Finding Your North Star

“The soul of the world” by Tomas Sanchez

What wants to be expressed in your life? What is your soul's desire?  What is your purpose? What is the meaning in your life? Why do these questions matter?

Because we are in a crisis. In a crisis in which meaning got replaced by material achievements, constant distraction, and superficial hedonistic excesses. These are all possible attempts to stuff the void which is there because we humans are meaning-seeking beings and many lost a deeper meaning.

We get taught by culture to follow a certain path and I don't claim that there is an organization that is consciously trying to rub us from meaning and satisfaction. But it's a trend that developed over time. We have arrived at a time in which the commonly agreed narrative is to make a career, to buy stuff, to get home, to go on vacation 1-2 a year, to have a family, and after 40 years of working entering the well-deserved pension. And there is for sure nothing wrong with it. I believe that creating a family is probably one of the most satisfying things that you can experience in life. But the question is if this narrative is aligned with your personal story that wants to be expressed, that will create a sense of meaning and satisfaction and that will feel right.

The cultural narrative is crumbling. Best seen in the urge of millennials to have a job that has a positive impact on the world (Ninety percent of millennials in a study said it was either "somewhat important" or "very important"). A loss of traditions that taught people to find purpose and meaning (e.g. rites of passages, elders, vision quests, etc.) and the lack of role models in our direct environment, leave us uninspired and with failed attempts to answer the above questions with logic.

And to be clear at this point, I don't believe there is an ultimate purpose in our own life. I believe there are different purposes that someone can live and that they change over time. My psyche called me to be in service in the way I'm today but this is not the end product, it is constantly evolving and shifting shapes. Even though over time a bigger picture crystallized, the path is always changing, it brings me to new intersections and new places. Nothing I could have planned out this way. 

Four principles helped me to navigate the path and to become aware of the intersections, the possible directions, and to identify from where they stem: culture, ego, or something more personal? It supported me to decide to become a breathwork facilitator, a coach and to quit my well-paid and safe job in one of the biggest tech companies in Europe and enter the world of entrepreneurship with faith and confidence. The following four points are about the connection to the inner knowing which are helping me to navigate life:

Connect with your inspiration

What do you feel drawn to? What are you inspired by? There is a mysterious force in us that pulls us towards certain things that inspire us. We are not consciously choosing it. It is basically choosing for us. This is the source that will support you in navigating your life. And probably you don't see how this makes sense and how this feeds into your purpose, but these inspirations are creating an imprint in you and will inform the way you express yourself in the world.

Connect with your values

There are values taught by our cultural and personal values. It has helped me immensely to grow and to make decisions, to a degree that I didn't expect.⁣ Discovering values through life is like discovering seals, that hold certain magic over your life.⁣ They are gravitational points that you see in your life always coming up. ⁣ Look at stories, music, people that you feel inspired by, what values are connected to it? One practice is to note down your values, creating principles out of them, and bring them into an honor code (you can see an example of an honor code here).

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions.” - Gandhi

Connect to your inner space

What we are seeking is seeking us as well. ⁣Wisdom, purpose, insight, soul. What I experienced in my practice but also my work with other people is that these things want to be seen, heard, and expressed. And so often it just needs our openness and availability to be received. ⁣Making us available through practices that bring us closer to our nature and give us a break from our mental repetitive chattering. Breathwork, distraction-free solitude, meditation, journaling, vision quests, and many others can help you to create this availability and openness.

“Truth is not hidden. You are hiding from it.” - Sadhguru

Connect with your body

A simple example of an everyday choice and how to connect to your body is supporting you: Recently I couldn't decide if I should go to have a walk in the forest or to stay home and read. What a difficult and life-changing decision, I know ;) . But it's a good example: I was talking to my partner about it and she told me to close my eyes, take a few conscious breaths, and experience how it feels to go to the forest. I felt some excitement rising in my body and I knew that this is what I should do. Sometimes it's about putting your rationals beyond and checking in with your body on what feels right for you at that moment, what inspires you and creates a certain excitement. Use felt sense meditations to learn to listen to these subtle messages and sensations. The felt sense is the gateway to your inner knowing as it can be found in the borderline between the conscious and unconscious and is always communicating to us.

And whatever is arising doesn't have to make complete sense for you. E.g. I don't exactly understand why I always felt drawn to darker stuff and why certain music inspires me. But both things are helping me in a way to move forward on this path and into a direction that feels aligned with my inner world. 

To wrap up this article: What is your compass? The compass of the outer world? Or are you able to build this connection to yourself and to acknowledge where the needle is pointing towards?  And remember it's not necessary that you have to know the end goal and how to get there, it's about taking the steps towards what you feel drawn to and what excites you. Emily Dickinson wrote:

“The sailor cannot see the north but knows the needle can.”

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