Clarity: 3 Essential Shifts

The topic of clarity is near and dear to me, and it’s near and dear to the people who come into my coaching practice to work with me. Being clear and specific in our Vision is crucial to ANY of us working purposefully on ourselves and our lives in expansive and empowering ways.

Why is it so important?

Clarity is CRUCIAL because it’s the catalyst for everything we bring into form as we learn to become the conscious authors of our own lives.

You and I are going to be creating anyway, and so my question for you is this: DO YOU DESIRE TO CREATE A LIFE YOU TRULY LOVE? Do you desire to CREATE ON PURPOSE, with clear intent and follow-through? OR … are you okay simply creating according to old, unconscious patterns — those “default” patterns instilled by social conditioning?

I suspect that since you are reading this blog post, and perhaps watching my video, the former rings true for you.

Here is what I know. The more CLEAR you become about what you would love, the more POWER you will have to create your life by design.

What follows is a short personal story and THREE FUNDAMENTAL SHIFTS that you can make right now to help you succeed when it comes to creating a life that you love!

My husband and I recently returned from a truly marvelous journey to San Miguel de Allende. I first heard about this magical city in the mountains of Mexico decades ago from my aunt and uncle, two people very close to me. They would fly down there each winter, leaving the land of snow and ice behind in exchange for adventures in the sun.

Years ago when my daughter was little, and I was, for a time, a single parent raising her, my aunt would say, “The two of you should come down here. Come for week! Come at March Break while we’re here, and we can enjoy this place together.” And I would always say, “Oh yes, that sounds wonderful!”

Well, that didn’t happen. My daughter grew up.

I met the love of my life and married him. And my aunt would say, “You two should come down here and spend some time with us in the winter! That would be so fun; that would be so wonderful!”

Two years ago my aunt passed away. None of us saw that coming.

It was a reminder that you and I are on a human journey here, and there are elements of this experience that are beyond our control. My aunt’s life was complete. Eighteen months later, my uncle followed. Shortly after that, my husband and I went for a late-October walk and I said, “You know what? We are going to make that trip to San Miguel happen.” He was reading my mind. We were on the same page and prepared to write a new story on it.

So why am I telling you THIS story? It’s about former versions of me and the version of me now.

And why this matters to YOU is because you also have former versions of you.

And you have a next version of you that is speaking to you, right now, CALLING YOU TO BRING THE NEW YOU INTO FORM.

We all do! This is part of our growth process; it’s part of our evolution.

Years ago when I started thinking of San Miguel, and of being there with my child and my aunt and uncle, with people I love, I would let my reasoning faculty run the show. And reason, while it is a very important mental faculty, is only ONE of our six mental faculties, and usually I would just hand it all over to my reason, to my rational mind — and my rational mind would tell me things like …

Do I really have the MONEY to take my daughter on this trip? Well, the answer was yes, I could have found a way to make that happen, but I would talk myself out of it. That’s the truth.

My reason would force the question, do I really have the TIME? Would there really be enough time to make that trip happen in a way that we would deeply enjoy? Well, of course there was lots of time for the trip back then! We were RICH with time.

We could have had an amazing experience in seven or eight days, and while it may not have been the PERFECT amount of time, I let my reasoning mind, my inner perfectionist, prevent me from having ANY days at ALL in that place with my then-little-girl and with my aunt and uncle.

Years ago, every time the topic of travel to Mexico came up, my mental faculty of reason would take me into a pro-con list, and that would pause me enough so that I wouldn’t follow through. It felt SAFE to let that topic go.

Like we had all the time in the world to come back to it.

We didn’t.

Clarity Shift #1: Shift from Your Head to Your Heart

And so … shift number one when you are building a dream is to learn to press pause on your “pro-con list button” because when you’re in your pro-con list you’re in your reasoning mind.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting you throw out your reason in building a dream; I’m not saying to stop being rational. It’s an important mental faculty! But if you never allow your intuition a voice, you’re going to be living a muted experience.

Albert Einstein once said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

From MY heart I encourage you to listen to your intuition. That is shift number one. Shift from exclusively living from your head, your reason, to coming from your heart. I can tell you there was not one day in San Miguel last February when I did not feel a pang imagining what it would have been like to have been there with my aunt and uncle.

Intuition speaks in the language of love. To ask the question, “What would I love?” is to connect with the heart and with intuition.

And so, what about YOU? What would YOU love? How do you know what it is you would love?

It can be challenging to give ourselves full permission to respond — again, due to social conditioning. We are not raised to truly and fully answer these questions. It takes courage to open ourselves to the answers. Notice the word courage has the French word for heart, coeur, built right into it.

So how do you and I know what we would love? This brings me to the second shift.

Clarity Shift #2: Shift from Wishing to Dream Building

I’ll bet there are lots of things in your life that you’ve wished for and never expected that you could actually have or experience. We are raised to “wish upon a star.” It’s coded into us. We learn to wish for things, but not fully believe or expect that we could actually experience or have those things. So my invitation to you is this: MINE your wish list. Find something on that list that, up until now, you haven’t believed or expected you could ever have, for all kinds of exclusively logical reasons — condition-based reasons.

We can shift from idle wishing to purposeful DREAM BUILDING, first, by daring to state what it is that we would love.

When we actually commit to building a dream, we go from just thinking about things but not believing that we could ever have them, to FOCUSING on the things we would love. Energy flows where attention goes.

And that brings me to shift number three …

Clarity Shift #3: Shift from Jot Notes to Fully Formed Ideas

One of the things that prevented me from moving forward in taking that beautiful trip to be with people I loved on a part of the Earth that seemed enchanting was that I DIDN’T GO BEYOND THINKING IN MERE JOT NOTES, sound bytes. I had some very basic ideas of what that trip would be, and and I did NOT sit down to really explore in DETAIL what that vision would look like if I were really INSIDE IT, living it.

And so, I strongly urge you to shift from thinking in jot notes to fully developed ideas.

We are living in a culture that moves very quickly. We are CONDITIONED to think in mental shorthand, in little bits and bytes of information, and not to fully flesh out our ideas. Putting meat on the bones of our ideas is so important when it comes to creating a vision for a life that you would TRULY love.

And so, really BE with that wish list. Find one idea that has a lot of electricity and DARE yourself to invest the time to IMAGINE what “DONE” looks like — that it all worked out, that you’ve lived this thing. Ask yourself this: what would the details of that dream realized be like?

Watch what that question sparks you to do — the images that you will find, the research questions that you’ll ask, the phone calls that you’ll make, the emails that you’ll write in order to just get a little bit more information about something so that you can see it in your MIND. This is a VERY powerful shift.

As you focus and take action, watch your Vision take form before your eyes.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll be glad to know there’s much more to come. Subscribe to my newsletter for new episodes in this series on helping you increase YOUR clarity, confidence, and results.

To being here now.

 

Photo credits 1, 2, 3, 5: Hugh McBride