On seeking clarity, direction and alignment

With clarity comes a sense of direction and a feeling of alignment. Clarity is much like having your own North Star that leads and supports you through whatever challenges may lie ahead.

It means knowing what the ultimate destination looks like.

In keeping with the tone of this newsletter, let me ask you some questions about your professional path:

• Do you have a clear sense of direction in your work?

• Does this direction excite you and energise you most days?

• Do you have a definition of what success looks like to you, with a plan to guide you there?

• Do you see evidence that this direction is working out for you?

If you have said no to one or all of the above, then chances are that you are craving clarity.

Clarity, according to dictionary definitions, means “freedom from ambiguity”.

I think I have heard the word clarity more times in the last two years working in this industry than in the rest of my life combined: it is the holy grail of business owners and is aspirational during times of change.

In an ideal world, we would do the hard work required to find clarity, and that would be it. However, that is not the case as clarity comes and goes like a thief in the night. You might have it one day but not the next. My bet is that if clarity were a prescription drug then ambitious, driven people would pop themselves on the waitlist for priority orders.

Why do we care so much about clarity, but find it so often eludes us?

This post will explore these questions and hopes to offer you more clarity, or at least, clarity on getting clarity.

Signs you might need more clarity

As a coach I’ve worked with entrepreneurs who lack a clear roadmap for their business, with artists, creatives and technologists to define their next steps professionally or with employees to navigate their career path. Whatever their situation I have seen that people who lack clarity experience the following symptoms:

• Feel lost and directionless; unclear about which life or career factors to prioritise when it comes to making decisions and remain stuck in analysis paralysis

• Feel unsure about what drives and motivates them professionally

• Feel unsure about where to focus their efforts and turn their ideas into action

• Feel envy about others’ lives and careers — as they lack a sense of feeling grounded in their own direction, and get distracted by the paths of others

• Feel plagued by overthinking and not having a clear action plan

• Feel a sense of professional stagnation, but don’t know what else they’d rather do

As you can see, these are largely negative emotions you’d want to avoid.

In 2019 I was working in a VC backed startup reporting to the CEO, I had a new mortgage to pay for and lots of responsibility. But I was miserable.

I ended up quitting without a back up plan, using my savings and then ultimately finding freelance work. Anything was better than the place I’d found myself. But it took me about five months to find clarity again during which time, I experienced all of above feelings and more.

It makes sense that people will pay coaches or other forms of support to help them to move past these hurdles as quickly as possible.

In fact, it is extremely common to see my clients quit something before they would find clarity on the exact brighter future they sought. I have helped business owners leave companies to pursue new ones; leave co-founder relationships that were not fulfilling (three times in fact!) and leave jobs to pursue their own path or even move half way across the world.

Why we lack clarity (and how to find it)

We lack clarity when we can’t decide what we want. Or we have an inkling of it but are afraid to commit to that decision.

Whilst writing this post I came across this from Adam Ryan who writes WorkWeek.

Adam here illustrates something I see almost daily: people will doubt their own decisions. Whether due to fear, shame or a lack of confidence many proclaim that they think they want something only to then caveat all of the reasons it might not work or they might be wrong about that, in fact.

Why do we do this?

Well depending on what you want, it could be that you have not yet created the identity of a person who can achieve that thing and so there will naturally be natural confidence gap until you’ve done it.

Another reason is the societal pressure we feel to do the ‘acceptable thing’.

Whether that pressure is real or imagined, never before have we lived in an age where everyone’s professional choices are broadcasted so widely and regularly online. We feel that natural, human instinct to fit in with the pack.

Except, fitting in is not clear either.

The range of career paths is so broad and constantly evolving. Even if you feel clear one minute, a new technology or industry can rear its head that makes working on something else seem much more appealing.

The entire recruitment industry is designed to tempt employees elsewhere and at the same time, the rise of entrepreneurship and the creator economy is tempting the masses to their own destiny as an independent worker. The pull of the Great Resignation has never been stronger.

Because of the variety of options out there, know that no single choice will be pleasing to everyone.

To some people you would be ‘selling out’ to go and work for ‘the man’ and get a cushty corporate job. To others, you would be ‘out of your mind’ to think you could be a self-employed creator online.

You will never get everyone’s approval.

“People who lack the clarity, courage, or determination to follow their own dreams will often find ways to discourage yours. When you change for the better, the people around you will be inspired to change also....but only after doing their best to make you stop. Live your truth and don't EVER stop.”

— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

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So work on getting your own approval. Work on overcoming the fear, shame or a lack of confidence you feel about your wants and then building the conviction in the path of your choosing.

Tools for reclaiming clarity

When everything is unclear, you start with what you DO know — which is yourself.

You look at your strengths, skills, traits and your interests. To make sure that you are doing things which align to your natural disposition and temperament.

You look at your values, your biggest motivations and goals in life. Not forgetting to also interrogate your deepest fears and insecurities to ensure that they are not limiting your potential or skewing your perspective.

You look at your work history. The projects you’ve shone in, people you’ve loved working with and types of conditions that suited you.

You look at feedback you’ve been given from other people about your strengths and weaknesses. You consider areas you’d like to develop in or learn about, where you’d feel engaged or excited.

Ultimately, you will map these things together to make conclusions, ensuring that you have tested any assumptions that you might have been making along the way. Then you run tests and life experiments to check you actually want what you say that you want.

But beware — you’ll find that there are trade offs in your choices.

Pursuing one path means accepting a sacrifice to another at the expense of your mission.

Businesses have to do this and I believe that people should too.

In fact this perspective is shared by my internet friend and incredible newsletter writer Alex, from Basic Arts who portrays this clearly in his post, Can a person have a strategy like a business?

So know that your professional decisions involve finding focus and putting your blinkers on to prevent all of the other paths from distracting you from actually achieving what you are capable of.

All of this is the process that I guide my clients through during coaching programmes.

They finish coaching with aligned direction and focus in their work, but crucially, along with a clear plan to make it happen so that they may maintain belief that it is possible and know the path forward without getting lost.

My recent quest for clarity and where I’ve landed

Long-time readers of this newsletter might assume I’ve found clarity. I’ve written to you consistently for over two years on similar themes whilst also receiving great feedback and new subscribers daily. There are over 2,600 of you here now, hi!

But the newsletter is one small piece of a larger puzzle (my coaching business but also my vision that I have for my life and career overall). This puzzle has moving pieces and they need to work together in tandem with my goals, aspirations and to also make sense from a time and profitability perspective.

So over the last six weeks I’ve been conducting an audit of my life and business overall since things did not feel as aligned as they used to. Which is unsurprising considering the events of the last six months in my life running my business remotely, moving from London to Portugal and then to Chicago. This has meant creating new friendships, relationships and perspectives and building community from scratch multiple times.

Within my business, we hit the two year milestone which coincided with organising and hosting a 1,000 attendee-strong virtual event that took half a year to plan along with managing a bigger team.

I’ve been living a bolder life than ever and it’s been great.

But at the same time, had felt a disconnect in some of the things I was (or wasn’t) doing in my business and felt a lack of clarity as a result. Now, I’ve done a huge review of what I do, who I do it for and how I do it which involved making some difficult choices and sacrifices.

Crucially, before making any change I started with my deepest WHY.

Why do I do what I do and what am I the absolute best at doing, above all else?

Some changes are coming to ensure everything fits neatly into the puzzle I am building.

I’ve not updated too much yet but for now, allow me to share the revised tagline, which is that I help the ambitious get unquestionably clear on their next venture.

I know that it is my mission to guide you to find the most aligned professional path that you can. To use my experiences — interviewing thousands of people as a startup recruiter combined with my transformational coaching credentials — to go deeper than you ever have before with your career decisions.

Because career decisions are life decisions and it matters that you figure them out sooner than later.

I work best with ambitious people who are ready to take action towards a new future and navigate the uncertainty that comes with that. That might be starting a new business, but it might not.

Whatever lies ahead, if you have a calling towards something different, bolder or perhaps scarier then before then don’t allow fear, indecision or doubt keep you in stasis.

I coach people through the change, by offering tools for clarity, confidence and planning. Clients report that my coaching enables them to finally “identify their unique selling point”, to do “transformational experiments that support their transition”, to “open up possibilities they’d never considered” and to “approach their next steps methodically and strategically”.

If that’s what you are in need of, and you are ready to take action, then you can book a complimentary consultation as a first step in your new direction.

Thank you as always for reading!

I’ll be back in two weeks time with a new kind of newsletter post — excited!

Ellen Donnelly, Founder + Chief Coach, The Ask