A fairly consistent message from personal development experts and life coaches is to look at whatever bad situation you may find yourself in and explore what was the good in that situation. There’s general agreement that if you can find the good in a negative situation, you’ll walk away with a more balanced view of what that situation really means in the context of your broader life.
I get it. And I’m fairly comfortable with the theory however, when you are in the midst of a negative situation, this can be quite a challenge. And quite frankly, there are many times that the good will only become apparent after that experience is well and truly over.
I remember a previous negative experience I had in a large corporate organisation. Whilst I was in the midst of that experience I kept asking myself: What is the good in this situation for me? And it was tough. For weeks, I just couldn’t come up with anything. Don’t get me wrong – there were learnings, but I couldn’t quite categorise them as “here’s the good”.
It was in my last week of wrapping up my work there that the light bulb went off and I recognised “the good for me”.
It was to do with this area of my career – my coaching.
You see, I speak and write about the need for clarity in designing the life you’d love to live and sometimes it can be difficult to provide tangible examples of what I mean by the term ‘clarity’, and to also provide tangible examples of how things pan out when that clarity is missing.
Now I have a great metaphor to base this teaching on!
I was working with a team of people who were scrambling to “do work” in order to achieve a result that wasn’t clear.
There was a tight deadline looming and the team had been told that they had to set up a brand new division in this organisation. Sure… that’s kind of a goal, but when it comes to knowing what actions to take, the required detail – the clarity – was missing.
What specifically would that division be responsible for? What tasks would the team members be doing on a day-to-day basis? What was the volume of work that would be coming in? How many people would be needed to do the work? Where would they be located? What would be the appropriate management structure? If this new team was going to take on certain activities, who was doing those activities now so they could be told to stop doing them? What about hand-over points between divisions? The list of questions went on and on, but there were no clear answers provided.
You can imagine the confusion and frustration within the project team! People were frantically “doing stuff” but they weren’t sure if what they were doing was the right thing or if what they were doing would actually get them to the right outcome. And it was simply because they didn’t know what the outcome was supposed to be!
This is a terrific analogy to apply when creating a design for our own dream life. Clarity on what we want for our life is key because it provides us with all the details we need to (1) feel inspired to actually work towards our goals, and (2) know what actions we need to take.
Simply staying “busy” without a clear goal may keep us occupied, but it doesn’t actually get us anywhere.
If you aren’t clear on what you specifically want, what will you use to guide your decisions? How will you know what actions to take?
Clarity is key.
When you have a clear picture in your mind of what you are striving for, you have the benchmark against which base your decisions. When choices are presented, ask yourself which of those choices will be aligned with, and will get me closer to, my goal?
For example
My goal is to save $50,000 for a deposit on a property. One day, my phone breaks and I need to purchase a new one. Do I spend $1,000 on the latest fad version, or do I spend $200 on a phone that gives me all the functionality I need? Well, if I focus on my goal of saving $50,000, then the decision is made easy for me. Buy the $200 phone and be $800 closer to my goal.
Without being super clear on what my goal is, I could so easily be swayed into make the wrong choice – a choice that will keep me from my goal.
Having clarity about what you want for your life will make the choices you make so much easier, your priorities will be clearer, and most importantly, clarity will get you moving toward the life you want to create.
So, if you haven’t done this already, create some quite time for yourself and think about what you want for your life. Be specific. Be descriptive.
Then go for it!
