Are You In The Focusing Stage?
Life Stage 3: Focusing
What drives Life Stage 3 is a quest to find your passion, your bliss, what makes you unique. Questions about life, who you are and who you can become ... lead to more questions ... and a sorting through to find the ideas, lifestyles, values and career choices that fit best.
When the Focusing phase comes on the heels of the Exploring stage, you put the best ideas and insights you have gained under a microscope and focus on developing them further.
Focusing on the Best Possibilities
When this development phase is part of a smaller cycle, such as starting a new job, getting a new home, moving to a new city -- or beginning any new project -- it is the opportunity to focus on the best possibilities and follow up on them to reveal their true potential and learn more about yourself.
When growing up, this is the third phase we go through as we enter the adolescent and early adult years -- if we haven't skipped the life calling stage. This is when we start to really define who we are and what we value -- sometimes by trying on and discarding ideas at a fast pace or by choosing things which are contrary to our upbringing to test what truly fits us and decide what we can leave behind as we exit our childhood and leave the nest of our early environment. This stage spans a number of years, usually 13 to the early twenties.
However, we can get stuck in this phase if we fail to find the right ideas to build our lives on -- or have to return to it if we skip a critical task which holds us up later in life. A midlife crisis is often a call to revisit this phase and complete the work we skipped earlier in life.
How Do I Know?
Clues that you are in the Focusing stage include researching and experimenting with different life styles, spending time on developing skills in the activities you love to do, playing with new ideas of how to be in the world and testing what you value in life.
At the heart of Stage Three is delving deeper into the mysteries of who you are and who you are meant to become.
