Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live

“life design.” It isn’t therapy, although I do tend to talk a lot with my clients about their feelings and personal histories. It isn’t career counseling, although I’ve helped many people spiff up their résumés, prep for job interviews, and refine business plans. Life design, at least the way I practice it, is the process of helping people find wha

When Square Four starts to feel so comfortable it lacks a sense of challenge, take up something you can’t do at all, like auto repair or the Finnish language. Build your own laser or log cabin. Write a novel and self-publish it on the Internet. List five things you’d like to know how to do and do one a year for five years.

Expect Change. It’s almost universal for people in Square Four to resist change.

The one thing that will never change is that always, in every single moment, your nature will be urging you to notice the still, bright point of light that leads you toward your destiny. The compasses inside you will always be pointing the right way, even if you forget to check them, even if you fail for a while to hold your course. You can begin a

But as long as other people aren’t being dangerous or harmful, stop worrying about what they’re doing and focus on finding your own way. This is what people learn in “codependency” treatment, after they’ve been severely hurt by other people’s addiction, abusiveness, or crazy behavior: You cannot control anyone else’s journey through life. Focus on

2. Take Down All the “One Way” Signs.

All of the advice in this book boils down to just one thing: You are designed with the ability to find the life you were meant to live. I can’t do it for you. Neither can your mother, your lover, your religious leader, or anyone else. The instructions in this book are worth exactly nothing unless they help you free yourself from all instructions an

Here are some questions you should ask and answer on a regular basis. 1. Are your loved ones happy with the life you’ve got? People who assume their families are happy simply because they are often precipitate breakups, showdowns, and long-term resentment. You’re not the only one in the promised land. 2. Is technology transforming areas of work and

I’d like you to build the practice of scouting into every Square Four. Without getting paranoid or fatalistic, be on the lookout for signs of change, either good or bad.