New Year Resolutions 2: What Do I Focus On?

Resolutions 2: What Shall I Focus on?

Study yourselves; and most of all note well
Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel.
Not every blossom ripens into fruit.

Amen.  

When it comes to the character virtues of good listening, good will and good heart, we are all equally capable of excelling.  Not so with all the other characteristics.

There has been a lively debate among researchers and also among us average Joes and Jills about what to focus our self-improvement energy on.  When I was a kid, the focus was all on removing or ameliorating one’s weaknesses.  We studied ourselves to find our weaknesses and then added education or training to our To Do list and we got rid of it.  It’s a good plan.  Celine Dion couldn’t make it as a singing mega-star until she had elocution lessons and plastic surgery.  Reality is what it is and women are judged on their appearance before anything else.  Consider the mean tweets about Carrie Fisher’s appropriately-aged face this week.  So removing barriers is always a good idea.

The 21^st century spawned the Strengths movement, specifically to counteract the all-pervasive search for defects, and that has merit as well.  As Longfellow’s quote shows, this isn’t a new idea. There is a great deal of value in knowing what you are already good at or naturally good at, and focusing on that.  Polishing your gemstone so it gleams even more brightly.  There is some evidence to support this as a strategy, in that hiring managers and potential spouses over-focus on one’s shining points if you dazzle the eyes with them.

The dilemma is succinctly explained in the last line of the poem fragment: not every blossom will ripen into a fruit and you only have 18 usable hours every day, less if you exercise and you will exercise, right?  [If you don’t exercise every day, and you have $20 in your pocket – you know you do – click and start changing your internal landscape now! https://zparkl.com/course/about/transform-your-relationship-with-exercise/  ]

So what shall I spend my precious time on: fix it or get better at what I already do well?  Fixing things, if they are barriers like Dion’s, can give you a big bang for your buck.  Better organizing of paperwork?  Probably not, but it might significantly lower your stress at the office and give you more time to ride a bike or do yoga or paint.  If I focus on what I know I am good at, I will have a thrill of victory as I climb higher and higher on a path that I am already halfway to Denali’s peak on.  There are pros and cons no matter what you choose.

For me, it’s still fix-it.  Healing what needs healing, growing in virtues, and making time for the creative activities that feed my soul, that’s where it’s at for me.