Do you ever stop to wonder about why you do some of the things you do (or did), and think–“what was I thinking” or “that made no sense whatsoever”?  Are you a person with many interests, always seeking and learning?  Are you on a clear path with this seeking and learning – i.e. working on an advanced degree or specialized training, or are you following some inner pull to explore new things, reason unknown or vague at best?  Do you feel stuck sometimes, comparing yourself to others and feeling like you don’t measure up?

I have; especially when I go down a path and realize that I’ve reached a dead end.  How I deplore backtracking and starting over.  But as a career-changer with no concrete plan for a switchover from my professional life to “something else but not this”, I’ve been trying different things – part-time work, taking classes, focus on home and hearth while contemplating all of it – and sometimes I’m up and some days I’m down.

Being one to pray, contemplate, and meditate about all of this, I’ve become aware that my years of amassing art supplies, taking in-depth art workshops focused on mixed media, the pull I feel to write for this blog mixed in with years working in a fast-paced professional services environment (think always on call, always ready to put out fires or switch gears to work on something more mission critical), and teaching at a university, to name the bigger “stuff”, may have all been in preparation for what I’m to do next.

Me, being no friend to the virtue of patience, frustrated at false starts, and chomping at the bit to figure out how to make this all work for me NOW, am thinking what if all of this how it’s supposed to work?  Maybe all of the experience, training, interactions, down-time and supplies (!) have been simmering around in my big pot of secret sauce all this time.  I’m realizing that finding the right voice at the right time involves patience (my new BFF), faith, tons of paying it forward, reading, writing, contemplating, studying, practicing, seeking, knocking, asking along with some honoring and praising (the Lord) to bind it all together.

With all of these ingredients in the pot, how could I have the flame turned up high to boil furiously?  No, it has to simmer to reach its full potential and flavor.  This is what my contemplation and meditation have told me.

How about you?  Is your secret sauce just about ready?  Have you taken time to slow down your frenetic pace to listen to your inner voice that would guide you toward the next steps?

What’s in your cauldron? 

By the way, if you’re like me with a million things going on at once, always looking for a way to optimize my time but without much time to learn a new system or read up on what the experts have to say, you might want to check out this beta program for an app to combine project management with todo list improve your productivity. – See more at: Hello Focus