Wisdom Keys: Change Your Focus

Have you ever taken a photograph that turned out to be blurry? Maybe your hand shook as you snapped the shot. Perhaps there was a smudge on the camera lens. If could be that the film speed wasn’t set right and that became the culprit. In any case, no matter what you do in the post-editing, you simply cannot change the focus of that photo once it’s already been taken.

Like that blurry photo, sometimes our lives become too far out of focus. We forget the goals we once had in the process of living from day-to-day. The dream career, perfect home, wonderful children, and life filled with traveling all become a boring job, a house that needs a good cleaning and lots of small repairs, kids who sometimes appear a little more dirty that we might like, and the last thing even close to taking a vacation was the drive from home down to the grocery without a screaming kid parked in the back seat of the mini-van.

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that scenario, other than the fact it wasn’t quite what we thought we wanted. If we let ourselves sit around a think, “I hate my life,” then guess what—it will never get better.

You probably all know someone who never seems to have a good thing to say about anything. Complain, complain, complain. If you let yourself listen to the things they say wither one of two things will happen—you will start to feel so uncomfortable listening to them that you will leave, or you’ll just right in, sharing woes of your own.

And what happens if you take the second course? Pretty soon you become the person everyone knows who does nothing but complain about life.

Is that the way you really want to be? Somehow I don’t think so. We have higher aspirations in life. We set goals to make ourselves better. We look far into the future to help us keep out end results in mind. The simple truth is, losers focus on what they are going through, they are the whiners of the world. While champions focus on what they are going to do, then get themselves busy and do it.

What can you do it you find yourself a whiner and headed toward being a loser as a result? Look at the people you regularly associate with and make a change. Thomas S. Monson suggests, “Associate with those who, like you, are planning not for temporary convenience, shallow goals, or narrow ambition, but rather for those things that matter most—even eternal objectives. Choose your friends with caution; plan your future with purpose; and frame your life with faith.”

Like preparing for the better snapshot, you need to get your life in focus.

Champions find their inner determination, make themselves work with discipline, and use that burning desire to get them moving. They are not satisfied to sit around a wish that someday their dreams will come true.

Champions enjoy hard work and love the game. They plan for success. They are competent and optimistic. They visualize success, for themselves and are willing to help others. Champions are consistent, creative, and focused. Champions never quit.

Losers can’t hold it together for any of these things long than for a short period, usually less than a season of their lives.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t change. If you want to become a champion, you’ve got to change your focus. Find new friends. Change you job if its taking you nowhere. See yourself as the best in your field, then work hard to be there.

When it comes to being a winner, it’s up to you to make, then take the better picture.