STEP THREE: CALIBRATING YOUR COMPASS

You’ve taken the first two steps to prepare for your E & E journey: You’ve come to understand the nature of the journey, and you’ve gotten started on taking a Knowcation.

Now it’s time to take the third preparatory step: calibrating your compass.

Unless you pay attention and work on calibrating your compass, your E & E journey will be aimless and directionless, and your destination will be determined by chance alone.

This is what I like to call “the default path,” and it’s most likely the one you’ve been living up until now.

You’ll find a path, alright (after all, every one of us finds some sort of path), but it may not be your path. Instead, it’ll be easy path– the one that “picked you” instead of you picking it.

That’s where having a compass comes into play.

Having a compass ensures that you’re always headed in the right direction, even if you don’t know exactly where you’ll end up.

It turns a process that would otherwise involve aimless wandering, blind trial & error, and chance opportunities into a process with crystal clear direction. It allows you to forge (or discover) a path that’s truly yours, even as you’re exploring and experimenting and staying open to possibility– even as you’re taking a Knowcation.

Engaging in a deliberate journey by following a conscious process makes all the difference, and in order to do this we require a compass to guide us.

So how do we calibrate our compasses? What can we use as an indicator of our “true north” and as a guide for taking and evaluating the steps we’ll take within our E & E journeys?

The answer is simple: aliveness.

By using what I like to call “aliveness” as your guide, you can be sure that you’re headed in the right direction, the direction of your truest self.

WHAT IS ALIVENESS?

What do I mean by aliveness?

Aliveness is the feeling you get when you’re feeling truly– well, alive.

You can use any word you’d like– joy, purpose, passion, excitement– but no matter what word you use, aliveness is that feeling you get whenever you’re feeling the most “you,” when you’re living out your truth and living in alignment with who you really are.

One of the patterns I found among people who LOVE the work they do is that they mentioned the importance of aliveness time and time and time again.

In my interview with Dr. Kent Hoffman, one of the most important mentors I’ve had in my life over the years, I asked him if he had any advice on how one might go about evaluating the myriad of options that we’ll encounter throughout our lives and during our E & E process. His response was right on point and in alignment with what I’ve heard from almost every respected person to whom I’ve asked this question:

The rule of thumb for me is: Does the profession that’s chosen make me more alive? AND, does the profession chosen allow other people to be more alive?

Do I feel more vital at the end of the day because I’ve done what I’ve done?

When am I most real? And then, how do I help those around me feel most alive and when are they most real?

Here’s a brief clip:

(My apologies for the desktop background– I wasn’t sure how to record a Facetime interview on my computer, and obviously it didn’t turn out great, although the content is wonderful, and that’s what matters most, right?!)

If you haven’t watched Kent’s full interview yet, you should check it out! It’s packed with wisdom.

ALIVENESS IS ALREADY WITHIN YOU

Guess what, guys?

Aliveness is not something that you can ever obtain from a career or a situation or even a person.

In fact, aliveness is not something you can obtain, ever, simply because it is something you already have (and always have had!).

In finding our aliveness, then, we are not seeking something outside of ourselves. We are not seeking something we don’t already have; rather, we are discovering the truest self that already lies within us.

Remember back in Module 1 when I talked about the four failures of traditional career planning methods? One of the things I noted was that a career in itself will never satisfy us.

A career alone can never satisfy us because what we’re looking for isn’t just a career: what we’re looking for is a sense of aliveness. We’re looking for our truest selves.

And the rad thing is, we already have what we seek.

Consider the following story as an illustration of this concept.

DON’T STRIVE TO BECOME SOMEONE BETTER

I was painfully shy as a child and I hated it. Instead of being withdrawn and quiet, I always wished I could be the social butterfly. I wanted to be funnier and more engaging and more charismatic–I wanted to be that person who everyone was drawn to.

And so for a long time, I strove to become someone “better”–I strove to become a more outgoing, more social, more likeable version of myself.

It took me years of effort and struggle to realize that I was approaching things all wrong. In fact, I came to realize, there’s nothing worse than self-improvement. We don’t have to become someone “better” or “stronger” or more “likeable.” We don’t have to become more of anything at all.

Why?

Because there’s no one better than who we are already.

Remember Michelangelo? (No, not the Ninja Turtle–the Renaissance artist, silly.)

You know the story of how he crafted his renowned sculpture, David, right?

He didn’t ask, “How can I make this block of marble shinier? How can I make it bigger?” He didn’t try to add anything to the block of stone or to change the quality of its nature.

Instead, he simply chipped away all that was not its true nature, and in doing so he allowed David, in all his nude glory, to emerge.

He allowed it to become more of what it already was.

In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.

— Michelangelo

So it is with ourselves, too. Instead of self-improvement, perhaps we ought to call this process “self-embracement.” After all, it’s not about becoming someone better or improved or someone who you aren’t. Instead, it’s about embracing who you are already (and who you always have been).

Own that. Become that. Instead of striving to become someone you aren’t, allow yourself to melt into your core.

I’m not sure exactly how or when it happened, but one day I came to the realization that maybe I didn’t need to become someone else. Maybe I didn’t need to become the social butterfly or the loud, entertaining center of attention–maybe I was ok as who I was. And so I began allowing myself to become comfortable with my quieter nature and to sink into the qualities of who I was already.

In practicing self-embracement, my quiet nature came off not as shy and insecure and awkward like I’d feared, but as calm and accepting and inviting. I learned that my quiet could hold deep power: I spoke less but when I did speak, what I said was filled with power and intentionality.

And here’s the weird thing: the more I embraced my quieter nature, the more people were drawn to me, until I suddenly realized that I’d achieved the results that I’d been striving for for years.

It didn’t happen through self-improvement, though–it didn’t happen because I became more outgoing or louder or more charismatic. Instead, it happened because I helped people feel comfortable and accepted and because I truly listened. It happened because I allowed myself to become more of who I am already– to fully show up as that person I was born as.

If you want to fulfill your greatest potential, don’t strive to become someone better. Instead, let yourself show up as who you already are.

* * *

Make sense?

So in becoming the most “ourselves” and in embracing the qualities of who we are, we’re experiencing aliveness and embracing our truest selves. And again, aliveness isn’t something outside of ourselves. Instead, it’s something we already have– it’s something we are born with.

SO WHAT?

“That’s great that I already have happiness and fulfillment and aliveness, Therese,” you’re probably saying.

“But so what? I don’t feel like I do. How can I come to experience this?? How do I access it?”

This becomes the question.

And this is where things become a little bit tricky, because it’s a chicken-and-egg type of scenario.

Although a career cannot give us anything we don’t already have– although it cannot give us any sense of aliveness or fulfillment or purpose that doesn’t already exist within us– it can help facilitate the bringing out of that which we already have.

That is, certain activities CAN (and do) serve as catalysts for exposing our sense of aliveness and for helping our truest selves emerge.

That’s why the environment in which we’re placing ourselves—and the work that we’re doing—absolutely matters.

For example, we might be happier teaching in a classroom than flipping burgers at McDonald’s. This is not, however, because teaching brings us a sense of happiness and aliveness that we didn’t already have.

Instead, it’s because something about the act of teaching more naturally facilitates the bringing out of the happiness and aliveness that is already within us.

Under certain conditions and in certain environments, our sense of aliveness (who we really are) is more effortlessly uncovered. Just as David was carved out from a block of marble, our true selves are most naturally carved out and exposed when we place ourselves in facilitative environments.

And that is why, when (re)discovering our sense of aliveness, I suggest we begin by beginning to pay attention to and identify those activities and circumstances in which we feel the most alive.

This is what you’ll begin to do in this module’s homework. You’ll begin pinpointing those activities and situations in which you come most alive and in which you are most “yourself.” You’ll begin to find your aliveness, and in doing so, you’ll be laying the groundwork for deliberate E & E.

When it comes to E & E,  it’s essential that we lay the groundwork with a deep awareness of  (and an overarching focus on) one simple question: “WHAT MAKES ME COME ALIVE? WHAT MAKES ME THE MOST “MYSELF?”

Knowing the answer to this question, and using it as your basis for exploration and evolution, as a guiding compass for your process of exploration and evolution, is the key to ensuring that you’re evolving in the right direction.

It’s how you ensure that, even as you’re taking a Knowcation and leaving room for the unknown to emerge, you’re evolving into your truest path and becoming your truest self.

It’s how you avoid living the default life.

BECOMING AWARE OF YOUR ALIVENESS

We all have a compass within us, but most of us spend our lives shutting it out and paying attention only to our outer worlds and not to our inner worlds.

We begin to think only with our heads, forgetting that there’s a deeper, inborn sense of wisdom that already lies within us.

And as a result, we begin to lose the sense of direction and guidance we were born with.

Throughout this course, I’m going to help you rediscover your compass and reclaim one of the most important tools you’ll ever need in order to find your way.

And it all begins with something very simple: Paying attention.

Paying attention to our aliveness means that we are always present and aware.

It means that no matter what we’re doing, we’re paying attention– to how our body feels, to what is going on inside our heads or with our feelings, and to the factors that may to be impacting our aliveness.

As a part of this module’s homework, I’m going to ask you to  begin tracking your aliveness– to pay attention throughout the day, for an entire week– and to begin noticing how you’re feeling at any given time.

As you make your way through your week, I want you to pause whenever you can remember to in order to pay attention to the sensations inside your body.

What are you feeling at this moment?

Is there aliveness within you?

When is your sense of aliveness most heightened and noticeable, and when is it at its lowest?

I’ve included instructions and a tracking sheet within your homework documents to help you with this process.

As you’re completing this exercise and noticing these sensations and the feeling of aliveness (or non-aliveness) within you, focus on paying attention to not only to “what” you’re doing in each moment, but to the other factors in your environment as well: The who, where, how, why and qualities.

In the very last section of this module, we’ll be exploring these factors and learning about “The Mistake of The What.”

Continue on, my friend!

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Next: Continue on to Section 3.4: The Mistake of The “What!”