Moving the Needle: Get Clear, Get Free, and Get Going in Your Career, Business, and Life!

Chapter 1When It Comes to Getting Clear, First Get Quiet

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN, twentieth-century physicist

If you're not sure where you're going in life or feel like you're not going anywhere, think back to your childhood when you played hide-and-seek and concealed yourself in a bedroom closet full of clothes. Inside that dark closet, while you waited for one of your friends or siblings to discover you, you had to be quiet and not make a sound. Your eyes and ears adjusted to your surroundings—the darkness, stillness, and silence. All that was left was getting lost in your thoughts or your imagination.

So what happened in the closet as you got quiet? Your eyes adjusted to the darkness and your senses were heightened. You were quiet because you had to be quiet.

Finding time to get quiet, get focused, and get lost in our thoughts or imagination is considered a luxury to most today. We spend our days with smartphone buds in our ears, listening to calls while our thumbs rush to compose e-mails as we run between the day's meetings, which usually leave us running late for our evening's social functions or family dinner. Sound familiar?

If so, here's my number one rule for getting clear, which is to get quiet. When you get quiet, you get clear enough to ask yourself, “What am I pursuing and why?” This is the most important ...