Develop your personal clarity

• The True North Group: You have a compass for life and know which direction is the correct way. When asked about your philosophy of life, you could explain it immediately and concisely.
• The Dusty Compass Group: You have a compass for directing your life, but you don't always know how to use it. You may have a loosely organized philosophy but may not use it to filter and direct your experience.
• The Inbox Group: You may not have a compass. Life may be about something, but you don't know. Your approach is to deal with life the way you manage email: You are just directing your attention to whatever lands in your inbox.

The difference between the members of these three groups is internal. You won't be able to spot them instantly.

In general, it is better to live as a member of the True North group, provided you remain humble, curious, and open to the possibility you may be wrong.

You need to have absolute clarity over 3 fundamental facts:

• Your goals (the destination)
• Your current situation (your coordinates)
• The path that connects both of them (the route).

A very simple, but crucial principle: if you don’t know where you are, you can never reach the place where you want to be.

Making an alternative choice is hard because we are neurologically wired to favor the default solution, even if it brings suboptimal results.

As the complexity of a decision increases, so does our tendency to stick with the answer we know.

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”

Making sure you hold yourself accountable in order to keep up the motivation and, therefore, accomplish your goals, is easier than it sounds.

All you have to do is to commit and express your commitment also in front of others. This will lead to you wanting to be consistent and, therefore, it will make it harder to give up.

21–35% of our life is spent at work, making it a crucial part of our lives to spend at something we find meaning in.

Meaningful work should be:

• Motivating and purposeful.
• Should be coherent and make some sense.
• Should be significant.

Meaningful work is when we feel a genuine connection with what we do for a living and our larger spectrum of life.

It is motivating, creates deep relationships and helps others.

In the last decades, organizations are increasingly becoming more global, complex, and demanding of workers’ time. In the always-on, always-connected work environment, boundaries are overlapping and combining. 

If you can’t adapt, can’t see situations in versatile ways, can’t find meaning in the most dreary circumstances, you might not survive.

The downsides to always adapting, always flexible, always changing gears could lead to a lack of direction and commitment. In turn, a lack of direction could lead to failure.

We don’t want to entertain the possibility that it might fail. We just imagine that things are definitely going to work.

Curiosity creates a longing to know more, do more and be more.

To have a successful life, you have to cultivate your sense of wonder and be curious about what the future might hold. Curiosity helps you see any situation as an opportunity for your advancement and learning.

It improves your ability to prioritize and it makes decision-making easier.

It also provides commitment: it's usually hard to commit to something that has no foreseeable future.

Their population enjoys a healthy work-life balance, high standards of living with less pressure, less stress, and more time for everything they enjoy and love doing.

It's part of the Swedish culture. It means “Not too little. Not too much. Just right.”

The concept encourages an overarching balance across our lives: everything in moderation.

It's a pleasurable emotion brought by a state of well-being and contentment. It’s usually accompanied by an attachment to an idea, a destination or experience. It often weighs profoundly heavier on our subconscious. 

The vision of the life you desire is a destination you shouldn’t ignore as it’s key to understanding your happy place.

If happiness is the destination, joy is the milestone that leads there. Joy comes and passes through without the heaviness of it being a “final destination” because joy is an attitude.

We make excuses for the following key reasons:

• Fear of Failure
• Fear of Embarrassment
• Fear of Success
• Fear of Change
• Fear of Uncertainty
• Fear of Responsibility
• Fear of Making Mistakes
• Perceived lack of confidence or resources

Authenticity is about being your true self and not pretending to be someone else. It is also the way to take ownership and refine and improve your true self toward the best you can become.

Therefore, if your true self is aggressive, entitled or immature, you don't have permission to mistreat others.

You can only know yourself if you are honest and accepting of all the parts of you.

• Acknowledge the good parts about yourself. This can include strengths, talents, knowledge, skills.
• Don't overlook the bad parts. The bad of you will hurt others and sabotage your path toward a meaningful life.
• There might also be ugly parts, like being awkward, off-putting, or distracting from the good.