How to Get Clarity

How Do You Clean the Windows in Your Mind?

If only getting clarity were as easy as spraying yourself with a big bottle of window cleaner (Don’t try it; some of those cleaners are filled with chemicals). Last week I talked about why having clarity was so important. This week, I want to talk about HOW to get that clarity.

Finding clarity has to do with sorting through all the things that capture your attention to find what really counts. 

The first step to finding clarity is to capture the things that are on your mind so that you can do that sorting. You can do this in a number of different ways, depending upon your preference. You can use a pad of paper, a flipchart, create a file on your computer, or find a big white board to write or draw on. You’re going to do a Brain Dump. Find a time when you can sit uninterrupted for 15 or 20 minutes. Write, draw, or somehow capture the things that are racing around in your head. If you want, you can set up categories if that fits what’s coming out. You might have a category for business ideas, things you want to fix in your home, things you want to do or have in your relationships, etc. When I do this process, I often break things into the following categories:

·       Health

·       Work/Career

·       Physical Environment

·       Relationships

·       Spirituality

·       Fun/Recreation

·       Financial

Within each category, I may have subcategories. For instance, my work is to coach people, but I also write fiction and non-fiction. I can break the Work category into Coaching and Writing since they tend to be pretty different. I’m doing them both, and both matter to me.

Essentially, what you’re doing is brainstorming in order dump what’s taking up space and energy in your life. You may want to keep this list around for a week or so, and add to it as soon as other ideas pop into your head.

Once you’ve captured most of it, the next step is to sort through it. Put a star next to the things that are most important to you. You can even use different colors to highlight levels of importance, or use multiple stars to indicate what is most important to you. Once you’ve done that, take a look at it. What comes out as most important for you? Hopefully, that will bring you some clarity about what you need to put first.

Here are some examples:

One woman I coached discovered that her relationship with God was most important. When she felt connected spiritually, everything else flowed more easily. What became clear to her was that she needed to plan her life in such a way that she always took the time to stay connected.

Another woman did this with her husband, and they discovered that financial issues, specifically their debt, affected every other area of their lives, and especially their relationship. It now became clear that they needed to come up with a plan to reduce the amount they owed.

A man I worked with discovered that he was so focused on his job that he didn’t make time for his family. Weekends were taken up with maintaining the house and car. He wanted to make his relationships more important. Once he was clear that he wanted his family to be most important, he carved out time during the evenings and weekends to spend with them. He discovered that a simple reallocation of his time made a huge difference. A half hour playing a video game with his son and special time with his daughter helping her rearrange her room left time to spend with his wife as well.

Having clarity doesn’t mean you have to give up everything else you do. It is about making sure you focus attention on what is most important to you. It is about making your time and energy count. When you do that, most likely your life will begin to feel more fulfilling. You’ll feel less like you’re wasting your time and energy on tasks that seem meaningless.

If you want help with this process, feel free to call me at (865) 983-7544 or email me at Linda@InnerResourceCenter.com. We can set up some time to talk about your situation, and if you’d like, we can set up a Strategy Session to help you sort things out. When you find clarity, it makes things so much simpler. Decisions become much easier to make because you can determine whether an opportunity or project brings you closer to reaching your main goal or not.

What Really Matters

Sometimes you’re going along, living your life the way your usually do, and then something happens that throws you off-kilter. It might be something that changes the way you think about things, something that makes you realize that your focus has been in a place that matters less than what is going on right this moment.

It may be something that stops you in your tracks and makes you realize what really matters. 

For much of my nation—the US—it has been Hurricane Harvey and its terrible aftermath during this past 10 days.  We’ve watched as torrential rains flooded our fourth largest city and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Water destroyed houses, washed away cars, and ruined all their belongings. But even worse, it killed people and animals. 

 

It took hundreds of thousand lives and turned them upside down for the foreseeable future. Whether you know anyone in that area or not, you can’t help but be moved by the ways that strangers reached out to help others: driving in with flat-bottom boats to help evacuate those stranded; forming a human chain to rescue someone out of a floating truck; arriving on horseback to help release other horses trapped and straining to keep their heads above water; opening homes, stores, and churches to take people in from the relentless water; arriving at shelters to volunteer; sending money and supplies.

Just as it has done at other times, this disaster focused us on what really matters. I experienced it close up last fall during the fires that killed fourteen and wiped out so much in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Or as it did when the tsunami hit Southeast Asia several years ago. Or when wildfires engulfed so many acres of land in the Western US. 

Whether the disaster gets national news or is primarily a local story, most of us are moved by the pain and suffering of others. We want to help. We hurt for them, imagining what it would be like to experience those events first hand. 

Television, the internet, and social media brings us first-hand stories and first-hand images that burn their way through our consciousness, reminding us of what is important. What is most important through it all are the LIVES.

 what is

Lives that are lost. Lives that are irrevocably changed. Lives that matter. 

All of us become changed by the experiences we have. If the experiences are positive, those changes may not be problematic. If those experiences are negative, they can be life-changing not only for the person who has the experience, but on others whose lives intersect with theirs.

I’ve spend a good portion of my professional life helping people move beyond trauma, whether caused by a natural disaster, a crime, an abusive relationship, war experiences, accidents, health issues, or any of the huge number of traumatic incidents that can change your life forever.

Trauma changes people, there’s no doubt about that. It can change brain functions, and how fully the person is able to live in the here and now. But there are ways to mediate trauma, to resolve it, to help people go from feeling as if all their resources have been damaged to putting it in its place and moving on. 

While I’m in full support of rebuilding homes, helping people restore their lives, I hope we won’t forget what really matters: helping people survive something terrible and come through it stronger, wiser, with all the inner and external resources they need to move on. Because that’s what’s really necessary to survive this or any other bad experience.

If you or someone you know needs help connecting with those resources, I hope you’ll reach out. Email me at Linda@InnerResourceCenter.com or call me at 865-983-7544. 

While I no longer work as a psychotherapist, I can teach you the tools to move on, or I can help you find someone to work with so that you can resolve whatever trauma has taken its toll on you. What really matters is to find the resources to move on. Your history of the trauma doesn’t change, but what can change is your reaction to it.

Linda Pucci, Ph.D. is a personal and business coach with nearly 40 years experience helping people uncover obstacles and resolve them in order to be able to MOVE ON. For more information, email her at Linda@InnerResourceCenter.com.