Awaken The Sleeper, With 20/20 Focus and Vision

 

Revised 11/14/2021

Vision tells us our destination.  It doesn’t tell us how to get there, it just tells us how we will know when we arrive.  Focus is what helps up to do the work to arrive at the destination that vision has uncovered in our heart.  Focus is the road to the destination.  If we don’t have a vision we can’t have a destination. Without focus, we will find ourselves asleep wandering lost in the forest. We will just keep going in circles back to where we started. Lost, dazed and confused.

If you look back at the last two year’s – did you follow your vision or did you go in circles?

Without focus you travel down the road forgetting where you came from.  The journey becomes the destination in a twisted sort of way.  You will find yourself trying to fill a bottomless hole by acquiring more of everything.  To possess things which promise to make you whole, but which instead create an insatiable appetite for more and more.  Without focus life becomes a merry go round that never stops.

“When you are clear on your vision, it will pull you forward and out of bed in the morning” – Sean McCabe

We have all heard the story of the person who worked at a job for 30 years, retires and gets the gold watch.  Then after a short while of sitting at home with nothing to do, they die.  They never uncovered their life purpose, their reason for living.  They dragged themselves out of bed each day and went to a job that didn’t fulfill them.  They never discovered the reason they were born.  Instead they punched a time clock day after day, month after month, until the years fled.  They never found their way out of the forest.

Awaken the sleeper

The only way to find that vision, your life purpose is to look for it.  It is deep inside your heart.  It is connected to the things that you love to do.  It’s not about something that happens in some distant future.  It is about the quality of choices you are making in your life this moment.  It’s about what you choose to see, to perceive, to feel and what you choose to do in this moment of time.  The choices that push you to engage in life at its deepest meaning for you.  It changes who you are NOW.

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.  Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens” – Carl Jung

It’s a funny thing when one day you wake up to your vision.  You might have been wandering in circles for years, looking for that one special person or that title at work that said “I have arrived!”.  You might have worked your fingers to the bone for years to find elusive fame and fortune.  Whatever you thought was the answer to that longing deep in your heart, once you had it, you discovered it wasn’t it.  It was just another circle in the forest.  Then one day it happens.  You finally realize it isn’t outside of you.  It’s not a person, a career, money in the bank, a dream house or car.  It is something inside of you that is calling you home.

Usually what wakes you up is being disillusioned, disappointed, that feeling you have hit rock bottom.  Too many bad decisions and failed plans.  When you stop fighting the uphill battle, give up and give in – when you are in that spot of finally understanding what it means to “let go and let God” it finally happens.  Your heart feels calm, whole and centered.  Your soul comes alive and feels truly safe for the first time because finally we are listening to the inner voice.

Listening with your heart and soul

Your vision becomes clear as you climb a high tree and see the way out of the forest of lost causes.  You understand the connections to what has happened in your life and how each trial and tribulation, each circle around the forest was teaching you something vital that you needed to learn.  Peace with your past, present and future permeates your bones.  You see far off the destination your soul is leading you to.  You realize the importance of the journey.

The journey has places where you became confused as to what the right choice was – at the same time that confusion is where you learned something new that stretched your comfort zone.  The journey was where you were betrayed and broken by someone you thought loved you and would never hurt you – at the same time it was how you learned to heal your heart.  The journey lead to lots of frustration as you tried and failed, over and over to learn something critical to your dreams – at the same time those frustrations lead to more authentic decisions based on your own judgment and not someone else’s.

Make the right choice

Even the parts of the journey where the sadness was a deep pit of despair, you learned to listen the heart, hear the words of wisdom of the soul and recover your happiness and joy.

2022 can be your year of focus, and vision.  With the global pandemic, most people have lost focus.  Their vision has dimmed.  It seems like every time we think that we are moving past the masks and restrictions, this virus mutates into something else.

Instead of waiting for whatever “normal” is going to be and then settling into a new vision, it is time to just do it anyway.  Some of your plans will fail dramatically, and you will learn something.  Some of them be will duds that don’t even get lift off before they came crashing down – and that’s ok.  Plans to go in one direction, will actually come about 180 degrees to go in another direction – which seems wrong but will be exactly right.

  • Look for the self sabotage.
  • Look for the places where you missed the road signs to turn left or right.
  • Look for where you missed the detours.
  • Look for where you got lost.

Now program your GPS system with your updated vision.  Get clear about what it is you want to feel and be open to the feeling and not how or what is going to get you there.  Look for signs, clues, and ask for directions.  Don’t give up on your dreams.  Listen to the voice in your heart and soul.  Get back on track to where you are supposed to be.

Be fearless

Have a vision  

Get inspired

Believe in yourself

Always hustle

Stay determined

Stay focused

Stay motivated

Keep pushing

Be happy

Get out there, own the day

Create your own personalized dream map, claim your own unique goals of change and transformation; refine them into goal crushing gremlins; and finally, to truly understand what your motivation around those goals is all about.

 

Sheryl Silbaugh

I am married with 4 grown children who are all married and currently have 14 grandchildren and two great granddaughters. I work fulltime as a Director at Bank of America and I am the founder of LemonadeMakers.org, which is a website and Facebook page dedicated to personal transformation and growth. We all have life's lemons show up in our life, this website helps us to make them into lemonade.