How to get clarity on what you want in life

In our world of noise and distractions, it can be really hard to know how to get clarity on what you want in life.

It’s even harder when anxiety means you’re hard on yourself, becoming overwhelmed with the competing demands of life and notching up your imperfections as failures.

You’re not alone, and this article will show you how to stop overthinking and become kinder to yourself, so you can learn to listen to what you want in life.

Watch the video or continue reading below…

I thought that by age 37, I would well and truly have it all figured out. I thought that I’d be in the ideal career that I love, which I am, but it’s been a very, very long road to get here.

I thought I would have been here a lot sooner than what I am.

And I thought I would have achieved complete financial security, never have to worry about money again, I thought I’d have it completely together.

But let me tell you, I still feel, at times, unclear and unfocused and anxious and doubt myself on a daily basis.

I just want to assure you that those feelings are absolutely, completely and utterly normal and in fact, they’re actually a pretty good thing. I will explain why that is.

Step 1: Understand that life is a journey

The whole point of life is to journey through it and to grow.

I used to have this idea that life was a series of lessons that you’d come through and everything that happened to you in life was to teach you something.

But I learned from my Reiki master that rather than life being a series of lessons where you’re kind of judged on your performance, instead, life is an opportunity to grow at every moment and to learn and to thrive.

So, rather than right or wrong or learning a lesson or being judged, having a pass or a fail, life isn’t about that at all.

Life is an unfolding of a path in front of you and that path isn’t predestined.

For example, many people start their New Years Resolutions with a feeling of fear and trepidation, because deep down they worry they will fail.

But there is no failure – just growth.

You get to choose your own path.

So when people talk about being off-track or off the right path, my immediate question to that is, “Well, how do you know? How do you know that you are off the path? How do you know that you’re not exactly where you need to be right now to grow in the way that you need to grow, for whatever reason?”

And I always believe that when people say they are a bit off-track or a bit off-path, they ae actually very much on the right path – maybe they are not quite where they want to be, but that’s just the incentive to keep moving forward.

You know not to settle in this place, you know that there’s still movement and still growth for you to work towards. That’s a very, very good thing.

Step 2: There are very few decisions in life that you can’t go back on

I believe that you don’t ever need to decide anything in life about what you want to do, where you want to be, where you want to go.

An example I’ll use for this is career.

I know a lot of people, they get to the end of their schooling and then they have this panic about, “I need to decide what I want to be, I need to decide what to do.”

Relax. Be assured that you can have as many as three careers in your lifetime.

I myself have had three careers in my lifetime.

I’ve worked in retail, I’ve worked as a communications officer, sort of working in PR and communications and journalism and that kind of industry and my energy healing reiki career which is by far, my favorite career so far.

So you don’t ever have to make a decision, you just sort of meander along the path that unfolds in front of you as you grow and as you move forward.

This is just fantastic.

When I say don’t decide, of course, make little decisions along the way but you don’t have to make the big life-altering, life-changing decision which will impact every other decision because you can always go back and do over.

There are very few decisions that you make in this life that are completely and utterly irreversible.

And the ones that you make that are irreversible are usually fairly out-there permanent decisions, you know?

You know that these are big decision to make and you will know where you stand on that, no matter what.

So, the one decision that really, you do need to make along this life path is where to start.

You need to sort of look at your life and decide what matters most to you.

And what matters to you or your values or the things that you stand for will be pretty obvious to you most of the time.

I mean, most people love their family, most people love their friends.

Some people stand up for political issues, some people really love an aspect of their work…just really realizing what really does mean a lot to you and work out ways to bring out more of that into your life.

Work out ways to align what it is you want or the direction that you’re going in with what really matters to you.

You do that by setting goals.

Step 3: Set goals

So, set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-focused.

So, let’s do an example of a goal that you might want to set. Say, your goal is to find out whether hairdressing is the right career for you.

So, a goal would be specific. Number one, find out whether hairdressing is the career for me?

Measurable. How do you know whether hairdressing is the right career for you? You will have tried it and you will know. You will like it or you won’t like it.

Attainable. You need to figure out what the steps are to make sure that this goal is attainable for you. So, figure out where you might go for your hairdressing apprenticeship.

Realistic. If you are three-quarters of a way through another course or study, consider perhaps finishing that course of study before pursuing this new hairdressing idea. The reason for that is you don’t want to be constantly chopping and changing in your career path because that will lead to feelings of failure if you’ve got unfinished bodies of study around the place, you will just, down the track, file study in the same file as you put failure into.

This is not a good thing.

You want to finish what you start. Even if you’ve decided that that’s not what you really want to pursue before you pursue hairdressing, just finish it off. That way, you’ve got your qualification or you’ve got your certificate and that is something that you’ve completed. You can energetically seal that off and start on your next adventure.

T for time-focused. You want to know when you want to have made this decision by. By what date do you want to know that you want to be a hairdresser or you don’t want to be a hairdresser by? And make sure you take the steps and those actions by that date so that you know that your goal has been achieved.

And that is how you get clarity in your life:

You understand that there is no destination. You really just decide where to start, just realizing that you need to do something and you need to move forward.

All you have to do is figure out your starting position and you can repeat this again and again.

Now, really, the sky is the limit.

There are no decisions that you need to make that you can’t go back and do over again. That’s the hardest decision when you’re an anxious woman. You feel like every decision is the last decision you will ever make and I just want to assure you that there is no reason to really believe that. You can be 100% flexible and easy on yourself with making these decisions. They’re all just adventures.

If trying to get clarity is actually driving you crazy, I recommend that you download and listen to my free grounding and space between your brain cells meditations. These free meditations will guide you through how to get the energy out of your head, and get the space you need to be clear on setting goals.

Love + Light,

Eva xo