Over at Embrace Your Life this week, they are talking about focus, and this is a topic that is dear to my heart mainly because I have so much difficulty with it, and so I thought I would add my two cents.
I guess I should be clear what I mean by focus because I think there are multiple different ways of looking at it – there is the focus that is required to stay on track and then there is the focus that informs our activities, that reminds of why we do what we do. While I think they are merely different sides of the same coin, I want to focus on the second.
Victor Frankl said, “Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
These words, these ideas are where I get my idea of what a purposeful life means. We have choices in life every single day, and perhaps our greatest choice is what our overall life will be about. Where will the story of our time here on Earth end up, where will it take us? What characters will we allow to play a role in our story? What events and mindsets will we let inform the action?
Each day, we wake up and we are faced with a myriad of tasks that must be completed. For me, that means I have to make meals, clean up after the kids, read to them, play with them, put them down for naps, walk the dog, feed the pets, do laundry, drive Magoo to activities…
If I focus on many of the individual tasks, I sometimes have a hard time finding meaning in all of it. Let’s face it; it’s hard to find meaning in loading the dishwasher for the nine hundredth time that week.
But if I step back and look at my purpose, if I remember that I am doing this to take care of my family, to create a clean and comforting home for them where they can grow and flourish then I can perform these tasks with pride and find meaning and purpose in them. Because I have kept my focus – I have kept my purpose clear in my mind. I have refused to let my mind become bogged down in the details.
And I think that is one of the biggest challenges we face when it comes to finding true, deep, and lasting happiness – keeping the reasons we do things at the forefront of our brains. Because we can’t find happiness if we aren’t pursuing that which is meaningful to us, and we can’t find the meaning if we are just focusing on the details.
What do you think? In what areas might you be losing focus of your goals and purpose? Where in your life do you lack the most focus? What can you do to change that?
Thanks for linking up over at The Elf House. And thanks for this post. I really needed to hear this perspective on things right now – as I’ve been struggling a lot here of late with seeing the ‘big picture’ and only looking at each individual thing going on in our life. I really am going to think about what you’ve said here and try to apply it to the way I approach things!