What do you think about? With what is your mind preoccupied? Right now? Take a moment, a deep breath, close your eyes and see.

I’ve realized that I have spent a lot of my thought life being preoccupied about things I didn’t want in my life. Things about myself I hated. People I didn’t like, reasons why I didn’t like them. My sports teams that chronically underperformed. My sports team that consistently overperformed, just didn’t win it all. The condition of the economy, the current politician or party in power. The list of those things can be endless in me. Many of them things I couldn’t even do anything about, like a sports team or the weather.

Some of them are things I actually could do something about and didn’t realize it. I already had all the tools and was even using them, but in the wrong way. I was frustrated and not getting the results I wanted.

Take a person I’m angry with, for example. When I begin to think about what angers or hurts me, and I revolve that person and their actions – or lack of actions – in my mind with consistency. I begin to create a grievance narrative in my mind. I am telling myself a story. I focus on what is wrong, what I don’t like, what isn’t that should be and what is that shouldn’t. I zero in on negative things. I focus on the problem and if I do it long enough, I come to do it to the exclusion of anything else. I become “joyously preoccupied” with my negative line of thinking, and I become “absentminded” to anything positive or redemptive about myself, the person or situation I am dealing with. Followed to its conclusion this scenario is going to end in hurt, hopelessness and broken relationship. The opposite of all that I am wanting or intending to achieve.

There is no question that we need to look at, be aware of and respond to the negatives in our lives. Not just our lives but the lives of others and even circumstances. But the point of looking at them is to diagnose them and treat them, not to become preoccupied and overly focused on them. Doctors study diseases for the purpose of preventing them and their effects. Their ultimate goal is to cure, then eradicate the disease. Not to get caught up in the awfulness of both it and its effects. The awfulness of the disease is, in fact, the motivation to do something to resolve it to begin with.

We cross the line of appropriateness in our minds, when we misplace our joyous preoccupations. The Bible counsels us to think on things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report and if there be any virtue or praise in them. It counsels us to “take every thought captive”, to examine them – not just the thought, but it’s motivational source. It is the second part of that statement, where I believe we largely fail in our preoccupations.

When we don’t consider the source, we don’t look at the becoming part of our lives. We don’t have a compass to tell us what direction the source is pointing us.

I think we should analyze preoccupations from time to time and ask who and what am I becoming? Put another way, am I becoming who and what I want(ed) to? Am I being on the outside who I have convinced myself I am on the inside? Then, ask what am I becoming joyously preoccupied with, and what am I being absentminded to? Then, compare the results. It’s a brain check. It can become habitual and it should be. It requires weapons grade honesty and self assessment. It leads to healing, hope and peace with ourselves, with others and circumstances, even the ones out of our control. Joyous preoccupation with the possible, the hopeful, the doable – regardless of difficulty – is the path that will lead us to them. Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I love my little dog, Sherlock. He’ll be 17 this year. We don’t have many more years together and I can see the deterioration slowly advancing. I caught myself focusing on that deterioration. I googled many things about aging dogs and their activities. I especially wanted to know how to know when it’s time to let him die with dignity, the dog way. All good things to do and know. But I found myself getting very dialed into his dying, which he will certainly do, and I lost sight of his living. I became joyously preoccupied with his death and absentminded of his life.

I have the rest of his life to show him how much I love him, and receive all the love he has to give until that time comes. The result of my becoming joyously preoccupied with the rest of his life is more peace and less anxiousness. I can live in the now and not have fear of the tomorrow. One day, I will have all the happy yesterdays. That will be the time to grieve. Today is the day to be joyously preoccupied with our lives together. If I can purpose to do this with my dog, I can purpose to do this with myself, any person, any situation.

Intentional Living, The Purpose Filled Life, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. These books and others like them remind us that the joy of life is purpose. Purpose is looking for a bright future we want to see, doing it in the right now and being joyously preoccupied with that goal. Absentminded of things that run contrary, and eagerly receiving that which harmonizes and synergizes with our purpose.

Purpose is the becoming of life. My purpose is to become as joyfully preoccupied as I can with anything and everything that will aid me in becoming who and what I want to be, leaving me free to be absentminded with all the worries and problems that life is going to bring. When they do come, I will learn how to joyfully preoccupy myself with how to best respond to them in a manner that is consistent with who it is I am intending to become. I can be defined by my life, or I can define it by writing the story of my life. My pen is my mind, the words are my choices and actions.

This is my blog about becoming. I am chronicling my path. I am hopeful someday, someone will be helped by how I walked it, who I became and what I overcame to do it. All of us are writing our stories. I hope to inspire you to join me and start writing a good one for yourself today.