5 Lessons I Learned on My Journey to Get Clarity

There’s an ache deep within when you know you want to do something else with your life, yet you don’t know what that THING is. At some point in your life, you’ll need to travel the path of getting clarity to find what it is you TRULY want in your life. You’ll recognize the feeling as a deep longing and eventually will embark upon a search for clarity on what that thing is. In this blog post, I want to share with you the lessons I learned on my journey to get clarity.

The importance of getting clear cannot be understated. Developing a clear picture of what you want is imperative to your happiness and wellbeing. If your ultimate destination is shrouded in fog, progress towards achieving your goals and improving the quality of your life will be difficult to achieve.

A coaches first tool in her tool bag is to try to get her client to verbally articulate what they want. Whether it is the goals and aspirations they want to achieve, behaviors they would like to embody, the feelings they would like to have, or who they want to have in their life – getting clarity on what that LOOKS and FEELS like is the first vital step.

There may be dozens of areas that a client may want to focus on. Even so, the initial focus must be in the areas of their life that will make the most impact.  Additionally, it is critical to focus on what they want MORE of in their lives, not LESS of.  Then rinse and repeat for the additional improvements they have identified.

I recognize, for some clients, it’s harder to verbalize what they want. They come to see me precisely because they do not know what they want.  With this set of clients, it is usually the lack of clarity and the inertia that this causes that is the EXACT problem.  These folks feel the drain and frustration of uncertainty. They know that they NEED SOMETHING, but don’t know what that something is. They will continue on autopilot until they can unpack this information. Being unclear is anxiety producing. What makes me calm, focused and productive, however, is to have a clear objective for my life in mind.

I’m lucky. Right now, I have a pretty clear idea how I want my life to unfold in the next 3-5 years. Even knowing this, I accept the FACT that what will actually transpire in my life might be quite different. Having a clear objective, I am able to focus my actions and my attention in that direction, rather than being distracted, scattered in my actions, with a lot of tasks left undone. When I feel pulled in many different directions, I am unproductive and tend to shut down.

I’m not the 0.01% of the population who comes out of the womb with an obvious, innate talent. Getting to this point has been a journey in and of itself. I’m nearing my mid-50’s and only now do I see the clear picture. Survival was the focus of my 20’s. Awakening to the need for evolution in my 30’s, I made small, safe moves. In my 40’s I took big action to bring that evolution to fruition but was still a bit all over the place. Now in my 50’s, I’m finally seeing it all come together.

I believe that we all possess a knowing, deep down in our souls, the direction we want (and need) to travel. It’s those desires that keep coming up again and again, yet we keep pushing them away. We convince ourselves that it will be too hard or impossible to achieve. We swat away the whispers of our own intuition with fear and perceived logic of why it can never be attained. The louder voices of those around us drown out our own inner voice. The fact is – every idea followed leads you down the path of your journey to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. That’s how this clarity thing works. It comes from action, not sitting around waiting for it to show up.

In my 40’s, one of the actions that I took, being a good corporate employee, was to direct my passion for leadership to enrolling in a PhD program in organizational psychology. Spoiler alert, I did NOT receive my PhD. I couldn’t get past Statistics. But that’s a story for another day. This is an example of following one impulse in order to be exposed to the next thing. During a full day of Saturday class there were guest speakers where they introduced the class to an organization dedicated to advancing coaching as a profession. (International Coach Federation – ICF). Up until that point, I had no idea that this was a viable professional option. Ultimately, I learned more about the profession, researched and eventually found a program I liked to become certified.

Being the only certified coach in organization gave me a distinct calling card and I was excited to put my new found knowledge to good use in a corporate environment where, in my opinion, coaching is much needed. I found my outlet by leading a women’s empowerment group for 5 years. Reinvigorated, I created coaching and development programs, personal development material and toolkits along with writing newsletters.

I began posting on social media where I could flex and practice my writing skills. Without a doubt, my enrollment in the PhD program led me to my passion of writing. There is no straight line from Organizational Psychology to writing. But by following the whispers and placing myself in certain circumstances, I was able to arrive here, where I am today, with a clear picture of how I want my life to unfold.

Check in next week and bookmark my main blog page where I will share 9 Ways to Amplify Your Inner Voice.

Check out some additional reading on the do’s and don’t’s of gaining clarity

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