How can you expect to arrive at a destination when you don’t know what direction you’re going in? By finding your North Star. Your North Star is a self-defined vision of your future. It’s the beacon of hope that drives today’s actions to fulfil your future ambitions. This blog is therefore for people who are a little bit lost, confused or discontent with how their life is going. If you feel discontent now, it’s unlikely avoiding your concerns are going to make you life any easier in the long run. Be bold enough to find your North Star now to find prosperity sooner. You only get one life so don’t waste a minute of it.I hope by understanding how to find your North Star you are able to revitalise the meaning and purpose in your life, and each day strive towards your ideal greatest ambitions.
To help you find your North Star we are going to explore the following ideas:
- Find out what your North Star isn’t
- Be open to radical change to find your North Star
- You might need to improve your capabilities before you can pursue your North Star
- The North Star moves and changes
- The North Star can be anything
- You don’t necessarily need a North Star to be happy
I have long discovered my own North Star and undergone radical transformation where necessary to ensure every component of my life is a conscious decision. Similarly, I have supported and challenged my clients’ views of themselves so they too can live with a sense of guidance and purpose. I hope this advice provokes similar inspiration.
Find out what your North Star isn’t
It’s completely reasonable that you might have zero direction but stay busy. When you feel like you don’t have direction, going as hard as you can in any direction is a lot better than doing nothing. It’s important you continue to pursue different endeavours as if they were your North Star despite lacking passion because it’s a lot easier to know what you’re not passionate about when you’re doing it. For example, perhaps you realise social impact is really important to you after working a job that pays well but feels soulless. Perhaps you realise the people you collaborate with is more important than the social impact after working two similar job roles, but loving one and disliking the other. Regardless of what lesson the experience teaches you it’s important to acknowledge how much it teaches you about yourself. Even if you think you know something, test it. Our ideations of things don’t always match up to reality. There is just no experience like first-hand, visceral experience. This is why ‘life experience’ is thought of so positively, because it doesn’t lie. Getting out in the world and learning wisdom through experience will teach you things that couldn’t be learnt in a book or in a coaching call. The important takeaway in finding your North Star here is don’t wait for it to find you. You finding it is the right of passage that galvanizes you personally and forces you to take strong convictions on your preferences.
You might need to improve your capabilities before you can pursue your North Star
You may have a North Star, but don’t have the capabilities yet to fulfill it yet. There is a lot of work to be done before you can even begin to chase your North Star. For example, in an extreme case, you want to find the perfect partner to build a family with, but you’re a mess – poor mental health, socially isolated, no purpose or passion. In this case, clearly, a lot of pre-conditioning needs to be done. There is a positive here though, admitting you have a North Star so far removed from your current existence reflects a lot of your true desires. However, the difficulty in improving your capabilities are that skills take time. And with learning new things, be it personally or professionally you need determination and will-power. And with the need for discipline comes the inevitability that most people will falter on their promises and give up on their goals. To avoid failure put yourself in environments where you’re forced to be disciplined. For example, jobs are great ways to learn skills because you have to show up and invest your time otherwise you’ll have no money and be fired. Hobbies involving groups or teams where people depend on you to show up make it increasingly unlikely you won’t bother to show up one day. So if you long for a North Star that feels far out of reach, good, at least you know what you want. Now you just need to create an environment conducive to improving your capabilities before you can pursue your North Star. Be patient, it’s worth it.
Be open to radical change to find your North Star
As I’ve hinted at above your North Star can be radically different from where you’re at now. Overcoming the doubt and denial to hold the conviction of a North Star wildly removed from your reality is an accomplishment in itself. Rationally speaking, you’re looking up ‘Ways to find Your North Star’ because you’re dissatisfied with your life. Likely indicating something else needs to be added that you’re not already doing needs to be added to your life to make you content. It’s therefore entirely rational to be radical in whereabouts you look to find your North Star because it’s likely far removed from where you are. What you’re doing isn’t working, so go big and find something that does. It’s unlikely you’ll have transferrable experience for every new endeavour in your life. But by being able to embrace starting at zero and as a complete novice you open yourself up to the most opportunities in life. So take pride in how radical the change may have to be for you to find your North Star. Overcoming your own doubts to pursue your true desires might be one of the most liberating, fulfilling decisions you ever make.
The North Star moves and changes
Finding your North Star is an everlasting process. Trust me, even if you were to fulfill all the North Star’s currently imaginable to you, you would soon find yourself seeking a new North Star. That’s because having a purpose to your life is essential to your wellbeing. To exist without the purpose of a North Star is to live in spiritual poverty. There are huge junctions in your life that require your North Star to change – retirement for example. But there can be other changes that arise more subtly in your life that change your North Star. Say for example you’re part through building the capabilities you thought you needed to go on and chase a business prospect, but at some point along the way you think you’ve found something else, it’s okay to pivot. You’re allowed to learn new things about yourself and adjust your plan accordingly. Just acknowledge there is a difference between changing and quitting; don’t change because you want to quit, change because you’re too inspired not to. Knowing when to change your North Star or retrospectively asking your ‘has it changed?’ is an extremely personal question. All I can advice is that you know in your heart of heart what’s right. And as long as you continue to pursue your goals with a strong tenacity you will find your North Star.
The North Star can be anything
I have been framing the North Star mostly as a business/ career ambition. However, the North Star is much more than this. Finding your North Star is more so discovering the lifestyle that makes brings you fulfillment. It’s entirely holistic, containing everything from your relationship, job, religion and health etc. So striving towards success in one department of your life, say your fitness and health might demonstrate massive progress and achievement, but not affect another aspect of your North Star, life your finances, whatsoever. It’s therefore important to assess all the aspects of your life and set North Star’s for each of them. Not all have to be radically ambitious, just conscientiously acknowledge how content you are in each area. And if by assessing all the parts of your life you realise you’re not fulfilled then that’s fine too. You can pursue a life specific to all your desires. If it’s easier to think of your North Star as the combination of lots of smaller North Stars representing different aspects of your life then do, there are no rules.
You don’t necessarily need a North Star to be happy
My final point on finding your North Star, perhaps controversially, is that you may not need a North Star at all to find what you are looking for. It’s easy to assume it’s a lack of all the things you don’t have, or the absence of that far reaching mission that cause you to seek more. However, you can’t assume you even know the correct question you’re trying to answer. As confusing as it is, bear in mind the source of your unfulfillment could be something you hadn’t considered at all. Perhaps most of the progress you could make is by looking at what you already have through a different perspective, like rejuvenating your relationships with loved ones. It’s easy to get hyper focused on seeing the world for what it isn’t, but it’s entirely plausible that perspective exactly is what causes the feelings on unfulfillment. So to find your North Star, sometimes it’s worth considering ‘What do I really want, that I don’t already have?’.
Conclusion
As you can tell from my detailed explanation finding your North Star is no easy task. You’re going to have to be self-aware enough to know when something isn’t for you, even if your life is completely wrapped up in it. Whilst balancing these reflections with the steeliness required to persevere through adversity.
Ultimately, whatever you want to call it, the North Star symbolises a process of progress, of moving forward to a better position. However uncertain and challenging that path is I urge you to have faith you’ll get there. There is something inherent in someone like you who is even willing to question their North Star. And whatever part of you has asked that question will no doubt call you to again for change. My last advice is to acknowledge the voices inside you with open arms, no matter how challenging on painful. The sooner your embrace the depth of your own character the sooner you will find your North Star regardless of all other advice. Good luck, I wish you every success and more.