The Strong Within Affirmation Podcast
Education:Self-Improvement
383 I Focus On The End To Know Where To Begin | January 2018 Thursday Week 3
Thoughtful Thursdays-#374 January 18th The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast
I Focus On The End To Know Where To Begin
“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.”
~Dalai Lama
Maybe I might be oversimplifying how our lives work, but where your focus goes is where your energy flows. Where your concentration resides is what will actualize. Where your emphasis is put is what will determine your output… Where your attention lies is whether you get the whole meal or only the french fries…. too many rhymes??? Never. My rap game is on point…and as the famous rap group of the 90’s Digital Underground said in their song The Humpty Dance… “top 10 rappers please allow me to bump thee.”
Ok, but in all seriousness, we overcomplicate life by putting our attention upon the things that should have no worth in deciding what we can achieve. We focus on how things aren’t going right, we focus on who is in our way, we focus on how we aren’t talented enough…and not that those things don’t matter…but they aren’t the final truths in who we become.
We decide our fate by sinking the ship before we’ve even pushed off from the shore. Many of my mentors have talked about a similar idea, that’s said differently. Dr. Wayne Dyer says, “Think from the end.” Stephen Covey say, “Begin with the end in mind.” And I’m sure there are a multitude of other ways it’s been said over the course of humanity. But this idea gets looked over because it seems too simple to really have any power in helping us, and we think that maybe it might be too hard to see what we want at the end of what we’re chasing after. We feel we have to have all the answers right away, or that we need to know every twist and turn along the process of our pursuits.
But that puts more pressure upon us, and instead of creating a clarity of why we are doing something…we then create a habit of jumping without really thinking. And sometimes we need to jump to get moving, as we can overthink and over complicate things, but if it becomes a way of existence …then we’ll always live our lives trying to find our way out of a dark tunnel with no flashlight.
Dr. Wayne Dyer talked about thinking from the end when he would write his novels. He would see the cover. He could visualize it finished and see it in his and other people’s hands. And by thinking from the end, he said that when he wrote, “all he had to do was put his pen to the page and the words came out.” He was divinely inspired as the creative process wasn’t just about him creating but him connecting to something more than just himself.
And I think that’s why we think creativity is so hard. We say we have to be inspired, we have to sit down for hours and hope it happens. We think that it’s all about getting talented enough to be able to put great work into the world. And yes we need to sit down, we need to put in the time to hone our crafts, but we’ve been coming at creativity from the wrong angle.
If you were to talk with some of the greatest artists, the greatest writers and poets, or the greatest speakers… a good amount of them will say, “yes I did the thing I set out to do…but I connected to something more. The greatness in my work just happened, as something more transpired than just ‘me’ doing the work.”
Which makes me think about when I’ve given various speeches on living a more fulfilling existence through my life coaching business. And while I practiced and prepared weeks before the date I was to give the presentation, I still would get nervous right before speaking wondering if I might forget something or maybe I might not connect with the audience. And so I feel this nervousness rise right before I get up to talk…freaking out that I’ve forgotten everything, and I don’t remember how to start.
And that has literally happened where I got so anxious I forgot the exact beginning I wanted to start with. I think it was a story, or a silly joke, or something to help me segue into the topic…and even though that happened, I still did fine. Because if I’ve done the preparation before the presentation, then it just flows. The funny thing is I usually like to film my talks to get better from viewing them, but also because I don’t remember what happened during the talk. I just get in flow, and the words just pour out from me as if it was half me and half something more than me.
Over the years, I’ve become better at hearing myself when I speak in front of big audiences. I want to be in flow, but I don’t want to be a zombie that has no clue what just happened from my talks. I’ve reminded myself that I need to pay better attention to the voices I’m hearing inside my head, pun intended, so I can connect better with the audience. You see, I get excited when I talk and I want to speak fast. So, I work to hear myself during a presentation to slow down my speech patterns consciously. I also work to pay attention to the crucial points that I really want to hit home with the audience. I work to create bookmarks in my mind that when I come to an important point, I will pause and repeat the idea back to them—for better information retention.
The whole purpose I’m getting to, is that if we put in the time…the creativity will happen. But not because it was all us, but because we connected to something more than ourselves. And if you can think from the end, or begin with the end in mind with a crystal clarity…you’ll find the pathway more easily laid out for you. You’ll find you connect to something more than yourself more readily and more deeply. Great creativity is not in the course of saying, “look what I did;” it’s the journey of saying, “look in how I connected…with the work, with myself, and with something greater than myself.”
Today’s Personal Commitment:
What are you committing yourself to this year, the next 5 years, or the next 10 years? And have you thought about it from the end, to see with crystal clarity of how you’d like it to go? It’s not that this practice is an exercise in controlling things, but it’s about seeing that the more you practice the habit of visualizing things from the end, then the more you will see your power changing. You will see that what you think is what you create. It will be like you becoming a fortune teller…manifesting what you set in your mind. And the more you do it, then the faster things will come to you.
There are energies and powers within this world that we never tap into because it’s always about physical work, it’s the idea of pushing through or pulling up your bootstraps no matter what happens. And mental and physical toughness are warranted in making your life great…but to connect to your greatness truly is about something more. It’s about being able to visualize goals with crystal clarity and think from the end, so you not only can begin creating them…but you also know where to begin.
We get in the habit of planning our appointments for the day, knowing what we will wear for the day, knowing what we will be eating for the day but we never take the time to visualize that end goal with crystal clarity. What makes seeing things from the end so different than all those other smaller habits?
So whatever your major goals are this year, I want you to get in the habit of seeing it in your mind every morning and night for 365 days. Try to get as crystal clear a picture of what obtaining that goal would look like, smell like, taste and feel like. See it in your hands, walk around it to see it from every angle. How will it change you and the people around you by reaching that goal? Be as vivid as you can, for the brain doesn’t know the difference between a real picture or a vision in your mind. So the more clearly you can see it in your mind, then the more likely you’ll be able to create it in your reality.
So again I challenge you to visualize, to think from the end, and see your goal vividly every morning you get up and before you go to bed…and I challenge you to keep reminding yourself of your why. The more you know why you are doing something, then the more you will stay connected and motivated to the thing you pursue.
I Focus On The End To Know Where To Begin
Thanks for listening. I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn
Contact info- email: chris@strongwithin.com phone:865-219-3247
Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
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