Follow Your Inner Compass

Read when planning doesn’t work for you!

I used to teach entrepreneurship for a while. An important part of that subject was how to start up a project. You know. You decide on a goal, you make a plan on how to get there, in clear steps, with deadlines and off you go. Not.

At the least for me. While teaching project planning, I realized I never make plans in steps. While planning works for many, there are also many people for whom it doesn’t work this way. For me a plan is like a prison. Plans feel like bothersome homework that suck all the fun out of me. Thus I started to observe how I do get things done.

“ Aren’t you all exited to hear the newest business model?”

How planning and control may suck the juice out of life.

Most people travel with a map. First go to this town, then take that turn, and step by step you’ll get to your destination. Others travel by compass. I for one follow an inner compass. I feel like a youngest fairy tale prince on a treasure hunt. Suddenly there’s a old crone on the road asking for a piece of bread in exchange for an advice. In most fairy tales the older princes with their maps ignored the crone and gets stuck, perhaps even turned into stone.

Many people panic when the journey goes of the road, and try to design plans that prevent that to happen. Only then they find out reality is much more complex than plans can predict. People who want to stick to plans also often block their own capability to adapt in a flexible ways when the need arises. With my inner compass I feel my way forward. Each new moment there’s new options and choices possible. Invites that seem off the path, may feel ‘good’. Later then, it often turns out, those invitations helped to prepare me for things I later needed.

It is not for nothing most fairy tales with three princes or princesses searching for something teach you that the youngest, most open to new suggestions, is the one who succeeds while the more fixated older ones get bewitched.

Being in the box is only a good plan for the organizer, not the people executing it.

Our society is fixated on controlled outcomes. It is fixated with makability of reality. It is fixated on success formulas. Schools makes us think in clear questions and clear answers. I once heard a student working on a real world assignment complain. “This is not a real client, this guy doesn’t know what he wants.” Who is lost here? We also plan for success, and accept targets that kill joy, sense, meaning and humanity, just for profits, most likely not yours. The hunt for ever better success strategies may just be a dead end road.

You are a prince(ess) with a destiny.

When we focus on our inner compass and learn to steer by it, new roads become possible. Many roads lead to Rome, not just the text book ones. To liberate yourself, especially when planning doesn’t work for you either, is hard work. You’ll have to overcome fixations of our society and start listening within. For here lies a direct tie with where you really want to go. Here lives the youngest prince or princess with a destiny, more beautiful than any plan, for it includes the journey as much as the outcome. Just start listen to your belly and follow all invites that feel true. You’ll be amazed to the crazy places they may lead.

How do I recognize signals of my inner compass?

1. An invite makes me happy/makes me feel seen for who I am/makes me look forward to the event

2. I notice I have started writing, working on a project. Thus action precedes insight.

3. My intuition, for me sensation just beneath my solar plexus, says do this and my head can’t believe it. I find believing my intuition in these cases must be boss.

4. When in doubt, I notice what I do, and follow that action. Or I choose the one which has the most meaning/purpose for the world.

5. Listen to your body. Rest when it wants rest. Be exited when exited. But seek peace, when stressed or anxious.

6. Be part of the whole. Follow love. Trust destiny. It will unfold.

7. If you have an idea, that burns you to do it: do it. I’ve gotten paid for over 50! jobtitles. Switch them when new ones seem more inviting.

8. Don’t protect your image, or don’t act because what people might think of you. When you shine with what’s alive in you, it’ll light the light in others.

Enjoy the ride, nothing can be held onto anyway.