Shifting the Focus

So every year in December I try to prepare for the year that is coming.  I can’t help it, I’m a planner, that’s just who I am.  I make lists (yes I am an extreme list maker) for different avenues of things in my life.  Typically I make 3 lists (goals for the year, books to read for the year, and writing projects to accomplish for the year) but this year I added a list (goals towards better health) which only adds to the expectations I place on myself.

There is one thing that I am changing about how I make my lists.  Usually I push the envelope with the lists I make in the fact that I make them highly unattainable and marginally off focus, hoping to push myself to a higher standard to achieve them.  This time I am making the lists not only with a more realistic expectation of completion in mind, but also with a different focal perspective in my sights as well.

I think that a part of my problem in the previous years (also one’s that just did not go as great as I had planned) is that my focus was on the wrong things.  My focus was shifted on things that I just didn’t have any actual control over; things that required me trying to work my way around the plans that God already has worked out for me.  I’m realizing now that there were things that I should have been directing my focus towards, things that are actually in my power to control, things that are where my focus needs to be, that I just wasn’t concentrating on the way I should have been.

Quite possibly, the reason why all of my plans for previous years were not going accordingly is due to the fact that they were my plans for me and not God’s plans for me.  It’s not that I don’t also want the things that God has mapped out for me, it’s just that my focus got off track on other things that I thought I wanted and they weren’t necessarily what was right for me to have (at least not at this time).  I was focusing on the wrong things.  I was placing my energy into things that weren’t right for me.  I was putting time into forcing something that was out of the realm of God’s plans.  I was getting off track.

Now that I’m in a better place, a place where I can clearly see that the direction I was going in was leading to the wrong destination, my focus has shifted.  My mind is clear.  I know where my energy and time needs to be placed and everything else that comes as a result of that, is whatever is meant to come to me.  My writing career hasn’t been what it should have been by now because I wasn’t focused on that.  I thought I was.  I had even managed to convince myself that I was steadily focused on that.  However, my actions were just not matching what I was saying.

I wasn’t putting the energy and time into doing the things that I, as a dedicated and passionate writer, need to put into it.  I was focused on other things that just weren’t worth my time.  I wasn’t focused on the number one thing for my life (besides my daughter of course) which is my writing and my career.  I’ve got it now and I’m back on track.  Next year should be really interesting!

I have the Write 2 Be Ambitious and Driven…

What is your Write 2 Be?

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)

Writing as “Jaycee Durant”

https://write-2-be.com/

http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/

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