Problems With “Clarity”

The most necessary ingredient for success.

I know, I know, I know, another self-help article on clarity.

Another article that’s gonna tell you that “you have to know where you wanna go and what you wanna do to be successful.” That “there can’t be a journey without a destination.”

And here’s the thing: none of that is wrong, ya know.

But I have a semi-different but not different take on the whole “clarity” thing.

On Clarity

No one can really combat the whole idea of having clarity in your life. You need to be clear on lots of areas in life, especially what you want. The only thing is that you can’t be so clear on everything. Take your passion, for example. What is it? What do you want to do with your life?

This is the first step to any self-help material. You must know this, but many people struggle with finding out. What your passion may be — what you want to do with your life — is not as clear for more people as it is for others. Ya gotta dig deep, right? And it can be scary.

Here you are, finally realizing after all this time you’ve been going through the motions and now want to live life with intention, doing the things you want to do, living life on your own terms.

But now, when you sit to think about it, you realize you don’t know exactly want to do with your life. Maybe something comes to you. Or a few things. Or a lot of things. Or nothing. This can be scary. But here’s the problem with clarity.

It’s clear, and life isn’t.

My advice? Don’t worry too much about it. Pick a thing and try it out for a bit. I know what you're thinking: “That’s it? What a waste of time!” Hear me out for a second. A fundamental problem with passion and trying to find it or even about our lives is that we humans are so scared of the unknown.

It’s what makes us steer clear of the path to our dreams. It’s what makes fear arise and question whether or not we have what it takes. Our “thinking about it” because we “wanna know for sure” is what paralyzes us. Then we can’t decide at all.

Clarity is such a massive concept because that’s just what humans want. Be clear all you want to, but life isn’t. It will through you some hard curveballs. Roll with the punches. The future is so uncertain. So don’t sweat it too much. Here’s an overused but true quote for ya.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

— Woody Allen

I’m not against clarity at all. Hell, I have some of the biggest and most specific plans for the future out of most people I know. And then I forget about them, on purpose. I work toward them, of course, but I’m not expecting anything, necessarily. Extreme clarity only reinforces our need to know everything in a world that we will know nothing about.

And that’s our biggest problem.

In another blog post, I plan to unpack passion a lot. That’s essentially what finding clarity for what you want to do with your life is about.

This has been a major problem area in my life for a while, and I’ve gotten really in-depth with a lot of material about how to find it, pick it, and stick with it.

But I’ll tell you now that the most important thing you can do for yourself is pick something.

Sean McCabe in his book Overlap argues that what we are doing now almost certainly isn’t what we will be doing for the rest of our lives.

That doesn’t mean you are doing the wrong thing, maybe you are so firm in your vision and so clear on what you want. I am!

But McCabe says that tons of people go through several things before being clear on what they want to do with their life.

But in order to get to “Thing #5” — the one you will be doing forever — you have to go through the first four things.

And the only way you can do that is by picking something that’s interesting to you and starting.

Maybe you found your thing the first time around. But you most likely won’t, and you sitting there thinking all day because you want to be crystal clear on the matter is what ensures you won't discover a damn thing.

It’s gonna be something you found out in “Thing #2” that sparks interest for “Thing #4” but starts you on the path to “Thing #3”. You realize only during “Thing #3” that you do indeed want to pursue “Thing #4”, which in turn leads you to discover “Thing #5”, which is the thing.

Only because you pursued “Thing #4” did you even find out that “Thing #5” was a thing in the first place.

Get it?

And please please please don’t ever think of the previous “Things” as a waste of time. They served a vital purpose in eventually leading you to the main “Thing”. You couldn’t have found it any other way.

Maybe you could’ve thought all day for the rest of your life and finally chose the thing and it turns out you were right. But how much of your life did you waste doing that, though?

And even if it took you just as long doing that as it would someone going through several “Things”, you missed out on so many life experiences and skills that could’ve been gained during those first “Things” you never went through, which in turn would’ve made you more successful at the “Thing” you ended up choosing.

Only then you’ve “wasted” your time.

You see all this that you have to go through?

So why wait to start the process?

Our need for clarity only feeds into our need to know. So my advice is to have clarity but not make it a big deal.

In other words, let clarity mean what it’s supposed to mean: that you know certain things to be true to you.

Our problem with clarity lies when we are too adamant that it will or can never change. It’s a problem when we make clarity synonymous with certainty.

Sometimes it’s used that way, and even at various points in this article, I treat clarity that way.

That’s only because it’s how a lot of us think about it, but they aren’t exactly the same.

Firm clarity can feel certain, yes, and certainty isn’t bad either. It’s probably the firmest level of clarity. But certainty is not something that we should strive for in such an uncertain world.

You should know, yes, but you don’t have to be certain. And you need to recognize when things are out of your control and you can’t “know” for sure.

They are separate ideas, keep them that way, and make some damn decisions.

Clarity comes from choosing.

You have to choose something, then you’ll find out if it’s clear to you. It doesn’t work the other way around like most seem to believe.

But I think we all know this, we just don’t act like it.

When you think about it, most of the things you’re clear on in your life has been because you experienced it to find out. And if you are “so clear” on something and haven’t experienced it, can you really say you are?

You can die, right now! You remember that, right?

I don’t know, just seems like we forget sometimes…