Look me in the eye — are you in there?
Hello! Your dream is calling…
It’s time to drag it out, dust it off and see what is in that package for you to explore.
Many of us have gotten to “a certain age” and are re-examining who we believe ourselves to be. Our children, if we had them, have grown and left the nest. We’re either at retirement age or, with the current economic silliness, have been laid off after years on the job. We’re asking ourselves, “now what?” and looking at our options. This is the time we’re trying new things, creating our futures and pulling our dreams out of storage.
In moving out of the corporate world, setting up our own businesses and settling in to solopreneurship, it’s easy to get buried in the day to day sh — tuff. There are tasks that need to be handled whether we want to or not, time management issues and paperwork that mounds.
Do you ever feel lost under the piles? Do you feel like there’s too much work left at the end of your day? Are you spending more hours than ever working instead of living a joyous, created life? Can you still remember what it felt like when you first began your journey? Do you still hop out of bed, excited to face each new day? No? What has happened to change that? How can we reset the scene so we can have fun again, be excited again and find the energy we had to create our vision?
Where Did You Disappear To?
Do you feel as if you’re stuck on a carousel or a Ferris wheel that lost its brakes and won’t stop? Are you always in a hurry to get somewhere but not really sure where you’re going anymore?
Do you just feel invisible? Is your life/business running you instead of the other way around?
As entrepreneurs, these are the questions we need to ask ourselves. When we start our businesses, we’re always so sure of where we’re going and what we’ll find there, but as the days go on and we begin to work towards the goal we’ve set for ourselves, the road gets dusty and the horizon always is just beyond our reach. After awhile, we get thirsty and sidetracked in all that dust so we lose focus. Once we’ve lost that, it’s rather like being on the inside of the hamster wheel. Here’s a new definition of FOCUS for you.
F: Fierce devotion to a goal.
O: Optimizing time, effort and resources
C: Creating new opportunities
U: Understanding what it is we want
S: Seeing the goal in 3D before it happens
But to FOCUS, we need first to be clear about who we are and the goals we are pursuing.
It’s time to do that thing we all hate to do; look at ourselves in the mirror. We’re really very good at a passing glance to make sure we don’t have our makeup on wrong or our ties crooked or spinach in our teeth on our way out the door, but when was the last time you spent ten minutes just looking yourself in the eye?
F: Fierce devotion to a goal.
Fierce devotion to a goal is a difficult concept to explain. On the surface, it looks fairly simple; it means to have that goal be your guiding force, the light you aim towards. But it’s a lot more than that. You have to be willing to make that goal the primary force in your life. You eat, sleep, breathe and live that goal every day. Nothing is more important than achieving it. The goal you set can be business oriented, but more often it’s deeper, more expansive. A life where you are happy (however you define that), have what you require and more and the lifestyle that supports your choices is possibly more of a goal than a thriving business.
O: Optimizing time, effort and resources
We all have 24 hours in a day and 365 ¼ days in a year. Only 7 days in a week and there’s a little flexibility where months are concerned. What we do with the time we have is not as important as how we do it.
C: Creating new opportunities
Look for the low hanging fruit. Use a swipe file. (If you don’t know what that is, click the link. That is another site that has tons of examples.) NEVER plagiarize, but you can get some great ideas from campaigns others use, images, type faces, etc. Always be listening for the “Find a need and fill it” opportunities. What’s something so out
U: Understanding what it is we want
Be really clear about what you are asking for. What is it about the thing you want that you want? Sometimes it isn’t the thing itself, but how it makes us feel when we think of it. Can you get that same feeling from something else? The more of what settles and warms the cockles of your heart you can have the better!
S: Seeing the goal in 3D before it happens
Have you ever seen something you dreamed of so clearly you could swear it was real? Have you ever wanted to go somewhere so strongly that you could close your eyes and be there? Could you smell the smells, taste the tastes, see the colors and the shadows in full 3D Dream-o-vision?
It’s time now to FOCUS forward for 2024. This is a time for planning, strategizing and visualizing.
