There is so much I wish to accomplish. I have so many ideas I’ll never get to. Thought after thought whirl around my head. I am ADD. That means Attention Deficit Disorder with no hyperactivity included. My head whirls, but my actions do little for accomplishing my desires.

I wish to put my Beloved, Pam, first in my life. Then, I wish to get an article written for you. Next I desire to create a small project that will lead to residual income. Along the way, I stop at the tire store, my secretary asks a question, a note catches my eye reminding me to print some paperwork for a client, and then I wonder what it was I wished to focus on today.

Perhaps you feel the power of these pressures in your life? You probably don’t even have ADD/ADHD. It’s just the holiday season added to the fast pace of daily life. Where did you lose your sense of purpose? How did you lose focus on those simple goals?

I can become so frustrated with the process that I cease to even make those goals. What’s the use? I never get to them anyway. What a discouraging process.

Fortunately, there are answers.

For many people the art of goal setting really works. The marvelous organizing materials of Steven Covey come to mind. One makes a list of desires, then forms priorities, and finally works this list, checking off finished items and moving unfinished ones to the next day’s list. Just google “goal setting” and you’ll find all you need to make it work.

Of course, it might not work for you. It doesn’t for me. At least, not very well.

I find it hard to explain, but once I’ve made my list of what I want, it becomes dead ink and paper. No life left in it. The life is inside me moving on to the next thought and the next desire.

It is helpful to me to make such a list. It gets the clutter out of my head. But then I rarely look at the paper again. Goals must be alive for me, or my thoughts move on.

What works?

I find that some focusing meditation helps me.

There are traditional ways of “focusing meditation,” all of which are helpful. However, I find that just a simple process works well for me:

I close the door, sit quietly, allow the dirty energy (a visualization) to drain out of me into the cleansing of Mother Earth, breathe deeply, and ask my guides (or however you refer to the sacred) to remind me of who I am, what my purpose is about, and at the very least, what I might next apply myself to.

That’s where this article came from. Call it intuition, magic, or just a simple focusing technique, the words began to flow and I grabbed my laptop. The same process might work for you. Or, it might not. We all must experiment to discover what is best for each of us. For those of us that are ADD/ADHD this can be especially true. Whatever works for everyone else rarely works for us. We need to shape and reshape our process until we discover what works for us individually.

And when I’m finished with the article? I stand up, look around, am immediately distracted by something else, and later in the day, by force of will I place this article on my blog or submit it to an article directory. Sometimes, brute force of will is all that finishes a project for me.

Does this sound familiar? In yourself, or someone you know? It’s certainly familiar to my wife, who has spent 30 years adjusting to this silly man she married. I’m quite fortunate she stuck around, don’t you think?