Unsettled!

Have we all been here before?  I would like to think it is a place we have all been, but at the same time would not wish it on anyone.

Describing the feeling of being unsettled is a little like trying to describe the sensation of drowning without never having experienced it.  You know what it must be like.  You know it would be horrifying and you would hope that before you took that last breath and your lungs filled with water, you would be able to grab hold of something that lifted you to safety.  Yet, complete understanding eludes you which means you just cannot quite accurately depict the feeling.

This is not a new place for me, but it comes at a new time.  Making life changes when you are young is expected, even encouraged.  You have this sense that no matter what happens you have time to adjust, recoup, and rebound.  When you make big changes later in life you begin to wonder if the time you have left is enough to warrant the difficulties of which you are about experience.  Do there have to be difficulties?  The purest in me would have to say NO, but the realist says there is no way to avoid them.

Human nature dictates that we have struggle.  The degree of struggle will be directly related to the amount of effort we put in focusing on the difficulty.  Take for example a baseball player that is adept at knocking the ball out of the park.  Players that hit a lot of home runs also have a lot of strike outs.  If the focus were on the strike outs, there is a good bet to be placed that they are not on the Home Run leader board.  An example in another field would be Thomas Edison.  He made a light bulb – it did not work – he changed something about the light bulb…again and again and again…until it finally did work.  But the focus was not on the difficulties, but on the goal.

We have all heard the quote attributed to Albert Einstein, haven’t we?  “Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  That is because the focus is on the wrong thing.

So, to me, being unsettled is akin to not being focused on the goal.  When the prize is what you are reaching for, the more you stretch the closer you get, until that moment when you grasp it in your hand and shout a victory cry.

Clarify your goal.  Have a plan, but be ready to adjust the plan so as to not focus on the difficulties, but on the end result.