Find Your Inner Compass

Understanding how to align personal values with a broader, collective purpose is not just a skill; it’s a transformative force that shapes the way we navigate life’s intricate terrain. This workbook will take you through a tool to strengthen and fine-tune your Inner Compass, guiding you towards a more purposeful and socially conscious existence.

In a world that is constantly changing, it can be difficult to know what our purpose is. We are bombarded with messages telling us that we need to do more, be more, and achieve more. However, this pressure can often lead us astray from what we are truly meant to do. Instead of chasing after an arbitrary definition of success, we should strive to be changemakers who are working to improve the world in a way that brings us alive and aligns with our unique truth. When we are working towards something that is truly important to us, we will be more likely to persevere through challenges and make a lasting impact.

A life audit is not a one-off practice, but a tool that you can come back to whenever you feel like you might not be living in alignment, going through a period of change, or when you need to make a decision. Your truth is the alignment of your values, passions, and purpose. Living consciously and in alignment with this truth is the ultimate measure of success in your life.

Watch the video explanation here.

The world needs more changemakers who show up in a way that is authentic and purposeful! I look forward to helping YOU activate your power to change the world. I hope this tool helps you as much as it helps me.

💭 Think About: What does success look like for you?

I want you to move away from the common practice of having certain metrics or standards by which you measure success in different categories of your life (like family, health, career, etc.) Don’t reduce your human experience to different categories; the social world is far too complex and contextual to compartmentalise. Instead, we will be unpacking what your specific truth is, any applying it to your life in a way that transcends any predefined categories or areas.

Your truth is shaped by three key factors— your values, your passions, and your purpose. When you are living in alignment with these three things, you are living your truth. This is your inner compass! Your truth might slightly change as you grow and evolve as a person, but it won’t change by much. And the key thing to note about conscious living is that it’s a verb— it’s something that we are constantly doing (or not doing,) and as our personal circumstances and situation in life changes, we will need to make changes to ensure that we are continuing to live consciously and in alignment with our truth.

Conscious living is something that applies to our entire life— it’s not reserved for just our career or just our family or relationships— it’s a holistic approach to doing good and feeling good in life, so it applies to our entire life, not just parts of it. Now what happens if we aren’t living consciously like this? We get a feeling that something isn’t quite right in our life— like we aren’t on the right path. We feel like we aren’t living authentically. We aren’t having the impact that we could be having in the world. We aren’t as happy as we could be. We might lack motivation or feel stressed or burnt out.

The first key component of your inner compass is your values. Your values provide direction for many of the ethical and moral choices you make and help you determine the things that are important in your life. It’s really easy to be seduced by what our family or society or the media tells us makes a successful life, but when you know what your values are and you decide to let your values determine your success— then you’re living a much more authentic.

Values are beliefs and ideas that you consider to be important. They’re like a benchmark that helps you measure if you’re living a life well-lived. No values are better than others— your values are unique to you. Your values are largely shaped by your life story— your upbringing, your experiences, your social or cultural conditioning. It’s important to know what your values are so you make conscious, deliberate choices to live a life that aligns with them— a life that is truly successful.

Here is a list of some common values… but this is by no means a complete list:

Accessibility Courage Growth Prosperity Accomplishment Creativity Health   Curiosity Honesty Recognition Accuracy Dependability Humour Relaxation Adventure Determination Imagination Reliability Affection  Impact Resourcefulness Affluence Discipline Independence Respect Altruism Diversity Integrity Security Ambition Efficiency Intelligence Sensitivity Assertiveness Empathy Justice Significance Balance Enthusiasm Kindness Sincerity Bravery Excellence Knowledge Speed Calmness Experience Leadership Spirituality Celebrity Expertise Learning Spontaneity Challenge Fairness Love Stability Charity Faith Loyalty Strength Clarity Fame Mindfulness Success Comfort Family Optimism  Originality Teamwork Compassion Flexibility Passion Understanding  Fun Peace Vision  Generosity  Wealth Control Grace Power Uniqueness

Take some time to think about and write down your top 10 values, preferably in order of most important. The words you selected are important because they mean something specific to you. It’s important to be clear about exactly what these words mean to you, as sometimes people have different interpretations of the same word. Write a personal definition for each value you have chosen, in a way that resonates with you. Perform a quick self-assessment to measure your alignment with these values. For each value, give yourself a score of 1 to 5, where 1 indicates I am really not living this value and 5 indicates I live this value very consistently.

The second component of your inner compass is your passions. Passions are the things you do that make you feel alive— they bring you joy, are probably things that you are good at or wish to master, or things you care deeply about, and are key to living a happy life.

Here are some questions that might get you thinking about what your passions are: (hint: use these as journal prompts!)

• What would you do with your time if money weren’t an issue?
• What activities do you enjoy that make you lose track of time?
• What are your skills and talents? (Write them down— you’ll use this list later!)
• What did you choose to study or pursue as a career? Does this relate to any of your passions?
• What were your favourite things to do as a child?

A question I think of a lot is “if I could just pause time, and have a whole week to myself, and the rest of the world paused, how would I spend that week— for me it would be reading all the books on my bookshelf I haven’t got to yet, and making art.”

Take some time to think about and write down your passions. You can have macro passions and micro passions, or subcategories— eg: storytelling might be a macro passion, but micro passions are journalism, podcasting, or vlogging. You might categorise them into phenomena that you’re interested in, activities that you like to do.

It’s important to make time for your passions. Take some time to think about and write down your passions… Think about how these passions are currently integrated in your life. Do you engage in them often, or hardly ever? How do you integrate them into your life… is it as a hobby, or in your work?

Your purpose is the bigger picture vision for your life— the thing you were put on Earth to do. It’s your “why,” and I like to think of my why in the context of my role in the social change ecosystem. Some people grow up intuitively knowing what their purpose is, others will have an ‘ah-huh’ moment with the divine (the universe, source, God, your higher consciousness— whatever the divine means to you,) and realise their purpose, while others will need to do deeper soul searching to find their purpose.

Write down what you think your purpose is – it can be a full impact statement if you know your purpose, or just some dot points if you’re still figuring it out.

Your mission is the way in which your work (hobbies, jobs, career, or vocation) directs you towards your purpose —much like the needle of a compass points north. Do you need to make adjustments with your mission to ensure you stay aligned with your values and passions with your purpose?