On The Right Tracks Now: 2011

Making Our Way Back

Getting off track with our lives is easy. Getting back on track and moving forward, although rewarding, is not. Don’t get me wrong there are glimpses of joy and hope along the way but there are also visions of darkness and despair. The question is how to we survive the moments of despair that so desperately want to defeat us? How do we keep our focus on the goals we truly desire even when giving up or giving in options are readily available and easy? That is the purpose of this blog post.

Understand I personally know that this journey is not easy but it is a worthwhile adventure. By no means can this article provide you with all of the answers or all of the guidance that you will need. This is only an attempt to offer a few guidelines to help you start the march toward your destination in spite of the obstacles you may encounter. You will find that much of the guidance you need will come from within you. As you will see below most of what I am recommending to you has to do with a look within. Now let me share with you some ideas that help me on my way back to joy and peace.

Know where you are. How can you get to your destination unless you know where you are? We could wander around aimlessly in hope of stumbling upon our utopian dream but the chances of that are virtually none existent. Ask any hiker and they will tell you the importance of knowing your location at any time. By knowing where we are we can plan your route to our destination, understand the obstacles we must face to get there, and be prepared to take another path in the event the one we are on becomes totally blocked.

Take the time to truly understand where you are in life. Consider all aspects of life including age, attitude, relationships, finances, health etc… Age is just a number but it can also be a motivator for example if you are over 50 the motivation may be the fact that you don’t want to waste any time on things that don’t matter and that procrastination is not a skill you want to use. If you are 30 or less your motivation may be that you are young enough to handle the trials ahead and you accept the challenge to thrive. Attitude is important to survival no matter what the situation and it is essential that you take the time to understand your true attitude. I say true attitude because you may be in denial of your true feelings for fear of admitting that you are angry, worried or afraid. Is our attitude positive or negative? Take the time alone to examine your true feelings and question yourself about the attitude you have is it healthy, accurate, or what improvements can you make in it? Relationships in your life are they healthy, supportive and vital or are they degrading, poisonous and deadly? By knowing where you stand in any relationship you can determine what steps you may need to take in order to protect and improve it. This includes relationships to co-workers, friends, family, humanity, spiritual and especially with yourself. Our Finances, whether we want to admit it or not, do affect our attitudes and feelings and must be considered. This does not necessarily have to do with greed and an incessant need for more but if you are not aware of your finances, big or small, you can allow yourself to fall into a trap of debt that will strangle your resources to the point that your attitudes and relationships are adversely affected. Health is often over looked when emotions are involved. In fact health does affect the emotions and emotions do affect health. They both need attention the trouble is that we tend to ignore one for the other. If you are experiencing storms in your life now is the time to make sure that your nutrition, exercise and sleep habits are in order.

Know where you want to be. This may sound simple but it is also crucial. Often we are lazy in our thinking and simplify by saying “I just want my life to be better”. Although this may be true it is so vague that we lack one key element that we need in order to “make our way back” and that is a goal to focus on. It is our life so let’s take the time to determine what we really want. Take the time to write to meditate on what we really want and to write it down. How we want to feel, what kind of relationships we want to have, where we want to live, what type of career do we want to have. Getting these ideas on paper is not the end it is an ongoing process. As we continue on this journey we will need to refine the dreams and goal papers. Compare where you are to where you want to be in attitude, relationships, finances and health. Knowing the difference in any area in your life between where you are and where you want to be will allow us to begin planning our route to our destination. A little warning may be in order here. While it is great to have a goal and a dream know the difference between a dream and a fantasy. A dream takes a realistic view of life and our possibilities. It is not looking beyond what we are capable of but learning to use what we have to maximize our lives and that is encouraging. Fantasy on the other hand looks at life through rose colored glasses and makes statements like “I’ll never have another problem”. In other words when we fantasize about unrealistic ideas we set our self up for failure and disappointment.

Track your progress. Now that we know where we are and where we want to be it is time to begin making our way. We continually need to realize where we are so that we can stay on track. One tool that I have found beneficial is keeping a travel journal for my life journey. This allows us to track our journey and to make corrections to our path as we go along. The closer we get to our goal the more temptations to veer from our journey we will face and if we record theses difficulties and our accomplishments they can become a source of inspiration for all.

Join me on this adventure as we make our way back to the place we want to be.

This is Sarah our Terrier mix that just happens to be my most willing model. The term willing my not exactly be right but she is the most available. On those days when I do not want to shoot a still life I can always count on her to give me some expression that is worth the effort. The main thing is that I am able to continue to experiment and perfect this wonderful obsession that we call photography. I am like the rest of you there are times when I just "snap" a picture but like anyone else who is on the quest to improve I am rarely happy with the outcome. I am then inspired to perfect the image and begin to experiment with lighting, depth of field and composition to tell the story that I want.