Brilliant One:

Read on, or click here to listen to the audio of today’s Transformation Tuesday insight on Soundcloud.

Most of us find ourselves in the optometrist’s chair at some point in our lives. You know that drill: you smoosh your face up to the machine whilst the doc flips various corrective lens combos in and out, manually checking to see precisely which lens gets you closest to clarity.

“This one, or this one?”

“This or this?”

“Number one or number two?”

Some of the lenses make things clearer, some go the other way. But even the fuzziest lens combinations help the optometrist narrow down the vast realm of possible prescriptions, eliminating options until she finds the just-right lens through which you can see clearly.

Life works the same way. It’s easy to feel like we’re behind where we should be in life, to feel like life keeps making it impossible for you to get a clear line of sight on your purpose: who you really are and why you’re really here. You can’t take a retreat. You can’t go sit in a cave and just meditate. You’ve got bills to pay. A home to manage. A job. A life to live.

But the opposite is true: every situation in life, every circumstance, every job and relationship, every crisis and obstacle and especially every bit of spiritual and personal growth we experience is a lens. Even the most unwanted experiences and emotions are a lens. Because, as one of my teachers likes to say, “when you know what you don’t want, you learn what you do want.”

And with every flip of the lens, we either get more of what we want in life or we get clearer on what we want.

It’s great to take a sabbatical, go on a retreat or write a book in order to get clear on your purpose. If you can swing any of the above, do it. These can be powerful, pivotal experiences. But many, many people go on retreat, learn amazing stuff and come back to their real life and find it hard to turn what they learned into real habits and new ways of being and doing, over the long run.

Let me say something that might surprise you: you don’t have to do anything wildly disruptive in order to get clear on your purpose in life. You don’t have to go on retreat or sabbatical. You don’t have to run away and join the circus, blow up your life or quit your job to get clear, though you might feel called to do that at some point. Life and experience will bring you the clarity you seek, if you sit still, connect the dots and listen to your inner guidance system with some regularity.

What you do have to do to get clear on your purpose is give yourself permission to be counter-culture. Be willing to protect your mind and spirit from the chaos of the day and from the overwhelm of your digital life.

You do have to be willing to stop regurgitating the same old struggle stories and put your attention elsewhere. Let a new story emerge, even if the uncertainty around what that new story might be is very uncomfortable.

You must be willing to take a sacred pause and get still, ideally for a few moments every day. (I’ll share more on how to do that consistently, for the long run, tomorrow.) You must be willing to listen to your inner guidance system, invite inspiration and act on it, when when it comes. You must develop a way to reset, recalibrate and reconnect with the wisdom that is always trying to get to you: the wisdom and clarity that you’ve been cultivating your whole entire life.

If you want to get clear on your purpose, the most efficient way is to figure out how to settle down, down-regulate your nervous system and get in receptive mode. In that place, it is inevitable that you will receive the clarity you’ve been getting ready for your whole entire life.

Catch this principle: you’ve been sowing the seeds of clarity as to your purpose your whole entire life. With every experience you’ve had and enjoyed or liked, you’ve planted seeds of “more, please.” And with every unwanted experience, small and large, you’ve planted seeds of ever-increasing clarity about what you don’t want, which—news flash—is the same exact thing as getting clearer on what you do want.

In your coming season, you will harvest and act on the clarity you’ve been cultivating your whole life. Clarity of purpose. Clarity of thinking. Clarity in the way you speak and interact with others. And you will just continue to get clearer and clearer, as you live out your next 200 years.

Sometimes we impatient, ambitious uplifter types want our clarity to come in a big, overnight dose. Epiphanies sound fast and easy, so we gravitate toward people who tell us stories of their own sudden shift from chaos to clarity, usually because they had some sort of great crisis or trauma that shook them out of the trance they’d previously been walking around with their whole lives.

The problem is that this keeps selling the false storyline that you have to experience something traumatic or do something dramatic in order to get clear on your vision and purpose. Sure, that’s how some people’s journey unfolds. But as quiet as its kept, some of the most on-purpose people you know got there through a lifetime of moving forward, saying yes, trying things, seeing how that feels and continuously course correcting: incremental clarity, with a spurt here and a spurt there, over time.

Even when it seems like someone has gotten an epiphany, what has usually really happened is that the shift in their circumstances gave them permission to make a sudden shift of their lens. They decided that life is precious. They realized that they are, actually, limitless. They released that lifelong internal resistance to what they’ve always known, deep down, they were here to do. They stopped telling themselves tired old stories of why they can’t and starting looking at themselves through the lens of what they do have and can do and what they will create, instead.

When you set down an old, smudged, scratched outdated pair of lenses you’ve been using to look at your life, you gradually stop telling the old stories because you gradually begin focusing on a bright, new vision that is frankly waaay more fun to look at. When you start gazing lovingly forward with wonder at what is to come, your old limitations dissipate and disintegrate.

It’s just like what happens in the optometrist’s chair: when you reach out and grab a new frame filled with a new lens, in that moment: clarity comes.

More like this from my blog: You are a creator

P.S. Over 4,000 brilliant souls participated in my first-ever 10 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders. . . and tomorrow is their last day! I thought I’d share one of their favorite prompts from this Challenge with you.

This prompt is called: Third Times a Wrap. READ | AUDIO

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Head up + heart out,