On Sunday, we talked about taking the  journey of life with YOUR eyes wide open — as in, yes, absolutely, DO explore with fascination, but LIVE too, while you’re doing it.

Some might say we’re pretty opinionated about HOW we “think” others — our readers, seekers, self-improvement proponents — should take that journey. We’re not immune to some “Gawwwwd, get off my back… let me just @#$% smell the roses already” comments (heck, nor would we want to be).

So, we respond with: smell ’em, baaaaaaby, smeeell all you like, but ensure you’re not ONLY smelling the rose-colored roses ’cause that’s all you SEE (get it?)

If you are, and/or you haven’t read the last blog post, skippedy-do-da right on over to the previous blog post for some Wizard of Oz Wisdom.

If you’re actually going to one day EXPERIENCE (as in, like before you’re floating back around the ethers) what you think, imagine, and keep saying you’re going do or have, we’d venture to say there are a few things yas gotta come to grips with.

= = = = = Continued = = = = =

As we elaborated on in Sunday’s post:

FIRST MIND GRIPPER: The more you focus on pushing aside (repressing) your own feelings of fear, anger, or anxiety; the more you spend too much energy trying to shield yourself from (ignore) anything “outside of you” that is controversial, negative, or emotionally/mentally shocking, the more likely you’ll be constantly hanging out in Munchkinland.

Like Dorothy, you have to admit you feel bad (scared) before you can feel better (at ease). And you have to be okay with facing those feelings head-on, whether it takes the form of flying monkeys, or witches, or just plain old raw emotions.

NOTE: if you ALREADY commented on the last post, high-five to you for your contributions. If you have some insight or just want to share your experience with our “the struggle is worth it” philosophy, scroll to the end of Sunday’s post and write away.

Okay, so now that you KNOW, without question, that life is a series of complimentary opposites put in place for you to experience contrast (again, if you don’t, read Sunday’s post)…

You can trot along NOT always:

* Playing it Safe;
* Having Unrealistic Expectations;
* Feeling Sorry for Yourself;
* Quitting Too Soon;
* Pretending You’re Fine When You’re Not;
* etc, etc.

Now, here’s the coolest part about owning up to (i.e., admitting it’s gonna happen) the struggles of your life:

You don’t waste your days majoring in minor crap!

In another words, when you’re NOT fretting about how to be (or appear) perfect, living up to some label you’ve mentally tattooed to yourself, or worrying about trivial stuff, you have more energy (and time) to FOCUS on what you DO wanna experience.

But, stop the presses for a second!

It sure the hell doesn’t mean that, like Dorothy, you won’t be surprised with an “apple-throwing tree” every now and then — i.e., just because you’ve found this new approach to focus on what you want, it doesn’t mean this power will magically put a force field around you that protects you from ALL of  life’s hurdles and pot holes.

It seems counter-intuitive, we know, to take the “I’ll-just-let-life-come-to-me” approach while FOCUSING on items in your day that you think and/or feel will give you fulfillment, joy, and a sense of accomplishment.

Yet, truth is always stranger the fiction, when it comes to the mindset and actions super-achievers take too.

They get things done — progress through their projects, and end up where they wanted, regardless of the opposing things around them — NOT so much by focusing directly on the thing (the item, desire, goal, etc.), but on the process instead.

A funny thing happens, we’ve found, when us humans focus directly on achieving (having / experiencing) something:

We start ignoring the beauty of the journey for the destination.

We start worrying that we’ll make mistakes. We start getting nervous about failure and rejection. We start feeling guilty about success!

All that’s just too distracting.

Most people end up round-filing their desires, their wishes, and their dreams, because their fear and guilt causes them to just spin their wheels. Or worse yet, freeze into inaction.

So, at the end of the day, how can you feel good about your accomplishment from the previous 24 hours?

Every day, you either have or don’t have results to show for burning through another 24 hours of your life… How can you get things done, without feeling like you’ve wasted that time ?

SECOND MIND GRIPPER: When you focus on the process — the journey from where you are to where you want to be — of achieving any outcome, you don’t think of it as a chore. People who seemingly have the Midas touch when it comes to accomplishing stuff look at it as a game. And, by golly, it’s a game they’re gonna enjoy while playing it!

The magnitude of what you want doesn’t matter. Simply because, no matter how big or small your goal, the process of making it happen remains the same.

End-result thinking gets you attached to one goal, stifles creativity and keeps you from letting unforeseen angles become positive possibilities.

However, with task or process-oriented thinking, you can easily open up new horizons. You can let your imagination soar.

And you can accept the infinite possibilities that are available to you.

And no, that doesn’t mean focusing on the “how” — as in “How am I going to get there?” “How am I going to achieve that?” and so forth — because that stops people in their tracks too.

At least, it doesn’t mean focusing on the “how” of the big-picture “forest goal”, but it may mean looking at the step-by-step “hows” of each small-picture “tree goal” along the forest journey.

But like they say, the “hows” will get revealed to you as you go… and if they don’t, you just do some research, and then they certainly will get revealed!

Let’s take the case of a person going on a diet.

He tries all kinds of diet plans, ingests all kinds of “miracle” pills, attempts all kinds of exercise routines. He reviews books and tapes. He attends courses and workshops. But the results are nowhere in sight.

Why?

Because the fundamental issue for success with dieting is: “the habit of maintaining self-control.”

But the average dieter completely bypasses this very basic issue. Instead, he focuses directly on the result he is seeking… “losing pounds of fat soon!”

(Focusing on the wrong “how” often means coming up with the wrong game plan… and then giving up in defeat!)

So he falls easy prey to the “quick!” and “overnight!” scams. He pursues the exotic powders and the trendy diet books… all of which are useless without self-control.

As you can see, his chances of success are somewhere between nil and zero!

Don’t kid yourself!

We’ve learned the hard way that almost every life situation has parallels to this dieting example. We humans aim for a specific result. But that result remains elusive because we’ve failed to address the essential fundamentals.

It’s a much too common trap. Common because more often than not, the only way to learn about these essential fundamentals is to understand the process.

Think about it!

And once you do, let us know your thoughts by commenting below.

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For some GUIDES to help you through the process in key areas of life, we’ve put these on our TO RECOMMEND LIST:

For Dieting:
http://www.lwlurl.com/snapp

For Getting Things Done & Time Management:
http://www.lwlurl.com/get-things-done

For Making a Marriage Thrive:
http://www.lwlurl.com/collins

Your Partners in the Quest For
Living a Life Without Limits,

(( Life Design Consultants,
Agents of Higher Learning &
Catalysts For Change ))

Filed under: Personal Achievement, Time Management