and expenses crop up, new emotions emerge, new inspirations pop up, and lots of momentary fascinations appear. How do you focus amidst all this “noise”?
One way is to choose a yearly exercise or aim that will focus your attention for a long period of time. And of course the beginning of the year is a perfect time to choose and begin this kind of exercise.
So close your eyes and ask yourself this question: “If I could be a genius at something by the end of the year, what would I choose?”
Sit with this question for a while. Sort through physical goals like money, fame, and acknowledgement (translation: rich and famous) and see how they strike you. Sort through inner goals like self-liking, freedom from what anyone else thinks about you, and acceptance of life and see how these strike you. Set these goals against the background of the rest of your life and see what you want the most. See which goal will satisfy you the most from your current perspective.
Then choose a goal. Don’t worry so much about choosing perfectly. Think more of choosing wisely a goal that will provide the maximum useful experience. Your yearly aim isn’t meant to be another pressure point that will make your life difficult, but more of an experiment that will reveal new vistas, emotions, questions, and answers.
In all of the courses that we teach, we never tell anyone “how it is.” Instead, we set forth a number of hypotheses and our students verify through experimentation whether they are true. The same goes for your yearly aim. You desire to excel at something in life. The hypothesis is that you can be a genius at anything of your choosing through focused attention over a long period of