Exercise focus and faith
THE daily battle is to choose your focus. Negativity narrows your focus towards the things that will not work, cannot work and stopped working. When you change your focus, you change your life. When you change your focus, you shift your universe. Your attention determines your emotions. Strong negative emotions are a reflection of sustained negative focus. You are able to train your focus. Yes, you can.
I wake up daily, dress up and face life and its challenges — just like you do. I am not a spectator or mere commentator, neither I am a dead ancestor. Life is not to be avoided but lived. Challenges come to strengthen you and catalyse new growth and ways of thinking.
Choose to play the winning game of life by choosing your focus. Keep reminding yourself to mind what matters and to focus on the positive. You do not have the luxury to proclaim that you want to run, yet chop your legs by focusing elsewhere.
Good or bad, negative or positive, past or future, faith or fear, far or near; you choose what you focus on. Whatever you focus on will also focus on you and start growing. You are responsible for what goes on in your mind, mouth and what you do. Direct your mind deliberately towards the direction you desire. This is the essence of self-leadership. No situation lacks possibilities. There are no hopeless situations. There are only people with hopeless minds that have cast away hope, lost focus and closed their eyes to possibility.
Faith in action
Without faith, your focus has no directing power and your personal agency will be lost. Agency is that inner drive that allows you to plough through anything that stands in your way. Faith is hope challenged into present reality. Faith sees the future and handles it as reality in motion. The opposite of faith is fear. Fear sees the present challenges as a doom loop, pain pool and unending continuum. Do not believe everything that fear suggests because fear’s shadow is long and threatening.
If you are fearful and negative, do not assume everyone is sharing your fate. If you feel discouraged and dejected, never assume that the whole world has stopped hoping, believing, dreaming and doing big things in bigger ways. Your personal situation is not a global adverse trend or barometer of hope. Choose faith and focus. Be alert to opportunities.
Work in faith on your focus as a daily priority. When pulled down, rise in faith, pick yourself up and keep moving. Do not count your falls, count your rises. Go back to your strategy plan, clean it and start executing it. Do whatever it takes to regain your focus, work with faith as a touch.
In whatever situation you face, both faith and fear are always present and each makes a compelling invitation to your focus. When you choose fear, you ignore the voice of hope and heap yourself with unnecessary burdens. Do not throw away the possibilities of the future. Present reality is not the only reality that exists. Faith sees differently, talks differently and behaves differently. Faith says there is an exciting future that is full of possibilities.
When you operate in faith, you may look at any moment with hope, any experience with expectation and any interaction with promise. Faith is truly the evidence of things hoped for. It is the reality that you choose, not the reality chosen by the emotions that are pricking you now. Faith is filled with possibilities and is too exciting to let go.
When you see what looks terrible, choose to wear faith spectacles and adjust your focus. Choose the right stories to tell. There is no merit in spreading negativity. You may be in a hope, but the stars are still shining. You may be in flooded mud, but that is where rice grows best. You may be surrounded by bees, do not see the stings. Focus on the honey factory. You may be under pressure but take courage, you are developing better muscles.
Faith is the raw material of all greatness. Never laugh at a person with faith and vision, who is working diligently on their humble hustle, with an eye on the future. Such a person is a creator, not just a commentator. To get anything you have to see it somewhere first. Faith is “first sight” for anyone who dares do anything great. If you do not see it as real in your mind, it will never fit into your life. Defy fear and believe.
Your life is where it is because of the sum total of the decisions that you took in the past. You are not marooned but you have options and there are possibilities that are too big for your imagination. Choose your options and moves wisely. Choose action, more action and focused action. Do not let situations choose for you. Take back your power. When you blame, scream and complain you give up the power to choose and the sobriety to think deeply. Do not surrender your power to fear.
There are opportunities everywhere. Start by taking in this belief. If you do not see opportunities, that does not mean they do not exist. Above the clouds, the sun is always shining. Focus means choosing to be opportunity-minded, not problem-obsessed. Faith is choosing a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset.
Focus is choice. Focus means that within the arena of what is happening, you choose to focus on what you really want. As you so look, possibilities appear. Focus on where you are going to not just what you are going through. Choose what you want to be and see happen. Focus is the strategy with agency. You have a choice to talk down or talk up. Use your options wisely, knowing that you become your choices.
Faith and courage
If you do not have courage, look for it because you will need it. Keep looking for it in low risk situations. Exercise focus and faith. Focus is like a muscle that gets stronger with use.
It takes courage to focus on opportunities that other people do not see. It takes courage to paint a picture of the future that other people think does not exist. Do not be discouraged.
Greatness is not a majority decision, but a personal one. It takes courage to see what other people do not see. It takes courage to stand up when you are hardest hit, yet always believing and focusing. It takes courage to think creatively and act with resolve. It takes courage to confront your fears.
Without courage, life is left to be an empty meaningless shell. People with courage and conviction make things happen. Courage is a choice to do something regardless of the emotions of fear or self-doubt. Just do it regardless of the threats, jeers and nay-sayers. Don’t be afraid if it seems too fearful. Believe more in your dream than in your personal preservation.
Committed to your greatness.