Clarity and Courage

This week marked a milestone for a member of the Forrest team. Our associate, Tim Elliott, launched the third edition of his book Clarity & Courage: Life as an Improvised Journey.?The book has been a mainstay of our coaching practice. We had a small gathering for friends, family, and clients in Toronto to celebrate the (re)launch.

I am writing about it this week because the book is an instruction for our lives. As I wrote in the foreword to this edition, Clarity and Courage is a simple yet profound expression of what we all need in our lives. We need the clarity of what we want and the courage to go after it.?

I find, time and time again, I run across clients who are struggling with these two constructs. The typical career starts after our first few jobs, and we find those jobs that start to define us. If you wonder about this, look at the inordinate amount of time and energy spent defining our work titles. But the problem with this is that we often find ourselves captured by these roles, and our lives continue to move forward, but they aren’t necessarily what we really want. Again, you see this in countless cases when someone loses their job for whatever reason, and they are lost. I believe it is because we don’t take the time to get clear on what we truly want in our lives. Having clarity of the end state where we want to be is essential. As I have stolen for my book, Lily Tomlin said it well: “I always wanted to be someone growing up; I only wish I had been more specific”. As children, we all have those dreams, but how many live up to the dreams of our childhood? Once out of childhood, we are told it isn’t right to dream. So, we need to pause and consider and get that clarity.

But, it doesn’t stop there; the other part is the courage to go after it. Courage, as Tim says, comes from the French “Coeur” or heart. We have to put our heart into it. We have to make it our goal and our determination. Life isn’t a rehearsal; we need to live it. Too often, I have had that loss of courage that drives me to go after something important. As we teach in our coaching and flagship managerial leadership program, “The Leadership Path”, we can’t become boiling frogs.

The grisly analogy, if you don’t know it, is that if you throw a frog into a boiling pot of water, it will immediately jump out. However, if you put a frog in a pot of water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will stay and boil alive. Now, I am not suggesting anyone test this out. But the boiling frog analogy is that we remain complacent far too long and don’t dare to jump out of things that are not what we want or that are not good for us.?

So, it is about having that clarity and that courage, but this is about the end state, not the plan because, as the second part of the book title suggests, we need to improvise on our journey. We need to adapt to changing circumstances in our planned trajectory. We need to adjust but always with that clarity of where we want to be and the courage to go after it.

The post Covid era is giving people food for thought. What we wanted before, and what we put up with before, no longer meet our needs and desires. There is a perfect window now as the world settles into a new rhythm, to get clarity and, once we have it, to steel ourselves to chase it.?

So, now is a time to consider this. If you would like a copy of Tim’s book, please feel free to contact us. It is a good read and has terrific worksheets as thought starters to help you on your journey.