How To Get Unstuck By Clarifying Your Goals

Welcome. I'm Scott Radford This is the performance hackers. And today's solo episode on one of the most important subjects I think, in high performance. And that's clarity, finding and building the clarity that we need to commit to the changes that we want to make in our lives. Now, clarity provides pretty much the foundation to every decision that you make in life, right. But most people actually find themselves pretty overwhelmed because they always start a couple of stages down the track. And so today, I wanted to lay the foundations on how to build that inner clarity before we then go on to answering the big questions about what your vision and purpose on this earth look like. And so on this episode, I'm going to share with you the three steps that I used to help me build that inner clarity and not feeling like you can make a move and take action until you've got all the answers. That's just not the case. Now, yes, clarity does provide the foundations for every decision you make. But more importantly, it also creates the safety to go all in. And you've probably experienced this when you feel like you need to change your life and you try out a couple of new things that you think might be the solution. And for some reason, you're just not fully committing to that change. And that's because the mind doesn't believe that it's safe to take those actions. And so providing the internal clarity through the three steps I'm going to share with you will show your mind that it's actually safe to go all in and to take the committed action that you know, is the only way that you can get results. And if we're not satisfied with who we are internally, let's be honest, no external success is going to make us happy when we come into this process. And we're trying to find the clarity of what you want to focus on. We often come in with so many limitations on what we think we can possibly achieve based on false limiting beliefs we've picked up during our lives, things like not feeling like we're qualified enough or not having the right skill sets, maybe even not being the type of person who does x. And so we limit ourselves on actually truly opening up the possibilities for us. But the fact of the matter is, if you can describe your ideal self, then you actually have the capacity to build it already within you, as your perception often determines your reality. And we've seen this in so many studies in the past, and one that springs up is the one you might have heard of with the kittens and the boxes, and how some kittens were placed in boxes with just horizontal lines on it. And other kittens were placed in boxes with vertical lines on it. And they found that when they finally released the kittens out, the ones that grew up in the boxes with just the horizontal lines, they couldn't actually see or perceive anything in the vertical plane. So they were bumping into chair legs and other things that were on the vertical aspects of objects. And that's because their brain just couldn't perceive anything outside of the realm in which they had already been exposed to. And this is exactly the paradigm that we operate when when we're trying to build a future that's so vastly different to what we've already built. The truth is you get the reality you commit to. And so inner clarity is so so important, because not only does it minimise the doubt that you have in yourself, but it actually increases that self confidence. It's required to go out there and take the committed action to be successful in another endeavour. But it can also help you learn your strengths and work on your weaknesses as you go through the self reflection process to find this clarity. Now, before you even started to think about the future and setting your vision and your goals, you need to understand where you're taking off from, like, where are you currently at. And so you need to meet yourself where you're at with no judgement either of yourself, or where you find yourself at the moment, or where other people are at where you feel that you should be at this stage, try and take some baselines and get some real data on where you're at, and what it is that you're missing what it is that you currently desire. And this can be done pretty easily just in a journal in the evening. Once you've done that step two is to find your values. And there's a great quote by Adam Grant that says following your passions is a luxury, following your values is necessity. And I couldn't agree more. I think a lot of people get lost in not knowing what they want to do next, I think you're asking yourself the wrong question here. I think it has to be about who you want to be and not what you want to do. And if we think of this from a cultural agency point of view, yes, a lot of us in the western world have such a privilege of being able to get to take time on our journey to find out who we're meant to be or what we want to do that a lot of people around the world don't have that cultural agency, yet, they're still able to find the fulfilment and the passion and the happiness that we're all searching for. And they do that because they're acting in alignment with the values that they live by. And so there's loads of different methods you can use to finding some of your core values. But one example I've got from the flying world is what I call the black box method. Now some of you might be familiar with a black box is essentially a piece of recording equipment that's in most commercial aircraft and it records basically From the moment the aircraft starts to the moment, it stops. And so on big emergencies, this black box will be pulled from the aircraft. And then they'll analyse this, to understand what happened, what went wrong, and what we could do to improve in the future. And so on my last big emergency that I had, I remember looking down at the screen, and just thinking to myself, How do I want to come across when they're analysing this data and this voice recorder back in an office with a cup of tea next to them? How do I want to come across in this moment, and it provides such clarity of thought about what your next actions are? And so by almost stepping out of the situation, and thinking, how would I analyse this tomorrow? How do I want to come across now, so that when I'm looking back at this tomorrow, I'm showing up how I want to show up. And so if you were to describe how you've been in situations in just the last few months, and then think about how your future self would show up, if you knew that you were maybe pulling that black box out and analysing it the day later, what are the three words that describe the person that you want to show up in life as and maybe that you want other people to remember you as as well? Once you've got those three words, don't just put them aside and then get on with your life? How are you going to remind yourself every single day to show up with those three values. For me personally, I like to set notifications on my phone that pop up, to remember to be the type of person that I wanted. And it just allows you to start being a little bit more intentional with the values that you actually want to live day by day by. And the third and final step to try and find that inner clarity is to determine the feeling you're after a lot of time when I asked people, what are you trying to feel? What feelings are you going after? A lot of people just don't have a clue they have not attached a feeling to the goals or the vision that they're trying to go after. And yes, emotions are instinctive. So when we're talking about emotions, we're talking about perceived threats or fear or even love, they're often quite physical, whereas feelings are actually the mental portrayal of an emotion. So when you get an emotional response, you actually have the power to determine what feeling you get from that emotion. And this is where athletes differentiate themselves the most, because they're able to take the same emotion of fear or stress and turn it into a feeling of readiness and being in the zone, as opposed to it being anxiety or some other unwanted feeling at the time. And so ask yourself, or is the feeling that you want or you crave currently, do you have unity between your thoughts and your actions. Now I do say that clarity is a contact sport, that you need to be an action, you need to be in motion to start building the picture. As we'll discover in a second part of this clarity podcast, you only really need a hypothesis to get you going. But if you can recognise the feelings that you're after, and the zone of genius that you operate in, it then starts to reinforce that intuition. And then that shows you more examples of those opportunities. And so a little tasks I get people to do when they're trying to determine the feeling that thereafter is to get a third party perspective of it. Why don't you try and ask those people that are close to you, whose opinions you respect what qualities they will describe you as having? What is your superpower, because it's hard to really know what you value unless it's challenged, unless people see it in you and you feel proud. Or maybe people don't see what you think you display. And it makes you feel upset or frustrated or annoyed. So this is a real treasure chest in terms of opening up to this self awareness and understanding the feelings you're after how you want to be perceived by yourself through your eyes and through other people's eyes. And so once you've got a little bit of a temperature check of where your current position is, what your values are, that you actually want to live by and show up by, and the feelings that you're trying to generate in building something new or different. And it's only really once we've got those three things in place that we're then able to go on and ask the question of what our vision or our purpose might be for the future and actually start taking some defined action towards that. Now in order to set goals and create a plan and take some action, basically move your life forward, you're going to need outer clarity, and having that clarity then brings more energy and more focus into your day. And so before I share with you the three steps to building more outer clarity in your life, it's really important that we get the basics right first, first of all, in order to set yourself up to find more mental clarity, we need to be able to reduce the stress and anxiety that we're putting on ourselves. Now chronic stress contributes to high cortisol levels, which essentially means a weakened circulation and so poor circulation results in the heart firing less oxygen to the brain. And this can then cause a lack of mental clarity. And ironically that in turn, like a vicious cycle amplifies your stress and anxiety levels. And so what you want to try and do is reduce that stress and anxiety even if it's just on a short term basis while you figure this next step out there. Same goes with sleep without seven or more hours of sleep a night. The mind and body really just struggled to exhibit high performance behaviour. And finally, nutrition as well, if you can try and nail your nutrition, so that you're optimising your diet for more vitamin B, 12, and omega three fatty acids in particular, these both massively boost the brain and the immune system and help boost mental clarity. And so vitamin B 12, found in fish, meat, poultry, eggs, dairy products, things like that. So once we've got the basics straight, and we've sort of physically set ourselves up for enhanced mental clarity, the first step you need to take is to try and define what's meaningful for you. Where do you derive most of your personal satisfaction from what are you passionate about what allows you to grow or allows you to contribute more, those are generally going to add to what you're going to find meaningful going forward, once you define what's meaningful for you, the second step is to set your vision. So without a bigger vision of what you want to create, a lot of people just seem to stay motivated by their short term needs and comfort. And so the urgency of your day to day life ends up just crowding out the questions of the long term purpose that you're trying to create. And so from the last episode about inner clarity, you already know what you want to be. But when you're looking about what you want to do, in order to be that person, you kind of need to look at this at a more macro level. And I like to do this by looking at what I want my perfect week to look like in the future. So again, if you can define and then vision, what you want that perfect week to look like, What things does it have that contribute to it, what things are there to challenge you to keep you engaged to keep you enthusiastic? How can you display the attributes, the values, the skills, you want to demonstrate on a daily and a weekly basis. And the key part here, when you're setting your vision is don't think that one activity, one job role is going to give you all the ingredients you need to live the dream life, it just doesn't work like that, I'd like to see it a little bit more like a big ingredients list that has different levels and quantities of ingredients that I can increase or decrease depending on what I find meaningful at the time. And so if I was to give an example, for me, I would say that I absolutely love flying, and travelling, and seeing the world and exploring. And so I'm never gonna give up flying at this stage, because it contributes so much to my life. However, I didn't want to do it every second of the day. And so therefore, I knew that the ingredient was important. But I knew that I needed to reduce the ratio of that ingredient in order to set my perfect week, the things that I was missing from my job as an airline pilot, I then went looking for in other aspects. And then I was able to add those parts into that week in order to create this balanced, full, meaningful week. And so what are the ingredients that you need in your perfect week going forward in the future? And at what ratios do you need them to happen? The third step I found that was really helpful for me, was to imitate then innovate. Now, I had absolutely no idea initially what I wanted to do. But I did know that my fear of judgement and failure of not being proven or credible in a new endeavour, I knew that that was holding me back, I knew that I was making me play small. And those fears are ultimately going to try and influence what your mind tells you, your options are right? So you're going to automatically limit yourself to what you think is possible based on those fear and those limiting beliefs. And so if you were to ask yourself what you truly wanted, what are you not allowing yourself to admit you want? If there were no constraints or rules, and everyone had to start from scratch? What would you get excited about? And then you can define what primary field of interest that's in. Once you've got that primary field of interest, go and find examples of those that have achieved success in there. What three skills make people successful in that field? And what can you now do to develop them. So maybe it's starting a course, maybe it's reading a couple of books, or maybe it's just buying some equipment and taking some action, whatever it is, put it in your diary, try and make this stuff happen. And then ask yourself what skills are going to be needed in five to 10 years time in this primary field, so you can get an awareness of whether you actually want to go down that track and learn those skills. Guys, one thing I will say to close this section out on clarity is that this isn't a perfect formula, like this riddle is not going to be sold for good. Once you find clarity. It's an ongoing process, you will have to ask yourself questions to stay on track to stay aligned to stay focused as you go along. In this process, don't think that anybody's got a clear defined purpose and vision of what they're doing. And that's how it's going to stay for life. Because let's be honest, if you're anything like me, that sort of thinking is probably what's got you into this hole in the first place. I thought that once I'd got my dream career and set myself up in an amazing country and start a little side project, that would be he sorted for life I was. But actually when you get there and you achieve that and you experience it, your mind still wants to ask what's next. And so if you just accept that it's going to be an ongoing process that you're going to need to adjust your heading from time to time and still ask yourself your questions, is what you're doing still meaningful to you? Is it still giving you what you need at this time, you have to stay proactive. But the one key thing here is that being in motion is the best place to be to continue to learn more, and to hone your vision of the future. And it's when you stop and procrastinate, that's when you find yourself stuck, overwhelmed, overthinking, and unable to find the clarity. So whatever it is, wherever you're at, just find the quickest path in to motion again, because like I said before, clarity is a contact sport. Now, guys, I'm so passionate about this topic, I would really love you to reach out if you're struggling with so in any way. If there's anything that you found useful or that you've put into action, please do get in contact because I'm always trying to learn about other people's methods, finding the clarity in their lives. This truly is one of the most important habits you can develop as a high performer in order to get yourself back on track as quickly as possible. And thank you so much for being part of this community and listening to the podcast once again. Speak to you next time on the performance hackers.