Is it clear? Are you clear? Yes! we say enthusiastically and we lie.
Clarity is one of the things we ALWAYS lie about. It’s like the speed limit… or not thinking about sex. It is a built in landmine to make sure we are never in integrity.
We view clarity if it were a black and white phenomenon.
And we talk about clarity as if it were knowable.
Clarity is one of those words…
You don’t know until you do.
So why talk about it if it is so tricky?
Because, in my experience, clarity or the illusion of clarity is what fails most people in attaining the good life: health, wealth, love and fulfillment.
I never contemplated this word before 1999. I first encountered lack of clarity as a distinction in Axiology.
I trained to become a Value Profile coach, or whatever they called it… this was a long time ago, and I haven’t done much with it since then…
If I remember after so many years, awareness, accuracy, clarity were the three main capacities through which people and their chances were evaluated. and the results were eerily predictive of success, of happiness, of health, of wealth, of fulfillment. Everything.
Eerily.
I, myself, of course, mostly lacked and still lack clarity. So I have been working on clarity. I measured top ten in awareness and accuracy of judgment. But lack of clarity had and has prevented me from doing much good with my life.
Now, maybe you are lacking in all areas, maybe you aren’t…
Regardless, I want to talk about clarity because I have been gaining ground there and I find myself feeling maybe even hopeful? Wow.
Don’t be mistaken, we are all somewhere on the continuum between wretched to fully self-realized.
A human’s job is to do that journey. That is maybe the best use of a life.
Life doesn’t have a purpose, intrinsically, but it does have, maybe, a good use and a poor use?
Anyway, back to clarity:
Clarity can be in any area of life. In perception. The degree to which you see what is there. And to see all that is there.
I see well for a near-sighted person. I fill out what I actually see with memories, imagination, intuition, and I guess… And that is where clarity is most visible as lacking:
I was about eight or nine years old.
After a recess, I was walking towards my seat, and saw there something that looked like a bread crumb. I was always hungry at that age. So I reached down and picked it up. On its way to my mouth I saw that it was a thumbtack.
My classmates put it on my seat… They were disappointed that I saw it before I sat into it.
What they didn’t know is that I saw a bread crumb… I never told them.
But it tells a whole story about me and clarity.
So in spite of strengths going for me, including my tenacity, I was hardly what you call happy and successful.
And my axiology chart showed it clearly.
- What gives you your actions is what you see (the occurring world/personal reality).
- Your misdirected actions, your jumps, your procrastination… come from what you see.
- Any action relating to your results or failures, has clarity as partial or full cause.
So many things to be aware of, discern accurately, and be clear about, don’t you think?
I am working with a private client on building a business. I insist on talking at least once a week.
Why? Because one of the things that happens in each of those calls is
- a slew of things to become aware of,
- a slew of things to start to recognize accurately and interpret accurately, and last:
- becoming clear about what the heck we are doing,
- what the heck we intend to do,
- and why.
If you are like a rudderless boat floating on the ocean…
if that is how your life is, please know that to one degree or another, all humans are like you.
Let’s look at the three people I most often look at, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Jeff Bezos. Let’s look at them from this vantage point: awareness, accuracy, and clarity. I see they cultivate all three aspects. They work on all three to increase each. Both in the macro and in the micro…
I have the most details about Jeff Bezos because I’ve read his unauthorized biography. I haven’t read that much about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs…
Jeff Bezos’ process to increase clarity
Jeff Bezos manages a huge empire. Lots of projects, a mad scientist laboratory.
I don’t know the man. I feel him… that is the only direct knowledge.
Small teams of five to seven (I might be wrong about the number), always testing, always coming up with ideas and concepts for something new.
He has a rigid system. Each new idea needs to be submitted in writing. 4-6 pages of clear, succinct, and complete plan.
Wow.
You, my dear reader, would be hard-pressed to come up with five sentences about what you do, what you did, what you plan to do. Not 4-6 pages.
And you may even FEEL that you are clear, that you have a plan, that you have a direction, that you are ready to move.
FEELING CLEAR doesn’t equal BEING CLEAR.
Clarity is not a feeling, not a sense, not an ‘inner’ thing.
Your clarity shows only when you write it down. When you present it to someone who doesn’t know what you are talking about. Or when you attempt to implement what you think or feel you are clear about.
And when I watch you and see you wanting to go from vague thought to action, I don’t see you being clear. I don’t see you working on clarity. I don’t see you having strategies to increase your clarity.
You may read and re-read for clarity, but your filters won’t allow you to see more… no increase of clarity will result.
I write for clarity. To get clearer. I often speak to get clear or clearer. But speaking is more useful for me to increase awareness… the other component of success.
A lot of speaking may give me the illusion of clarity. But the proof of a pudding is eating it. Often when I try to take the action I was so darn clear about… I find out, I wasn’t clear at all.
Going from blind to seeing is a long and arduous path…
- The blinders,
- the cultural filters,
- the right and the wrong,
- the emotional resistance to finding out anything bad about yourself,
- your unwillingness to give things time,
- your unwillingness to feel uncomfortable,
they all work against you.
Only when you trust me that every single person is like you. They are somewhere on the continuum between wretched and self-realized When you can get that: that is only when you can start growing.
Wretched is how you feel
- if you expect yourself to be different from how you are.
- When you expect yourself to know what you don’t know.
- When you expect yourself to be able to do what you cannot do.
- When you want reality to be not reality, not to be the way it is.
Inside or outside. That is my definition of wretched.
Your vibration is a direct expression of where you are in this regard. On the wretchedness scale… doesn’t sound good, does it?
And, add to it, that often you find out that you were in a delusional state… lying to yourself, or blocking out all the areas of life where you weren’t all you hoped you would be, or all you pretended to be…
And then someone points it out to you… and what happens? You go backwards on the wretchedness–self-realization continuum.
Because reality stings…
Hey, we are all dependent on our perception, our awareness, our accuracy, and our clarity to create a map of reality that is at least connected to reality…
It’s not easy. But it’s important.
