Episode Summary

Clarity is not a feeling — it’s a system. This episode of the Pocket Ninja Podcast, explores why clarity, not confidence, is the real catalyst for decisive action, sustainable success, and peace of mind.

Using real client stories and personal experience, Jehanne breaks down how clarity works, why it’s often missing, and how having your own framework for values, strengths, and goals changes the way you make decisions — even the hardest ones.

This episode reframes clarity as a competitive advantage, showing how aligned decision-making unlocks courage, commitment, and contentment in both professional and personal life.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• How clarity fuels courage, commitment, and peace of mind
• What clarity actually means in real life and leadership
• Why confidence fails where clarity succeeds
• How systems create ease in complex decisions
• Why your clarity must be customized to you

Ready to Activate Your Inner Ninja?
If this episode sparked something in you and you’re ready to ignite your inner ninja in your career, business, and personal life, book your complimentary Clarity Conversation — your inner ninja will thank you later.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Pocket Ninja Podcast, where big picture wisdom meets practical tools.

Do you have big dreams, but you just don’t know which ones to pursue? So that leaves you stuck? Or do you wanna work on your dreams, but you don’t take action on them? Or maybe you get started, but you never fully commit and follow through, or no matter what, you’re always second guessing your choices.

If any of this sounds familiar, then this podcast episode is for you.

Today, we’re deep diving into the most powerful and versatile tool you’ll ever need. Today, we’re talking about clarity.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know what clarity actually is, how to find it, even when things are foggy, complicated, or challenging, and why clarity is your ultimate advantage.

Let’s get into it.

Hi, I am Jehanne. I’m the founder of Pocket Ninja Strategies, where I coach and train ninjas. And I am not talking about martial arts. I’m talking about people who are ninjas, both personally and professionally.

And I define ninjas as daring dreamers, purposeful learners, courageous transformers, and bold action takers.

This episode is so important because clarity is a superpower, and understanding it, developing skills around it, and using it relentlessly unlocks your power. And it’s the only thing I have ever found that has helped me succeed consistently.

Let me tell you what I know to be true and what I’ve seen over and over again with clients I’ve worked with and from my own experience.

All my clients are ninjas. People just like you. And there’s just one thing in the way. A lack of clarity.

When ninjas get clear, boom, they take off like a rocket. They start making decisions, taking actions. They stay committed. They have more ease.

Why?

Because clarity is the fuel that activates the four driving forces for ninjas and unlocks the power of the clarity effect.

Let’s get into this clarity thing so we can start understanding it.

The dictionary definition of clarity is the quality of being easy to understand.

Let me say it again.

Clarity is the quality of being easy to understand.

And this makes a lot of sense when we think about communication. For example, when you’re in the airport and you’re trying to find your way, it’s very easy to say whether the signage is clear or not because either it’s easy to understand or it’s not.

So this is pretty simple.

Clarity means being easy to understand.

But if we look at clarity — the quality of being easy to understand — in the context of your personal life, or your professional life, or your organization, it gets much foggier.

Like, is it really easy for you to understand how to make career choices, how to make decisions, how to set boundaries, what strategy to go with?

For example, imagine you have a great new job opportunity, but it’s way farther away and it will require a lot of commuting. The position is exactly what you’re looking for in your career goals, but it doesn’t feel right because of the commuting.

This job advancement versus the commute leaves you second guessing every attempt to make this decision.

When you decide to go for the job advancement, you feel very uneasy about it. You know taking on this commute isn’t quite right.

So then you think, okay, I won’t take it.

But then giving up this big important opportunity leaves you feeling like you’re gonna regret it later.

This decision, this fork in the road, is not clear. It does not have the quality of being easy to understand.

And this leaves you unable to decide because you can’t easily understand what the decision is, or more importantly, how to make the decision.

This problem shows up in business too.

As a business owner, do I choose customer satisfaction over profitability? How do I make that decision? Should I choose satisfaction over profitability? Oh, and then another moment, I wanna choose profitability over satisfaction. How do I know which one?

It’s not easy to understand what to do.

The real definition of clarity is being easy to understand. But the how of clarity is having a system to work from so we can think things through and make a decision.

This system creates clarity — being easy to understand.

A system for business and life is content plus hierarchy, and that creates a system.

So the things we have to make decisions about, plus the ranking of how they compare to each other, creates a system.

I know this sounds like a lot, but don’t worry. We will get into it and explain it.

So let’s take a real life example.

With many of my clients, we do what I call a personal playbook. And it’s designed to help them get clear on everything they want in their life so they can go out and achieve it.

The personal playbook is made up of 3 core pillars — values, strengths, and goals.

These pillars are like the content, the things in your life.

But if I only give you the content — so we identify your 5 values, your 5 strengths, and your 5 goals — that’s 15 things.

But if there’s no hierarchy with those, no framework, no system, then knowing your 5 values, your 5 strengths, and your 5 goals is not gonna help you at all.

Because your new job is a goal, but time for fitness is also a goal, and time with family is a value.

So all the things that matter are competing on the same level.

This is why you end up not clear, and it’s not easy to understand how to make the choice.

But if we create a system by putting together your top 5 values and rank them in order 1 to 5, and your strengths 1 to 5, and your goals 1 to 5, now you have content and hierarchy that makes a system.

And the system is what makes the decision easy to understand.

So I use this example of commuting versus job goals versus fitness and time for family because this is an exact situation one of my clients was in.

And what I love so much about this story is when this happened to my client, we had just completed their professional playbook — their system for clarity — which included their values, strengths, and goals in this hierarchical order, in this system.

And instead of my client being stressed, stuck, conflicted, or spinning about this really important choice, they showed up to their coaching session and announced to me how this opportunity came up, how they felt so conflicted, and then how they looked at their values, strengths, and goals and immediately became clear that taking the job was not the right choice for them.

Because in their professional playbook, their family and their health were way higher up in the hierarchy than career advancement.

So this client was able to make a really challenging decision fast and definitively because they had a system that made it easy to understand why they should make that decision and why not taking the job felt so much better.

This system also allowed my client to remember why they made that choice for themselves, and also gave them a way to explain it to other people.

So it’s not that my client was confident, or that the decision was emotionally easy to make — because let me tell you, it wasn’t.

Giving up what looks like a perfect job is not an emotionally easy decision to make.

But for this client, it was so clear — meaning easy to understand — why the job wasn’t the right move for them, which allowed them to make the choice fast and with a lot of peace of mind.

The next thing I want you to know about clarity is that clarity is your competitive advantage.

What? That doesn’t even make sense.

Let me explain. Because it does.

How everyone achieves clarity is the same. You get clarity through having some sort of framework or system that makes challenging decisions easier to understand.

And although everyone has the same structure for clarity, everyone’s content in the system is unique to them.

So your values, your strengths, and your goals — and the hierarchy you put them in — is different from others, which creates your own unique system that only works for you.

And this is why we often feel so unclear and so indecisive.

We can’t find the clarity we’re looking for because we don’t have our own system.

But also, we get really lost and confused when we’re trying to use other people’s systems.

So for example, if I go back to the career choice that I was talking about, and I try to figure out what to do by asking different people — my parents, my adventurous friends, my practical friends, my siblings — I’m gonna get totally different answers.

And this is why we go in circles and feel so confused and conflicted about our decisions.

We will never be able to make choices that feel good for ourselves when we’re trying to use someone else’s system or a combination of other people’s systems.

It’s like Cinderella’s glass slipper. My system only works for me.

And that’s okay.

Because you weren’t meant to live by someone else’s goals and values.

And this also applies professionally too.

The strategy for one person’s business is not what you or I would do, but it works for them. And that’s what makes them different.

So for example, when I started Pocket Ninja Strategies, I had a friend come to me and offer me a really interesting opportunity.

And oh man, it was so interesting.

But I knew it didn’t align to my top values and goals.

And in offering the opportunity, he said to me, “But I really want you to do this. You can be part of my company and you can get really rich.”

Let’s be honest — I’m not against getting really rich.

But I know for me, there was a specific impact I wanted to make, and this opportunity wasn’t about making that impact.

So I told my friend, “Yeah, I do wanna be very successful and earn lots of money, but I value making a difference in a certain way, and this opportunity just doesn’t serve that. So I’m okay being less rich if I’m working on the thing that matters to me.”

And don’t get me wrong — this was not easy.

Turning down this really good and interesting opportunity with someone who really believed in me was hard.

And also at the time, I didn’t have tons of belief in myself.

So it would’ve felt really good to just hitch onto their thing. It would’ve taken the pressure off me. It would’ve provided me more security and a feeling of validation.

But my system — my values, strengths, and goals — were so clear that I was compelled to turn down this opportunity no matter how good it seemed.

And that was so interesting to me at that time.

Because when I stated it to him so clearly about my values and my goals, he got immediately what I was saying and stopped trying to convince me.

Which was something new to me.

This didn’t mean he agreed with me. But I think I was so clear that he got that I was certain about my choice.

It was a big breakthrough.

Because I hadn’t been decisive and certain in the past.

This clarity and the power of it was really new to me.

In the past, I had been easily persuaded into things that didn’t feel quite right.

I would often people please and substitute in other people’s judgment or values or goals.

And then I would be in a situation that didn’t make me feel good.

So here’s where that competitive advantage comes in around having your own clarity.

#1 — You’ll be more powerful when you know what matters to you and what you want.

You’re more likely to make bold decisions, set boundaries, and clearly state your mind.

And you’ll be less pushed around by other people’s powerful ideas.

#2 — You’ll be faster.

You’ll make choices faster. You’ll spend less time fussing about them, even if they’re really difficult.

#3 — You’ll create a lot more workability for yourself.

Meaning you’ll make more decisions and ask for more things that work for you.

Which means you’ll get set up for success more and can thrive even more.

So operating by your own value system to create powerful clarity is like the difference between being an Olympic athlete with generic food, training, and sports gear versus having a customized nutrition plan, training program, and sports gear.

The customization helps you feel your best and perform your best.

Let me share a little story with you.

My top 3 values are freedom, adventure, and leadership.

Those are powerful values — but they’re also challenging.

They kind of create problems if you’re trying to have a very traditional career path.

I was struggling in my career.

I was going from job to job and couldn’t figure out the problem.

Was it the organization? The job? The boss? Me?

Nothing seemed to work.

No matter how many times I changed jobs — sometimes my salary went up, sometimes it went down — the cycle just sucked.

But as I got clear on my values, I realized I had been trying to be someone I’m not.

I was trying to find an organization where I could work slow and steady, move up, and stay forever.

But that didn’t align with freedom, adventure, and leadership.

When I stopped fighting my nature and started aligning my decisions to my values, I started Pocket Ninja Strategies.

I also ended up in a teaching career.

And that’s when I finally broke through my financial barriers.

It’s the longest I’ve ever stayed in a job — triple the length of any other role I’d had.

When you stop going against what works for you and start aligning to your own system of clarity, you’ll be more powerful — and you’ll thrive.

It’s like being planted in a garden instead of in cement.

The last thing I want to share with you is the clarity effect.

In the previous episode, I begged you to give up chasing confidence because confidence is a myth that does not work.

And instead, I wanted you to chase clarity.

Confidence promises success, victory over challenges, and comfort.

But confidence doesn’t actually give us these things.

Clarity does.

Clarity gives us a system for success.

Clarity compels.

Clarity compels courage — which leads to action.

Clarity compels commitment — which leads to perseverance.

Clarity compels contentment — which leads to peace of mind.

Clarity arms you with things you can use right now.

When I got clear about my values, strengths, and goals, I was compelled to start Pocket Ninja — no matter how I felt.

I was scared. But I was compelled.

And that clarity kept me going even when challenges came.

It gave me peace of mind, even when others disagreed.

So that’s it for this episode on the clarity effect.

Before you go, I want to ask you — what’s your one takeaway from this episode?

Thank you for tuning in to the Pocket Ninja Podcast, where big picture wisdom meets practical tools.

If this episode sparked something in you, go to http://www.pocketninjastrategies.com to book a complimentary clarity conversation.

Disclaimer: This podcast is designed to help you unleash your inner ninja. The ideas shared are not a substitute for personalized professional advice. Only you know what’s right for you.

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