Chaos to Clarity, Overwhelmed to Excited
Chaos is often defined as complete disorder or confusion.
The Law of Disorder – the fact that everything in our universe, when left to itself, tends toward more and more disorder. A good example is housekeeping: go a month without picking up or keeping house and see how your house is at the end of the month.
In order to create a clear vision, we have to have lower things on the hierarchy taken care of, our basic needs of shelter, food, and security. Then social needs and self-esteem needs, before reaching the stage of self-actualization.
In business, it is the same. Many business owners expect to have their business reach the apex without taking care of the basic needs of the organization and system first.
But, just like a person must be able to envision the person they can be when they climb the pyramid to self-actualization, a business owner and the business must have a clear purpose and vision.
Being in alignment with your highest or true purpose gives you clarity and personal freedom to pursue your vision, even when you are still working on the basic needs. Without this, one will experience disorder and/or confusion in mind, actions, and purpose.
We have to work on both at the same time – establishing and maintaining a vision and purpose, while we focus and eliminate the chaos and clutter that is impeding us from maximizing our potential. Consider these questions:
- What legacy would you be happy to leave behind?
- What do you want your business to be known for?
- What is the real reason you went into business?
- What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Clearly visualizing the achievement of the prize gives you an idea of how you will feel when you achieve your vision. This process of daydreaming, tasting and feeling the goal, helps motivate and inspire us to continue to work and sacrifice to make it happen.
Clarity of purpose starts to clear the chaos.
We start to see where chaos is just stepping stones on the path to our goal and where the chaos is unnecessary and should be avoided. This takes time and lots of work. We do not gain clarity, direction, and purpose immediately. It is a process and often requires much soul-searching.
As a leader, we must be willing to put the time and effort into this process to understand ourselves, our true desires and values, and where we really want to be.
I once worked with a Frank who had owned his own business for four years. He was burnt out and frustrated with the lack of success in his business. We started to assess the issues and gaps in the business and ways to improve the business. However, it quickly became clear that Frank did not have a clear purpose and vision for this business. We went back to the basics and Frank worked on his clarity of purpose and his vision. After two weeks, Frank clearly stated he wanted to sell the business and go a different direction. He did not want to grow the business and he did not want to be in the industry he was in. That clarity and realization was both scary and liberating to him: scary to deviate from everything he had focused on for the last 4 years.; liberating because he was full of ideas, enthusiasm, and motivation to start a new chapter in his life and career.
I am glad to say that for most clients it is not a 180-degree change, rather it is usually a 5- to 10-degree change they make as they gain clarity and shred off the unnecessary chaos they previously had to move forward with more clarity of purpose.
