Focus, Man, Focus!

I’m sure you’re aware of all the bumper sticker clichés that have to do with goal setting and success in life. As examples: “If you can see it, you can be it.” “To visualize it is to become it.” “You can do anything you can imagine.” “Success begins with an unshakable mental image.” And, the list goes on and on.


While still working in the sales and marketing side of the television industry, I was fed a steady diet of it over a number of years and usually the television station paid handsomely for some outsider in an expensive hotel ballroom to indoctrinate, or reinforce, the minions of sales people in attendance – usually about once a year.

If you think I’m about to get down and negative about this sort of thing; I’m not. In fact, I remain a huge fan and proponent of such imagery and goal setting. What’s the point of starting anything, unless you can create a mind’s-eye image of successfully completing it?

So far, I’ve laid down three paragraphs to simply set up questions I have for me and for you: How does success visualization and goal setting evolve as we get older? Or, should it change at all? Is it normal at, or near, retirement to stop doing such things? I wonder about this often as I attempt to analyze myself in this regard.

Oh, I still visualize success and set goals, but it’s becoming an increasingly narrower endeavor. What I mean is that I, once upon a time, dreamed of becoming a novelist – beneath that umbrella were a number of stories I wanted to write. I not only had a vision of becoming an author but a highly detailed mental image of success doing it. Now, I don’t see things in such grandiose fashion. Instead, I see myself successfully completing the novel in progress.

There was a time I’d stand in the center of a room and totally remodel it in my mind before I ever picked up a saw or hammer. Only then did I go about the job of making that room fit what I saw. Now, I spend a week, or so, trying to visualize re-gluing a rickety chair.

I wonder; now that I likely have more sand at the bottom of my hourglass than the top, is that normal? Or, could it be that I’m sabotaging my creative future with such a narrowing approach?

If you know me at all by now, you surely realize that when I latch onto a philosophical notion like this, I can’t seem to let it go until I get it down in print. Some people talk it out. I write it out.

Right now, I’m trying to develop a mental image of breakfast. That’s about it. But, on the upside, it's becoming crystal clear.

Y’all have a wonderful day.


Author of
"Six Years' Worth"/Father's Press/mainstream/print & ebook
"Paradise Flawed"/Dream Books LLC/action-adventure/print & ebook
"Where Are You, Anne Bonny?"/Rogue Phoenix Press/ historical drama/ ebook only
“Trouble”, short story/CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthology, Vol. IX/print only
“Dancing Away”/ short story/romance/Untreed Reads/ebook only
“Annie’s World: Jake’s Legacy”/ATTM Press/soft science fiction/print & ebook
“Helping Hand For Ethan/Rogue Phoenix Press/young adult/print & ebook
“Phobia”/Booktrope/suspense-thriller/print & ebook
“Defining Family”/Whiskey Creek Press/young adult/print & ebook
“The Last Radiant Heart” (re-release)/Sage Words Publishing/science fiction/print & ebook
COMING SOON
“Hackberry Corners, Texas 1934”
“Zero To Love”