5 Steps to Clear Your Path in Life, Work, or Business

If you would like to feel less busy, less overwhelmed, and have more time and energy for the things that matter most to you in your life, work, or business, it is time to clear your path of the things that don't serve you. 

In this article, I share with you 5 steps to get started with that. But before we dive into that, let's just take a quick look at the problem many people face.  

Many people’s schedules are constantly full, and folks feel overwhelmed and overbusy a lot of the time. People feel swamped with everything they have to juggle every day and feel that things that really matter to them in their personal and professional lives are suffering as a result.  

This is a problem because if you are already running close to empty, feel exhausted, and have little time, space, or energy it is going to be difficult to change anything. Plus, it has a negative impact on your quality of life and wellbeing.  

It is important to keep in mind that it requires extra time and energy, over and above the time and energy you need to juggle all the daily responsibilities you already have on your plate, to create change successfully.  

Here are just three of the benefits of taking a Clear the Path approach to deal with all of that:

• Reduce feeling overwhelmed and overbusy.  
• Have more time, energy, and space to dedicate to things that matter to you. For example, a change you want to create, designing your next chapter, working on a new goal you want to achieve, or having fun with family and friends. 
• Improve quality of life and wellbeing.    

Creating a strategy to Clear Your Path of what doesn't serve you in your life, work, or business.  

Clearing Your Path is all about identifying the specific things that are getting in the way of how you want things to be in your life, work, or business, taking proactive action to deal with those things, and putting in place permanent solutions that will prevent them from recurring.   

Here are five steps to help you get started with clearing your path:

Step 1: Taking back control of your time and schedule.  

• Stop tolerating busyness. Commit to finding ways to free up time. 
• Identify what can you stop doing, reduce, or take out of your schedule.  
• Create strong criteria for what gets in your schedule. 
• Set a limit for how full you let your schedule get every day, week, and month. Your schedule should never be 100% full. Always build in space and contingency time.  
• Find ways to create regular time and space to dedicate to work on creating the changes that you want to make happen and to achieve the things that matter most to you. Protect that time.   

Step 2: Stop tolerating what doesn’t serve you in your life, work, or business.  

What you tolerate persists. Stop tolerating. Period. Ask yourself this question: “What am I tolerating that I would benefit from addressing?” Commit to finding a way to deal with those things.  

Step 3: Ask yourself this question:  

“What would I benefit from taking a "clear the path" approach to in my life, work, or business?” Take your answer to this question and create a Clear Your Path plan of action. Implement it.  

Step 4 – Prioritise energy 

A car can’t go anywhere without fuel. And if your car doesn’t have enough fuel in the tank, you are going to run out halfway to your destination. The same applies to your energy. It is the fuel that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Therefore, prioritizing it is essential.    

• Identify the things that drain your mental and physical energy. Find ways to eliminate or reduce them.  
• Identify things that boost your mental and physical energy. Find ways to do more of those things. 

Step 5: Keep your path clear as you move forward. 

Once you have cleared your path, it is useful to keep it that way.

• Identify things you can put in place to create permanent solutions.  
• Identify boundaries you would benefit from putting in place and implement them.  

Once you have worked through these five steps, get into action so that you can reap the many benefits clearing your path can create for you.  

Have fun experimenting with this. It is an exercise that can feel really empowering and liberating.