Refocused Living

Sometimes life feels completely overwhelming, as if the bad times are here to perpetually stay. Awful weather, unforeseen pot holes, and extremely long detours can force you to change directions on the road map to your goals. With no foreseeable end to your misery and way to get your life back on track, you feel awful, almost as if it feels like a form of suffering.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the bad things and lose focus of your ambitions when hard times crash into you like a 300 pound football player. It’s completely understandable, too. That’s a natural reaction.

Taking responsibility for your life – complete, total 100% responsibility – is one of the things that has gotten me through some of the toughest, most aggravating times of my life. It’s a difficult area to master, but learning what total responsibility is and then applying it to your life is richly rewarding.

Responsibility comes in two steps. First, you need to accept what your life is right at this very moment. Next, you need to take full responsibility for the changes that you can create in your life. Only you can make those changes happen.

Acceptance

A family member passes away. You lose your job. An unexpected medical emergency comes up. Something bad happens.

Or it may not even be an event like that. Maybe you feel totally stressed out from your daily load of schoolwork. Or you keep grinding your wheels at your job day in and day out but you just can’t quite seem to get ahead.

When something terrible happens or you feel as if your life is on a downward spiral, take a step back. Take a deep breath. Think about how your life looks as a whole. What parts are going amazingly well? What parts do you feel are crashing down on you? Try to look at the entire picture, not just the aspects of life you’re having trouble with. See how what you’re going through fits into the big picture.

Focusing solely on what’s going wrong in life is what most people decide to do. And as a first reaction, that’s natural. When I accidentally slide on ice getting into my car, the first thing I think isn’t “Gee, I wonder what I’m going to have for lunch?” It’s more like “Shoot! That hurt! Am I bleeding anywhere?” First reactions to any event zoom in on what happened. They’re like a snap decision in a situational analysis form.

Much like you have the option of viewing a tumble on a sheet of ice in different perspectives, from the game of life you have the option of using various lenses to get better understanding of your problem. You can focus on just the problem itself. Or you can focus on your life in general and how that problem will play out in the grand scheme of things. The former view often leads people to making rash decisions over a situation – decisions that don’t work out so well in the long run. The latter view is empowering and incredibly motivating. No longer does your situation look bleak; instead, you see how everything will eventually wind up. Your decisions are made with a cool head and logical reasoning, not your emotions.

It’s like eating an amazing 3 course dinner with a so-so dessert. Are you only going to focus on how okay the dessert tastes? Or will you remember the meal as a whole and how fantastic the rest of the food was? View your life together with the problem and the problem suddenly becomes easier to manage. What was a terrible, awful situation now turns slightly less horrible, as if streams of sunlight are beaming down on your life once again.

(I’m not saying to go all Pollyanna and think your bad situation will magically disappear; however, your problem will seem not as overwhelming when viewed in a larger perspective.)

Looking at the problem in a large setting also brings about acceptance. I’m not talking about acceptance of the problem, per se. Anybody can accept an individual aspects of their life – I can accept the fact that my name is Matt, I’m male, and I play the piano. What I’m talking about is an acceptance that you realize the problem is in your life is there to stay, and you need to make major changes to quickly and effectively solve that problem.

This is the part where people stumble. Instead of looking at the grand scheme of things and hammering away at solutions, they look solely at the problem. Whatever bad thing happened in their life angers them to no end. Because they’re so intently focusing on that one bad thing, it’s impossible for them to work through it. Don’t be one of these people.

Responsibility

Accept your life how it is. Take responsibility for whatever happened. Even if something awful happened that’s quite not your fault (e.g., you are fired from your job), accept that it happened. It’s in your life now. It’s your responsibility to take that misfortune and turn it into something greater.

Nobody else can change your bad situation into a fabulous situation. If you’re jobless, it’s your choices from here on out that determine your new job or new method of earning income. If you have a medical emergency, it’s your choices that will effect your quality of life, possibly for the rest of your life. If you want more happiness, you have to accept that you’re unhappy, and then take responsibility for your decisions here on out that can make you ecstatic about life.

This is another part where people totally stumble. They “get” the acceptance parts, they “understand” the responsibility aspect of this whole thing, but then they start pointing fingers. The blame game begins at full speed. For example, many people blame everything else – large companies, their friends, society’s standards of what’s beautiful – when trying to justify the fact that they’re overweight. But these people are completely wrong. It’s not the fast food company’s fault that you’re overweight and suffer from a low self esteem because of your body image. I wouldn’t even say it’s the fashion magazine’s fault. What you have is an acceptance and responsibility problem. Accept who you are, flaws and all. If you don’t like those flaws, take on the responsibility to change them.

Stop yourself from waiting on the permission of others to take charge of your life. That’s a classic symptom of total denial of responsibility. “I wish I could do X, but I’m waiting on Y to help me out first…” is a lie, 99% of the time. There might be some instances where you need another person’s specific help and you’ll be forced to wait on them until they have the time. However, most people use this as a bogus excuse to procrastinate.

Your decisions produce outcomes. Acceptance of how your life is right now and taking on the power of all that responsibility is what’s going to help you through the darkest hours of your life.

What are you putting off finally accepting as a reality in your life? How can you claim responsibility for what has happened and change it to what you dream of?

It’s your life. Your responsibility.

I was reading through a book by Donald Trump that had a chapter entitled “Approach Your Work As an Art Form,” with the subtitle “Work Brilliantly.” In this chapter, Trump talks about how he approaches his business: like an art form (shockingly enough.) He demands the very best out of himself and others; he constantly tries to out-do himself; he never settles for anything less than perfection.

Reading this sent me into a think mood . How many of us honestly strive to live by Trump’s values? In our careers, do we give a sincere attempt to put out our best products, or do we settle for the average? Do we reach out for a genuine impact on other people, or do we figure a simple smile and “Nice job!” is enough of a reward for a job not so well done?

Are you constantly perfecting what you’re creating?

If you’re a blogger, are you constantly trying to out-do yourself every single time to create work with a higher impact? Or are you stuck in a complacent writing rut? If you’re a musician, are you practicing to become even better, day in and day out? Or have you settled for being an okay guitarist, playing average-level songs?

People want the highest quality they can afford. They hate to settle for the mediocre, the bland, the boring. If you’re not producing and putting out the highest quality content you possibly can, what’s the point of creating new content? People won’t flock to what you have; they’ll gravitate towards something even better.

For everything you ever attempt to do in life, you should always be asking yourself, “Is this the absolute best I can do?” If it’s not, immediately start doing your best.

This is silly mindset to some people, but to me, it’s really an interesting, awesome way to live. I want to be the best that I can be, no matter what I’m putting my mind to. If I’m playing the piano for a group of people, I want to be playing at the best level I can, whether that group is of 5 people or 150. If I’m writing a blog post, I want that post to be the absolute best I can make it, whether it’s going to be read by 5 people or 15,000. 15,000 would be nice, though.

Constantly demand perfection from yourself and from others. If you’re creating something, don’t settle for a product that’s just okay. Really, honestly try to top yourself each and every time. Always go bigger, go better, do something more interesting.

Are you striving to leave an impact on others?

Part of the reason I love what I do is because my work can leave such a profound effect on people. Okay, I know that’s bit of a cliche thing to say, but in my experiences it’s totally true.

The strongest memories I have of performing at the piano aren’t necessarily of me being on stage performing, but of the reactions I get afterwords when I’m meeting the crowd. It’s an amazing feeling to see the effect I had on so many people who had the opportunity to listen to me play; it’s like I want to rush on stage and perform once more just to see the audience’s reaction once last time.

Of course, my feelings toward blogging is the same thing. I might not be able to see everybody’s face to face reaction to my writings, and it might take a while for some of the ideas I’m explaining online to trickle down into real life and make an impact in other’s lives. But regardless of how much time that takes, I love communicating what I know through these posts. I love the positive comments and feedback I get. I love knowing that somehow, somewhere, what I’ve said here sincerely made a difference in somebody’s life.

The bulk of your life’s hours are going to be spent whittling away at your career(s). But are you doing work that truly leaves an impact on others? When you explain what you do to others and when your products get into other people’s hands, what are their reactions? Happy, enthusiastic, and ecstatic? Or bored, lackluster, and apathetic? Are they thrilled as much as you are about what you get to do every day? Do they even care? What kind of an impact are you truly leaving on the people you meet?

If you’re not impacting other human beings as much as you know you can be, it might be time to find a better fitting career.

The bottom line is simple: step up your game. Only demand perfection out of yourself. Strive to connect to other people. Make real human to human connections in everything you do.