How to Find Clarity

SUMMARY

• “The time to have the map is before you enter the woods.”
• What’s the importance of having clarity? After this episode, you’ll learn the life-changing role it plays in your life and how to access it in your own life.
• “Stop browsing for inspiration and start studying for education.”
• Watch the video to get the full training.
• It’s time to really hone in on what inspires and motivates you so you can perform at your best this new year. Here are four tips to help you gain clarity about yourself, your skills, your relationships, and what truly brings you fulfillment.
• Already have the High Performance Planner and CRUSHING each and every day? Let’s celebrate you! Take a photo with your planner and use #HPXlife or #TeamHPX.

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DID YOU KNOW?

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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of YouTube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

What’s up, my friends? Hey, it’s Brendon. Happy Saturday! 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?

First, I think I should share with you: What’s the outcome of clarity? We were studying the world’s most successful people trying to figure out what was the difference between 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 under performer, 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, and hone my craft?” And number four, they’re seeking 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 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 if that makes sense, those are just kind of the outcomes.

High performers have great levels of clarity for self, social, skill, and service.

But I know the questions, “But, how do you develop that clarity? 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 just had some changes in your life and you’re trying to figure out what’s next. Here are some simple things to keep in mind for clarity.

1. Daily Reflection and Scoring

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 will go one day because you’ll see how important it is to have frameworks for measuring our life and for assessing our life. I mean, 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 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 because 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 in on how you reflect on your life. It’s why you must have an evening journal.

It’s why you need to have categories or values that you’re rating and reviewing in your life on a weekly or monthly basis. It’s just the extraordinary power of reflecting more often. You want more clarity than most people? Reflect more often than they do, but also give yourself the gift of scoring yourself. I’m always asking myself all these questions to keep me high performing. “On a level of 1-10, what’s my level of vibrancy and presence right now?” And if I’m a 1, 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 1-10. 1, 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 want to 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 makes 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 an 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 that’s where, not only clarity happens, but a new level of confidence in life, because 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.

2. Follow and Record Positive Emotions

Number two, I want you to 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 ah-ha’s, 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 and you’re like, “Yay!” And the next day you were 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 Years 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 there’s been 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, and you’re like, “Oh. So, how do you do that?”

I’m begging you, have an evening practice to record those areas of positive emotion. 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 always 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.

3. Get Training

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 woods.”

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. Whether that means, you read the biography, you join their online courses or their programs, you go to their events or their seminars, 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 and 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 says, “Brendon, what are you reading?” And whenever I’m ever reading 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 ah-ha, and yep, that clarity. Everyone is like, “Brendon, 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 thing, like, everything. I never wander into stuff dumb.” And that’s just the power of being a high performer. You seek clarity and then act. Instead of acting from impulse or fear, I act from instruction, I follow this 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 to you.

All right, last big idea. So, the first one, you need daily reflection and scoring.

Number two, you need daily following and recording of what were the positive emotions and experiences, so you can find that through line and stick to it more.

Number three, you’ve got to get training. I mean, real training.

4. Dive Deep in the Areas of Your Life

And number four, you’ve got to decide to dive deep in the areas of your life. So many people are skating on the surface of life. They don’t have any depth. And so, they don’t feel like they have 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 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 always go, “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’ve got, you know, half foot, 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 seven, eight, nine, 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. Most people are just like, “I don’t know what’s right for me,” because they never connected to a deeper level of them with themselves, in their relationships, in their skill set, their career, their vocation, their purpose. 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 in your experience of life by recording some of it and writing it down and reflecting on it, 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 podcast. I think it was in Season Four on The Brendon Show, my podcast, where I uploaded the entire audiobook of my book, “High Performance Habits,” literally, the entire audiobook for free in Season Four. So, you have to go back through The Brendon Show, scroll all the way down to Season Four, and you can download every chapter of the book, including the chapter on seeking clarity.

If you’d like more insight on this topic, go to my YouTube channel. There’s dozens and dozens of videos on personal development, on finding your purpose, on setting goals, on how to achieve things faster, on how to deepen relationships, on how to deal with anything that you deal with in your life. It’s a true library for free over on my YouTube channel, so I hope you’ll check that out.

So, 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 in HPX. I appreciate all of you.

Don’t forget, every single day, as the niche always says, you can go out and be ordinary, or today, you can choose to be extraordinary. So, my friends, go be extraordinary.