What do I Want?
This is the single most triggering and catalyzing thought I have when starting a project, such as this article.
I have a great deal of experience in facilitating creative groups across many industries and cultures. A whole quiver of tools and techniques, and tremendous inspiration to share this with others. But all of that turns into noise when I ask myself the question, what do I want?
Words matter. Clarity is a profoundly powerful Catalyst. A Catalyst is defined as a person or thing that precipitates an event. Synonyms include spark, incitement and stimulation. Catalysts cause movement. When you’re stuck, Clarity is powerful way to answer questions, solve apparent problems, energize and release pent-up motion. Clarity -> Progress.
The most common difficulty all of my clients deal with is lack of clarity. This includes everyone from the community theater down the street to Cirque du Soleil, beginning therapists to top market performing coaches.
My discovery of the Clarity Catalyst came in the early years of my career when I was known for what I termed “Project Recoveries”, meaning the thing was ‘effed and I was hired to get it unstuck, bring it to substantial completion and keep my clients out of court.
When I begin a project recovery, the situation is typically characterized by general confusion and a sense of stuckness and overwhelm. Nowhere to turn and no sense of how to proceed effectively.
With clarity all things become clear.
Duh. It sounds so self evident and yet it’s the most frequently missing piece.
I start by asking what am I trying to achieve? This can be more difficult than it appears. I’ll share some of my process for getting unstuck with this article today. I was finding writing difficult until I applied my own clarity process to the writing about it and… boom. Progress.
What do I want? - To write and post an article sharing my own experiences and core methodologies to:
Inspire - People are capable of more than they fear.
Educate - How to do it and more about the “It”.
Connect - Who are my people? Let’s share the life - educate, inspire and inform each other.
Inform - This is what I do for a living and here’s how you can take part in that.
The other edge of this particular sword is that when you ask that question, you might not like the answers you come to. This is particularly true of a project that is partially complete, like a building. Every architecture project I have worked on has revealed some level of a lack of clarity of purpose and process. Once the thing gets built it is expensive or impossible to rectify. The wall might be in the wrong place, the grid too low, the lobby too small, not enough bathrooms or too close to the road to function effectively. Flexibility and humor is key.
Full disclosure: I’m a creative, chaotic mess. I teach clarity because I need it. We teach what we most need or we wouldn’t have the connection with it. I am also a tremendous visionary, frequently inspired beyond prudence and my creations tend to be chaotic, unfocused and unsuccessful without the discipline of a clarity process. This makes my wife crazy. Fortunately she’s also my partner in NEI, an artist, and architect, and has a more methodical mind. Together we are integrating our own bodies of work to create a tool we’re calling the Clarity Process (there are talks of a mini online course on this topic coming later this year…).
When you follow the thread of inquiry, you might also begin to find the unconscious material, the shadow, revealing itself. For me I found an unconscious desire to impress my audience with my tremendous and self important body of work. From there I was able to talk myself down, go back and weed out some of the things I wrote earlier that are not necessary to achieve my goals of inspiring, educating, connecting and informing. It also revealed where I need to add a bit more.
The creation of NEI has been the catalyst to help us develop the clarity process and the discipline to use it. Of course there’s more to the Clarity Process, and yet this is the essential core.
Whether you call it intention, goal or purpose, asking yourself the simple question of what do I want is the most powerful and efficient way to find the end of that golden thread that leads to something that will surprise and delight you.
If you feel inspired to go deeper, we offer private coaching and consulting services for individuals and groups, to help you find develop your own clarity tools and capacities and uncork your brilliance. All of the creative programs at NEI are informed by this process and contain it as a teaching methodology to some extent. We would love for you to join us, you can sign up for the mailing list to be notified of new programs.
So, what do you want?