When Looking for a Dream Career, Why Are You Looking for True North (Part 2)

In my Nov 1st blog, I wrote about when it comes to identifying our dream job, dream career or dream partner in life, why are we always looking for true north, the perfect something? Instead we should look for “north”. North is much broader and provides a variety of options and balance. For example 20° west and 15° east are both still north.

Variety of good options

North should be described as activities you are good at and/or enjoy doing, your strengths and passions. It should also include the people who are important to you or you enjoy working with. In assisting thousands on their Dream and Achieve (DNA) process, I’ve found that most people need to have anywhere from 6-12 things (what I call elements) in their life in order to be both successful and happy.

Balance is like a good Chinese meal

It’s quite a responsibility to order a Chinese meal. You need to make sure you find the right combination of sweet, sour, salty; stir-fried, braised, steamed; beef, chicken, fish, pork and vegetables. North is like a well-balanced Chinese meal. It has a combination of all the things you want to have in your career/life. Operating in the north, you can have it all…to some degree. It’s better than having a lot of something (money) but nothing of other important things (purpose or a great life partner).

“Come on and ease on down, ease on down the road” (from the broad way show, The Wiz)

Since north is broad, but still focused on your elements, it allows you to take steps to move forward now. It’s much easier to take steps towards getting more of a specific element into your career than trying to find an action that will give you everything. All these small steps add up to significant progress.

Each step also brings you more clarity about each element. Lastly, easing on down the road gives you the sense of accomplishment and control.

Along the way, you will be making course corrections. This is not at all a waste of time, for you are still moving in a northerly direction.

So the important point is to move, take action, take small steps. Little by little bring more and more of your (north) elements into your career/life. If every day you take part in activities you enjoy and/or are good at doing, the results will probably be good and your passion for living will grow.