Do You Feel Your Life Is Blurred?

I love taking photos. One of the things I really like about my camera is the manual focus feature. You know, when you slowly rotate your camera lenses until your image is perfectly clear. You go from a blurred, foggy image, slowly turn your fingers around the lenses, and voila: you have a brand new, crystal clear image, ready to be captured by a single, gentle touch of your finger.

You’ll be surprised to learn that everybody have this feature, this manual focus. Only it’s not about photos. It’s about your life, and the way you live it. Most of the time you live a blurred life. Everything around you is unclear. You just have enough information to know a little bit about your surroundings, but you are moving in a foggy world.

By the way, living in a blurred world is frustrating. Not knowing who you’re really talking to, not knowing where you are really heading, not knowing if the person in front of you is smiling or frowning, that’s really bad. But this is how it is and it’s pretty much everybody’s story. I’ve been there, you’ve been there, and even now, the vast majority of people is there, moving around with a blurred image of their lives.

And they have this foggy image because they don’t use the manual focus feature. Their life camera is not calibrated. In other words, they’re not using their full potential. They’re looking at a blurred scenery, truly believing that this is all what they are getting from this life. A blurred job, a blurred relationship, a blurred income. A life blurred completely. They don’t have the courage to touch the lenses and really see what’s going on around them.

Whenever you clear your lenses, something magical happens. You start to see things the way they really are. Some people call this “having an a-ha” moment. Some people call this an epiphany and even other people call this “seeing God”. If you ask me, they’re all right. With the mention that everything was there before, only blurred. Your real life mission was always there, only you couldn’t see it because of the fog. Your perfect partner was there all the time, only she was just invisible, melted in a sea of dissipated contours. Everything was there before, but you couldn’t see it, because you were not properly focused.

Now, what could you do in order to start improve your life lenses?

Make Sure It Still Works

Yes, the most common problem is a broken camera objective. It doesn’t work anymore. It’s stuck. Only you think it’s still working at full capacity.

The best way to verify your camera integrity is to try moving it a little bit forward and backward. That translates in what people usually call “pushing your luck”.

For instance, if you are in a job you don’t like, try upsetting your boss. Or be late a couple a days. Is this really making a difference? Or everything is basically the same, no difference?

On the other hand, if you do like the job but you’re unsure if it really fits you, do allocate some extra time. Work extra hours. Is this really making a difference? How do you feel? There is any change at all in your life?

This type of small steps helps you verify if the camera is actually working. If it’s not, you’ll experience the same type of sensation you have in a dream, when whatever you do has no consequences. If there is any reaction at all from your environment, you’re lucky: you have a working camera. If not, you’re stuck. Your camera objective is broken, you live a blurred life and you didn’t even know. You need to take immediate measures to fix your camera.

Usually, this means buying a new one. Which, of course, translates in starting a completely new life.

Make Sure Your Lenses Are Clean

Sometimes, wherever you point your camera, you get the same result. The reality has the same shape. No matter what you try to shoot, you get the exact same picture. That means your lenses are dirty. There is clogged dirt on the lenses which is preventing you to see the world as it really is.

The most common dirt your lenses can accumulate in time is called prejudice. Or pre-made judgement. If you already make your judgement in regard to whatever crosses your mind, your camera will obey and show you exactly what you think you know. It will show the dirt you have on the lenses, not the reality.

Assessing this can be difficult. You trust your camera so much that you don’t even bother to check it out from time to time. Things are changing, reality is changing. Some judgement that was ok when you were a kid is not working anymore now. And this is something natural. You lived for so long that your camera accumulated a lot of dirt. Clean it up.

And the only way to give a professional cleaning to your life lenses is to go out and experience more. You can’t tell if your lenses are clogged with dirt if you don’t check them out. Verify them against what you thought you know. Experiment. Learn.

Make Sure You Shoot The Right Subject

Maybe you’re trying to get that common picture everybody wants? Like shooting the same old Eiffel Tour you get on every postcard in the world? No wonder you think life it’s boring. Because if you’re doing what everybody else does (or tells you to do), your life will be boring. If you’re choosing common subjects for your life, you will get common pictures.

Point your camera to new topics, try new angles, see if what you get is interesting. Maybe your life picture got blurred because its main subject is so common that you can’t find anything original in it? No courage? No thrills? No innovation? No risk? Well, enough with that! Forget what they told you about how to use a camera and invent your own way. Nobody guarantees that you will shoot the picture of a lifetime, but at least you didn’t get bored.

It’s About You, Not About Them

If you’ve carefully doing everything above, I’m sure you’ll start getting a new picture pretty soon. You may not know if it’s a good or a bad one, but it’s a new one. You’ll learn something from it.

And maybe the most important lesson to be learned is that your life picture is entirely up to you. You are the one who holds the camera. You can adjust the objective the way you want. The lenses are obeying you. You chose the subject, you adjust the clarity and the beauty of your life.

So, think again: is your life blurred right now?