Cultivating Drive

My friend Alicia over at A Beautiful Mess is, as always, a source of great inspiration.  She was inspired to focus on just one word which she will then use in as many aspects of her life as possible.  Her word is "simplicity".  I think that's a great word - too much of life is full of stuff, of things to do, of self-imposed burdens.  We probably all need to set a burden or two down and live a bit more simply.

So here I am, two days into a brand-spanking new year, wondering if I should pick a word and what that word should be.

But here's the rub, friends.  I can't focus on just one word.  It's too much for me.  There are so many areas of my life which need help.  At least, that's how it seems from my point of view.  My health, my finances, my goals.  Not to mention the bed that never gets made, the laundry that piles up on the bedroom floor, the overflowing kitchen cabinets that don't quite close, the kitchen drawers which don't open without some effort because they too are overflowing with nonsense.  I feel completely unfulfilled in my job.  I know that I have talents which are going unused or underused as a result of my insecurity, combined with a more-than-healthy dose of laziness.

All of this thinking over the muddled and criss-crossed roads which compose my life has led me to create a visual depiction of the mess in my head:

Yeah.  It all boils down to laziness.

So I went on the interwebs and looked up the opposite of laziness.  The word which speaks most clearly to me is:

DRIVE

Drive is the one quality I'm lacking most, and always have.  For as long as I can remember I've envied driven people and wondered what they had and how I could attain it.  Drive is what gets stuff done.  It's what makes a goal achievable.  And it's not something I've ever recognized in myself.


My word for 2011 is drive.  It's finding the strength and sticktoitiveness within myself to move forward in all aspects of my life.  And in a funny coincidence, drive can be taken literally as well, since I'm still struggling with my fear of driving - yet another hurdle to overcome this year.


But...is drive something you can cultivate? A habit which can be developed? Or is it something you have to be born with and are basically SOL if you weren't?

What do you think? Are you a driven person by nature, or is it something you have to work on? Is there any hope for me?