“For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.” – Gotthold.
Clarity accounts for 80% of success and happiness. From working with my clients I can say with confidence that the lack of clarity is more responsible for disappointment and underachievement than any other single factor.
GOAL SETTING
The old paradigm of goal-setting is broken because it’s not connected to your deepest values. Many times people are achieving goals but becoming burnt out or achieving the goal only to discover that they are still not happy. They have no sense of joy or no sense of inner peace.
They just created and manifested a goal without a true understanding or knowledge of what matters most. There have to be powerful reasons that pull you rather than a goal that pushes you.
Many people are not in touch with their governing values so they’re running with this deep sense of survival with a deep sense of disconnection. Our process is not so much informational as it is transformational. We go beyond traditional goal-setting pulled by vision rather than be pushed by pain for the gain.
If you just set goals without knowing what you truly value. You may be chasing a goal that when you get there you realise you climbed the wrong mountain. Or in other words, you put your ladder up against the wrong roof.
“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” – Francis Chan
Remember that the most genuine success reflects a strong sense of values. For success to be worthwhile, it must extend to all areas of life. You cannot neglect one area to be successful in another. Ask yourself if making a fortune is worthwhile if, in the process, you lose your family or your health? So what if you’re the richest man or woman in the hospital.
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, he answered: “Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
So moving into 2021 you need to get CLEAR about what you truly, truly, truly value, and knowing where success REALLY comes from – is it just mindless hard work?
THE MOST POWERFUL INSIGHT EVER!
We put so much emphasis on the physical, of physical hard work. This is purely because of ignorance (from the Greek to ignore – no one is calling anyone stupid). We lack CLARITY on how happiness and success truly works.
Grand Master Lu says: “The invisible is more powerful than the visible.”
In other words, the visible (physical) is simply a shadow or reflection of the invisible. “As within, so without.” The invisible world is very important because it runs and operates the visible world. Most people are more concerned with “doing” and “having” rather than in “Being” which is where happiness and success really reside.
To quote Emerson who says: “Who you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you’re saying.” BS doesn’t baffle brains it’s just very revealing of who you are. Someone you don’t want to be with, work with, live with, or hopefully someone you do want to be with, work with, live with.
Here is something you may not want to know but it is relevant. The Guardian newspaper in the UK recently reported that six million people are now on antidepressants in the UK which is an all-time high. The national depression level has more than doubled since pre-lockdown and suicide is now at a twenty-year high.
Covid is waking us up to our weak links both physically and mentally. The hairline cracks have always been there, but Covid is now amplifying and magnifying what was once hidden.
For example, without mental health we have nothing and yet we don’t consciously work at it. We’re so busy being busy with busyness. With the physical stuff.
What’s going on in your mind (the inner) might be so invisible to you that you don’t really know how your thoughts are impacting how you’re speaking and how you behave with others at home and at work (the outer).
I have so much to say about this most powerful subject, but let me end with Marcus Aurelius (emperor of Rome) to hopefully demonstrate the power of getting strong on your inner thinking.
Marcus in his writings asks this same question of himself over and over: “How can I prepare and protect myself against the stresses of daily life?”
Marcus then says (in his journal) that the people that I will deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly (sound familiar). And he says they are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.
So, every morning Marcus would prepare himself for his day and the people he would deal with. He says a healthy mind should be prepared for anything. We should be like a wrestler waiting, poised and dug in for sudden attacks.”
Like Marcus, we should prepare for the day, set the tone for our day. So if you want to live a good life you have to build your spirit, you have to build that inner fortress, the invisible.
This might sound dramatic for the uninitiated and ignorant but I’m sure you’re all better than that.
WISE GUYS
- “Invisible things are the only realities.” – Edgar Allan Poe
- “Some things that are invisible and untouchable can nevertheless be seen and felt.” – Michael Chabon
- “What delights us in visible beauty is the invisible.” – Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
- “The visible is always a mirror of the invisible. The reality is imagined before it manifests itself.” – Paulo Coelho
