everything is better with butter!)

• If that is all you can do, that is ok.

• Do what you can.

• When you finish, do the next thing.

Life, during difficult times, is best lived by taking it one moment at a time. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to rest, rest. Moment by moment fill up the moments a little bit at a time by doing the next thing. Before you know it, you will realize you have found a way to live the next moment by simply doing the next thing.

Blessings. Don’t try to do all the things during these difficult days. Just do the next thing.