{"id":20,"date":"2014-02-03T16:01:03","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T16:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becominggreat\/?p=20"},"modified":"2014-02-03T16:01:03","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T16:01:03","slug":"clarity-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/becominggreat\/2014\/02\/clarity-continued.html","title":{"rendered":"Clarity continued&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before I continue with clarity, I wanted to give you a bit of my story and how it relates to clarity. I&#8217;m from a small town Lancaster, Texas ( a suburb of Dallas) and my childhood though on the surface was great, it was filled with many hardships. I was bullied, made fun of, and emasculated on almost a daily basis\u00a0 (college would be a place of misunderstanding as well ). My self-worth,\u00a0 esteem, and my masculinity were nil and my friendships were one-sided. I was a friend to them they weren&#8217;t to me.\u00a0 I was depressed and felt\u00a0 alone and that I didn&#8217;t matter or had a place in this world. It wasn&#8217;t until\u00a0 my Father spoke his final words and wishes for my life that I had a spark of hope. He said that I would change the lives of people and help young men become men and that I would write a book to help many (how accurate!!). And\u00a0 when he died I was 24.\u00a0 The process of healing began to take place in my life (it would be an almost 9-year process).<\/p>\n<p>It got so dark, cold and lonely.\u00a0 It was some nights I would ask God to not wake me up because I couldn&#8217;t take the pain any longer. I was in agony.\u00a0 I remember laying prostrate on the floor in my apartment in tears\u00a0 before the Lord and saying to myself &#8221; Lord just send somebody who cares to help me.&#8221;\u00a0 And God answered that prayer.\u00a0 I had a stranger come into my life and he life coached me.\u00a0 The first thing he did\u00a0 for me was to be clear about some things:\u00a0 I was a child of God, I was a Man of God and that I&#8217;m worthy of greatness entering my life. But, before I could even get to that place I had to map out my life and my problems and address them one by one.\u00a0 I discovered through my process that I was never going to be able to achieve anything if I didn&#8217;t have a clear mind and spirit to even ponder and dream.\u00a0 Throughout our journey, one of the things that my friend emphasized to me was that I would have to be alone for a while; intentionally.\u00a0 I\u00a0 removed myself from the world at hand and I began to pray more, write more and deal with the process that I was going through.\u00a0 Solitude is a great component of clarity.\u00a0 Sometime we have to remove ourselves from the world to get alone and spend some time communicating with God, ourselves and the future we want.\u00a0 I&#8217;m reminded of how Jesus would depart from the disciples and he would go be alone to pray and get renewed and get more insight about his journey.<\/p>\n<p>The same principle applies to us.\u00a0 We must have scheduled alone-time.\u00a0 This is absolutely essential for our greatness.\u00a0 No matter how hectic or demanding our lives may be we must intentionally seek a quiet space in our lives to be able to collect our thoughts.\u00a0 This is a non-negotiable.\u00a0 When I began to seek solitude that&#8217;s when the ideas and positive thoughts started to sink in. When my friend suggested I write a book, the thoughts of my conversation with my dad began to rise up within me.\u00a0 But, I wouldn&#8217;t have arrived at that place if I hadn&#8217;t incorporated the discipline of solitude.\u00a0 It&#8217;s important to note that solitude isn&#8217;t being lonely, it is a conscious decision to withdraw from our lives to seek God and clarity.\u00a0 No matter if its five to ten minutes it&#8217;s a great way to begin your new life.\u00a0 Start out small and work your way up to an hour of you-time.\u00a0 Remember you have the ability to not only change your world, but the world as a whole&#8230;&#8230;BE GREAT!<\/p>\n<p>Until Next Time,<\/p>\n<p>Pervis<\/p>\n<p><em>Pervis Taylor, III is an Author, Life Coach, Speaker and Contributor. His books Pervis Principles Volume 1 and 2 are available exclusively on his website: <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pervistaylor.com\/author\" target=\"_blank\">www.pervistaylor.com\/author<\/a><\/em><em>. He resides in New York City. Follow him on twitter @pervistaylor or facebook <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pervistaylor3\"><em>www.facebook.com\/pervistaylor3<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden;color: #000000;background-color: #ffffff;text-align: left;text-decoration: none\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before I continue with clarity, I wanted to give you a bit of my story and how it relates to clarity. I&#8217;m from a small town Lancaster, Texas ( a suburb of Dallas) and my childhood though on the surface was great, it was filled with many hardships. I was bullied, made fun of, and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":567,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Clarity continued.... - Becoming Great<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clarity continued.... - Becoming Great\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Before I continue with clarity, I wanted to give you a bit of my story and how it relates to clarity. 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