The Power of Getting Clarity

Clarity helps us to focus, to take action, to feel energized. A lack of clarity causes stress, inaction, a scattered focus, relationship difficulties, confusion on teams.

Some examples of areas to find clarity in:

• Your mission in life
• Your morning routine
• Your financial plan
• What you need to do to improve your relationship
• How you’ll get healthier
• What others expect of you; what you expect of them
• How a meeting will be run
• What your boundaries are in each relationship

As you can see, this is a pretty broad topic — it can apply to every part of our lives. And we don’t have to be perfect, and we don’t have to get clarity on everything this week. It’s something to bring awareness to, that we can improve over time.

But the more we find clarity, the more we’ll have focus, calm, motivation.

How to Get Clarity

OK, great … we want to get clarity in our lives … how do we do that? I’ll share some things I’ve learned for finding clarity:

1. Create some space. When we’re unclear on something (how we should reach a goal, for example) … most often we put it off instead of getting any clarity. Instead, try creating some space to get clarity. Carve out an hour. Half a day. A weekend. (Depending on how big the thing is that you need clarity on.) Then do the things below. But carve out the space.
2. Journal, iterate. Write about what you need clarity on — it doesn’t have to be any solid answers, or any kind of coherent writing. Just let your thoughts pour out. Stream of consciousness. Just give yourself space to reflect.
3. Meditate & contemplate. Similarly, you can go out in nature and spend some time in solitude. Go for a walk. Sit on a rock. Meditate. See what comes up for you. Hold one question in your mind: “What do I want here?” Or something like that. See if anything emerges as you hold the question.
4. Talk to others. Share your thoughts with others. Share what you’re not sure about. What you’re afraid of. Hear their thoughts. Just the act of talking it out is valuable — you’re giving space for your thoughts and feelings, and having them heard. Often you can get clarity from a good conversation.
5. When you have a little clarity, write it down. If you have some kind of answer, any kind of clarity at all, write it down as simply as you can. Two sentences. Putting it down simply helps it become more clear. And then you can start to take action on it.
6. Take action to get clarity. Many people think they need to have clarity before they take action, but it often happens the other way around. Have the slightest bit of direction? Go in that direction, take the first steps, see what it’s like. You’ll learn more from doing than going back and forth on things. For example, as I started working on my mission, I got clearer and clearer that this is what was meaningful for me, but I also got clearer on how I’d go about doing it. Maybe in a couple years, I’ll have even more clarity, but I’m not going to wait for that in order to take action. Start moving, and learn from that.
7. Reflect after you take action and get clearer. As you set things in motion, it’s useful to step back every month or two to see how things are going. What have you learned? What’s getting in the way? Use what you’ve learned to get even more clarity. Write it down simply. Take action again.

What areas of your life need clarity? How is the lack of clarity affecting you and those around you? Are you ready to create the space to get the clarity?

Simplify Your Day to Have a Greater Impact

Our society is obsessed with productivity and optimizing our lives — having the perfect routine, perfect diet, perfect productivity system, perfect to-do app, and more.

It’s an ideal that not only doesn’t exist; it’s harmful to our health and happiness. And what’s more, it’s completely misguided — what many of us really want to do with our work is do meaningful work and have an impact on the world.

So how can we let go of the focus on productivity and optimizing, while still doing meaningful work and having an impact?

Simplify. Focus on the important, meaningful tasks instead of churning. And actually dive into those meaningful tasks instead of procrastinating because of the uncertainty that comes with them.

Look at your task list and email/messages inbox and pick the most meaningful tasks — there’s a good chance you’ve been putting them off. Instead, when you don’t go to your favorite distractions, you are likely to churn through smaller tasks, answering messages, checking on inboxes and updates.

This is because meaningful, important tasks come with great uncertainty. We habitually respond to this uncertainty by avoiding it, going to distraction and easier tasks that make us feel less uncertain.

But the result is that we’re churning through a lot of busywork, spending our days doing a lot but not getting a lot accomplished.

Instead, we can simplify:

1.                           Pick meaningful tasks, and focus on those.
2.                            Create space by clearing away distractions.
3.                            Letting the busywork get pushed until later in the day, when we set aside room for those.
4.                           And putting our entire being into the meaningful, important tasks.

Imagine clearing out space in your day by simplifying, letting go of the small tasks, not constantly answering messages and emails, and instead giving yourself the generous gift of focusing.

You’d get the meaningful tasks done, and feel like your work is more meaningful. Those tasks would make a greater impact, and over time, you’d have a great impact on the world.

All because you simplified and focused.

Letting Go of Attachment to Reach Your Outcome

Letting Go of Attachment to Reach Your Outcome

You’re starting a project, new business, new career move or a new exercise plan and it’s in shaky new territory for you. You feel doubt about whether you can do it, and so you’re tensely doing everything you can to make sure it will turn out the way you hope.

The stress, fear, doubts and tension all come from attachment on how you perceive your outcome and how you think things will turn out. The process is a journey and it’s important to let go of any negative attachment be it people, places or things that may hinder you for reaching your goals.

We could acknowledge that…….

·                                 The outcome isn’t always fully in our control. 

    Sometimes other people get in the way or unintentionally sabotage a project, sometimes things happen that we didn’t expect, sometimes despite our best efforts things just turn out differently than we pictured in our heads. On a training plan, the weather could get worse than we thought, we might come down with the flu for a week, we might get injured or things come up to throw our schedule off.

·                                 There are multiple outcomes that will be OK, if not great. For example, maybe we won’t get six-pack abs if we do our best with this plan, or maybe we won’t finish the marathon we’re training for … but maybe we’ll get healthier despite not meeting the goal? Maybe we’ll enjoy the exercise, maybe we can meet other people trying to get healthier, and maybe we’ll experience beautiful outdoors that we wouldn’t otherwise get to experience? On our new project, maybe it won’t turn out as well as we hope, but we could still enjoy the process, learn a lot, form good relationships with our team or client, and get better at the process itself. The outcome we hope for isn’t the only one we can be happy with, and sometimes the actual outcome will be better than we hoped for, if we’re open to it.

         Focusing on the outcome is detrimental.  

    It causes us to stress out, to enjoy the process less, sometimes to not even start something because we don’t think we have a chance of getting the desired outcome. We don’t ever write that novel because we think we can’t write a good one. But how do you ever get good at writing a novel if you never attempt it? It also causes us to be disappointed with the outcome when it’s not what we want, to be disappointed in ourselves when we don’t live up to our own expectations, to feel that we’re not enough (or others are not enough).

              Letting Go of Attachment to Outcome

Letting go of our attachment to the outcome is freeing. It helps us to be more present with the doing, the being, the act itself, rather than what might come in the future. It can help us have better relationships, because we’re more focused on the people than the goal. It can help us have a better relationship to ourselves, as we focus on our own well-being and contentment, rather than some external source of possible happiness (spoiler: happiness doesn’t come from external things)

What can you focus on instead of outcome? Here are a few good ideas:

·                     The intention. I’ve found my intention in doing a task to be much more important than the outcome. It’s what I hope to bring to the task rather than what I hope to get out of it. It’s how I want to show up right now, rather than what I want things to be in the future. 

Examples: I have an intention to be helpful and loving as I write this post; I intend to be mindful and appreciative of my many blessing small or big. I intend to be fully present with the person I’m talking to, compassionate and open-hearted with them.

·                   The effort. Instead of worrying about how things will turn out, pay attention instead to how focused you are on it, how much effort you’re putting into it, how mindful you are as you do it. How much of your heart are you putting into it? How much love and care are you giving it?

·                     The process. The outcomes are a result of the process — if you’re not getting the outcome you want, focus on improving the process. How much care are you taking as you do it? How can you step up your game? Don’t worry about the outcome as much as you pay attention to how you’re doing things.

·                     The moment. What is beautiful about this particular moment, as you do the action? What can you notice? Can you be curious as you do the act, instead of having a fixed mindset? What is there to appreciate about yourself, about the other person, about everything around you, right now?

·                     Relationships. Much more important than the outcome is the relationship you have with the people you’re serving and working with or your relationship with your loved ones. When you’re focused on the outcome, you often disregard the feelings of the people you’re working with, snapping at them when they’re not doing things the way you’d like. Instead, you can focus on your connection with them, on finding ways to make them enjoy the process more, on being loving or compassionate.

Think about how this might change things for you. If you’re working on a shaky new project, you can let go of how you might want things to turn out, and instead focus on how you want to show up, what is beautiful about the moment, having fun with the effort, playing and being curious, being more loving to yourself and others. This transforms every act, every habit, every project, every moment with others.