The key is focus

Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you are right. – Henry Ford

A new year can be a good opportunity to reframe, reflect and realign your life. Resolutions are close to synonymous with a year New Year because they serve this purpose. However we need not always wait for 1st January or 31st December to make the necessary changes and adjustments in our lives, this can be done every other day because essentially every day in life is a new opportunity to start again or make changes. You have all the opportunity to do so. Even in the face of adversity and uncertainty like Covid-19.

Sometimes we are discouraged by challenges, by others and sometimes by ourselves to take the necessary steps to progress the way we need to, but as said, whether you think you can’t or you think you can, you are right. At the end of the day you have all the power. Just focus.

Men go forth to marvel at the heights of mountains and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. – St Augustine

Talking about power, we humans usually underestimate the amount of power we have over ourselves and our lives and environment. Indeed we fail to marvel at ourselves and what we are capable of achieving and doing. We often feel that we are helpless to the situations around us or our environment. The thing with human nature is that even if you do not have the resources or ability to change what is happening around you, you have the power to adjust how you respond or how you are affected.

We face many stressful situations and how we respond to the stress even if we do not have the ability or resources to change the situation can be the determining factor between progress and no progress. At the end of the day we are capable of doing little and big things that we can equally marvel at and inspire others around us in the process. Just focus.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing – it was here first. – Mark Twain

Talking about abilities, we need to own the fact that our lives are our responsibilities. As much we live in a world where we co-exist, and are co-dependent and interdependent, ultimately each one of us has the unrelinquishable responsibility of our lives. Sometimes we walk around thinking the world and everyone and everything in it owes us a good life, a peace of mind, good relationships, a break, money and everything else you can think of whether we put work into it or not. The government especially is at fault for a lot of things. So is the system. So is our place of work.

We also think we are owed these things because so and so have it and so should we? But who said life is a game of utter equality? It’s rather a game of focus.

Lack of direction not lack of time is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days. – Zig Zagler

But maybe life is not that unfair after all, talking about equality; it gives us all the same amount of hours in a day. The difference between us all is the power we exert when deciding (or not) on how to spend or utilize those hours. Everything that has been achieved on this earth has been achieved by people who had the same amount of hours as everyone else, what differed is the direction.

Especially is an era of social media we lose track of how much we are actually procrastinating and scrolling hours away senselessly while feeling like are actually doing something. And currently with social distance, and some under lockdown, how do we account for our time? Has it been spent aimlessly or has it been an opportunity to complete some personal goals we claimed we ‘do not have time for’? The key is focus.

It is important for us to continuously reframe, reflect and realign our lives so that we keep the right direction that will make us progress to where we need to in our mental, spiritual, physical, emotional, social, relational, financial and professional goals despite circumstances. We all have different goals in life but principles that help us achieve our goals essentially have the same underlying factors. Focus.

I rest my case