In October of 2021, I launched a blog series titled “Overcoming Obstacles” to use as a guide to evaluate areas where you might have gotten stuck during 2021. During this series, I walked through identifying common obstacles to achieving your goals (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)
.Ironically, in Part 5 of this series, I’d planned to explore losing Focus when I encountered my own obstacle in the form of my father’s death. His passing was not sudden…in fact, our family had been preparing for his transition since 2018 when doctors told us that he only had twelve months to live due to multiple health complications.
Who among us can claim we’ve never lost our way on the path toward our goal?
My original goal was to show the breadth of issues that contribute to us losing focus. However, dealing with my dad’s passing brought everything to a screeching halt. I’d never understood the phrase “going numb” until I tried to press forward following the news. Throughout this feeling of fogginess and distraction, I felt confident in my ability to continue being productive at work and at home.
The ability to focus is our superpower!! However, just like every hero with a superpower, we all have something that makes us feel vulnerable (aka Kryptonite). When it comes to focus, some of those vulnerabilities may creep in to rob us of the motivation to keep momentum.
For me, it was at least a few months before I was able to acknowledge that I needed help with getting back on track. Since I didn’t have the energy to actually talk with anyone, I decided to start with the tools at my disposal.
I believe starting the day with a renewed spiritual mindset is important for setting the intentions for how we choose to operate during the entire day. Therefore, my daily morning routine includes contemplative meditation after reading scriptures.
I use an app on my smartphone because I prefer a guided meditation to help me get the most out of the experience. One day the meditation was focused on sorrow. During this session, my awareness centered on the suggestion that is also a signal to turn away from something within us that might be holding us back.
In that moment, I realized that the grief that I was experiencing was a loss of someone particularly important to my life. In fact, my dad was so important to me that he had become unreachable as a human being.
This created significant conflict inside of me because I could not reconcile the pain that I felt from his human choices with my desperation to gain his acceptance.
My sorrow was because, for the longest time, this internal conflict robbed me of a relationship that might have changed the trajectory of my growth as a man.
And yet, here was an opportunity to do something powerful with this grief!!
This meditation experience took me all the way back to something that I could not understand in the darkest part of my sorrow. You see, a few weeks after he was laid to rest, I felt a spiritual connection to my dad that gave me comfort. It was a voice telling me that, “Sometimes your heart has to break in order to be set free.”
I share this because, without an intentional effort to develop this morning routine habit, I don’t believe that an opportunity to free myself from something deeper would have materialized.
Over time, I recognized a few very transformative thoughts about my grief experience.
1. The only acceptance that mattered was my own.
2. My internal conflict was now over, and I was free to live fully inside my purpose without the fear of rejection.
3. We overcome our Kryptonite by using tools that help remove us from the threat.
Although this is not the direction I’d intended for this post, I believe that it was important to illustrate how leaning into an obstacle in one area (in my case focus) can be an opportunity for personal growth in a different area. Further, the root of some of our obstacles can be deeper than we understand…or care look.
At this point, I haven’t decided whether to continue exploring the remaining blogs in the original series about obstacles. What I do know is that I’m free to flow in whatever direction feels right to help others on this journey.
The obstacles we encounter are a normal part of our growth process. We build resilience by identifying the sources of the blocks; developing solutions to navigate those obstacles; and following through with working the solution. One of the top methods of staying in front of this challenge is to develop or improve self-awareness and self-management habits. Take the time right now to put in the work necessary bring your most common obstacles to the surface as continue developing your goals for 2022.
What’s your favorite method for regaining focus?
Drop me a note in the comments and let’s chat!!
Don’t know where to begin? Let’s connect on a brief call and we can explore together!
Excited For Your Empowered Self,
Coach Frederick