You are listening to my freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 10.

 

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. This is where strong people, just like you come to have honest, open discussions about anxiety, depression, and frustration, but we don't stop there. We go deeper by learning and applying mindset management tools to once and for all break free from the pain. So we can actually enjoy our lives. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you joined us.

 

Hi, my strong friends. Hey, the sun is out. It's shining. It's beautiful. We're starting to get an early spring out here on the Mendocino coast. It's so great. We've had months where it was just really stormy and cloudy and lots of rain, which has been fantastic. There's so much green blooming up everywhere. I like to look at the grass and just describe it as juicy grass. Like, you know what I'm talking about, where it's just, you can tell there's so much liquid inside of it. That is just full of life in that shade of green that it hits in springtime is like no other, and we're starting to get daffodils popping up. And some of the other bulbs it's just, everything's coming back to life and it just feels fantastic. 

 

So let's jump into this week's episode. So this week's episode, I got inspired because someone reached out to me through LinkedIn.

 

He was searching for some solutions to something that he was struggling with. It was basically about a company direction and he wanted to help get his team engaged on things. And he was just having a little bit of confusion and it was just looking for how do we get going? And so for some reason, my face popped up. I think there were some key words that he was using that happened to fit keywords on my LinkedIn profile. He went to my website and he saw that I have this experience journal that the writing on my website talked about how you could go from confusion to clarity by using this experience journal. So he decided to reach out to me and he was just like, I saw this and you know, maybe we should get connected. So we had a great conversation.

 

It inspired me to create this episode for you guys, because I find that a lot of people are struggling. Now, whether this is in their personal life or in their work life, it's usually that they kind of have a general idea of where they want to go, but they could definitely feel that discomfort from whatever kind of confusion was going on at the time, or if it was like an emotional turmoil. It's like, they could definitely feel that, but what's the first step that they take to get out of it.

 

How would they know everything they need to do to finally get to where they want to be? It's like, they know where they want to be, but they're just kind of like spinning their wheels at times. So I have this thing that I call The Clarity Steps process. It's something that I've been using for about three years. I started out using this on myself and then I was experimenting with my clients and found out that it really works. 

 

Now anyone in the corporate environment that has heard about empathic listening, this process definitely takes that empathetic listening. And it teaches you how to actually be an empathic listener. And this will be to yourself or to other people around you. I want to share this process with you. It's just a seven step process. And it's one of those that you can't just hear the steps and then go out and magically do it.

You're going to need someone to help you practice at least one time through or at least part way through. And then you'll start to get the hang of it. And it's almost like having training wheels on a bicycle. It's not necessarily going to become one of these, I forgot the name of that bicycle race, but you're not going to become a professional bicycle racer just from hearing these steps the very first time. In fact, if you've never even gotten on the bike, you're gonna need those training wheels at first, just some extra support so that you understand the mechanics of how a bike even works. And then once you figure it out and you get your balance, you don't need those training wheels anymore. 

 

With this process, I find it super helpful to have that extra set of support. That's where having a coach helps you through.  It is a really great thing. You're not always going to need a coach, but once you have someone that is there helping you get through those initial steps at first, then you'll get that confidence built up and you'll be like, yeah, I can totally tackle anything in my life.

 

What I want to do is I'm going to go over these seven steps with you. And then I'm going to go through some more specific examples of how that worked. And then I have a special invitation for you at the end of this, so that you can get a little bit more hands on practical experience. Getting into these steps. There's again, seven steps.

 

One of the steps is going to have some smaller steps underneath it. Your very first step is figuring out where you want to go, right? So if we think of this as like a journey and specifically what I like to use visual tool is a staircase.

 

So if you imagine, once you're at the very top of it, the staircase that you've done it, you have figured out everything that you needed to do so that you could be exactly where you want it to be. And that each of those stairs, between where you're standing now and where you want to go is something that you have to figure out along the way. 

 

Now, for some instances, your staircase can, might only need to have two or three steps, for others, it might be helpful to break it down into 10 steps or 12 steps, whatever works for you. You're going to figure it out along the way. 

 

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Step 1: Defining Your End Goal

 

Again, going back to that very first step, you have to figure out the top of that landing of the staircase. What is that goal? You can call that your true North. You can call it your goal, your destination, whatever you want to call it is fine.

 

I typically just draw it as like a star with a circle around it. Like, that's just what I want. That's what I'm going after. And this can be anything big or small, you know, it might be something that you want to achieve in the next week or in the next two weeks. This might be something that you want to do within a year. Or maybe this is like a five-year type of thing that you want to go after. But what is that thing? 

 

So what you'd start to do is describe the qualitative properties of what it looked like once you were there, what does it look like? What does it feel like? How are you showing up when you're there? How are other people showing up when you're there? What does that look like? 

 

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Step 2: Measurement System

 

Step two is coming up with a way that you would measure that you actually got there.

This one can be kind of subjective. You know, some people that just want to feel happy or happier, they're trying to figure out, well, how would I measure that? And with that, sometimes I just say, come up with a squishy scale of one to 10. You figure out... I want to be maybe a level eight when I'm there on my happiness scale, but having some way of measuring it will help you with all of the next steps that come after it. But it also helps you figure out your progress on, are you there yet? And how do you know when you've actually made it? Some people might just come up with one measurement. Some might come up with a handful of measurements. I try not to make this too overly complicated. Like don't come up with like 15, 20 different measurements for this, because there's going to be other places where you're getting more specific.

 

This is just in general. What are those big, main measurements you'd have? I'd say even picking just three measurements would be great so that you don't overwhelm yourself.

 

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Step 3: Define Your Steps & Sequence

 

Step three now is considering where are you at right now? So looking at that measurement scale that you just came up with, what are your current measurements on that? So knowing where you're starting that step, number three, step number four. Now this is where you're going to figure out what are all of those staircase steps between where you're at now and where you want to get to. So you're going to figure out not like the, to do list. This is not a to do list at all. So for example, some people might think, Oh, well, my first step is I need to go have a conversation with someone. Well, that's not going to be your specific thing for these steps, right?

 

This is your action plan is going to come later in a different step. This is what do you need to figure out? And so, if it's something about a conversation, your stair-step might be something more along the lines of, I need to figure out a communication style that works for everybody or an effective communication style, because how often have you gone to have a conversation with someone and it didn't go as planned. It didn't give you that deliverable that you were looking for. So when you're trying to think of what are all of these things that I need to figure out, it's something more general. Like I need to figure out how to talk to someone. I need to have more education around what something looks like. I need to educate myself somehow.

 

 Now, when you start coming up with these things of all the things that you have to figure out, I tend to like to put them all on post it notes, because the next part of this step is figuring out in what sequence you would go after.

 

Part of confusion is when you are getting distracted by shiny objects, it's like people will come up with different advice. And then all of a sudden you start going after one thing, and then you go after another or worse yet you're going after like five things all at the same time. And you find that you're not getting any traction. Like you look at those measurements and the needle on those measurements is not moving. Now that's because you're going after too much at the same time, or you're going after something that actually is never going to move the needle. 

 

So when you think about these stairsteps, break it out into what would you do first? And then what would you need to do second? And what would you need to do third and so on? Because now that's going to help you to constrain your focus to just one thing. At a time, you can put your brain to work, to completely unlock everything that goes with that step. And then once you're done with it, then you can go on to the next thing. When you're thinking about how to sequence it, also think about in what order would it even make sense? 

 

Because there are some things, that if we tackle all the rest of the stuff, becomes a lot easier. Or if you really need some quick wins first, you might want to front load your quick wins so that it builds up your confidence a little bit more, and then you can tackle something that's a little more difficult later on. 

 

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Step 4: Target Measurements for Each Step

 

The last thing for step four is with each of those stairsteps, take a look at your measurement scale. How would you expect the needle to move on those measurements once you complete the step?

 

Now it's quite possible that some of your earlier steps, aren't going to move the needle. They're more of like laying the foundation of what you need to do. And then it will give you a bigger needle movement. Once you get to a different step, seeing what measurement you expect to get, like you're halfway to your goal. By step two, then you can also know, when are you done with this step? Because if you think you're done with this step, but you look at your measurement and you're not actually at that target, then you're not done with your step. There's still more that you haven't figured out about it yet. 

 

So have that because it also helps to set you up for those immediate successes, because sometimes our target measurements can feel a little unrealistic by breaking it down into measurable steps. It helps you to just focus on, you know, to get to a two by figuring this thing out.

 

Even if your ultimate goal is an eight, once you get there, you have that chance to celebrate and having those celebrations along the way, especially for some of these really tough goals,  can mean all of the difference in the world. Alright? 

 

So to sum up step four, this is figuring out what are those stairsteps that you need to figure out? What sequence would you put it into? And then how would you measure it when you're done with it? Each of those steps, what's the change in those measures that you had figured out your measuring sticks.

 

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Step 5 - Empathic Listening (Finding the obstacles)

 

Alright, going on to step five, this is where your empathic listening is going to come in. This is going to change how you view, how you go after the things in your life. This is creating an obstacle list. 

 

Now I know that we're in a,” just do it” type of culture, where people are like, just push through everything and just do it anyway.Find work, arounds, whatever you have to do, because everybody's always in such a rush to get to the other side, but that's not being empathetic at all. 

 

You actually want to care about yourself, where you want to care about other people. And so understanding what those obstacles are, is really important because they're valid obstacles. If you're just pushing through it, you're just invalidating what your pain is and shoving it down. And that's where all of a sudden, it's going to start festering and causing you a lot of emotional distress, which will eventually derail you from where you want to go in the first place. 

 

Obstacle list. What does this look like? So with this, you, I have one and you're going to just tackle one of those stair-steps at a time. 

 

You're going to ask yourself “what obstacles get in the way between where I'm at now and achieving that step?”

 

Now, this could be that you're uncomfortable having a conversation or that there's no time or that you don't have the right resources or that person is scary. Whatever it might be. Write it down, just make a bulleted list. 

 

One by one, one by one by one, consider these data points. These are not excuses. These are just pieces of data. It's just, what's getting between where you're at now and where you actually want to be, write these down. 

 

And then I want you to start using just like little tick marks next to it. How frequently do these obstacles show up for you? Like, is it a little obstacle? Is it just, you know, something kind of annoying and it's not really that big of a deal, is it something that might only happen once? But when it does, the impact is just so huge that you just crumble or that there's nothing else that you can do because that obstacle is just so huge.

 

Or is this something that the obstacles, you know, just a minor inconvenience, but it happens all of the time? Alright. So if it's something that happens all of the time, right? A little tick mark, next to it, every single time it happens. Cause it lets you know, the impact it's having on you. If it's something that only happens once, but it has a huge impact, figure out how you would mark that so that you would know.

 

 And you might even say, you know, that causes me a 10 hour delay or took me out emotionally for three days. Make some type of a note so that you understand the impact on all of these obstacles, to where you want to go. This obstacle list is something that is going to be your gold in order for you to be able to achieve what you want to with your very first step.

 

Some of these obstacles are going to have to get resolved. Now that doesn't mean that you have just gritted your teeth and pushed past them. It doesn't mean create a work around process because often when we work around something, we've created a lot more difficulty and getting something done than if the obstacle was just resolved. Now, once you do resolve these obstacles and they just don't exist anymore, imagine how easy it will be to actually complete that first step. 

 

When you're looking at that whole staircase, if you can imagine every single one of those steps is going to have obstacles that are getting in the way of you actually completing that step. All together, the number of obstacles between where you're at and where you're trying to go can be quite large. But imagine what if you had resolved those obstacles or the ones that were contributing to making it so difficult to get to that goal, if it was just smooth sailing, you'd be able to get from where you are, right to that point, very fast and very easy.

 

So when you're resolving these obstacles, we're going to try to look at how can you meet all of your requirements, all of your needs, the intents easily. Because the obstacles are preventing you from doing life easy.

 

So that obstacle step that's going to become very, very important. If you skip that, you're missing the whole point of the seven steps for clarity.

 

Take a look at your obstacle list and prioritize what are the obstacles you would want to resolve and in what order so that you could clearly get to that step easily. So again, you might want to choose to do some quick wins first because they're a small amount of effort, but it's moving you forward when you're stuck for so long. 

 

Sometimes that's what you just need.  You need a little bit of relief because then that's going to give you more of your energy back to go on and tackle some of the harder obstacles.

Or there might be one obstacle that if you tackle that one first, the rest of the obstacles on the list don't even really matter because it was really just this one obstacle that was seriously getting in your way of everything else being easy.

 

Just because you have a whole bunch of things listed on your obstacle list doesn't mean that you're going to have to resolve every single one of them because some of them you'll find are just little tiny pebbles that get in the way of you going where you want to go. But there's others that are big boulders. But the fact that there's so much on the list, it's going to feel like all of them are boulders at first, but if you know which one to go after, and once it gets resolved, all of a sudden your emotional load is so much less.

And you'll see that a bunch of the other obstacles are really more of like the pebble size and that they're really not holding you back. Alright. So step number five was create that obstacle list. What gets in the way between where you are now and completing that step and hitting those measures of that very first step. And then you're going to prioritize. 

 

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Step 6: Experiment to Resolve the Obstacles

 

Moving on to step six, you're going to do an experiment on how to resolve those obstacles. So this is where your scientific method comes in to play. You going to think first about what's the thing that you're trying to prove. Your hypothesis.

 

So specifically, what I like to use is what requirement are you trying to hit? And this might be a requirement for you. Like, you know, getting one of your needs met or multiple of your needs met.

 

If whatever it is that you're working on involves other people, consider what their needs are too. Because if doing something where you get to win in the situation and someone else has to lose, you're not going to resolve the obstacle. You're going to create a new obstacle. 

 

So think about what are your requirements for success for this experiment? What is it that you need? What is it that other people need to make one combined list? Now this might be just one or two things. It might be three or four. Try not to make it too huge. If it is really huge, break it up into smaller experiments. 

 

With your very first experiment we're so used to the ways that we've always done things, but we're finding that we're not actually hitting those success criteria. So now you're going to ask your brain, you're going to put it to work for you and say, what is some easy way that I can meet these requirements or hit this intent that I wanted to have?

 

What is an easy way? Everybody can win and we can hit this and then come up with what it is that you're going to try. And then you're going to get out there and you're going to actually try it. 

 

And then you're going to come back and look at what were those success criteria? 

 

What is it that I actually learned from what I did?

 

 And did I hit those success criteria? 

 

What you're going to find is that it's a huge learning experience and that you might've actually uncovered some other requirements for yourself or for other people that you never even considered at first, what you're going to do, this is an iterative process, is that you're going to write down what are those new requirements, add those onto the list, and then your experiment, what worked, what didn't work, what would you try differently next time?

 

There's a whole lot of stuff that probably did work. 

 

And there might be something that didn't.

 

Your experiment might have completely worked and that all of your success criteria was met. 

 

And your obstacle is totally resolved. 

That is fantastic, but know that that's not always going to be the case. In fact, probably about 80% of the time, you're not going to resolve the obstacle with your very first experiment. 

 

Take what you've learned and then design a whole new experiment. 

 

How would you do it differently? 

 

So whatever it was that you did, that did work, hold onto that and keep doing it.

 

The things that didn't work, stop doing those. 

 

And then what are some other things that you haven't done yet, that you could try?

 

And all of this, again, look back at what your success criteria was and then go out there, try another experiment and then repeat, you're going to go back and learn.

 

After you completed that experiment, did you hit your success criteria? If yes, then you're done. That's great. If not, then what worked, what didn't work and what could you do differently? 

 

And just keep repeating until all of a sudden you've hit all of those success criteria. 

 

This is really helpful. So you're seeing that there's like layers in how we're breaking down these overall goals, right? So it's like you had that whole staircase and you had that true North that you were trying to get to. 

 

But instead of thinking about that, you've now broken it down to thinking about the stair-step, you've broken that down further into what are the obstacles, and then even further of from that obstacle, what is the success criteria that I'm trying to meet? And then what experiments can I do? Did it meet that success criteria?

 

You're chipping away at it, right?

 

So as you can imagine, this is not one of those quick solution type of things. Because if you already knew a quick solution, you would have already been doing it.

 

But this is more for when you're stuck and your wheels are just going in the mud and you're not getting anywhere. You follow this iterative process and you're going to find that you're going to make a lot more progress and that some of those bigger obstacles you've resolved and all of a sudden you're zooming forward. Like you've never experienced before. 

 

Alright, just to sum up what step six was, step six is what experiment are you going to do on that obstacle on your priority one obstacle. So you're looking at what are the requirements for your success? What are you going to try first? You're going to get out there, you're going to do it.

 

You're going to reflect on it. See if there's any new requirements, what worked, what didn't work. And then how are you going to experiment again? And you keep going until you have resolved that obstacle.

 

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Step 7 Review & Repeat for Your Next Defined Step

 

 Now, step seven is your final step in The Clarity Step process, which is, did you resolve enough of your obstacles that you've achieved that very first step? 

 

So remember on that step, you've already qualitatively described what it was, but you've also said where on your measuring scale, did you want to go? And so if you can look at that and see, okay, did I get there? Did I resolve enough that my measurements are now exactly where I want to go? Because remember your obstacle might have a whole bunch of stuff on it. But you don't necessarily have to resolve all of it. Resolve just enough to get you where you need to go.

 

Now, you're going to know if that feels right to you. Like you might find that sure you have gotten to those measurements that you wanted to, but when you're looking at that obstacle list, you might realize there's really something else there that needs to get resolved now.

 

Or you can look at what are all of the other steps coming up ahead of you.  You decide, are those actually obstacles to going onto one of these other steps?

 

 Alright, so step seven, you're looking at your progress. Have you completed that step? Have you moved the needle? Have you resolved enough of those obstacles?

 

 And if you haven't, you're going to go back to step number five of reviewing that obstacle list. Maybe you've discovered new obstacles that you need to add and then step six is going through and doing those experiments and then coming back to set seven to see, okay, now have I resolved enough?

 

Alright. So the great thing is, if you have resolved everything that you needed to, to complete that step, then you're going to go on to your next stair step. 

 

That next thing that you have to figure out. And you're just going to repeat steps five through seven.

 

Here's this new step. Here's this new thing I'm trying to figure out what is my obstacle list for it, prioritize it. And then what experiments are you going to start doing? And then you're going to keep doing all of those experiments on those obstacles until you've completed that step. 

 

Meanwhile, you're totally making progress towards getting to that top of that staircase and meeting your absolute goal that you wanted to hit. 

 

But you're doing it in a way that is showing compassion and curiosity for yourself. 

 

So remember, we talked about empathic listening, you're listening to yourself on what actually are the obstacles.

 

You're not invalidating your obstacles.

 

You're not just trying to push them aside. 

 

You're not using your grit and your might and your sheer willpower and just pushing through. 

 

You're actually paying attention to what is really getting in the way. That is empathic listening. 

 

And I can tell you my friends, I've done this with all of my clients over the last three years. So this is one on one clients. This is when I was working in the corporation with large teams, cross functional teams. It worked every single time.

 

And when I started doing those obstacle lists, so many people thought that was the strangest thing. They couldn't get used to it at first because they just wanted to push through and just keep going.

 

But once they started to get the hang of it and you'd write it down, what I'd find is that people felt so much better because they had spent a lot of times trying to voice what their concerns were and they'd either dismiss it themselves or other people would dismiss it, or they would even be scared to even bring it up because people might judge them.

 

But once we started to get used to actually using these and seeing it as data points, it's just collecting data points. It made it more objective and made it something achievable.

 

And especially when you're getting down into those requirements, now everybody's needs are being considered. 

 

Because a lot of times we don't really think about what our exact needs are. 

 

We're just so focused on what that goal is and just keep pushing forward. But this allows you to really listen to yourself and to listen to other people. 

 

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Examples - Type of Goals that Can be Achieved Using The Clarity Steps

Example #1 - Feeling better

 

Alright. So I promised that I would give you a couple of real life examples of how this worked. 

 

So first one is when you're feeling really, really awful, and you don't know why. So with that one you might want to think you're very top of the stair-step is that you're feeling better, but think about what are those feelings that you actually want to feel and how much of it you want to feel.

 

So again, think of that squishy scale of just one to 10 list out a couple of the emotions that you do want to feel and what number it is that you want to hit. And then you're thinking about where you are now. So where are you on that scale? And what do you need to figure out between where you're at now and where you want to go? 

 

Now, this isn't necessarily, I want to buy a new house. I want to go live in this place. I want to win the lottery.

 

This could be as simple as I need to understand what I don't feel good about. What's causing me to feel this way. That might be your very first stair-step. 

 

And then to see, is there any extra education that I need or an extra support group, or you might start to think I'm having a lot of conflict in my relationship.

 

So your stair-step might be, I need to figure out how to have harmony in my relationship. 

 

And then as you start to figure out those different specific stair-steps.

 

Again, you're going to have to determine what are the obstacles? So again, those obstacles could be time or not knowing how to talk to people or not being clear on what their needs are or not having boundaries. It could be any of those things. 

 

And then what experiments would you start to do? 

 

And the nice thing is, is that there's already nine podcasts that I have available to you. That might actually give you some ideas on how to experiment on any of those things. You know, that I give you a new podcast every Tuesday. 

 

So there might be something that completely addresses whatever obstacle it was that you were experiencing. 

 

And once you start getting through all of those specific things, you'll find that you're meeting one stair-step at a time and you're starting to feel better.

 

You're starting to get to where you want to be. 

 

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Example #2 - Getting feedback without taking it personal

 

Next example is feedback. Say you've gotten feedback from someone. So this could be, maybe your boss has given you some feedback or maybe a friend or a loved one has given you feedback and let's face it getting feedback, especially if it's not positive, doesn't feel good. 

 

It's possible that you can figure out not only how to not feel awful from getting feedback. You might even start to feel pretty excited about getting whatever it is that you do want for this relationship, with the other person or your performance at work or whatever, that you can figure that out by using The Clarity Step process. 

Because sometimes people don't give very clear feedback and you don't know what steps you need to take in order to evolve your skills or your actions meet whatever requirement it is that they were presenting to you.

 

Again, your very first step is trying to figure out what it is that you want to do. 

 

So is this that you want to be performing at work in such a way that you're meeting the requirements of the job? Or you're trying to do better with your presentation style at meetings? Or maybe you want to contribute more value to your company, to your department or in your relationship. 

 

You'd still have some type of way of measuring. What does that look like? If it's, if it's performance in a presentation, what does that look like specifically? Is it how you're speaking? Is it the length? Is it the deliverable at the end of the meeting? If it's something around your value that you're contributing, do you know what it is that the company is looking for, for a value? 

 

I mean, oftentimes I find that people are working so hard, but the things that they're doing, isn't actually delivering the value that the company was looking for.

 

So if you're looking for, what are those company top metrics that they're trying to move, and then what are the things that you can do within your group that help to move that needle? 

 

Make sure that there's alignment there because a lot of times I'm seeing that, that alignment wasn't there at all. Those key metrics are not connected at all, but once you figure out specifically, what is it that you want to do, then you can start to break it down into each of those steps. 

 

If it's a relationship knowing what is it that you do want for this relationship. and what would that look like? Right.

 

 So again, it could be a personal relationship is do you want to have it where you're spending more time with that person or that the quality of the time that you're spending together is more than what it is now.

 

And how would you measure that? If it is that appreciation factor. So many people not feeling appreciated by others, how would you know that you're already there, that you are getting appreciated? Is it something tangible? Is it, you know, that you, you want to hear, thank you so many times a week, or thank you for specific things or that you want to have a promotion or that you want to have someone give you a note card saying thank you.

 

Or that you just want the feeling of feeling appreciated because that can give you a completely different set of stair-steps. Because a lot of times self appreciation is even missing. We're depending on everybody outside of us to give appreciation. 

And we never even realized that we could feel it ourselves,  completely on our own terms and we'd meet that appreciation need better than anyone else could ever help us to.

 

So this example, again, just to kind of wrap this one up was thinking about feedback from other people. This one, before we even got into any of the other steps, the most important one was to figure out steps one and two, your true North, and how would you measure it? 

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Example #3 New Direction at work.  Adapt or Move On?

 

The next one I want to touch on is when you get a new direction at work, say your company or your department is sharing that they want to go in a completely different direction for the benefit of the business. 

 

Now, this one might be pretty hard to accept because the way that you've been doing things has worked for you this whole time. And this new direction might have you doing a different set of tasks or even evolving and showing up as a different type of person. Now you have to decide ahead of time.

 

Do you actually want to go in that direction? 

 

Because that one in itself, I find was a big sticking point for a lot of people. That was not what people had signed on for. But they had to make that decision, once and for all.

 

Because what I found they do instead, was just stay in resistance. “I don't want to go in that direction. I want to go in this direction.” There was so much time wasted for both the employee and the company in that resistance and that nobody was happy. Everybody was pretty miserable. 

 

So it was like, you have to make that decision - if a company wants to go a new direction, they're going to go in that new direction. You just get to choose if you want to go in that direction with them or to go somewhere else so that you can go in the direction that you like.

 

And both of those answers is okay, but staying in resistance just feels like crap.  I don't know why anyone would want to do it. 

 

First step with that one is before you even get into The Clarity Step Process is deciding, do you want to go in that direction? Once you make that decision, that yes, you do want to go in that direction. Then what does it look like when you're there? What does it mean for you or even your work group when you are there? And then what do you have to figure out along the way? 

 

And on some of these, it's going to take some mindset work, and that might not be something that you're familiar with. I mean, we hear about, Oh, well you have to be in this kind of mindset to do it, but do you know how to get yourself in that kind of mindset?

And do you know how to help other people around you to change their mindset? 

 

So in many of the previous podcast episodes, I was sharing with you the steps on how to actually get into your mindset, the mindset being collection of thoughts and beliefs and how you start to switch them. 

 

One by one, that's the type of work that you're going to have to do. If a company is asking you to evolve into a different management style or a more creative, innovative way of doing things, is that the way that you've been doing things has been great. And the way you've been thinking about it has been great when you were going in the previous direction.

 

But now that you're going in a new direction, there's going to be thought obstacles that are getting in the way of we'll know this. We always do it this way.

 

That's a thought obstacle and working these seven steps of writing down, what are those obstacles, thoughts that are getting in the way is really going to help you? 

 

Because once you flip each of those individual thoughts, all of a sudden you won't have those obstacles anymore. You'll automatically be thinking in the right way. That's going to go in the direction the company is asking you for. 

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Example #4 Going After a Big Dream

Alright. The next example that I have for you is going after a dream. So as you know, I have decided to go after my dream, I've been doing it for a couple of years now, and I had to break it all down into steps because I had pretty good solid foundation on what I wanted my dream to look like and feel like.

 

And then to break it down into steps and even separate staircases, so to speak, because one was that I wanted to live next to the ocean. That in itself had its own set of things that we had to figure out and a whole long list of obstacles to have to experiment with, to figure out how to resolve.

 

Also in creating this new business adventure and way of helping people with their depression and anxiety and frustration is how do I even go about that?

 

How do I find the people that would even want that kind of help, you know, figuring out how to do a podcast. That in itself, was its own step with a whole bunch of obstacles that I had to experiment through. 

 

And now that I'm doing an in person class, that in itself is another stair-step. And sometimes that's broken down into little mini stair-steps that have obstacles like advertising. Advertising is so different out in a coastal community than it is online. And trying to figure out what are all of those obstacles. 

 

And then what are these different experiments? And I can figure out what my success criteria is, but the experiments, they need to be things that I go out and I ask other people for ideas on how to do experiments, because it's something I've never encountered before. How do I do that? I'm not a sales and marketing expert at all.

 

I'm a total newbie on this. I'm great at business process and everything, but how do I do this? 

 

So going out and finding other people that can help you figure out experiments can be really helpful. Overall with a dream.  Dreams can be so big and lofty that we can get discouraged really easily. 

 

I mean, how many people have just decided not to go after their dream because they didn't think they could come up with any kind of a actionable plan that actually gets them there?

 

So they try a few things and it doesn't work and then they stop. But if you go through this Clarity Step Process and you figure out where it is that you want to go, how would you measure it so that, you know, when you're actually there, your current measurements breaking it down into what do you have to figure out, not your action steps, but what do you have to figure out?

 

And then what are the obstacles for each of those steps? And just focus on one step at a time.

 

Breaking it down to what are all of the obstacles and which ones would you start doing experiments on?

 

Constrain it down to just one set of experiments at a time. 

 

Because if you try to go after everything all at one time, it's going to overwhelm you. You're not going to see a whole lot of success. It's going to start to dissuade you really quick.

 

And if you don't have it broken down into these small manageable pieces, then you're going to be expressing yourself out into the world with all of this confusion. And people are going to want to try to help you by giving you ideas. And you'll be flooded with ideas that cover so many different topics that you're going to get derailed by all of these shiny objects and going after this latest thing and this latest thing.

 

But if you can collect all of those ideas, but put them into your format of, okay, under which stair-step does that fit?

 

And then does that address any of the obstacles that I'm actually facing? 

 

Would those be good experiments to try? 

 

And then you can figure out when would you schedule to do those different things so that you're making sure that you're moving the needles when you need to, right? 

 

Because if you move a needle that doesn't need to move right now, then you're missing out on an opportunity to set the right foundation for yourself. 

 

These seven steps done over and over are going to open up the possibilities for you. You're going to get clarity. You're going to get traction and you're going to get what it is that you want in life.

 

To help you out. I've created a downloadable PDF for you.

This is going to show you the seven step clarity process. And I'll also have a couple visual examples of what it could look like.

 

This process works every single time. I swear by it.

 

If you want extra support in applying the seven steps of the clarity process in any aspect of your life, I'd like to invite you to join Unshakable. That's my new men's monthly online group coaching program. 

 

We'll go over four different pillars of things in your life, including self-confidence, mental wellness, relationships and purpose to help you have a life that you can completely enjoy. 

 

Enrollment will open up again at the end of February. If it's something you want to check out, please go to my website at www.myfreedomgrove.com/unshakable. We would love to have you join us.

 

I hope that you have a fantastic week and I will talk to you again next week. Bye bye.

 

Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast. I hope this podcast provided you some relief and some inspiration. If you know somebody else that can benefit from this podcast, please share the link with them. Together I know we can make a difference. To access more podcasts and offerings please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com Until next time, take care of yourself. This world needs you.