The Power of Clarity in Finding Your Passion and Purpose
Without clarity, it is difficult to live a passionate life on purpose and motivate yourself or hold yourself accountable while working on achieving your goals because 1. you may not be clear on what your goals really are and 2. you may not be sure what to focus on. To get clarity, you have to get quiet and get honest with yourself.
Even then, it can still be difficult to hear what you want because of family expectations or peer pressure for instance. And sometimes, expectations can be so internalized that you cannot separate what others want for you from what you want for yourself. This can cause you to “should” all over yourself and go along to get along.
The truth is that it can be hard work to get clarity and get in touch with what you really want. Even though, ultimately, it will lead to passion and joy! dissatisfaction if not disappointment and failure if you don’t.
And it can be scary to go for what you want especially if you don’t have a support system. You may have feelings that are new, different and uncomfortable and want to slip back into your old way of being and you’ll have to face new challenges because every time you solve a problem, it creates a new one-that’s the nature of entrepreneurship.
Going after shiny objects can be a great diversionary tactic to avoid getting what you want and not having to face the truth as well. But, it will just prolong the pain not having clarity and following your heart.
Then again, you can have clarity, and implement your new goals and find out that you don’t really like that path after all and you would rather be something else. Or, maybe you love what you are doing overall but not the way you are doing it. That is what happened to me at one point in my business. I knew I didn’t want to be in any other business besides the book and business coaching and service business, but I didn’t want to do it the way I was doing it, running workshops and doing product launches two or three times a year. It was exhausting!
So, getting clarity is not something you do once and you’re done. It is an ongoing process in the journey of an entrepreneur.
And when I need to get clarity, here is what I do… I talk to my husband or a close friend or journal about whatever I need clarity on,
Sometimes, I don’t know that I don’t have clarity but if I find I’m doing something and I’m not happy doing it, it alerts me that maybe I should take a look at it.
I start by looking at what I’m doing in my business. I analyze what I am enjoying doing and what I am not enjoying doing.
Then, I decide what I want to keep and what I want to stop doing.
Then, I look at my overall marketing plan and adjust it.
1. Prioritize. You can’t do everything so make a list of the things you want to accomplish in the next year, then break it down into 90-day chunks. Take the first chunk, and then decide which are most important.
2. Commit. Decide that you are going to accomplish the top two or three and write out the steps you would need to take to accomplish them.
3. Get them on your schedule.
4. Take action, one step at a time.
And then I adjust as I go.
I want to encourage you to do the same because life is short, and it’s a shame to waste it doing what you don’t want to do when you could be doing whatever it is your heart desires! And I promise you, you’ll have a lot more success doing what you love too!