I made a video recently in which I shared an exercise I use with my coaching clients that can move you from “I don’t know” to knowing or not being clear to becoming clear on what it is that you want to achieve or what is to really want to have in your life.

And in this day and age of Facebook, being what it is, I call this exercise “Moving from Unlike to Like.” This exercise was created when I started my coaching business, and I was having conversations with people who were just coming on board to work with me. I found our conversations went in either one or two directions.

I would ask, “What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you want to accomplish in your life?”

They would either tell me:

1.  They didn’t know and they weren’t clear, or
2. They would go in the direction of telling me everything about the situation they didn’t want and didn’t like and never get to what it is that they wanted or what it is that they would like to be, to do, and to have.

I’ve found that we, as a society, tend to be conditioned to automatically go into the space of talking about what it is that we don’t know, don’t want, and don’t like.

So, this exercise, like I said, was designed to help remove that.

Going from “Unlike” to “Like”: the Exercise

The exercise goes like this: you take out a piece of paper, and at the top of the paper you write “My Ideal…” and then you fill in the blank with whatever the situation is that you want to see some positive change in.

So, for instance, if it’s a relationship concern, you would write “My Ideal Relationship” at the top. If it’s financial, you write “My Ideal Financial Situation.” If it happens to be something work-related, you’ll write “My Ideal Working Environment” or “My Ideal Career.” (See the diagram to the right.)

As an example, I will use myself.  When I was transitioning from being an employed person and to being an entrepreneur, I did this exercise. At the top of my list, I wrote “My Ideal Working Environment.”

Then what you want to do is to create a t-bar, and that’s just a line at the top with your heading above the line, and then making a vertical line going down the middle of the paper so that you have two individual columns.

The left hand side is going to be the “unlike” side and you want to start there. You are going to write down everything you are experiencing, or have experienced in the past in this category, that you don’t like and don’t want.

Going with my example about that transition, on my “unlike” side, one of the things I wrote was “frequent interruptions on the job.” (Drove me crazy how many times a day that I would be interrupted!).

Once you have made that list, you want to shift your focus to the right side.  And here’s where the clarity comes in.  It comes with this question: For everything that you have on the unlike site, you want to ask yourself, “What would I rather have as an experience?”

Write down the response to that question.

Going with my example for the frequent interruptions on the job I was experiencing, I asked myself that question. And my response was, “I would like to get my work, or the task at hand, done in a timely manner,” because my experience was due to the frequent interruptions on the job,  I was either taking longer to get things done or not getting things done at all.

So for everything that you have on the left side, the “unlike” side, ask yourself that question for each individual item, and then you should have a response on the right side, the “like” side. If you have ten things on the left (“unlike”) side, you should have ten things that you are now clear on for the “like” side.

You’ve Gone from “Unlike” to “Like”…Now What?

Once you have your list compiled, you’re going to rip the chart right down the middle. And then you’re going to take the left (“unlike”) and you’re going to destroy it. Burn it, shred it, flush it down a toilet it—it doesn’t matter. You just want it to be gone.

This is why: I have the belief that thought creates experience. And what we focus our thoughts on, we create more of. So if you’re focusing on all the things you don’t like, all the things you don’t have, and all the things you don’t want, you create more of that. Because where thought goes, experience follows. We don’t want anymore of that.

So now you focus on what you would like and what you want because you have become clear about it. Put this list in an area where you can look at it on a regular basis.

It doesn’t do any good if you’re going to do this exercise and then take your list and stick it in your sock drawer. It defeats the purpose.

I hope that’s helpful. Let me know if you try it. Let me know what your results are. When I’m giving a tip, I’m always invested in how it turns out for the people who use it. And if you find yourself challenged with it, I’d like to know that too; maybe I can help you move from that place of not being clear to becoming clear.*

Here for your success,

James

* Another way I can help you become clear is by having your own “Clarity, Strategy, Action” Session, which is a  100% free, no-risk, no obligation session. To learn more about the CSA session, you can check out the information here.

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