Sometimes our vision can become cloudy without us even realizing it. Most days I wear contact lenses, but over the weekend I wanted to give my eyes a rest, so I threw my eyeglasses on. After about five hours of moving around my house, I noticed some dust particles starting to stick to the lenses of my glasses. Honestly, the only reason I noticed the specks was because the glasses almost fell off my nose as I bent over to set up my television for my Breaking Bad marathon. The dust wasn’t really bothering me, but I knew cleaning them was the right thing to do, so I cleaned them.

After mounting them back onto my nose with clearer vision, it dawned on me how important it must be to deliberately clear our vision in life as well. I started to wonder how clouded our vision must become over time from experience, people, emotional debris, and secondhand mental pollution.

Vision is what we desire, what we believe, what we accept, and what we seek to reproduce. For the most part, what we believe, think, and desire is partially the result of what we see, with hearing being the other important sense. The real danger lies in the fact that we might not be aware of how clouded our personal vision has become. Certainly, it was not until I cleaned my glasses and noticed the marked difference in clarity that I became more aware of my blurred sight.

Questions to Help Clear Your Vision:

1. Are your relationships healthy?

2. Are you happy with how you spend most of your time?

3. Who are you listening to?

4. In what ways are you allowing society and those around you to influence your actions and life?

5. On an average day, are you thinking more positive thoughts than negative ones?

6. Do you know what you believe and are you confident in what you believe?

7. Are you as confident in yourself as you should be?

8. Do you have an idea of your next steps in life, whether small or large?

9. What is holding you back or weighing you down?

10. Are you healed from past negative experiences?

11. Are you happy?

As we move forward in life and this year, do not forget to take the time to periodically clear your vision, whether daily, weekly, or monthly. One general way to evaluate clarity is by checking your life. Most times, our thoughts and intentions are reflected through our lives, through the people we choose to surround ourselves with, and by our overall productivity. Vision may not be completely adjusted overnight, but checking, evaluating, and realigning it (if necessary) usually leads to small improvements.