Following Your North Star

This morning, I was reading an email from the owner of a Prana, an apparel company I support, and she mentioned her pride that her business was able to remain true to their North Star, despite all of the uncertainty of 2021.

She was talking about her mission statement, but the way she phrased it – staying true to their North Star – got me thinking about my own North Star.

According to EarthSky, the North Star or Pole Star—aka Polaris—is famous for holding nearly still in our sky while the entire northern sky moves around it. The fact that it was a fixed point made it an excellent beacon and navigation tool. Slaves escaping to northern states and Canada used it to guide their journey.

Metaphorically speaking, your North Star is your inner compass; the part of you that knows your passion, purpose, and life direction.

For some people, their faith is their North Star. No matter what happens in their lives, they know what’s most important to them and they are going to make decisions in accordance with their faith. It’s clear.

But I don’t think most of us spend time writing our own personal mission statement - we come up with goals, sometimes loosely, of losing weight or sleeping better or moving better - but sometimes it's easy to fall away from those goals because we're moving toward them blindly.

According to psychologist Rick Hanson, Ph.D (author of Buddha's Brain and many others) "When you find your North Star, you know where you're headed. That alone feels good. Plus, your North Star is (presumably) wholesome and vital, so aiming toward it will bring more and more happiness and benefit to yourself and others. And you can dream bigger dreams and take more chances in life since if you lose your way, you've got a beacon to home in on."

The new year is an exciting time for most people – whether or not you’ve made a habit of setting goals or intentions or not – most folks tend to enjoy the blank slate feeling of a new year. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Doug, it’s that writing down your goals and your vision is one of the best things you can do.

But if you're not sure what those goals are in service of - loving more completely, living more completely, living a life in service of others - it's going to be difficult to keep yourself on track in March and July and October.

We all lose our way at one time or another. But the most helpful thing you can do for yourself in those moments of feeling lost, is to come back to your own North Star.

As with anything, it's possible to have more than one North Star - being the best parent you can be and being the best teacher you can be - but it's important to be clear on what your current North Star is.

And if you're curious on how to go about figuring that out, start with your values. Take some time to write and reflect. Take some quiet time in nature and stop talking to yourself, and start listening to your heart.