Focus on changing one thing

When I was a pastor a young mother came to me with numerous problems that were causing a lot of difficulty. She described some of them to me and admitted she often felt overwhelmed by all the negative things that were going on in her life. She was confused about how to do anything to change her situation.

I asked her if she ever watched Star Wars movies. She admitted she did. I asked if she remembered when a ship would jump into hyperspace and how the movie would show all the stars flying past them at high rates of speed. She remembered that. I asked if that was how her problems seemed to her, that they were all flying towards her at one time, and as she tried to deal with them she felt overwhelmed. She stared at me and responded that was exactly how she felt. I explained that is why she felt so overwhelmed. It was impossible to deal with each of them at the same time. What she needed to do was to address one of them and deal with it before she moved on to another one.

In this blog I write about about choices and the need we sometimes have to make different choices to improve our lives. But, what do we do if there are many areas in our life that are causing us problems. We have to do what I explained to that mother. We have to take one at a time and put our primary focus on making choices that will improve that aspect of our lives.

You may wonder how we know which one to address first. There are two schools of thought. One is to deal with the one that seems easiest to resolve. Success in that area of your life will give you a sense of accomplishment and motivation to attack other areas. The second approach is to deal with the one that will give you the greatest overall success. Which one of your problems, if you resolved it, would provide you with the greatest benefit? Perhaps that is the one with which to be begin.

I can’t tell you which approach to take because I don’t know your situation. You do, so this is a decision you need to make for yourself. You may want to bring in other persons you trust to help you make that decision. That might be a friend, your minister, a counselor or a coach. As I have shared in this blog before, I have coached a number of people who were dealing with issues in their lives. If you think I might be able to help you sort through this, I do have room for a few coaching clients.

What you don’t want to do is to allow your problems to keep attacking you and doing nothing about it. That choice won’t make the positive changes in your life that you are seeking. Choose to do nothing, and those problems will only get worse. Choose to make the necessary changes to eliminate those problems, and your life will improve in that area. Remember . . .choices have consequences.