I set out to find out what happens when I introduce a zero-tolerance policy for stress, pressure and urgency in my business.
In an experiment, you expect things to happen, but you never know exactly what, and I certainly didn’t expect things to happen so fast….
Big changes are about to take place, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
But before I go into that, let me give you a quick backstory.
In 2009, I stumbled across the principles behind clarity (the 3 principles articulated by Sydney Banks), and I soon discovered these principles are to psychology what the discovery of germs was to medicine.
I realised they represent the future of psychology, and I had a vision of everybody on the planet waking up to their innate capacity for clarity, resilience & wellbeing.
By 2011, I was ready to start writing about it, and in early 2013 my first book was published – CLARITY: Clear Mind, Better Performance, Bigger Results.
The response was phenomenal.
CLARITY became a number 1 bestseller and received hundreds of positive reviews from people saying how it had changed their lives (as well as a respectable number of 1-star reviews comparing it unfavourably with dogshit).
In 2013 I ran the first Clarity Certification Training and started growing a cadre of high-impact professionals who are grounded in this understanding and are able to share it impactfully.
Over the past 9 years, we’ve trained over 300 Clarity Practitioners, Coaches and Trainers and I feel proud of the difference I see them making in the world.
So earlier this year, when my publisher (Wiley) approached me to write a second edition of CLARITY, I jumped at the chance.
And as I sat down to work on the new edition, I realised that when I wrote CLARITY, I’d planted a seed that grew into something far beyond what I’d imagined. All the podcasts, products and programmes I run today can be traced back to that seed.
Today we’re living in a very different world.
Millions of people are now aware of the principles. Businesses and organisations all over the planet are exploring this understanding (I even did a talk on clarity and strategy at the NATO Defense College this summer).
A number of principles books have made it onto the bestseller lists and my book RESULTS became the first 3P Sunday Times bestseller.
But the changes haven’t all been positive.
The desperate need for this understanding is even greater than when CLARITY came out. There are a number of forces that are leveraging the outside-in misunderstanding and creating a humanitarian crisis in mental health:
– The combination of digital technology and AI-driven social media
– The lockdowns and media-driven fear in response to the pandemic
– The widespread effects of disconnection from wisdom and wellbeing, including the climate crisis, the polarisation of society and the increasing divide between haves and have-nots
All of this is amplifying the effect of the outside-in misunderstanding for millions of people at a time when we need clarity more than ever.
So what was my insight?
There’s an old adage, “What got you here won’t get you there.”
I realised that just as the release of CLARITY planted a seed that grew into everything I’ve described, I now want to create the space for the seeds I’ll be planting with the second edition.
So I’ve made a decision.
Between now and July 2022, I’m stopping all business activities except the delivery of the programmes that are already on the calendar for 2022.
I have the strong sense that there’s something new getting ready to emerge, and I want to create room for it.
This means that the Clarity Certification Training I do starting January 2022 may be the last one I ever do (or at least the last one I do in its current form).
It seems to me that the world has never had a greater need for this understanding and that conditions have never been better to share it as widely as possible. In fact, the technologies that are playing a part in creating this crisis may also have the capacity to play a part in its solution.
I don’t know what part I’m going to play in all of this.
What I do know is that I’m interested in exploring emerging technologies and new models to align communities as we take this understanding out into the world in a brand new form.
To the people who have been through (or are preparing to go through) Clarity Certification Training, you’re not just early adopters; you’re trailblazers, and I’m grateful to be on the journey with you.
In Syd Banks’ final talk, “The Ultimate Answer”, he says that when this gets out into the world, “literally, it will help millions of people.”
The more I’ve learned from Syd’s work, the more I’ve learned to take him literally. And I think it might just be time.
Q: What do you think?
Let me know in the comments, and have a beautiful time over the holidays. I look forward to sharing this journey with you as it unfolds.
Tons of love to you and yours
Jamie
Jamie Smart, Sunday Times Bestselling Author, Speaker & Coach
PS. If you want to see the original article I posted on Facebook yesterday and read all the comments there, you can find it HERE