Gaining Clarity
Clarity is the ability to see life as it actually exists – not what we wish or hope life to be. I didn’t know what Clarity was until I almost lost my family. At the age of 21 I had a moment of clarity after my wife kicked me out of our home for cheating, gambling, using & abusing drugs and partying 4 to 5 nights per week.
During the first three years of our marriage, I did just about everything I could to ruin our marriage. I was clearly not ready to make such a serious commitment as marriage, additionally I had not successfully worked through my childhood and adolescent trauma. Having that lack of clarity meant that even though I was an adult chronologically – however I was functioning as a trauma impacted person. Psychosocially I was functioning as an adolescent, motivated by fear, insecurity, anger and control issues.
In order for me to gain a deeper level of clarity I had to determine what my priorities were and who was important to me. On the verge of losing my family and facing a possible divorce my fear of losing my family became the impetus for coming into a new level of clarity. In that moment it became clear to me that what I really wanted was my family.
Condition
The first step in gaining clarity is to identify and assess my current condition. Assessing your current condition requires a high level of honesty and sincerity. Any attempt to minimize mistakes, or rationalize poor decisions, or attempts to justify damaging behavior will undermine an accurate assessment of your current condition.
Commitment
After I conducted an accurate assessment of your current condition the next thing is to make a commitment to your new priorities that have come from your new level of clarity. Without the new level of clarity that leads to new priorities you cannot commit to your new priorities. Commitment is critical for progress because commitment to your priorities requires a sincere focus. A part of creating a sincere focus requires you to voluntarily and intentionally eliminate distractions. The elimination of distractions cannot be forced upon you – the elimination of distractions must be a personal decision motivated by your new level of clarity.
Consistency
I learned that the proof of passion and sincerity is consistency. Consistency demonstrates a high level of clarity and commitment. Consistency makes the statement that I’m invested and I’m not leaving any room for excuses, rationalization or justification. On the other hand, I learned that inconsistent behavior creates doubt, fear, distrust, and insecurity in those you’ve made commitments to. The more consistent I became the more trusting my wife became – which motivated me to be even more consistent. Consistency has tremendous benefits – and it creates its own positive motivation!