Yesterday, over at Organizing by STYLE, I wrote about finding an organizational North Star. In the process of writing the post, I came across an article in the Greater Good Magazine about doing the same thing for ourselves.
I found the "what's your North Star?" question to be an intriguing one, and so I sat back to think about what my answer would be. Things like family and happiness are easy answers, but what does that mean? How is family my North Star? How do I define happiness?
In my FYS and positive psychology classes, we take a strengths assessment, and I found myself going back to that and quickly settling on learning as my answer. It needed something, though -- something to make it less me but still personal, less academic and more personable.
It needed people -- learning about not just stuff (which I love to do), but about the nuances of the people I care about. Understanding not simply the facts about the world around me, but the nuances, too. It also needed a telescope of sorts, two basic, but sometimes challenging tools necessary to make help me zoom in on that North Star: focus and listening.
I don't know if this is my final answer but, for now, it feels right. I went immediately to Canva and created a visual to help me remember this, to find myself on days when I feel lost. A visual with lots of room to pencil in new ideas as they come to me.
How about you? What's your North Star? Why did you choose it? How does it guide you and sustain you?
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