Each of us has our own North Star—the purpose, passion and light that guides us. For thousands of years, the North Star served as a compass, a bright fixed position in the dark sky for travelers and explorers (which is not surprising why the North Star is symbolic for personal growth). Your North Star is your internal life compass. It is your purpose, your passion and your truth, a fixed bright light to always guide you.
Questions to Align With Your Life Purpose
Important Things to Remember About Your North Star
Align With Your Purpose: Create a Harmony Model
Achieve Your North Star: Master Goal Setting
Defining YOUR North Star
North Stars are unique for everyone, and only YOU hold the intuition and knowledge of what yours should be and how you want to pursue your passion. The secret to success is taking that North Star vision and breaking them down into measurable goals across various areas of your life such as career, personal, finance, etc. Goal setting is an important action to make that vision come true.
The beautiful adaptability of North Stars is that they can be the driving force for so many aspects of your life, from how your team or company aligns to a primary mission, to how your family is anchored on that primary life mission. Understanding your North Star in all aspects of life gives you clarity on things that are important, what your non-negotiables are and how to drive towards that guiding purpose in anything that you do.
Questions to Align With Your Life Purpose
Mark Mason, New York Times Best Selling Author, does an incredible job surfacing questions to get to the root of your North Star in the most entertaining way. We’ve included them below to help you craft your mission.
What's your favorite flavor of Sh*t Sandwich and does it come with an olive?
What's true about you today that would make your 8-year-old self cry?
If you knew you were going to die one year from today, what would you do and how?
1. What’s Your Favorite Flavor of Sh*t Sandwich and Does It Come With an Olive?
Life can suck, we all know it. Mason refers to this as your "sh*t sandwich", the sacrifices you're willing to take for a primary goal. Ultimately, what calling is so important and one you can’t ignore that you’re willing to ride out the sh*tty days. What I love is when Mason states that your sh*t sandwich is your competitive advantage. It’s your personal grit, where passion meets perseverance.
2. What’s True About You Today That Would Make Your 8-Year-Old Self Cry?
When you think back to when you were a kid, what were the activities you loved to do as a child, what passions have you lost? I wanted to be a teacher when I was younger, but I realized one of the things that I enjoy most about managing a team is being able to mentor and teach others. As we enter the rat race, we silence that inner child as we tackle our day to day. What are some of the things that brought you the most joy when you were younger that you can practice today?
3. What Makes You Forget to Eat or Poop?
Well, I’d have to say there’s nothing that has made me forget to poop, but forget to eat—absolutely. Determine what you really enjoy doing where time stands still and you find pure joy and uninterrupted focus. For me, I used to love cooking dumplings with my Mom and I would time myself to see how many I could make in 5 minutes. I’d try to break that record each time. Of course I loved making them (and eating them).
Mason explained that there are cognitive principles behind the activities that light you up. I loved things that followed a process and I love to see if there are ways to make things more efficient and measurable. It was no surprise that I ended up on Operations roles, I just loved to figure out how to make things better.
4. How can you embarrass yourself better?
Every expert started as a beginner. How many times did you fail at something until you mastered a skill? I’ve always suffered from a very loud inner critic. I was always afraid to fail, but I had to shift that mindset that no one is perfect. Perfection is the biggest progress and happiness killer. We all need to embrace failure and come to the realization that many times what drives that inability to embrace fear is driven by fear. With fear, we keep ourselves small. Embrace the embarrassment.
Mason said it best, “Feeling foolish is part of the path to achieving something important, something meaningful. The more a major life decision scares you, chances are the more you need to be doing it.”
5. How Are You Going to Save the World?
Identify a problem you care about that’s larger than you and how you can make an impact. The world is so f’d up right now that it’s not even fathomable that any of us can save the world. But what if, collectively, we had a personal mission to have one thing in our lives suck less? Now imagine the ripple effect if we all had a personal calling to do this, how the world would be marginally better and set a new wave for others to do better.
By making a difference, you can feel you’ve left a positive legacy, which will ultimately bring you more joy. Find a mission that is personal and meaningful to you, and see what problem you want to solve. The universe will thank you.
6. If You Knew You Were Going to Die One Year From Today, What Would You Do and How?
Many say life is short. I’d say life is long, we just waste time until it’s too late. The reality is, you won’t be able to see your North Star from a comfort zone. Uncover what you’re truly passionate about, have a purposeful goal and just start your plan! Make a commitment to start today, not tomorrow. Talking doesn’t help you achieve your purpose, only action does.
7. How Do You Want to Be Remembered? This question breaks down what is most important to you and values that guide your actions, but more importantly, what legacy do you want to leave behind? What are the footprints that you want to leave for someone else to follow? It doesn’t need to be a grand goal like curing cancer or going to the moon, but it can be something that aligns with your calling (big or small). How do you want to spend your time and how do you want to be remembered? That’s an important question to answer to help guide your path.
Important Things Remember About Your North Star
1. Having a North Star purpose results in better health, satisfaction and joy.
2. You can have more than 1 North Star and they can change.
3. Your North Star does not need to be tied to your career.
4. Break down your north star vision into smaller achievable & measurable goals.
5. Celebrate your wins, small and big!
Align With Your Purpose: Create a Harmony Model
Want to learn more about how to align with your purpose? Check out our free Harmony Model resource, we take you down an introspective path to get to your North Star (PDF file below).
Achieving Life Harmony © Rocketry Group
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Achieve Your North Star: Master Goal Setting
Do you already know what your North Star is, but you need help reaching it? We've also included a link below to our Goal Setting Workbook to help you reach your purposeful goals with a strategic plan! Feel free to email any questions to etsy@rocketrygroup.com.
