Recently I was on a call with a coaching client and asked her what she felt her unique and special talent was. She replied, I think I have the ability to help people achieve greatness. When I asked her how she planned to achieve greatness in her own career she didn’t have a clue and couldn’t articulate at all what that looked like.
The challenge that many of us face in our businesses and in our lives is that we can’t even begin to visualize what achievement looks like at the next level. Consequently, we get stuck in our own story and hit and imaginary wall that becomes harder and harder to ever break through.
In order to be great, you must first see great.
Think about anything you’ve ever accomplished in your life. More than likely before you got there you first gained clarity on what it was you wanted to achieve. This clarity leads to a single-minded purpose that allows your brain to filter out all the noise and ignore any and all obstacles that present themselves along the way. Clarity also allows you to visualize what your achievement looks and feels like which can cause you to act “as if” it’s already happened. This type of clarity in feeling makes the achievement of your outcome a foregone conclusion.
You’ve probably heard athletes talk about how they visualize making the winning shot, scoring the goal, hitting the game winning home run, or catching the perfect touchdown pass. They saw themselves achieving greatness in those moments which greatly increased the odds that it would happen for them.
You may know someone that has created a vision board with pictures of homes or cars they wanted to own which became a daily reminder for why they were working so hard. You may know the famous story of actor Jim Carrey when he was flat broke, and living in his car in Hollywood and he wrote himself a check for 20 million dollars. Then years later receiving a check for $20 million for the movie Mask. All these are examples of what can happen when there is clarity around what the end goal looks like.
Now let’s go to the other side of the equation. Lack of clarity on your goals and outcomes leads your brain to wander off into directions you didn’t intend. You start identifying obstacles even before you commit to a plan of action. This causes you to feel stuck in the muck and sludge of the story you’ve told yourself for years.
Phrases like:
“I’m not good enough.”
“I don’t have the resources”
“Things don’t ever work out for me”
“That might work for that person, but I could never do that”
Do any of those sound familiar to you?
Clarity allows you to cut through all this negative self- talk and emerge with a plan and purpose that propels you to the goals and outcomes your desire.
Gaining clarity is as simple as taking a few minutes this week to sit down and actually write out your goals and objective for the coming months. If your comfortable you can stretch it out to a year, and when your ready stretch out to 5 years. People tend to over-estimate what they can accomplish in a year, and underestimate what they can accomplish in 5 years.
What is the vision you have for your business and your life over the next 12 months? What do you want to celebrate on New Year’s Eve of 2024? What do you plan to celebrate on New Year’s Eve of 2029?
In order to be great, you must first see great. Take some time this week to define with clarity what great looks like for you. Then get to work making it happen.
Cheers to you and Seeing the Great
One Quarter Turn at a Time.
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