Let me invite you to take a short break in your busy day to embark on your personal road to Clarity.
Most people will carve out time for a coaching session with their heads full of various problems, concerns, and gigantic “to-do” lists. Yet they lack the clarity needed to focus on what matters. If this describes you, take a deep breath and put all of it to the side for a minute.
Imagine for a moment that you are an eagle flying above your whole life.
Your eyes are sharp, and you can see far into the past and the future. The sky is blue. You see the ups and downs of your life. Maybe, you even notice how some of them shaped the person you have become. And you can see a future that is being created now in the present.
As you are this eagle flying over your life, take a glance at your present – the here and now. What are some of the things that you are doing today that matter? What will have an impact on whom you are becoming in the future? What are some of the small worries that you won’t even remember in one week’s time?
Now, as the soaring eagle, have another look at all the paths in front of you. See how your future can be shaped by where you focus your attention in the present. Take another deep breath, and when you are ready, come back to your present.
Now that you had this experience, what has changed? Do you feel a clear sense of what to do next?
Most of us are so deeply entangled in the weeds of our daily activities that we lose perspective of what really matters. The road to clarity requires us to soar above our lives and look at the big picture, taking our “eagle” view. The more hectic our lives, the more critical it is to slow down and take a moment to choose how we are going to spend our time.
Our time is finite. Tasks are infinite. So, what is your single most crucial priority just right now?
Immersed in the weeds, we tend to lack a clear understanding of what we want to do or where we want to go. Once you have a clear sense of what you want, the “hows” will take shape. Once you clearly know where you want to go, the possible paths to get there will become clear. In other words, focus on what you want before you try to understand how to get there. As Albert Einstein said it so well: “If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty–five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.”
What are the problems you are trying to solve, the goals you ambitiously desire to achieve? Take the time you need to define them. Doing so will empower you to synthesize your road to clarity. The beauty of clarity is that it is not fixed. Clarity evolves, and you can redefine it as often as you need. Therefore, clarity is a journey, not a destination.
What nugget from this article will you take with you in your next activity?