Embracing the Future to Find a Sustainable Living

How clear are you about where you’re headed next? Do you have one clear direction you want to take, or are you trying to go in several directions at once? If we’re going to get somewhere in life, we have to make choices and focus. We can’t develop a strategy until we’ve found that focus. We need to make a choice that fits with our lifestyle, our budget, and our inclinations.

 Finding a Fit

One difficulty in finding a fit is trying to balance the demands of work and family. Yet if our lives are to be satisfying, we must find a balance.  This struggle with finding balance is a major reason we have a hard time committing to a clear focus for our future. It often takes a lot of wiggling and jiggling to fit everything into our lives comfortably.

 Paying the Way

Worry about making enough money is the number one reason that people can’t seem to commit to a clear focus. Instead, they make compromises in hopes of creating a financial safety net. Such compromises of course, can become financial drains. To find your focus you have to match where you want to go and what people will pay you to do.  Your niche lies at this overlap. Take time to consider how your passions, experience, background and contacts fit with the needs that you see around you. Think of how you can combine them to make the money you need to do what you want.

 Commitment

Once we are clear about what’s most important, focusing our time, money and energy becomes easier, and then commitment is the next step.  Often people are afraid to commit to a focus. It seems to be human nature to want to wiggle out of focus. And, yet, in looking at people who have successfully changed directions to pursue new dreams, the pattern is clear… good luck is when focused effort meets opportunity.

 Vacillating

Selecting one clear and specific direction involves making decisions. But once made, we’re only a step away from action. Are you faced with having to make choices you’re afraid to confront?  Vacillating back and forth isn’t unusual when we are in the process of changing directions. In fact it’s only natural.  Some of us may need to try out or audition various scenarios for our life before we can settle on one. That’s okay. We often need time to synthesize or refine our feelings. We need to digest what we’re discovering about the feasibility of our ideas before we can know that we’ve found the right one. That’s the only way we’ll find out what we truly want. So, give yourself the time and permission to send up some trial balloons and find out what the weather is like out there.

 An Interim Focus

There will always be times when the pressure of change means that we have to act quickly. If this is your situation and you must act now, choose your best available option as an “interim” focus from which to explore further. Once you have a focus, you will know where you’re going. All you have to do next is to figure out how to get there.

Finally, do you have a clear focus that you are ready to make a commitment to? What are you willing to commit to doing at this point? This is your journey. You need not be any further along.

“You see things and say, ‘why?’ but I dream things that never were and say, ‘why not?”    George Bernard Shaw

If you don’t know where to begin in breaking your goals down into a manageable strategy, there are experts that can help you… counselors, business consultants and personal coaches. The best route to finding such assistance is through personal referrals, but if you can’t find help that way, check out the web or if you think we can help, Paul we offer counseling.

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