How to Find Clarity
5 Feb 2020 · 18 min
Brendon Burchard shares how to gain clarity through daily reflection, tracking positive emotions, and diving deep into key life areas like relationships and skill development. He emphasizes self-awareness and service as paths to higher performance.
Foreign. It's Brendon burchard.
And welcome to another episode of the brendon show.
Today we are talking about a huge question you guys have been asking about, really since new year's began, which is how do you find more clarity in your life? So let's go over some notes I've got for you here on clarity. Okay, so this is a session on how do you get or find more clarity in your life, Especially if you're at that stage where you're like, wow, I want to go to the next level of success and performance in my life, or I'm not sure exactly what I want, or, you know, you just feel like you need a little more, like, clarity and connection and intention each day. I'm gonna give you some tools and some ideas in the session that will really help with that. First, I think I should share with you. What's the outcome of clarity in that? You know, when we were studying the world's most successful people, trying to figure out, like, what's the difference with them and under performers? Many of you guys know one of the number one things that makes a difference with a high performer versus an underperformer is whether or not they actively are seeking clarity in four major areas of their life. They're seeking clarity about self, like, who am I? What am I about? What matters to me? What's most important to me? They're seeking clarity about their social interactions. How do I want to treat other people? What do I want my relationships to be like and feel like? They're seeking clarity about skill, like, what's a skill I need to develop so I can deliver more, be better, you know, hone my craft. And number four, they're seeking clarity, Clarity about service. What's the difference that I want to make in the world or what would make this effort feel meaningful or fulfilling or satisfying or leave a legacy here? These are things they're wondering about. The outcome is that we want clarity in those areas because guess what? When I have clarity about myself, who I am, what matters to me, I'm more likely to make decisions that support that right. I'm more likely to stay on my path When I have clarity about social, like how I want to treat other people, my social interactions, I'm more likely to have great quality of relationships, which deepens my satisfaction and joy of life. When I have more clarity about the skills, I'm more likely then to develop the competencies needed to succeed in my given area of emphasis. And when I have more clarity about how I want to serve. I'm much more likely to feel connected, satisfied, and grateful for my journey. So hope that makes sense. Those are just kind of the outcomes. High performers have greater levels of clarity for self, social skill and service. But I know the questions. But how do you develop that clarity? Like, what are some ideas? I have four big ideas for you today on how to develop more clarity in all those areas or in any other major area of your life. Because maybe you're at a different life stage right now. The kids have left school, or you're starting a new business, or you're considering what your career is going to be, or you've just had some changes in your life and you're trying to figure out, like, what's next. Here's some simple things to keep in mind for clarity. Number one, clarity comes from daily reflection and scoring. If you've never been to one of my seminars or trainings before, I hope you'll go one day because you'll see how important it is to have frameworks for measuring our life and for assessing our life. A lot of you guys have my high performance planner, I hope. And if you ever open up the high performance planner. What did we put right up front? Right. We put up these assessments, like, here's 10 areas to measure your life and score your life every single day. Here's all the high performance habits and, and how to score yourself in each of these areas. Why did we do that? Because having a framework to contemplate on a daily basis and score yourself on, that's how you develop greater levels of clarity. See, most people actually have clarity, but it's surface level clarity. So they're frustrated. They're like, oh my gosh, I don't know what I really want. They kind of know what they like, but they don't know what they really want. Cause there's no depth there yet. Well, you're not going to get a deeper level of clarity in your life until one day you start honing how you reflect on your life. It's why you must have an evening journal. It's why you need to have like categories or values that you're rating and reviewing in your life on a weekly or monthly basis. I mean, it's just the extraordinary power of reflecting. More often you want more clarity than most people refer to. Reflect more often than they do. But also give yourself the gift of scoring yourself. I'm always asking myself all these questions that keep me high performing. Like on a level of 1 to 10, what's my level of vibrancy? And presence right now. And if I'm one, that means I know I'm dead. If I'm a 10, it means I know I'm showing up. I'm bringing joy to the moment I'm engaged. So a simple high performance trick that I'm always teaching people. Start scoring yourself on scores of one to 10. One, you suck. 10. You're great. And just know what categories you want to measure yourself on. Listen each day, please hear that. What are the categories you wanna measure yourself on every day? See, in the high performance planner, you're measuring things like your health, your mental, your emotional areas of your life, your partnerships or your love. You're measuring family, friends, relationships, mission, experiences, spirit, finances, learning, growth. You're measuring all the high performance habits. And it's by observing yourself in these areas that you want to monitor and measure more often that you start to hone clarity. Does that make sense? It takes daily reflection to get real, internal, spiritual clarity in life. I just deeply believe that you're not just going to one day suddenly have amazing epiphany where everything becomes clear. What's going to happen in real life is you're going to observe your life more consistently more often, reflect more on what's important to you, and score your performance and score your passions and score the areas of your life done consistently over a period of time. It's like, I know myself, I know what's important to me. I know how I'm doing, I know what I'm passionate about and what I love and brings me positive emotion. Let's go. And. And that's where not only clarity happens, but a new level of confidence in life. Cause you know yourself, you got it. So finding clarity begins with daily reflection and scoring. If you really want to achieve a higher level of clarity, number two, I want you to follow and record positive emotions more often. Follow and record positive emotions more often. What does this one mean? It means, guess what? Throughout the day, throughout the week, if you think about last month, even, you had so many great moments. You had moments of insight, of clarity, of AHAs. You had learnings, you had good days. You had moments of interaction that were surprising or funny or joyous or connected, but you didn't record them. They happened. You're like, yay. And the next day you're back at the grind and you didn't notice. There's a theme, there's a through line of things, people, experiences, topics, learnings that give you positive emotion. And so what happens for most people, they're literally reinventing the Wheel every day, every time they get in that moment, it's New Year's or whatever, and they're like, I don't have any clarity in my life. It's because it's the very first time they're even observing. I want you to follow the through line of positive emotion in your life because there's been topics, there's been skills, there's been adventures, there's been experiences and people you've worked with or known, and there was a lot of positive emotion around there. Clarity is saying, what is that? And wisdom is saying, get around it more often, baby. Get around it more often. Once you observe it and you see it and you can recognize the pattern, you're like, oh, so how do you do that? I'm begging you, have an evening practice to record those areas of positive motion. What did you enjoy today? What did you like today? What seemed good today? Even if it's just like, oh, I liked reading this article about this topic today. Write it down. Oh, I like this conversation I had with this person. What did you talk about? Write it down. Oh, you know what? When I did this thing with these people, I really enjoyed that. Write it down. By more observing that pattern of positive emotion and experiences, you're more likely to tease out what's important to you. And again, once you tease out what's more important to you, you're more likely to commit to it, stick to it, and do it. I know you get this, but common sense is not as common practice. So my question to you, my high performing friends, is, do you have the daily practice of this? Because don't hope for it to happen one day. Third, big idea, to get clarity, you need to get training. This is so vital. I know so many people who have hopes and dreams, but they're like, I don't know what to do. And if you've ever heard me teach before, I'm always saying the time to have the map is before you enter the wood, right before you enter the woods. That's when you want to have the map. What most people do is they run into the woods, they wander around, they get lost, they get distracted, they get scared, they freak out, they run around, they hope for escape and survival. And they never really had a plan. And so they started looking for clarity too late. There is nothing that you want to do in your life that someone has not already done at an unbelievable high caliber of excellence. Your job is to find that person and get training from them or mentorship from them or insight from them where that means you read their biography. You join their online courses or their programs. You go to their, you know, events or their seminars. You. You consume and observe from those who have already been there before. But listen. Stop browsing for inspiration and start studying for education. Stop browsing for inspiration and start studying for education. Or let me use another word, make it more alliterative. Stop browsing for inspiration and start studying for instruction. See, most people are just browsing all sorts of things. Everyone always said, brendan, what are you reading? And whenever I'm ever reading on a book, it's because I'm training on that topic. I don't do a lot of browsing. I go, I want to learn this. I want to understand that. I want to master that. And then I get books about that. I buy online courses for that. I sign up for coaches or mentors to do that. I go to conferences for that. I am always in training because it's in training that the insight comes. The aha. And. And, yep, that clarity. Everyone's like, brandon, how do you have so much clarity in your career? I'm like, because I've studied so many people, I've gotten so much training in my career. I've gotten training from how to use my voice, how to speak on stage, how to set up these goofy cameras, how to do this Instagram y thing, like, everything. I never wander into stuff dumb. And that's just. That's the power of being a high performer. You seek clarity and then act. And instead of acting from impulse or fear, I act from instruction. I follow the step, I follow the map. And that's how I outperform people so fast. And I know you've heard this idea before, but again, common sense is not always common practice. And that's why so many potentially great people fail to reach their greatness. I hope this makes sense. Last big idea. So, first one, you need daily reflection and scoring. Number two, you need daily following and recording of what were the positive emotions, experiences so you can find that three line and stick to it more. Number three, you got to get training. I mean, real training. And number four, you've got to decide to dive deep the areas of your life. So many people are like, skating on the surface of life. They don't have any depth, and so they don't feel like they have, like, spiritual connection or that insight that they really want. That feels like wisdom. That comes from the clarity that only comes from depth. The development of. Of depth in our life. Depth in your craft, depth in your skill set, depth in your relationships. You know, when they ask people in relationships, do you feel that your partner understands what's important to you? Do you feel that your partner asks you lots of questions, understands, validates, cheers you on, encourages you, is responsive to you? Most people say no. And then when they ask them, well, have you tried to cultivate a deep, meaningful relationship with them? Like, have you people all the time? Well, not really. It's like they're in a relationship by proximity, but there's no depth of intimacy and real connection there at an emotional or spiritual level because they're not diving deep in the relationship. They got, you know, half a toe in, as they say. You know, they're not really all in, but when you're really all in on something, you get greater insight on that, right? It's like when I study something as an example, I don't just read one book on it. I might read 7, 8, 9, 30, 50 books on it. I go way deep. And the deeper that you go, the greater depth you develop, the more that natural, intuitive insight comes that most people are thinking about. They're like. Most people are just like, I don't know what's right for me. Because they never connected to a deeper level with themselves in their relationships, in their skillset, their career, their vocation, their purpose. And I'm here to tell you, unless you start going deeper into the moment in life, that's presence, deeper into your skill sets, deeper into your relationships, deeper into your experience of life by recording some of it and writing it down and reflecting on it yourself, you'll never have the insight that we call intuition, that sense of clarity that we have at a spiritual level. I hope that serves you all today. This topic of clarity is a big one. So I'll remind you that you can listen to that entire chapter I wrote of my book, High Performance Habits. There's a chapter called Seeking Clarity. You can listen to the entire thing for free on the Brendon Show. I think it was like it was season two on the Brennan show, my podcast, where I uploaded the entire audiobook of my book High Performance Habits, literally the entire audiobook for free as season two. So you'd have to go back to the Brendan show, scroll all the way down to season two, and you can download every chapter of the book, including the chapter on Seeking Clarity. If you'd like more insight on this topic, or of course, go to my YouTube channel. There's dozens and dozens of videos on personal development, on finding your purpose, on setting goals, on. On how to achieve things faster, on how to deepen relationships on how to deal with anything that you're dealing with in your life. It's a true library for free over on my YouTube channel, so I hope you'll check that out. We've been recording these sessions and we're throwing them up on the Brendon show podcast this season and so far y' all been loving it. So thank you for cheering it on. I appreciate all the support of that one with that. I hope this served you guys as a session. Thank you again for being a subscriber, being a fan following my work. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for the support of the books and the courses, our coaching programs, everything we're doing in Transformation Week and hpx. I appreciate all of you. And as usual, don't forget, every single day, as Denise always says, you can go out and be ordinary or today you can choose to be extraordinary. So my friends, go be extraordinary. If you're ready to take your life.
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