“It’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of life, making it hard to see what really matters. This is especially true when you have a busy schedule and many tasks on your plate. In this article I explore how one can make time for the things that are important by taking small steps forward each day.
The “how to get clarity in life” is a blog post that discusses how to create more clarity in your life. The author of the blog, talks about how to find out what you want and how to be happy with it.
Kyle Eschenroeder contributed this post as a guest contributor.
Recall a time when you were completely clear.
A moment when the tension dissipated as understanding emerged out of nowhere. The stress of not knowing what you believe you need to know causes tension. The apparent release of a response. There aren’t many things that feel better.
These moments have escaped me for the most part, particularly in the previous year. I’ve extended my quest as conventional sources of clarity have dwindled.
We usually try to gain clarity by obtaining additional information or coming up with a common definition. We obtain data via doing study, acting, observing, and reflecting. Time allows various techniques to compound or interact, resulting in the formation of a picture.
However, there are certain types of issues for which no amount of knowledge or facts can bring clarification. These are the kinds of issues that send some of us into long-term existential crises. Am I making the most of my life? Is it true that I’m devoting my time to the appropriate people? Is it true that I’m supporting the correct cause? Is it necessary for me to revise my political beliefs?
Study, reflection, and experimenting are seldom enough to provide clarity on these sorts of concerns. External shocks, such as a near-death experience or the birth of a child, may sometimes bring the needed light. The development of some virtues, such as self-reliance, faith, and bravery, seems to be a more common source of the clarity we need.
These and other perception-enhancing characteristics may help you see clearly. One that does not obstruct or distort your vision.
The more we know about clarity and where it comes from, the more likely we are to experience it outside of occasional epiphanies.
The Crucial Role of Clarity
Focus is provided through clarity.
Clarity is an effective sorting tool. It enables us to swiftly eliminate information that is either irrelevant or dangerous.
When you’re clear about your goals, it’s impossible to get hooked to your social feed. When you’re clear about what you’re searching for, it’s tough to get overwhelmed by media and possibilities.
“In a society deluged with useless information, clarity is power,” observed Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens, a book that condensed hundreds of thousands of years of human history into a few hundred pages. He claims that the only way he can accomplish that degree of clear synthesis is to keep focused on the end objective while writing a book. And he’s committed to honing this skill: he not only meditates for two hours every day, but also goes on a quiet retreat once or twice a year.
Francis Ford Coppola revealed in an interview that he has a one-word theme in mind for each of his films to preserve the clarity needed to make the countless choices involved in directing a film:
The concept of The Conversation when I created it was privacy. The Godfather’s theme was succession while I was making it. And I taught my kids to try to figure out what the larger theme is because… you have to answer so many questions every day, like should she have long or short hair; should she wear a dress or a skirt; should he have a vehicle or a bicycle? And because you already know the answer, you just fire them off. However, there are times when you don’t know the answer. And it’s at this point that you ask, “Well, what is the theme?” …………………………
So, in the instance of The Godfather, [the] idea of succession, I’d always know that as long as I was presenting the narrative of — there was a king, and he had three sons. And one was very this, while the other was very that… I knew what I was doing.
There’s nothing to concentrate on if there’s no clarity. There is no sanity without clarity.
Motivation comes from clarity.
The more harder it is to hit a target, the less apparent it is.
The more ambiguous a job is, the more difficult it is to do.
Motivation is everywhere if we have momentum. Motivation is risky when we’re stalled, confused, or worn out. It’s easy for me to believe that the issue is a lack of drive, that the enthusiasm I previously have has vanished. Of course, this is untrue. There are many of people older and weaker than me who appear to have an endless amount of energy. Clarity is what’s lacking.
“Most individuals assume they lack drive when they truly lack clarity,” according to James Clear.
That reservoir of long-term motivation is unlikely to be replenished by another cup of coffee or the most recent nootropic. After another cold shower, breathing exercise, or workout, it could not be accessible.
Exhaustion is often a sign of a lack of focus.
Clarity instills a sense of security.
Sometimes all that is required of an organization is clarity rather than a solution. —Horowitz, Ben
It’s dangerous to move when you can’t tell what’s going on around you.
On a Friday night, imagine travelling on the highway. There are a slew of automobiles on the road, all heading somewhere for the weekend. Your automobile lights, as well as those surrounding you, enable you to notice possible risks. You’re probably speeding, listening to vintage music or the AoM podcast, or something similar, and having a fantastic time. Then enormous raindrops begin to fall on your windshield. Suddenly, you can’t see as well as you used to. As your windshield wipers rush to clear the path for you to see what’s ahead, the lights begin to blur, causing tense periods of blindness. It’s presently raining outside. Through the rain, you can see brake lights shining brightly. You slam on the brakes. An 80 mph drive is reduced to 60 mph. People suddenly reveal themselves to be bad drivers; you can’t trust them in these new circumstances. The lowered feeling of safety on the road due to the obscured vision — the lack of clarity — threw everyone off.
These types of opacity-induced traffic congestion occur not just on the road, but also in other aspects of life. The cultural wars are rife with acrimony due to a lack of a common language and agreed goals. Relationships are strained by differing norms. Organizations suffer from a lack of clarity in their standards.
When you’re unsure of how something will be received, you tend to say nothing. You stand in the corner when you’re not sure what constitutes good etiquette. You sit on your hands when you’re not sure what you’re meant to be aiming towards. Consider how perplexed you feel when you’re thrown into a sport or board game when you have no understanding what the rules are. As a consequence of misunderstandings, inactivity is paralyzed.
We can engage with one other more smoothly when common language and situations are evident. In our connections with others, there is less guessing. Consider the difference between providing instructions to a local and giving directions to a newcomer: with the former, you may be succinct and subtle, but with the latter, you must be long-winded, detailed, and primitive. Consider how merely lifting an eyebrow to a partner may convey a lot of information.
A feeling of clarity provides us a sense of security, which helps us to trust the world, and trust allows us to direct our energy in more daring and productive ways. The more you learn the game’s rules, the more difficult it becomes to play.
The Characteristics of Clarity
We may find the clarity we seek in a number of places. However, not all of them are made equal.
Clarity may sometimes be as easy as writing on an issue until it becomes clear. Conversation and knowledge may sometimes provide clarification. It’s also sometimes as simple as outlining the norms of interaction.
However, these methods do not always work.
Certain emotions, or sensations, may also provide insight – at least of a certain kind.
For example, intense suffering may bring the world into sharp, terrible focus. This is so accurate that some say that pain is our primary anchor to reality. Pain is one of the few things that can hold our attention for long periods of time. It’s impossible to focus on anything else while your hand is submerged in icy water.
The source of anguish becomes crystal obvious, and all else fades away.
Anger is a related emotion. The universe comes to a halt at a single moment of outrage or injustice.
The clarity that these experiences provide may help us concentrate our efforts and present us with a strong desire to make a difference in the world.
They may, however, swiftly become features that obstruct rather than improve our sensory abilities. David Chapman describes fury as “a skewed expression of clarity” in his online book Meaningfulness. They will blind us to their remedies if we are unable to alleviate the pain or fury. We’ll pass out when we reach a particular level of discomfort. Our view gets myopic if we hang on to our anger for too long.
When usual and muddled sources of clarity fail us, cultivating a set of qualities and attitudes might help us see the world through a new, broader lens:
Courage
Fear, like anger and suffering, is another path to muddled clarity, as memorably portrayed by Frank Herbert in Dune:
The mind-killer is fear. Fear is the little death that leads to final annihilation.
Fear, like pain and fury, forcibly draws our attention to its target. It’s impossible to focus on anything else while dread is prevalent. It’s not a huge problem when we cope with a phobia fast. When a fear is allowed to fester, it fades into the background, subtly affecting our perception of the world. It will be tough to have clarity at work if you are always afraid of getting fired. A persistent worry of being abandoned will make it difficult to see clearly in our relationships.
Without bravery, clarity is unattainable.
Not the other way around, mental clarity is the offspring of boldness. —Nassim Taleb, author of “The Black Swan”
Exposure breeds courage. The magnitude of exposure might shift.
Make a private draft of the views you wish to post publicly. Before bringing a tough professional topic to your employer, talk it out with a close buddy. Adopting a dog before having a child is a good idea.
In the end, bravery comes from taking action in the face of adversity. “Courage is what you acquire after you’ve gone through the difficult times and discovered they weren’t that terrible after all,” Malcolm Gladwell explains.
Clarity comes from courage.
I’m going to confront my fear. I’m going to let it flow over and through me. And when it’s gone, I’ll turn my inner eye to see where it went. There will be nothing where the terror has gone. I’ll be the only one left. —Herbert, Frank
Faith
It is typical of an emotionally healthy individual to be able to’make do’ with fewer assurances… As a result, he doesn’t need what amounts to a guarantee that his truth… is the whole truth, or that his activities would always result in success. He may take it for granted that he has somehow gotten hold of enough truth to keep him going for the time being — and that more is likely to arrive when he has gone far enough to require and discover it…
This kind of faith is far from being a static aspect of a person’s life. It’s best described as the psychological permission he has to continue from where he is now.
—Bonaro Overstreet and Harry
What if you knew in your bones that you couldn’t possibly make a mistake?
What if apparent failure, sin, setbacks, pandemics, etc., were all part of God’s perfect plan?
Do future errors seem so risky if everything you’ve done so far has gotten you here and this is where you’re supposed to be?
Is it necessary for ambiguity to lead to a loss of clarity if there are no incorrect steps?
So far, you’ve made a lot of mistakes. You’ve arrived. You’ve made it this far.
Is it such a reach to believe you’ll make it through your next blunder? Is it feasible that your next blunder may end up being advantageous to you in the long run?
Unlike planned solutions, spontaneous resolves frequently arise in spite of rather than because of authoritarian ideals and plans. Venkatesh Rao (Venkatesh Rao)
Many of us like to use Mike Tyson’s “Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face” when discussing the fragility of plans. Even yet, it’s tough to keep trust when we’re continuously having to rework our goals.
Developing a feeling of trust in the significance of the present and the possibilities of the future might assist us in remaining clear enough to notice the new chances that change brings.
Even if you don’t know what comes next, it becomes evident that the following step is critical. It becomes evident that perfection is neither necessary nor desirable. It becomes apparent that life is worthwhile.
Faith is the foundation of everything good. —From the Buddha
Honesty
Thank you, God, for giving me this moment of clarity and honesty. Jay Z is a rapper who is well-known for his use of slang.
Hova was hit with a flash of candor, which provided him with a flash of insight.
By definition, a lie is a distortion. We lose our capacity to see clearly when we lie to ourselves.
You may believe that in order to better yourself, you must alter yourself, and in order to change yourself, you must lie to yourself. This is because we reject parts of ourselves that make us uncomfortable, suppressing them instead of integrating them. Our “shadow self” is a collection of these rejected aspects of ourselves. Robert Bly explains the process of rejection as placing bits of ourselves in a bag and discusses the dangers of keeping them there in his book A Little Book on the Human Shadow:
It regresses when we put a piece of ourselves in the sack. It descends into savagery. Let’s say a young guy seals a bag at the age of twenty and then waits fifteen or twenty years to open it. What will he discover? Unfortunately, the sexuality, wildness, impulsiveness, wrath, and freedom he implanted have all regressed; they are no longer merely primitive in mood, but also antagonistic toward the person who opens the bag.
“Every component of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us,” he explains more bluntly.
Correcting this is a long process that may take numerous shapes. “Using words intentionally seems to be the most productive means of recovering shadow matter distributed across the universe,” Bly writes. However, seeing ourselves clearly requires honesty with ourselves, which comes from self-acceptance.
The strange dichotomy is that I can only change if I accept myself exactly as I am. Carl Rogers is credited for coining the phrase “Carl Rogers is a
Acceptance isn’t a state of being stuck; it’s a state of being able to see clearly. You could want something you shouldn’t, but ignoring it won’t make it go away.
Is your lack of clarity due to a refusal to accept what you desire or who you’ve become?
Do not, above all, deceive yourself. A guy who lies to himself and listens to his own falsehood reaches a point when he is unable to perceive any truth in himself or anyplace else, and so becomes disrespectful of himself and others. —Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Humility
There is an uncertainty inside us that stems from our want to know what the world — our world — will and should be like, as well as how we will feel about it. It’s easy to assume we’ve got it all figured out even though the solutions are always difficult to come by. However, this overconfidence leads to a jumbled, shaky sense of clarity, which leads to disaster.
Your error was not in picturing things you couldn’t know – that’s what imagination is for, after all. Rather, your error was treating what you imagined as if it were an accurate portrayal of the facts without thinking about it. —Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert
Recognizing that the world is, to a considerable extent, unexpected is part of humility. We have no idea how the economy will turn out (few guessed that the stock market would reach all-time highs the same year we experienced a world-shaking pandemic). We’re terrible at predicting what will make us joyful.
Humility enables us to separate certainty from clarity. We may be confident of what we need to accomplish without knowing how things will end out.
Memento (Living) Mori is a Latin phrase that means “memory of death.”
Your eyes will be awakened to the grandeur and splendor of life if you maintain a healthy awareness of your own mortality, and this will summon all of the qualities I’ve mentioned, as well as others I haven’t, such as hope, charity, and appreciation. If the life that hasn’t been studied isn’t worth living, it’s also true that the life that hasn’t been lived isn’t worth analyzing. Palmer, Parker J.
Someone must have suggested that you ponder about your death at some time, even if it was only inadvertently as a cry to YOLO. And this is a good proposal; honestly reflecting on the ultimate end of experience might provide clarity that we don’t get when we take eternity for granted.
This, however, does not always work for me. I shrug when I think of my demise. Death, as the Stoics put it, takes us back to where we were before we were born.
What strikes me at such times is this: Have I joined the walking, breathing dead?
There are people waiting in every part of the world who have no idea how long they’ve been waiting, much less that they’ve been waiting in vain. —Nietzsche, Friedrich
When I realize that I’ve been living in silent desperation for a month or more, I’m afraid. Few things are more troubling than realizing that my challenges have been purely survival-related, and that I haven’t stopped to admire the impossible beauty of a tree or sky in a long time.
Realizing we’ve joined the ranks of the living dead might bring a comparable sense of certainty. The significant things, as well as the things that have lulled us into a lethargy, become visible.
This may be our final day kissing our wives, petting our dogs, and driving by that church. It might also be the day we realize we’ve been living a life we don’t want to live.
Stillness
When the water stops flowing and the silt settles, the riverbed becomes visible.
When we take a break from our frantic, urgent, and demanding pursuit for understanding, we could get a glimpse of something we hadn’t seen before.
Noise is the result of preconceived thoughts. It’s a recollection of a feed brimming with forecasts, family expectations, status games, standards, wounds, and imbedded tales. You’re afraid of noise, so you’re reactive, tiny, and hooked to the things that keep you trapped.
Stillness is the state of being open. When you’re immersed in flow, it’s what you experience on a walk, in the hug of a loved one. Stillness is you – open, nonjudgmental, and fun — with your ego dialed down down.
You may hear a faint cry when you become quiet (when you become you). You may be able to access your whims with the clarity of tranquility.
Godspeed
“I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim,” Emerson wrote. I hope it’s better than whim in the end, but we can’t spend the whole day explaining it.”
We can hear the whim better when there is silence. Humility enables us to think about something as speculative as a whim. Honesty understands if the whim is for us or not, and whether it is worth recording. Faith is the belief in something more than chance. Rather of explaining the impulse away, courage accepts the risk.
Each of them may be developed by remembering that today might be our final day living, or that we’ve failed to come alive so far.
Every morning, I strive for clarity that is not based on certainty. A sense of clarity about how I should be, what I should care about, and what I should concentrate on. I write, meditate, and get punched in the face. Then, on a good day, I begin the process all over again.
Every morning, I strive for clarity that is not based on certainty. A sense of clarity about how I should be, what I should care about, and what I should concentrate on. I write, meditate, and get punched in the face. Then, on a good day, I begin the process all over again.
We collaborated with Kyle Eschenroeder on the publication of The Pocket Guide to Action: 116 Meditations on the Art of Doing. He sends out a letter once a week with five key ideas; if you’d like to be included, go here.
Clarity in life is a synonym for understanding, clarity, and awareness. It can be achieved through meditation, mindfulness, or by simply being present in the moment. The more you are aware of your thoughts and emotions, the more you will have clarity about what direction to take next. Reference: clarity in life meaning.
Related Tags
- how to gain clarity in mind
- how to get clarity in a relationship
- how to get clarity on your goals
- finding clarity meaning
- how to get clarity in career