True North: Finding Your Inner Compass

True North: Finding your Inner Compass

This weekend I had an opportunity to share my thoughts and feelings with a group of like-minded people, and I suddenly came up with the phrase, “Now that the crisis has past, I feel as though I’m walking around without a compass.”

For many of us, whether it’s a moving out of a crisis or a behavior or a habit, when we are suddenly without the familiar, we feel lost – aimlessly wandering, searching for direction.  Often times, it creates a pandemic of procrastination, or worse: a reversion to old belief systems and habits.  But it doesn’t have to.  It’s precisely at these times that the Universe opens up to us and allows the opportunity to create something new.

So – how do we go about redirecting ourselves, finding our Inner Compass, and putting our feet solidly on the path to wellness and peace?  Well, it goes without saying that our old compass is broken, and to use it as a guide or a reference point would not be helpful.  The most important step here is to simply recognize, acknowledge and accept that first piece of the puzzle – our old compass is broken.

What is the old compass?  Is it habits? Beliefs? Behaviors? Feelings? Decisions?  It’s all of the above.  Our old compass, the one that helped us lose our way, is comprised of negative thought patterns and belief systems that have guided our decisions thus far.  We didn’t know they were negative – though sometimes we did – we just knew we were doing our best, and using our best knowledge and guidance at the time.  But what happens when the compass itself is broken?  When the arrow says it’s pointing North, but in fact can’t be relied upon to point in any specific direction at any time?  Well, hopefully at some point, we end up sitting down on a rock somewhere, looking around, and asking the question, “How did I get here?” 

For some of us, it’s “How did I get 40 pounds heavier than the last time I weighed myself?” For others, it’s “How did I go from drinking on the weekends, to needing to drink everyday?”  Those are concrete measurable examples.  For others still, it’s “How did I manage to get myself into this situation, that isn’t necessarily bad or wrong – but FEELS bad and wrong, even though nothing has changed to make it so?”  That’s a tough one.  They’re all difficult – but the blessing is that when you find yourself sitting on that rock, realizing that you’re not where you want to be (or thought you were), you have an opportunity.  You have the opportunity to change your situation – to go where you want to be, to be who you want to be, and to get there using the one thing that is never broken: your Inner Compass.

When we’ve become accustomed to using the outer compass provided to us by all of our thought patterns and belief systems, we slowly un-learn what it is to trust ourselves, and that which we know to be true.  We handicap ourselves, in a way.  We learn to rely on external stimuli, and tune out our internal guides.  It’s alright – we’ve all been there.  Some of us are still there, even after we have found our Inner Compass.  What we discover is that not only do we have to find our Inner Compass, but then we have to use it and re-apply it to all of the situations in our life, whether big or small, and that takes time.

So – how do we find our Inner Compass?  Well, we pause.  We sit in silence, and we ask for help as we begin to put down the pieces of the old compass.  Once we’ve freed up our hands and our minds to grab hold of that which we know to be pure and true, it starts working – and then it works exponentially.  It builds on itself, and we can’t help but follow where it leads.  With every right step, on our true path, we reinforce the wisdom and knowledge and belief in our True North.  We recognize that True North is different for everyone, because although it is one journey – there are always many paths.  And once we start to shed the beliefs and thought patterns that have led us astray, we find that we have created space in our lives to see more clearly our own true path.

True North is the space in which you will feel complete, whole and at peace.  Your Inner Compass will always guide you there, if you let it.  For now, it’s enough to recognize where you are and look around you.  It’s time to see what compass you have been using up until this point, and to pause long enough to put it down.  Only then will you have the space needed to find your Inner Compass.  Only then will you begin to discover your own guidance system, and be able to follow it.

In love and light,

Martina

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