The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: Yes, this is true.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This chapter is about finding clarity in your life. It’s about how you think about tomorrow and what you do to stay connected with what matters today. The essential habit of seeking clarity helps high performers keep engaged, growing, and fulfilled over the long haul.
Our research shows that compared with their peers, high performers have more clarity on who they are, what they want, how to get it, and what they find meaningful and fulfilling. We‘ve found that if you can increase someone’s clarity, you up their overall high performance score.
Whether you have a high degree of clarity in life or not, don’t fret, because you can learn to develop it. Clarity is not a personality trait that some are blessed to “have” and others are not. Just as a power plant doesn’t “have” energy—it transforms energy—you don’t “have” any specific reality. You generate your reality. In this same line of thinking, you don’t “have” clarity; you generate it.
So don’t hope for a flash of inspiration to reveal what you want next. You generate clarity by asking questions, researching, trying new things, sorting through life’s opportunities, and sniffing out what’s right for you. It’s not as though you walk outside one day and the Piano of Purpose falls on your head and all things become clear. Clarity is the child of careful thought and mindful experimentation. It comes from asking yourself questions continually and further refining your perspective on life.
Clarity research tells us that successful people know the answers to certain fundamental questions: Who am I? (What do I value? What are my strengths and weaknesses?) What are my goals? What’s my plan? These questions may seem basic, but you would be surprised how much knowing the answers can affect your life.
Clarity on who you are is associated with overall self-esteem. This means that how positive you feel about yourself is tied to how well you know yourself. On the flip side, lack of clarity is strongly associated with neuroticism and negative emotions. That’s why self-awareness is so key to initial success. You have to know who you are, what you value, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and where you want to go. This kind of knowledge makes you feel better about yourself and about life.
Next, you need to have unambiguous and challenging goals. Decades of research show that having specific and difficult goals increases performance, whether those goals are created by you or assigned to you. Clear “stretch” goals energize us and lead to greater enjoyment, productivity, profitability, and satisfaction in our work. Choosing stretch goals in each area of your life makes a good starting place for high performance.
You should also give yourself deadlines for your goals, or you won’t follow through. Studies show that having a specific plan attached to your goals—knowing when and where you will do something—can more than double the likelihood of achieving a challenging goal. Having a clear plan is as important as motivation and willpower. It also helps you see past distractions and inoculates you against negative moods—the more clarity you have, the more likely you are to get stuff done even on the days you feel lazy or tired. When you see the steps right there in front of you, it’s hard to ignore them.
Our research further validates all this. In one survey, we asked over twenty thousand people to read the following statements and rate themselves on a scale of 1 through 5, with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”:
- I know who I am. I’m clear about my values, strengths, and weaknesses.
- I know what I want. I’m clear about my goals and passions.
- I know how to get what I want. I have a plan to achieve my dreams.
The higher the scores on questions such as these, the better the overall high performance scores. Data from the High Performance Indicator also shows that higher clarity scores are significantly associated with greater confidence, overall happiness, and assertiveness. Subjects with greater clarity also tend to report that they are performing with more excellence than their peers and feel they are making a greater difference. For students, the higher the scores on clarity, the higher their GPA. This means young people who have more clarity on their values, goals, and path ahead tend to have a higher GPA.
Most of this sounds like common sense, of course. “Know who you are and what you want” isn’t exactly cutting-edge advice. Still, it bears examination: Are you clear about these things? If not, start there. It can be as simple as journaling about these topics. For now, though, let’s focus on the promise of the book: the more advanced concepts that will move the needle in your performance.
* Source: High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard