From Hazy to Clear: How to Gain Clarity About Your Life

Sometimes the biggest questions you can ask yourself--Who am I? What is my purpose? Where can I find fulfillment?--come down to a very simple question: What shall I do to today? Grand visions aren't hard to think up, but carrying them out is the problem. Everyone's days are filled with distractions. Duties and demands pile up steadily. The bigger issues become hazy when your to-do list is overflowing. So how can we bring vision and practicality closer together?

The world's wisdom traditions tell us to look inside for the real obstacles that block the way to fulfillment. Outer demands will always fill the time given to them, and pitching into the swirling activity of daily life inevitably makes existence seem stressed and chaotic. What you can do instead is to examine your reality "in here," which is where clarity can be found.

What most people find when they look inside are the following ingredients in their mental makeup:

Confusion--this manifests as not setting clear priorities because the path ahead doesn't look clear and decisive.

Distraction--this manifests as a hundred small things that pull your attention this way and that.

Disorganization--this manifests as a lack of orderly thinking that leads to productive results.

Let's look at these three things specifically. They are the managerial part of mental life, which is a basic necessity. There's a spectrum of problems that changes from person to person. At either end are the polar opposites of the tightly controlled, highly disciplined thinker and the vague dreamer. There are countless variations on how we use our minds. But if your goal is clarity, set aside the thoughts and sensations that fill your mind every day. Focus instead on the goal of finding clarity.

Confusion is solved by getting your priorities straight.

Distraction is solved by getting better at focusing your attention.

Disorganization is solved by throwing out non-essentials and tending to the important things first and foremost.

Remember that we are talking about your inner life, so achieving clarity isn't the same as cleaning house and straightening out every room. The solution doesn't lie in attacking the problem directly. If you became a kind of efficiency expert, you could probably sort your thinking out in a more orderly, focused way. But the effort would be a strain, and the results are likely to be only temporary. Far better is to find a way to let the mind become orderly, focused, and clear on its own.

We've all been taught, one way or another, that the mind will run amok if it isn't watched and controlled. Like a child it is easily distracted; an undisciplined mind will run around in all directions. But few people have actually tested whether the mind's nature is so chaotic. We take for granted, looking at our own confusion, that it would be a struggle to turn inner chaos into something more orderly. This is where the world's wisdom traditions offer a valuable secret.

They teach that the unsettled mind comes about through one thing only--losing sight of who we really are. You can't be a puppet of outside demands and pressures unless you see yourself as secondary while the world "out there" is primary. After all, how can you eat, put a roof over your head, raise a family, and so on without plunging into the hard realities of daily existence? The answer lies in finding out who you really are--a conscious agent who can choose at any time to live from the level of the true self.

By committing to the practice of meditation, you take your mind to this level where clarity is natural and effortless. The analogy of a river helps to show what happens.  On the surface a river is fast-flowing and whipped up into waves and eddies. As you descend into it, however, the river's flow becomes slow and steady, and at the very bottom, the water may be so calm that it hardly moves at all. In the same way, there's a level of the mind that knows only peace, calmness, and clarity. But unlike a river bottom, it's not sluggish. There's a beautiful balance between relaxation and alertness.

The settled mind, in fact, is the most capable of meeting the day's demands because it is guided from within. Self-awareness dominates, which means that you know who you are and where you're going. Suddenly it turns out that the day contains enough time for you to find fulfillment, which is a timeless quality, undisturbed by demands, duties, and distractions. 

Regular daily meditation also leads to changes in your daily life that can be summarized as dos and don'ts.

DO

• Make your surroundings orderly and uncluttered.

• Take a close look at stresses that need to be addressed.

• Keep away from negative influences.

• Find a friend or confidante who shares you vision of clarity and fulfillment.

• Center yourself several times a day whenever you feel distracted or unsettled.

• Go outside to experience the calm and inspiration of Nature.

• Follow a regular daily routine.

• Get eight hours of good sleep every night.

Don't

• Remain in situations that turn disordered and stressful.

• Push your work time to the limit of exhaustion, mental or physical.

• Be tied down by other people's opinions and attitudes.

• Let stress go unaddressed.

• Let a good night's sleep slip by more than once or twice a week.

• Immerse yourself in bad news and the world's chaotic unrest.

• Ignore your body's signals--be aware of when it wants rest, nourishment, down time, and a chance to reset itself through meditation and quiet time alone.

• Forget to provide yourself with pure food, water, and air.

What these lists suggest is that as your inner world becomes more orderly and clear, your actions in the outer world should follow suit. Both sides of the equation are important. Just remember that without inner clarity, all the external neatness and organization won't serve as a substitute. Inner fulfillment is the goal of life and always has been. 

Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD  and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine.  www.deepakchopra.com