Clarity is Sexy

Can’t see the forest for the trees

Clarity creates your vision, without it, your vision can not be fully realized. What exactly do I mean? Can you paint a picture in your mind of accomplishing a goal? What does it smell like, look like, taste like make it as 3D as possible.

Do you take the time to milk it, to bring it forth, so that it becomes real for you?

True Empowerment

It feels powerful/sexy to have YOUR life under control. Most times though, it feels as though you are standing on quicksand.

Smile: never let them see you sweat, even if you feel like you are thigh deep in the trenches of being busy.

Whether you are at the grocery store or at a networking meeting, you talk about how busy you are.

You brag about how many things you are juggling, how little sleep you get and how many green smoothies you intake on a daily basis.

You basically emphasize how your busy is busier than their busy.

You walk away from the exchange patting yourself on the back, ‘Yaaas, I am so important, because I have shit to do and get handled…’ but as the temporary euphoria of productivity fades, you are hit with the reality of still not being about to decide which project has more importance, who you should call first and what you should just never do.

Overwhelm feels like a tidal wave, so you distract yourself with food, tv or social media and you are not any closer to getting the life you desire (being about dat life).

Now you are in a pickle because you don’t really trust yourself, but you seem to have it all together to everyone else.

You have worked hard to ensure they think this of you. Sure, you get it done eventually by throwing stuff up on the wall to see what sticks under the facade of being so productive.

The elusive ‘love yourself’ movement is in a far far away land from your actual life, because who would consciously treat themselves this way? A huge part of self-love is the ability to trust yourself, the act of being able to rely on yourself. To trust what you say is so.

What in the world?

You want to but the overwhelm fog has a lot of momentum and force in your life, where do you begin?

The internet vacuum, visual confusion aka paper clutter and now the wonderful virtual/digital clutter makes you want to throw away your precious (and expensive) smartphone. The catalog for random and important information are intermingled.

Countless apps sit on your computer and gadgets filled with things to look at later. Later isn’t a day/date on the calendar and later rarely happens, because well you are busy, remember?

Your hard drive will organize a boycott if you download one more thing, your offline storage is outdated and you just purchased more room for some cloud somewhere. You need a place to house all of your paperwork (cough: junk): you are bursting at the seams with information.

Be CLEAR

You have FOMO: fear of missing out.

I am a recovering FOMOist so game recognizes game. Here is the thing, clarity doesn’t live here. It can’t live where chaos dwells, this makes sense right?

You must make the decision to get clear. It will not happen instantly. You didn’t acquire your clutter instantly, so reversing it will be…interesting. You will be triggered, you won’t want to, you will get sleepy, distracted. Your mind will tell you it isn’t worth it.

Left alone, this will grow into multiple junk drawers physically and virtually that you avoid and slam shut.

Here is a short list of to do’s to help you begin to reverse the chaos and create a path to clarity:

1. If you receive the same bill with a newer date on it, throw the old one out immediately. Consider going digital here. Take a screenshot and put it in a virtual file cabinet (that you will actually use).
2. Get thee to an online note taking app. Currently, I am using 3 to keep my life together: Craft, Notion and Things3. They sync across all my devices and they are beautiful to use.
3. Create a task in your calendar to actually tag and categorize the areas in your life that are important to you. Remember, if it ain’t scheduled it will sail around in your mind as a ghost.
4. Have an ideas book at the ready: keep it at your bedside (carry the same one around with you during the day) and put items in your calendar; dump the ideas (implement where possible) into the appropriate slot within 15-30 days. I wait for the back to school sale and go buck wild, yay paper!
5. Once you decide on the tools for your system, commit to it for a year. Reason: the productivity genre is elusive and before you know it, you are spending your time moving things around to this place and that withOUT getting anything done.

This may take a while, be as patient as possible with yourself. See yourself at the end. If apps aren’t your thing, look for ways that will organize you and keep you from being busy.

Did you just breathe deeper at the thought of being able to actively rest? Yeah, me too. Like the air is fresher or something…that is the smell of sexy happening.

Clarity is cool, just like a cool breeze on your cheek and maybe just maybe a moment of nothingness, silence.