If you are desirous of living a generative life, one that ends with the feeling of a mission accomplished rather than of a disappointing failure, you must develop the ability to focus your physical, mental and emotional attention.
The three levels are focused independently, yet the three are connected like lenses within lenses. As such, having just one or two out of three properly focused in relation to the task at hand will prevent you from seeing clearly and acting wisely. To be sure, a clear mind paired with a troubled heart is just as limiting as a clear heart and a cloudy mind.
Body, mind and heart must be unified in purpose and focused in relation to the opportunity before you if you are to achieve any measure of success. If any are at odds, such as would be the case were your heart to be bound in worry while your mind struggles to maintain hope, the most likely outcome is failure. You must focus and bring to bear the fulness of your attention in body, mind and heart to overcome the gravitational pull of frustration and mediocrity.
As long as you are focused on the burdens you have physically, mentally or emotionally or on how constrictive your circumstances might be at the moment, you will not escape their clutches. To overcome, you must realize this basic yet powerful truth: to be free from, you must be free in.
You can find freedom in any situation by identifying and focusing your mental, emotional and physical energies on the momentary apertures available to you. If your attention is split between your apertures and your limitations, you will remain tethered to the limitations and feel limited by them. If, however, you learn to train your attention exclusively on your openings in circumstance, that is, on that which can be done now, you will fee free to act and free to succeed in the dance of life.
Liberty does not derive from license; it comes from the ability to focus on and act artistically and gracefully in relation to the open door before you in any circumstance. You are rarely as constrained as you will naturally feel when your lenses are unfocused. It’s a good thing that the future looks blurry when you are out of focus. If it didn’t, we would have a much larger problem on earth than we do now.
Gregory Hake 
Your post today is a tremendous pivotal point to a life of success. Interesting looking up the word focus in the dictionary where it is noted that it comes from a latin word meaning fireplace or hearth. Last evening there was a program on about what scientists are now fiinding out about the sun. They are finding that there is an enormously elaborate system at work for the generation of light. It obviously appears the sun, the hearth of our solar system, has one focus in mind. Makes me think of your words that if your attention is split between your apertures and your limitations, you will remain tethered to the limitations and feel limited by them. As your words are brought into focus in my attention it makes me strengthen in a sense of gratefulness that I can know freedom now as my attention is given as the the sun’s for the generation of light in my all my living circumstances now!
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This is such an important thing to learn! When you realize that there are opportunities in every circumstance for growth and movement, your experience goes from what feels like the impossibility of getting all three lenses focused simultaneously to an auto-focus. This is not some mental game you can play, psyching yourself up so you can have the energy to get focused. It should be effortless, and the only way to make that happen is to constantly look for opportunity rather than limitation.
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Your words of wisdom are deeply appreciated this morning Gregg – thank you!
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Focussing on what apperars to be amiss can become a self fullfilling prophecy. Life becomes a fiction we create. The reactions as they are played out in our hearts and thoughts create dissonance and then as we continue to focus on the aberration we create more of the same. Finding the aperture is more likely if we are calm. As has been said in some of your recent posts it creates an atmosphere for creativity. I also think what we think about we propagate.
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I like the connection between focus and freedom! Normally focus is sen as hard work, but it’s usually b/c heart and mind are at odds!
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“Liberty does not derive from license…” Well said. It definitely implies the responsibility we have to not squander the privilege.
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