It’s been almost 2 months since we started to live in the year of 2019. I personally feel that time moves faster than I ever experienced before. I remember in earlier this year, I questioned myself on what am I going to do this year. I heard some nice what-so-called resolutions or aspirations from friends and people in my social (media) networks. However, quite different from the others, I didn’t really make any detail plan, but only created few list of area I wanted to explore. Nevertheless, it’s quite interesting this year, as I received such a “sound of mind” on what I need to work on. I named it “the 3 F words”, that consists of Focus, Fight, and Fun.

Focus: I received this sound of mind since I came back from my master study at the end of 2018. Yet, this word came to my mind stronger this year. Some mentors gave similar advice to me on this matter. Am not sure if it’s because they observed me as a person with unclear goals – with too many concerns, or simply because I’ve never shown to them about what is actually am striving for.

Well, I don’t intend to share what would be my focus this year in this article. But, the sound of mind I received this year related to the word ‘Focus’ at least concerns on 3 things:

1. To know what I want to do, what I need to do, and what is actually important to do in life, this year (which gladfully some coaches helped me to sharpen this, earlier this year)
2. To know how to achieve point a, or at least to know where or to whom I can ask for help to achieve – or to make progress on those
3. To have confidence in both point a & b

I know distractions are everywhere – even from my own mind, which somehow produces too many questions, that not all of them are helpful but also creates worries and doubts. So to help me focus, I asked several people (coaches and friends) to help me stay on track.

Fight: This part of sound of mind I received earlier this year is actually strongly related with the previous point. To fight means to take efforts in achieving the things I am focus on, to push myself into the limit, and importantly to have a growth mindset, passion to give impact, and energy to solve problems, and to leverage learning opportunities from every situation.

I experienced several occasions where I decided not to fight for the things I aspired before. Those might be caused of lack of confidence, a feeling of underestimate myself, or simply because I didn’t want to do inconvenient things along my journey. This year somehow gives me energy to enlarge the ‘zone of fight’ to catalyze my personal growth in order to achieve what I focus on.

Fun: Lastly, which also quite important, is to have fun along the journey of focus and fight. To have fun includes to enjoy the process, to learn as much as possible from whatever happend to mylife – even in difficult situations, to try or to invest in experiencing new things, and to try to share the learning points and insights that I gain during the process of focus and fight.

It is important to note, however, that ‘fun’ shall come from the inside out – not only from the outside in. Therefore it’s imperative for me to keep myself being mindful on my mental health, sanity, happiness, and sense of affection and compassion. To balance those things, I need to be surrounded by diverse but positive people. Glad that so far I am on the right circle of people.

So those are the 3 F-words I need to work on this year: focus, fight, and fun. I suppose that you also have thoughts or things to work on. I wish you all the best and enjoy the rest journey in this year!

@yosea_kurnianto