transformation – Sarah K Peck

How I used Think Clearly’s Clarity Cards to inspire wisdom and peace at the end of my pregnancy. I wrote this out when I was eight months pregnant, and it helped tremendously.

Writing things down helps me understand things better.

As a nine-month pregnant lady living on stitched-together patches of sleep, planning for new motherhood, and wrapping up my many projects in startup land, finding time to write (and write coherently) is becoming an increasing struggle.

Suffice it to say, my book writing has gone a little bit haywire.

Instead, I journal as often as I could, whenever I can.

Sometimes it’s at 3 AM in the morning if the baby kicks me awake (or gives me one of those yelp-inducing punches to the bladder), sometimes it’s late at night to get me to go to sleep, and more often than not, it comes out in scribble notes in my iPhone while on the way in and out of the city on Manhattan’s clunky old C-train.

Pregnancy is both never-ending, and over so suddenly, so I want to write about it and capture it while I can.

(And if you’re only having one or two kids, you’re only pregnant for so long: and then you’re not. Maybe ever again.)

I want to understand it. I want to catalog it. I want to explain it, tell the stories of pregnancy.

Yet understanding pregnancy and being pregnant are so monumental. What does it mean? How does it feel? Who am I, and how is that changing?

So I used the Clarity Cards to spend 12 minutes journaling about pregnancy, and surprised myself with how quickly I charted out thoughtful ideas, insights, and clear perspectives on being pregnant.

A guided framework for journaling and gaining clarity

The deck of cards was surprisingly simple to use.

It walks you through four steps.

For each step, you take 2–3 minutes to write down as much as you can. You can go longer if you’d like, or keep it short and simple. The first step is the simplest, and by getting your pen onto paper quickly, it makes the process easier. Much like Julia Cameron writes about in The Artist’s Way, just getting pen on paper and making a list can be an extraordinary way to dive into your mind.

Here’s how I did it:

Prep: Grab some pages to write on.

I have a Moleskine I love using, and so I cleared fresh sheets and got out a teal blue pen to write with, because that sounded like fun. Make sure you’re not distracted (I prefer a Moleskine or loose paper on a desk without any other items on it — no computer, phone, or other distractions. Yes, take off your Apple Watch!). Have a timer ready.

Next: Choose a topic or area of focus.

Choose a topic or a subject. I suppose you could just let something tumble out, or try to define a problem. For my sake, and as the example in this essay, I chose “Pregnancy” as the topic, because I was struggling to understand it, and these prompts helped me unpack it.

I then stacked the four sets of cards out face-down in front of me in four piles, and started a timer.

Step 1: The Facts

The first set of prompts is related to “the facts.” I pulled my first card, and it simply said, “What are the facts?”

I began by making a simple list.

I am pregnant. I have swollen and sore feet. I am doing Mathias’ Clarity Cards. I’m in the 9th month. I weight X pounds… (and more, but I won’t tell you all the details right now).

I pulled another card and continued listing. The prompts said things like “What is going on?” and “What is happening?”

My observations: It was easy to begin with a simple list of what the facts are. Even just the act of writing “I am pregnant” somehow makes it seem more real. I know, of course, that I’ve got a watermelon belly and I’m waddling around the city peeing at every coffee shop I can find, but still — it helps to list out all of the pieces of this puzzle, no matter how obvious.

The act of list-making can be profoundly useful as an instrument for getting inside of your own mind and beginning the process of journaling. Never underestimate the power of making lists.

Step 2: Feelings

The second set of prompts asks you to write down how you feel about the situation. Prompts included questions like “What gives you energy?” and “What are you sad about?” and other guided questions to help you understand how you feel about the situation.

Again, I spent a quick 2–3 minutes on the next clean page in my Moleskine journal to jot down as much as I could. I spent about a minute per card and wrote whatever came to mind first.

Observations: It was wonderful to parse out facts versus feelings. It’s one thing to be pregnant (fact), and it’s a completely separate thing to have a set of feelings about it (excited! happy! scared! kind of in shock!). My list included things like “I feel like a beached whale,” and “My stomach is really tender in the center,” and “I feel much more vulnerable and in need of protection than my normal, ambitious, athletic self.” It went from physical feelings to deeper emotional layers, like “I feel like my identity is transforming,” and “there are parts of me that are changing so quickly, it’s hard to get used to.”

It can be difficult to separate out feelings and facts, and this was an easy way to do it. In addition, the act of taking time to focus just on feelings let a lot of them tumble out. If you’re not used to talking about your feelings, having a guided set of cards prompt you through it can help you find awareness.

Step 3: Insights

The third set of questions asks you to probe a bit further. What are you learning, deducing, and understanding? How are you interpreting these facts and feelings? What insights have you gained? This step takes you from observation to analysis.

I stumbled a bit here, because the first question was “What insights have you gained?” and I felt myself think dismissively, “Um, none.”

So I began this third step the way the whole process began, which was: simply.

My first insight? “Drinking a lot of water helps the headaches go away.”

From there, it became easier to write out insights, and because I was writing quickly, it was almost startling how fast I dug into deeper insights. Once I started, it was like they were ready to come tumbling out of me. “Rest yourself as often as you recharge your iPhone, if not more,” and “It’s your own learning process and your own journey, unique to you,” and “Take time to reconcile external readings and advice with your own internal wisdom,” all made it onto my list of insights about the experience of pregnancy.

Yes, this.

Gosh I felt smarter just writing it down. Nodding my head. It was like the wisdom was there all along, but I hadn’t had a clear way of seeing it.

Intuitively, I know that each of these things are true, but the act of writing them down made them stronger, more powerful. They reminded me how important they are. They clarified, for me, what insights I have at my fingertips, if I’m willing to sit for a few minutes and record, reflect, and listen.

Step 4: Actions

The fourth and final section is about creating a set of actions that you’re going to take. What can you do with what you’ve observed, noticed, and felt? What steps can you take next?

At first, I was confounded. What “actions” do I take with “pregnancy”? There was a list I could draw up quickly, like “pack your hospital bag, set up an email auto-reply, stock your freezer with food,” but those seemed like just another list of tasks and errands. I could make a to-do list in my sleep; how could I apply this more broadly to a reflective session focused on the holistic concept of “pregnancy” and everything that it entailed?

Then the ideas that came forward seemed both obvious and silly. I wrote them down:

Decisions to be made:
— It’s okay for the baby to come.
— We are ready.
— This will be great.
— We can handle this.

What am I going to do?
— Give birth.
— Become a mom.
— Work hard during labor and delivery!
— Rest fully and recover well.

What is the next step?
— Rest. Allow. Enjoy. Be.

And Exhale.

The power of putting words to paper continues to astound me. Twelve minutes of writing and journaling later, and there’s a renewed sense of calm about the transition that’s coming up ahead of us.

Recognizing that then, at the end of my pregnancy, I was getting ready to meet my little boy and bring him into the world — this makes me tear up. And it’s okay. The next things to do are to be here, in the moment. And to decide: decide that it’s okay, that we’re ready, and that it’s time. And to rest, allowing the process to unfold. I have a bit of work ahead of me as I achieve the physical feat of pushing a new human out into the big world ahead, and I think it’s going to be great. I can’t wait.

2. We consistently allocate resources ineffectively. First, by over-allocating time and resources to our careers, and second, by under-allocating to our other pursuits.

“When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half-hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments,” he writes. And because our careers are the easiest place to measure our output, it’s easy to spend most of our time, effort, and energy on our careers. But is this wise, and is this truly what we want? “Raising a great kid,” doesn’t have an easy metric, and probably never will. But it might be something that you want to spend time on. Knowing that it’s harder to allocate time to things that aren’t as easy to measure output-wise can help us re-center our attention across all of the things that matter to us.

3. Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well.

If you’re managing other people, or even yourself, your job is extremely important. You don’t just manage the time people spend at work, you also shape the way people leave work at the end of the day, and how they are when they head home.

If you’ve been a shitty manager, you may have people leave work frustrated, disappointed, or discouraged, and that’s who they are when they head home to their families. What if you could manage to leave people inspired, accomplished, and satisfied, and they went home feeling full, grounded, and creative?

In my own business, it reminds me that I’m not just hiring someone to “get things done.” I’m hiring for relationships, for deeply satisfying work, and for joy. The people I’m working with now on Startup Pregnant are deeply intuitive, thoughtful, and mindful. They bring me joy to work with them, and, it’s my hope that I inspire them as well.

And in your own life, if you treat it like a business, reflect: how are you managing yourself and your time? Are you treating your life like the valuable asset and creation it is?

4. Consulting and coaching aren’t about providing specific solutions; they’re about guiding people through a process that helps them find the solution on their own.

“When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly,” Christensen writes. “Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models […] and they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.”

The most profound leaders all share this wise insight: that coaching and providing insight to others isn’t about telling them what to do. It’s about cultivating deep listening practices and guiding people towards a way to access insights within their own wisdom. What I’ve been reading lately — Krista Tippet’s On Being Wise, to Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, and to the deep listening practices from Thich Naht Hanh — are all influencing the models I’ve built in my private Mastermind accelerator. In our small group, where confidentiality and conversation are paramount, our monthly Deep Dive practices are not about giving advice to each other, but about constructive, effective deep listening practices to guide people into better understanding themselves and the puzzles they’re working on.

5. “Just this once” is the most dangerous justification, and is probably why people end up cheating, being dishonest, and going to jail.

The simplest justification to yourself is that you’ll only do something once. If you follow this to it’s logical end, you’ll regret where you end up.

6. Humility comes from high self-esteem, not low self-esteem.

Having a high sense of self-esteem and a high regard for others were the traits that Christensen found were most in line with the most humble people they knew. “They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were.” People who feel good about themselves are not boastful or self-deprecating. They are satisfied and eager to connect with others, and to help others grow as well.

In his work with the highest achievers at places like Harvard, he found that people could develop and grow to a point where they felt they no longer had mentors or people to look up to. This, however, was important to learn from. “If your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited,” he writes. Instead, stay humble, stay eager, and remember that you can learn from everyone.

7. Know how you measure your life

“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you’ve achieve; worry about the individuals you’ve helped to become better people.” — Christensen

As he gets older, Christensen says that his projects or accomplishments matter less and less, but the individual lives he’s touched are what matters most. I’m inspired to bring this into my life, and remember that now, the only thing I have is the people in front of me in this moment, and the attention and love I can bring into today.

And as I finish typing this, my baby is knocking on the crib, reminding me that it’s time to put my book down, set my phone aside, and go help him up out of the crib and into his day. Spending time with him might not get more writing done, and it might not help me check off more from my To-Do list for work, but it will be part of the whole life that I’m living, and I’m grateful to spend time with him. And I’m grateful that this morning, I woke up early enough to write again. In reflecting on my self-management, I wonder, is it time to start rising early again to make more space for writing?

Tag: transformation

A 4-Step Guided Framework for Journaling and Gaining Immediate Clarity