The Art of Refocusing

"If you are going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill


“Today every inch of my character was tested…just hoping it wasn’t a dress rehearsal for tomorrow.” – Facebook Post 8/18/11 3:13am


"I try to take just one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me at once.” – Anonymous

The last two weeks have been tough.  Real tough.

I have found myself, throughout the days, needing to simply stop and reset. Now, I can clearly see the goodness in the stop and reset approach and I do my very best to refrain from participating in the defeating behavior of “spinning” which I recognize equates to paralysis. In essence, I’m calling "five for fighting" and taking the adult version of a time out (unfortunately without the accompanying nap). The other goodness that comes from this approach is, it gets me out of feelings of disappointment, discouragement, being questioned and challenged and in to those feelings of hope and progression towards a noble goal.

In the midst of a particularly rough issue, I started to sketch out this concept of stop, reset and progress:

Now, this concept is new to me and I haven’t fully mastered it. Sometimes I linger a little too long in “reset” mode before I can move fully, authentically, into progress. And, if I am being 100% honest, there is at least one time that I slipped back to full blown stop.

In both examples, something simple snapped me out of it (a Teddy Roosevelt quote above my desk or an unexpected note from a former team member) and motivated me towards progression.

During two tumultuous weeks, this self-reflection exercise felt like I had found the Holy Grail when in fact, it was actually some reinventing of the wheel.

I suppose that at the end of the day, it isn't about how many times the message is given, it’s not even about how many times the message is received, it’s about the message actually being applied. Me? I apparently needed to hear the message at least three times before it applied itself.

Curious though, as we all have our ways of resetting our focus to progressing…..what do you do to go from stop to reset to progress? What works for you? Comments welcome below.