My Compass

We all have a natural built in compass but so few of us know how to read our compass. Many people simply never take the time to look at it because we are too busy with our lives. Finding your compass requires us to reflect on life, understand where we have been, chart where we want to go and then figure out how to navigate our ways to our destination.

Some of us are not even bold enough to plot a direction. Why is that? I think it is all based on fear as committing to a direction means we are not also committing not to take our life in other directions. The fear of choosing 1% over the 99%. What is everyone so scared of? Realistically none of us will get to our destinations 100% of the time, but even if you get 80 or 90% of the direction correct, aren't you better off than not even starting the journey? Life has a way of shifting and humans have a unique ability to adapt as we proceed through the journey of life. We need to have faith that as things shift along the journey, we will shift as well and still make our way along the path to our intended destination.

This shifting is the challenging and oftentimes enjoyable part of the journey. Life throws all types of barriers in our way and how we adapt and continue to move down the path is in many ways the reward when we look back. Oftentimes, I am amazed at how I had the ability to overcome what life has thrown in my way and my ability to handle adversity and persevere.

Why do we persevere?

I think the key to perseverance is having an incredibly meaningful reason why you want to accomplish a goal or reach a destination. The stronger that desire the more willingness we all have to overcome adversity along the way. It all comes to a why - why are we chasing what we are chasing? If that why is incredibly powerful and meaningful to you, then the full commitment of your will power is stronger than anything life can throw in your way. There is a no stopping a fully committed person.

So how does someone get fully committed?

The key here is so yes to one thing and no to countless other possibilities. You need to separate the wheat from the chafe and have singular focus on a goal. From there you are dangerous so to speak as you can fully align your day to day decisions in alignment with achieving that goal. The hard part is simply saying yes to one thing.

If we all took just one thing and got fully committed to that singular goal, I have no doubt lives would change for the better. In my own life, when I used this in my personal and professional life, I saw dramatic changes. When I start out on a job search for example, I define in explicit detail exactly the job I am looking for which focuses and centers what I consider. What happens next is absolutely fascinating as all types of opportunities arise, but most of them are simply distractions. Saying yes also requires us to say no quite a few times. Life can be incredibly distracting and if you don't have a clear connection with a goal and your internal compass, then you will invariably sway off course. Given time and some focus, eventually the right types of opportunities that are in line with our goal do present themselves. Then you can actually start to make progress towards your eventual goal.

I am not saying it is easy. It takes a great deal of faith to pull this off as there are many dark days where you question if the right opportunity will ever present itself. But if you have the lens through which you look at the world - your lens - then life will be much clearer. You can filter out things that will create a lack of focus and in other cases opportunities are very close and you can mold those to be more in line with your goal. However, you can only do this when you know what you are looking for.

One last thought here, I mentioned faith. I have always felt we bring the energy, people and opportunities into our life that we ask for. There is no doubt this touches on your sense of spirituality and I have felt that if I know what I want and do the work to define the why, then this creates some type of energy in the universe. Invariably when I put this energy out, it comes back to me within a matter of days. I guess some call this faith, serendipity, or simply luck. But for me it is reinforces my underlying assumption that there is a bigger force in the universe that governs everything we do in and after our lives.