Smoke, Mirrors, and Specificity.

We have all been there, an end goal or desire in mind but the trail ahead leads straight into a thick cloud of fog. I want to get in shape, I want to be in a relationship, I want to stop sleeping in, I want to start a business, I want to be healthier, whatever it is we can usually have no trouble identifying the things or ways of living that we want to acquire or move toward. That is often the easy part. That is the part we can identify at a glance or in a moment of inspiration. We take in a view of the destination from atop the mountain that is our starting line.

We all identify various destinations in our lives that we want to get to. But what happens next?

My personal experience tells me that probably not much. I might be wrong but let’s start with the worst case scenario and then work forward from there, that way no one gets left behind.

When I say “nothing” I don’t mean you don’t try to start moving, in fact most people do. And often they begin to make very courageous plans and decisions, they do some research and pick a road to follow. What I mean when I say nothing happens is that when we zoom out from that movement of resolve over time, we see that nothing much has materialized.

The plans were big, and the start was commendable but ultimately the trajectory levelled out or even reached a lower point than where we started. What happened? Was it human weakness or lack of discipline? Was it an unreasonable goal or an unlearnable skill? It might have been any of these things but in my experience, it is usually something I like to call the “Fog”. The smoke and mirrors of all of the above combined with the inevitable interruptions and unexpected thorns of everyday life over a period of time. The “Fog” settles in and what once seemed like a good path descends into a thick and dark blanket of uncertainty and

ambiguity.

Concepts and ideas blend together and morph and transform until we no longer recognize them, experience contradicts theory, and the instruction manual seems to have pieces that were not in the box. Suddenly step three is nowhere to be found and to make matters worse only half of step two seemed to make any sense. Not only are you not sure of the way forward but the way back is now also shrouded in a similar cloak of formidable and unreadable smog. Principles and precepts that made sense before now seem to be teasing you and the clarity and perspective that once blessed you seems not be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

This is not an original narrative or commentary on common human experiences. You might be reminded of stories like Dante’s Divine Comedy or Lewis’s, The Silver Chair or  Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress, or any story where the characters are given plans or instructions but then get lost and fall from the place of light into doubt and uncertainty. This is a universal theme of the journey. And it is part of our individual journey’s as well, like it or not we all end up in the “Fog” and must navigate our way forward.

There are many schools of thought on how we can re-orient ourselves, clear the air, be found, and get back on the path. I won’t reiterate all of these, but I would like to offer one tool that has been useful in my experience, something that can cut through the fog little by little so that you can move from a whirling uncertainty to at least a next best step. And if you are lost and scared a next best step is a pretty big deal, even if it’s a very small one.

The tool I want to share is specificity. Calling something by name has a universal way of giving you power over that thing, and we can leverage this power by concentrating it through specificity onto a very small space in front of us which gives us just enough light and clarity to take that next small step.

When I was a kid we used to burn leaves with the light of the sun by using a magnifying class to condense the light and heat of the sun into a very fine point. With enough precision and consistency this point of light begins to burn the surface it is directed at. If you have not tried this I highly recommend it, quite aside from any lessons that can be garnered here it is just a lot of fun and can provide hours of entertainment.

But back to specificity. In life we can use this same strategy of the magnifying glass. We do this by first naming the thing upon which we want to focus, overcome, figure out, get passed, solve or what have you. But we don’t just name it in a general way, like the magnifying glass we must get specific, we must be as precise as possible, we must condense the power of naming by going to finest of categorizations. If we are afraid of spiders, we don’t just say we are afraid of all creatures, we get specific, we identify our specific fear. There is a huge difference between being afraid of all creatures and being afraid of just spiders. If we are too general than we lose our power. Like the magnifying glass that condenses the power of the sun we need to condense that power of naming by being as specific as possible. When we do this something fascinating will happen, just as the leaf begins to smoke and smolder under the fine point of light, so will our next little step be illuminated by a very small point of light and clarity.

Have you ever been driving in a thick fog or snowstorm? You flick on your “brights” and suddenly you are blinded, you have no idea where the road is. But when you put on your low beams you illuminate just enough road ahead to stay on course.

It is the same with us.

Railing against the fog will leave you exhausted, confused, bitter, stuck and despairing. But specificity will illuminate a next step, and eventually set you free. What does this look like in practice? One of the biggest “fogs” out there is anxiety. Such a broad term. “I have anxiety” is often the claim, and this a totally legitimate statement, but it is not specific at all. It is not condensed at all. We need to boil it down. Anxiety about what? Who? Where? When? We need to pinpoint something here, we need to name something at a very specific level, only then will we get a clue, only then will we see the next best step.

if the fog is inevitable then so must be our response, and our response need to be specific. Sure we all wish the fog would just lift, and sometimes it might, but we can’t always afford to wait. So go small and go specific and you will get back on the path, it may still be a winding path, but that is better than being lost. And the good news is like all other things this skill and practice compounds over time. Just like the magnifying glass and the leaf where a small smoldering ember can grow to consume whole trees in an unbelievably short period of time, so can our specificity ramp up at an exponential rate to the point where we would not believe the results. But you don’t need to worry about  big results, you just need to condense what you have down, to get specific and to create just enough light to guide that next best step.

It’s time to cut through the smoke and mirrors and get deadly specific.

What to you need to name and where to you need to get specific? It’s time to take a next step.

Yours in the fog,

Ben

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