Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Your mastery depends on focus, patience, and practice. Not on luck. Robin Sharma
We are told again and again of the power of focus and perseverance. The other night I was watching Utube videos and one caught my eye. It was about the most important thing a Utuber learned. It was the power of focus. He was told by someone he respected he was too scattered in his interests. The advice he was given about his art was to draw the same thing every day. He chose to draw the Australian White Ibis every day and he says it changed the way he looked at things.
I think I understand where he might be coming from. By choosing to write a blog post every day until I got to five hundred blog posts and then cutting down to two posts per week it also changed the way I look at things. When we have to come up with something to say tomorrow, we look at what is going around us in a new way. We are more cognizant of our lives, interactions with others, funny things that happen, and incongruencies in the world. It made me think of questions that don’t have answers, problems that don’t have solutions, and the unintended consequences of what we intended for good.
How much we wish we could change others, but having it come home again that we can only change ourselves. The power of love, kindness, gratitude, and what works in people’s lives. Why are some people always happy? Can we choose to be one of the happy, grateful, optimistic, and encouraging people? Pondering the lives of successful people and how focus, perseverance, and hard work seems to play as much a part as talent and luck. Questioning what makes long, happy, successful marriages. How creativity adds to our lives in big and small ways. The power of books to give us the answers we are seeking.
Success comes from curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism. Albert Einstein
One of the reasons I was afraid to start a blog was what would I have to say? It surprised me that wasn’t a problem at all. I now have to accept that the reason I hadn’t gotten to writing all those years when I said I wanted to but didn’t, was because I didn’t, not because I couldn’t.
Many of us may say, I wish I’d kept up that interest, hobby, or skill. Why not pick it back up now? We may think we could have been a big-time author, singer, athlete, or whatever if we’d continued. What if being a big-time author, singer, or athlete is not what is important. What if doing something is what is important, not if we make a lot of money from it or not. The accomplishment of being able to play the instrument at family parties so everyone can have a sing-along is worthwhile. Writing down stories is worthwhile even if they never have a wide audience. Being athletic enough to be fit at every stage in life is worthy in itself. Singing in a church choir is a blessing to everyone that hears the choir, and may add a dimension to our life we didn’t know was missing. Drawing and painting add to our lives even if we never make money from our art. Using our creativity is a gift we give ourselves.
I’m going to try to take the same advice the Utuber got and make a drawing a day. I picked up a sketchbook and drawing pencils to keep in the den where I write so I don’t have to go down to my art room to do it. If we want to do things we can’t make them so big that we won’t do them. Going down to my art room seems like a commitment of hours and if I am going to fit drawing in every day it needs to be easy to do a quick little drawing.
Is there something we should bring back into our lives we enjoyed, or have always wanted to do? Is there a better time than now?
Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. Jack Canfield
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Will Durant
Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results. Denis Waitley
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.
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