How to identify your North Star (04)

After a brief intermission, we're continuing with our career exploration series (you can see the full series here). 

You have the two key building blocks of your career – your Operating Principles and Strengths. Today, we're going to start putting them together to figure out what you are meant to do!

“What you're meant to do” can be a heady objective that makes some of you feel a sigh of relief (you're finally going to figure it out!) and for others, makes you feel tense and a little stressed (oof, that is a lot of pressure). 

Let's take the pressure off. Think of this as a fun exercise, which will give you some new perspectives and insights about yourself. 

I call this part of my process your “North Star,” or creating a purpose statement that describes the unique impact you're meant to have on the world. It is a simple statement that includes your super powers, passions and the industry, business model or intervention you want to focus on. 

It is flexible enough that it will guide you over the next several years, and you can fulfill through a few different types of roles. 

I am passionate about this and believe it is an important step in the process because my own North Star has so influential in my career. 

I created the following purpose statement during coach training in 2019: 

“I am the spark that ignites the flame that women already hold within.”

It is a little coach-y but this statement helped keep me focused on my side-hustle coaching business for years while working full-time and mentoring female colleagues. 

The statement feels so true to me that it helped give me the conviction to leaving my full-time job to scale my coaching business in 2023. 

Here are a few examples of my clients' North Star statements: 

• I empower people - with empathy, individualization, and an operating rhythm - to reach their fullest potential

• I partner with teams and agencies to tell brand stories that spark an emotional, lasting connection with consumers

• I advance upstream and downstream investments in women's health

• I leverage research, teaching and relationship building to help people connect to their internal values, to each other and to the world

• I use my vision, storytelling and agility to create infrastructure that empowers others to discover and bring their passion to reality, at scale

All of these are so different, yet so deeply personal and resonant. You can feel how much more energy these statements contain than “I am a product manager" or “I am a lawyer.” 

Now it's your turn! 

There are two ways to create your North Star statement – visualization or workshopping. Visualization works for some people, while others land on their statement through discussion and brainstorming. Either approach works and you can experiment with both! 

If you want to experiment with the visualization, review your Operating Principles and Strengths so they're top of mind and then click the button below to listen to a 10-minute guided visualization. 

This visualization was created by the Co-Active Training Institute, my coach training school, with specific audio and visual cues to help you uncover your purpose. 

Listen as many times as you'd like and allow whatever images come up, without judgement. Jot down notes on what you saw, take the most important themes and arrange them into a sentence. This is good place to grab a friend to chat through the key themes and refine them until you get to that one, resonant sentence. 

If you want to skip the visualization or the visualization didn't give you clear direction (totally fine if it didn't), take the outputs of the previous two exercises and try workshopping the framework below: 

I [WHAT YOU WANT TO DO / YOUR STRENGTHS] TO [THE IMPACT YOU WANT TO CREATE]

You don't have to stick rigidly to the framework, but aim to create a statement that captures how you like to and are good at working and the impact you want to create. In other words, the WHAT and the WHY. 

Keep refining this until you get to a statement that feels deeply true to who you are at the core (remember, not what you've always done or what you think you should do!). You'll know when you have it, but it will feel easy and aligned. 

This North Star statement can guide you for several years and through multiple roles. As long as you're working in a way that feels aligned to your North Star, you'll feel satisfied and successful. 

Send me a note if you need support!