The fifth key of Sourena’s amazing mindset is clarity.

How can you ever hope to achieve your dreams if you can’t envisage them clearly? Professional sports players are trained to imagine themselves kicking the ball into the net or breaking the ribbon at the end of the track. By firmly fixing in their minds a vision of what performing looks like, they give their bodies the freedom to just that -perform as they have trained to.

The same is true for your dreams. You first need to know what they are, why you want to achieve them, who you need involve along the way and when you expect to accomplish them. 

It’s become a rather strange tradition to choose January 1st as the start of a new set of goals. January 1st is an entirely arbitrary date, but I can see why it stuck around as a tradition. After all, the most important aspect of any goal is clarity and choosing the first day of the new year as the starting date is about as clear as it gets.

Finding clarity can be enormously challenging. Sometime the realities of our daily lives are complex and full of unknowns. But clarity comes as a result of always choosing to have a good reaction to the immutable realities of life.

For example, you may be chugging along in your business when suddenly a pandemic arrives that drastically affects your business. Equally, you might get an injury that limits your productivity. Or more positively, you may have a mind-blowing chat with a consultant that takes your marketing to a new level.

When other people are involved (and they are always involved in some way), the need to constantly react and adapt to their mercurial ways can affect your clarity. Two business partners must agree on direction, growth strategy, exit plan, core values and ideal staff. While it’s possible to align these goals, the existence of that other person means neither will ever know for sure if they are clear about the other’s needs and wants.

Complete clarity is an unreasonable target anyway. After all, you might be clear on one piece of the puzzle but lack any way of seeing the entire picture. Only the CEO will have the best impression of how that company is performing. Yet they likely won’t know about the minutia of daily mistakes and wastage occurring at the edges of the business. It is impossible to know absolutely everything, but that’s not the same thing as lacking clarity.

Clarity isn’t something that drops from the sky. It requires time and energy. It will be an effort to write down a 90-day goal or create a weekly to-do list every Sunday morning. But, as the old English proverb says, “measure twice and cut once.” Putting the effort into finding clarity will pay dividends further down the track as your goals begin to manifest.

It also takes time and energy to put your thoughts, feelings and ideas into words. Thoughts are no good if they stay floating disjointed in your head. If your dreams get dusty, they quickly an be pushed to the bottom of the to-do list as life’s obligations take priority. Clarity is about painting a picture of your life’s mission that aligns with your values, goals, career and opportunities.

Who You Are And Who You Are Not

Understanding your strengths, weaknesses and other characteristics is highly valuable because it means you will avoid contorting yourself into a mold that just isn’t meant for you. My strengths have always revolved around inspiring people. I knew that about myself long ago. But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting to be more. Where many people get in trouble is by pretending to be someone they are not.

Needs And Wants

It is great to spend time on others by lifting them up, but it should not come at the expense of your own needs and wants. After all, what use can you be to others if you don’t work on improving yourself first? It is not enough to simply maintain your life; you must be in a permanent state of growth like a tree reaching up to the heavens. Once your basic needs are satisfied, such as food, water and shelter, then you can focus on your needs to contribute to society, connect with people and be entertained.

Personal Mission

Here I’d like to define what a personal mission truly is, since many people seem unclear about this concept. Your personal mission is anything that gets you on the path towards your desired experiences.

Paint a picture of how you want your life to be. If that is too difficult initially, thankfully humans are wired for the negative so it may be simpler to start with painting a picture of what we don’t want our life to be. For example, sometimes I lack motivation, but I also don’t want my disability to get the better of me. Similarly, people buy insurance, go to the dentist or meet with a psychologist not necessarily because they are excited to do these things, but rather because they don’t want the negative consequences of failing to do so.

By painting a picture both of what you want your life to be and what you would like to avoid, it will be possible to clarify what experiences will part of your personal mission. Because of the way my disability taints or robs experiences from my life, experiences mean a lot more to me than for most people. My personal mission is to have as many amazing experiences as I can get despite my disability. This includes writing, presenting my ideas in public and connecting with other amazing people. I also love being a husband and a father, going out with friends, attending a sporting event or just reading a good book. Such experiences mean a lot to me and I have made it my personal mission to achieve as many of them as I can.

Related to this is the concept of the “vision.” Think of your vision as the road on which the vehicle of your personal mission will drive. A vision should support your personal mission. Creating a vision depends on expanding your narrative to encompass all the ways your talents can be combined to achieve the success that fits your mission.

Core Values And Philosophies

If I asked you to list all the things you stand against, you could probably give me 200 examples in five minutes. But that’s not very impressive. Children despise broccoli and asparagus, yet they have no clue what they want for dinner aside from “chocolate ice-cream.” The real test of whether someone has developed their own core values is if they can precisely enumerate what they stand for. That is more difficult that you might think for modern people.

Clearly outlining your values is the first step to making better decisions, which is at the heart of an amazing mindset. Of course, there are many general values we should all live by, such as honesty, integrity, truth and compassion. But other values must be determined by your goals. For example, if you work in the health industry, you should value well… health. Since I am in the personal development industry, I value creating a positive mindset, nurturing personal responsibility and building a supportive team. Equally, one of my deepest core values is that everybody in my professional circle must also share these values. Otherwise, my whole enterprise might fall apart and render all my values absolutely pointless.

Values emerge from your life philosophy, or the framework in which you interrogate every decision you make. Achieving any goal depends on having a general philosophy, otherwise you will be like dust in the wind. Clarifying your values and philosophies will help you see which projects it is wise to tackle next, who you should invite into your life, and why some actions are better than others.

For instance, if your goal is to be a successful investor, it would be unwise to adopt a philosophy of chasing every hot trend. An investment good philosophy is one that acts like a filter for avoiding being caught up in the excitement of the crowd. I have come to know a lot about personal development over many years. But the trick for success in this field is to distill all those millions of pages of book reading, thousands of penetrating conversations and hundreds of public talks down one or two ideas that really go deep. My philosophy is to gently shake the bucket of my knowledge until these deep ideas rise to the surface. Only then I package up something unique to share with other people.

Goals

In his book, Smarter, Faster, Better, Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhig connects two popular goal-setting frameworks: stretch goals and SMART goals. Stretch goals those which are currently out of reach, such as owning a million-dollar company or losing 100 pounds of bodyweight. In many way, even your mission is a stretch goal.

On the other hand, SMART is an acronym for “specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound” goals. For example, a SMART goal may be to read an important book in two weeks or losing two pounds each week for the next two months.

Duhig points out that taken separately, the two forms of goals don’t quite fit the package. It is much better to combine them. The problem with stretch goals is they can be paralyzing – you have no idea where to begin. And the problem with SMART goals is that they don’t challenge you enough. Duhig proposes beginning with a stretch goal then marrying it with a series of SMART goals. For example, if your goal is to build a million-dollar company, a SMART goal would include contacting two manufacturers each week until you have found an ideal match.

Career Path

Rightly or wrongly, love it or hate it, one of the defining characteristics of being an American is valuing independence over almost everything else. American bookstores are filled to brim with manuscripts about leadership (which is a bit ironic in a land that cherishes independence since being a leader implies other people are followers).

Leadership is an important skill. However, as the Prussian military understood two centuries ago, before someone can become a leader, they must first learn how to be a follower. This process must begin at an early stage otherwise a person will likely never learn how to follow command and example (hard to teach an old dog new tricks). It is therefore wise to seek out opportunities to learning from leaders early in your career so you can observe how to make good decisions and how to handle tough challenges.

Mostly due to the constraints of my disability, I was in many ways forced to become an entrepreneur. I felt that I missed the opportunity to learn from others and make mistakes on somebody else’s dime. We like to think good athletes win due solely to their raw talent. But reliable success depends on the assistance of people who can bring out your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. I had to search for mentors and examples to emulate, so my path was a bit squiggler than usual. But I knew it was important to find people who could take me to the next level.

Like everything in life, planning is crucial to success. A career is not something that you should fall into. An even worse strategy is waiting around for fate to tap you on the shoulder. With a clear and robust plan, you will immediately see the skills you need to develop, the connection you need to make and the opportunities you must grasp with both hands.

One of the facts of the universe is that this world is designed for people who have a plan and show a bit of aspirational gumption. At the top of every industry will be a group of leaders who dream every day of connecting with someone that genuinely wants to succeed. If you have the drive, the intelligence and the work-ethic it is surprisingly simple to connect with amazing people.

For example, many leaders attend industry events and write books. If you want to meet and understand these people, then read their books and attend the industry events. When you finally get a chance to engage with them, remember to ask questions and look for ways to build a win-win relationship. At one of my first industry events, I saw the founders of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and the motivational speaker Les Brown. In 2005, these were all big names. Since that time, I have seen hundreds of other leaders in my industry speak live and met with many of them.

Engaging with others is a great way to clarify your personal mission and values. While there are some things only you can decide, you may understand one part of a process but need help with another part. That’s what a team is for. And by engaging constructively with others you will open the opportunity to help them with their unique challenges as well. Perhaps you are the missing puzzle piece in their lives?

Processes

The process of achieving clarity about goals, vision and values is to break each up into actionable steps. Behaviors lead to actions. Repeated actions become habits. A group of habits becomes a routine. And a group of routines can be used as a process. The quality of your life is highly influenced by the efficiency of its processes. This is why clarity is so crucial: the quality of your decisions depends on it.

Becoming a better decision-maker by aligning all the many processes ticking away in the machinery of your life. Although sometimes being able to compartmentalize is a valuable strategy, you can make better decisions if all areas of your life are humming.

What You Need To Do Today

Although there are plenty of things clamoring for your time, being productive depends on creating clarity about what you spend your time on. This means isolating the most critical tasks in each day and then accomplishing them promptly. Take control of your day and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much time you have leftover to offer other people. Remember also to cut out as many distractions as possible while you are pursuing productivity. Yes, that means putting your phone on silent (and even turning over the screen). But being productive also depends on drinking plenty of water, watching what you eat and setting up an environment conducive to churning out your best work.

The same goes for opportunities. Opportunities can sound like fate, as if they fall into your lap. My life experience suggests every good opportunity is created by work, you just need to be more observant to notice them. So, if you want more career options, start small by developing relationships with people who have the keys to doors. Improve your skills, attend industry events, ask questions and have the courage to do the things most people won’t. Opportunities will spring from the earth like desert flowers after a downpour.

How To Find Clarity In Your Life

A big part of clarity is learning to be proactive rather than reactive. It’s planning out your mission, vision, core values, goals, processes, how you engage with others and even being clear about your day. It’s the what, where, why, who, when and how of life. In many ways the same tactics for re-writing your narrative are the same tactics for clarifying your life. Clarity is all about locating the areas in your life that need work.

These five keys are a circular process, not linear. Use them to plan out all your goals, all your dreams and build a better future.