GPS is not a good analogy for how you should navigate your life. Don’t get me wrong; GPS is one of the marvels of our age. It can tell you where you are anywhere on the earth to within about a thirty-foot radius. And it can give you detailed, step by step directions from where you are to where you want to go. Those traits make GPS great for navigating an unfamiliar city. Still, it is not a good analogy for how to navigate your life.
As the mythologist, Joseph Campbell warns us, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
GPS as an analogy to life gives us the illusion that we can navigate our experience from one waypoint to another with confidence that we will arrive at our destination. You know the route, high school to college, college to a good job, blah, blah, blah, death. That may be The Path, but I doubt it is your path. The danger here is that GPS thinking gets us fixated on the destination and not the journey. That means that we can miss opportunities along the way, opportunities that may lead us in a new and exciting direction.
That is why I think the compass is a much better analogy for how we must live our lives. The compass does not give us a step by step route. Instead, it points us in the right direction and challenges us to blaze our own trail. To make a path that is unique to each of us.
How does that work? Knowing your core strengths (you did take the survey right, if not click here) and how those translate into your virtues (see the article on that here) gives you the cardinal directions of your inner compass.
We all have an inner compass. It tells us when we are moving in the right direction in our life. We know we are on our path when we feel energized and purposeful. It also lets us know when we have deviated from our true north through the feelings of tension and unease. As an analog tool, the compass lacks the precision of a digital GPS, but human beings are also analog and imprecise, so the compass is the navigation instrument of the soul.
The problems with your inner compass is not that you don’t have one, but that you forget to consult it. We live in a world where seemingly everyone is trying to sell us on a “safe” path or a “shortcut” to success. However, as Campbell warns us if the road before you is laid out with waypoints and a destination, it is someone else’s way, not yours. Your path you invent as you go. You are a unique individual with a one-time route to a destination only you can find.
I keep a compass on my desk to remind me to keep moving in the direction of my values and strengths. That compass is inscribed with one of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” So that is what I try to do. I advance in the right direction, not always as confident as I would like because the going can be hard at times. However, I soldier on because I have met with unexpected success. Success I would not have found if I stayed on the well-trodden path.
No one else can tell you how to get to your destination, because not even you can know your destination in advance. So, get off the worn route. Set the GPS of life aside and consult your inner compass. Find your direction and start blazing your trail. Check in with your inner compass regularly to make sure you are moving in the right direction and adjust course as needed. It won’t be easy. You will have to push through the brambles of life that try to pull you back. Don’t let them. Advance confidently in the direction of your strengths and values. Stay open to new opportunities that will present themselves along the way. Real success is waiting for you in unexpected places and common hours.
What can you do to start moving in the direction indicated by your inner compass?
Go do it.
“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”
— Joseph Campbell
