I don’t know what I’m doing.
And I’m 37 years old.
One of my earliest memories is breaking my hand trying to keep up with my older siblings and cousins, running around the compound on my mom’s 40th birthday.
They jumped over a patch of flowers. There was a path to walk right through but I thought “I can jump over too.”
I got closer. They were already in the distance. I had to catch up.
As I decided to jump, I hesitated.
I fell through and landed on my hand.
SNAP!
While I lay in the room, nursing my arm, while everyone outside continued with the party. I remember having this thought about the kids running outside, while the adults were inside, listening to music, laughing, and discussing.
There was a clear line.
We – kids.
They – adults.
I thought the adults were soooo old then.
I’m now 3 years away from that age.
No yard.
No kids and family running around the place.
Still figuring my career out.
Sometimes I wonder, what am I actually doing with my life?
Do you feel the same way too?
Now the older I get, the more I realize, those adults were still figuring it out too.
Who wants to be free?
People are waiting for clarity of purpose to take action.
Waiting for permission in a permission-less economy.
Deluding themselves into the wait for the perfect plan. The reality is that most of us are not ready to be free. We want to be told what to do to stay in the pack. That’s how we’ve been programmed by education, culture, institutions.
The bigger problem is that now you have the ability to reprogram yourself.
But most don’t want to do it. Why?
Because it’s actual work.
So you do what’s comfortable.
Escaping in an endless scroll of information, waiting for purpose and clarity to land upon your head so you can finally exhale.
Don’t hold your breath any longer.
One thing that is guaranteed is that no one knows what tomorrow holds.
There was a mild earthquake here in Los Angeles a few days ago. It wasn’t too bad for me but it was a reminder that we are on a spinning rock in a vast universe.
So why sit there, waiting for certainty.
There is nothing like a perfect plan.
The only way you will get clarity on what you want to achieve is through execution.
How To Gain Clarity Through Execution:
A few years ago, I was at a cafe in Lagos.
I pulled out my laptop to do some work. I had an idea. I thought it was great at the moment (it was really below average). Instead of getting to my work, I thought about it some more, did some research online, then I grabbed my notebook to jot it down.
As I scanned through the pages to get to an empty page. I saw something that I had written down a few weeks before. It was exactly what I was thinking about at the moment.
It wasn’t a lack of ideas that was stopping me. It was a lack of execution. That day I promised myself that anything I wrote down in my notebook, I wouldn’t talk about until I did it.
The practice has served me ever since.
Gaining clarity through action will help you reduce your overthinking, decrease the need for immediate validation, and it will move you towards bringing your ideas to reality.
Here are 4 steps:
1. Nurture your curiosity
Don’t put all your self-worth in one basket.
A lot of times we become very fixated on defining who we are and what we do. We are quick to throw out a title when people ask who you are. We are quick to default to this question: “so what do you do?” when you meet someone for the first time at a social event.
But you are not what you do.
You are made up of multiple interests and the intersection of these interests make you unique. There’s the reality that you have to pay your bills but your interests don’t have to.
You can have a job for the bills and nurture your other curiosities.
Prioritize leisure.
Explore your hobbies.
Let curiosity be your guide.
2. Organize & Prioritize:
Organization supercharges your curious mind.
Most times people believe you have to be all over the place to be a curious person. I’ve found the opposite is true. At least for me, I realize that curiosity is a discipline that’s nurtured while taking care of yourself.
You can achieve that with organization.
Being organized allows you to set achievable goals and break them into small steps. This allows you to stay focused and provides forward momentum.
When you prioritize, you can take a seasonal approach, where you stop working on a certain project to focus on another because you know exactly where to pick back up.
Structure will supercharge your execution.
3. Do what you said you’d do:
This is my latest version of the Nike tagline “Just do it.”
You’ve heard that before.
I loved saying it. When people have asked me about starting a business or writing a book. I say: “Just do it.” It’s not falling on deaf ears but most people come back and ask: “but just do what?”
The reality is that you know what you have to do.
You talk about it all the time. You’ve said it quite often. You’ll probably say it again soon.
So “Do what you said you’d do”
That’s it.
You said you want to go to the gym, do it.
You said you want to reach out to clients, do it.
Just do what you said.
Let the feedback from your actions inform what you say and do next.
4. Cultivate courage:
Feedback is a gift.
Over the last 13 weeks, I’ve been streaming myself writing and editing my 4th book. The reason I started doing it was because people asked: “So how do you write your books?”
“Errmmm I just write them”
They think I have some secret writing wand.
“But, how do you find the time?”
“I don’t. I make the time.”
Instead of saying it, I started showing it. Now I’ve streamed myself writing so far for a combined 30+ hours.
In the stream, you see me thinking, writing, canceling thoughts, re-writing. There is no secret there. Just making the time early on Saturday mornings to get to my goal.
There was a lot of fear when I first started. I had no clue what I was doing. But I overcame my resistance.
You are most likely limited by a fear of failure.
Trying to get it right from the beginning.
Every moment you take action on what you say you’d do you are investing in your courage.
And I think that’s a worthwhile investment.
Execute & Reflect…
Know thyself.
There’s a lot of nudging here to take action. Go out there and explore your curiosities. Do what you say you’d do. Build up courage through consistent action.
This is all to give you material to reflect on.
Take the time to ask why you’re doing it. Pause and write down a few lines about what you learned about yourself from the projects you do.
The reflection is in essence you taking the same curiosity about the world and applying it to yourself.
The more you know about yourself, the more you can show up with real confidence and self-worth.
Clarity comes from walking on the journey.
It comes through execution and reflection.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. My 4th book drops soon.
