The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 66 Degrees
Back in music school, circa 1995-1999, every musician in our studio was supposed to carry around a tape recorder to record themselves when they played.
(For those of you too young to know what a tape player is, don’t email me to ask. It’ll make me feel old. Look it up…) 🙂
The reason for using it was simple. When you’re a musician, it doesn’t matter what you think you hear, it only matters what the people listening to your music hear.
And often times, what you thought you heard and what they actually heard were not the same thing.
You’d listen to the recording of your playing and wonder what the heck you were doing half the time. The parts you thought you nailed were actually unclear and jumbled, the parts you thought you really did something different were barely noticeable.
In business, using the tape recorder method doesn’t really work. And so you can go months (even years) doing things you don’t realize you’re doing.
You think you’re perceived one way, but the world actually perceives you another way.
In a pursuit where perception is such a valuable tool, you can’t really afford to be flying blind like that.
In business, this is why coaches are so valuable. They are basically your “tape recorder.” They play things you are doing, saying and thinking back to you so you can see them clearly. They help you imagine worlds you might not have seen before. It’s not because you’re not smart or talented that you need this, it’s because you’re too close to be able to see the big picture.
A few months ago, I began working with a coaching client doing some work to paint a “big picture” that was clear and powerful. And now he’s out there running with it and making it happen.
Clarity is extremely valuable. With clarity, 99.9% of the things competing for your attention just don’t matter. The benefit of recognizing that is that it allows you to ignore those things that might otherwise cloud your vision.
How much value can clarity like this contribute to your business? For my coaching client, the value is quite high. You can read about just how high here…