The BOLD (By Design)
I’m excited about this topic, which is part two in a
Last week, we looked at ways to nurture resilience in order to be aware, prepared and healthy. You can read the article here.
This week, we delve into the Design Clarity Cycle™, a model I built to bring all the wisdom and process of my previous career as a Commercial Interior Designer to all my work as a Clarity Coach. My clients and I engage in the model to explain, guide and nurture cycles of personal and professional transformation. As I said, I’m excited to spend this time talking about one of my favorite topics. How do we design the clarity that will allow us to make good choices
The Whisper (Spin)
How do we know what to do in the moment? Our decisions are based on what we believe to be important. The more we consult our values, our mission and our vision in making a decision, the greater our chance for meaningful success. That is, of course, a lot to expect in the split second between the arrival of a stimulus and our reactive response. As we discussed last week, our chances of making coherent, meaningful, beneficial choices increase with preparation.
How do we build capacity to create what we want in the vast majority of our large and tiny decisions? We must be clear about what coherent, meaningful, and beneficial means to us. We must know what we are trying to be, trying to accomplish and trying to create. There is a process for designing a clear path forward.
The Design Clarity Cycle™
This is where the Design Clarity Cycle™ comes in and it works like this:
At the center of the wheel is the classic design cycle that innovators use in many fields to guide the creative process to develop design solutions. In this case, we are creating interior interior designs—doing the inner work in service of the outer contribution.
The middle wheel describes the flow the phases, each of which builds on the last and informs the next.
The outer wheel is the Prospects of Possibility™, a framework of 10 keys for transformation that addresses the necessary components of growth, development and meaningful success.
They ride together to create the model I use to help my clients rise to their opportunities and answer their challenges. Sometimes the essential, valuable work we know we want to do feels dangerous and uncomfortable. The Clarity Design Cycle™ is a safe container for messy work and a reliable process for unpredictable exploration.
Because it is a map for change, it is a means of preparing for the unexpected.
PROVOKE
An opportunity arises and we want to build a new habit, create a new business, or develop a new concept. Or, perhaps, a challenge interrupts our lives. We must fix a problem or attempt to divert or repair a disaster. The Impetus has provoked the need, the desire for change.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 1: Pierce the Transparency
This is where the first key of the prospects of possibility lives. How do we prepare to learn and to grow? How do we discover what we don’t know that we don’t know? Just as a fish cannot see the water in which it has spent its entire life, we are swimming in a transparent bubble of what we know and what we think we know. In order to make a change, we have to pierce that bubble.
PERCEIVE
Next, we define the project and shift our mindset. Often, when we are problem solving, we charge straight into brainstorming before we fully define the problem we are trying to solve and before we consider our circumstances. In the Programming phase, we take stock of our assets, we work to shift our perspective and we define the terms of satisfaction. How will we know success when we see it if we haven’t created a compelling, accurate description of the opportunity or challenge we are addressing?
When we move directly to action, we often replicate the same outcomes we were attempting to avoid or replace. Why is this? Because the way that we observe the world determines what we believe is possible. What we believe is possible directly impacts the actions we see as possible and are willing to take.
Before we take new action, we must develop a new way of observing and understanding our world. We must impact our mindset. To do this, we work with keys 2-4 of the Prospects of Possiblity™.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 2: Refresh the Body Connection
Much of what we know and how we act is locked in our body habits and our body wisdom. We can change our mood by changing our movement.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 3: Open the Gift of Emotion
The world is busy telling us that our emotions are dangerous. How often have you heard someone dismiss the contributions of someone they deem “too emotional?” We are told that we must leave our emotions at the office door to be seen as professional. The truth is we have never experienced anything outside of the presence of our emotions. And our emotions create a predisposition to act. Emotional maturity and health increases our chance of choosing to act rather than to simply react.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 4: Speak, Think and Create
Language is our means of building new things. By understanding the words we utilize, we can build stories that support the change we want to make.
PREPARE
Before we set off to activate what we learned in the perceive phase, we can take the time to prepare. Measure twice, cut once as the carpentry adage advises. This is where our deepest preparation to act decisively occurs.
In Ideation, we brainstorm new ideas as we shift our perspective and notice new, previously unrecognized opportunities.
In Prototype, we create experiments to beta test the ideas we brainstormed before we commit to full execution.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 5: Prep the Path
There are many ways to prepare for success. We can arrange our environment to support our changes. We can build a team to provide support and accountability.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 6: Evict Insufficiency
There is a persistent voice that tells us, with soft whispers in the night and in loud roars as we walk into a make-or-break presentation, that we are not enough. The voice wants to keep us safe and to stay comfortable. Safe, however, is not thriving. And safe is often not safe for long. To counter the voice, we build a healthy sense of self-esteem that is graceful, humble and grounded in a strong sense of who we really are.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 7: Cultivate Coherence
In the end, we will judge our lives not by what we have done or not done, but by the degree to which we lived into our cherished values and honored them with our actions. Building capacity here involves knowing what is most important to us and knowing what we are called to do. This is the seat of deep meaning and the source of determination. This is where the giant, overwhelming YES lives. It is only that yes that will dispel all the little, yet potent, no’s.
PURSUE
Now we are ready to activate that learning with action, to activate transformation and to do the work. This is where a thousand decisions, made in response to a thousand stabs of stimulus, determine the trajectory of our life. This is where the resilience we discussed in part 1 must be nurtured. This is where the rubber hits the road, one millimeter of tread at a time.
In Implementation, we take all that we are and we marry it with all that we’ve learned to make the contribution that only we can make.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 8: Tolerate Nothing but Nurture
As we discussed in Part 1, nurture is rest but it is also the active pursuit of the work that nourishes our growth.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 9: Succumb to Courage
It takes courage to face your fears and to act. If we are creating something that no one else has created, or something that hasn’t happened where we are, we will need to become comfortable with discomfort.
Prospect of Possibility™ Key 10: Pursue Possibilities
And here it is—action. We build, strive, create, work, collaborate, communicate, inspire, devote and invest.
PROVOKE
And then we come full circle. In Analysis, we consider what we’ve done and what we’ve learned to formulate our next question and provoke our next turn around the cycle.
Prepare for the Unexpected
By designing a clear vision that responds to the challenge as defined, that is based on our coherent view of our values and that points to our biggest YES, we are more prepared to make a good choice in the moment.
We are prepared, then, for the moment of choice when we have designed a clear sense of what we value, of what we are trying to accomplish and of what we are planning to do.
It will happen soon. The alarm will sound and you will surface from the raveling edges of a dream.
“Why” you wonder, “is that waking me up?” And then you remember the reason for that discordant pest of a noise. You set the alarm so that you could get up an hour early to invest in the next chapter of your book.
You yield to the wisdom of the more awake version of yourself, the one who set the alarm, and you get up. Congratulations. Your preparations led to a decision that supports your goals. Also, your forethought led you to go to bed a little earlier so it isn’t quite as difficult to get up.
You’ve washed your face, brushed your teeth, made your bed, and planted yourself at your desk. You’re poised to begin writing when your cell phone beeps, buzzes or shakes. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the pop up—an enticing invitation to engage with a story about your hero, a text message from a friend, a cute photo of a…you have another choice to make.
The chances of making the choice that supports your desire to be an author increase with the degree of clarity you have designed. Do you understand how your habit of reaching for your phone or your emotional fear of missing out will influence your decision? Have you created a compelling vision of your successful self? Have you nurtured your resilience and your health with a good night’s sleep? Have you crystalized your connection to your value of building something worth sharing into a determination to let nothing stop you?
Decide. Choose the chapter and ignore the binging phone.
Lather, rinse, repeat as a thousand choices present themselves. Design your clarity and activate your transformation one tiny step at a time. In this way, you live boldly.
What’s Next?
In Part 3, we will discuss the role of awareness in bringing all the preparation to the moment of choice as we navigate the unexpected.
To read Part 1 of this series on Expecting the Unexpected, follow the link
To read on, follow the link to Part 3
Leave a Reply