Finding your True North

For a long time, whenever I felt like I was getting lost in life, I thought the solution was to find the right path. I usually do this when I didn’t feel like myself anymore or when I feel like my decisions are based from my reaction instead of choosing with intention.

So I would search. I would look through social media, research things, outsource my existential crisis and somehow, the more answers I found, the more lost I became. Knowing what other people are doing doesn’t necessarily tell you what you want to do. I think maybe the goal isn’t really to find the right path. Maybe it’s to find your own.

If you ever seen a compass, there’s a needle that spins around and points north. It’s actually pointing towards the magnetic north, a direction created by Earth’s magnetic field that shifts over time. The true North is the exact top of our planet in the north pole and it never moves.

Long ago, sailors and explorers learned that if they only trusted the compass needle they could end up going the wrong way. So they had to find other ways to find their direction. One of them was by looking up at the stars. While most of the stars seemed to move across the sky during the night, the North Star barely moved at all. That’s because it sits almost directly above the North Pole. For sailors, it was like a giant signpost in the sky that points them towards the true north.

Life can sometimes feel a lot like that wobbly compass. Friends, fear, comparison, social pressure and wanting to fit in, all of these things can pull at us and make it difficult to tell which direction is actually ours. If you filtered out all those external noise you’ll be left with what you genuinely believe. What you value and what you genuinely want. People started calling that “true north” too. Just like the real North Pole, it’s something you can look toward when you’re pulled in ten different directions and don’t know what you want anymore.

So how do you find your true north? How do you know what you really want? Having a “true north” sounds nice. But I think people sometimes mistake it for that vague feeling of wanting to be successful or happy. But those aren’t really directions. They’re destinations that are so broad you could spend your whole life chasing them without knowing if you’re actually getting closer. A real true north is something you can actually navigate by, which means it needs a little more structure.

For me, I think finding your true north starts with having a clear vision instead of simply following whatever you feel in the moment. Mapping out your goals, timelines, and milestones could help. A true north you can’t describe is a true north you can’t actually walk towards.

One of the first things I did, without even realizing I was doing it for this reason, was try to understand myself. I got interested in things like Ikigai and MBTI because I wanted to know myself better. I wanted to understand what I was good at, what I enjoyed, what kind of things mattered to me, and why I naturally think and behave the way I do. At the time, I was just thinking, I need to figure myself out.

Before you can set a direction, it helps to know what you’re actually working with. Who are you, really? What are you good at? What do you enjoy, what matters to you, what kind of life feels natural to you? I think this is an important part of finding your true north because your direction can’t be completely separate from who you are. If you build a life around someone else’s definition of success, even if you manage to reach it, you can still end up somewhere that doesn’t feel like you.

This is why I found things like Ikigai and MBTI interesting. They’re not going to tell you who you are with absolute certainty, and they’re definitely not going to hand you a five-year plan. But they can give you somewhere to start. Ikigai, for example, looks at the overlap between what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. MBTI gives you another way of thinking about how you naturally process information and interact with the world. They aren’t the final answer, but they’re useful starting coordinates.

Once you have a better idea of who you are and what matters to you, then I think it becomes easier to decide where you actually want to go. Choose a final goal or at least a few big goals then reverse-engineer it. What do I want my life to look like in five years? What would need to happen this year to move me closer to it? My values? What habits do I need to build, and which ones do I need to let go of? What kinds of people and environments bring me closer to the person I want to be, and which ones pull me away from it?

Once you have a direction, you can study people who’ve built something similar. Learn their steps, mistakes, timelines, and regrets. Keep what fits you and skip what doesn’t. Sometimes you’ll even realize a goal isn’t what you actually want once you see what it takes and that’s useful too.

I also think there’s something to be said for being a little delusional. Dreaming bigger than what currently feels reasonable can push you further than playing it safe. Aiming high has a way of raising your ceiling, even if you never fully reach it.

But I’ll be honest, it can backfire too. If the dream stays so big and vague that it never turns into an actual plan, it stops being motivating and becomes a comfortable fantasy that lets you avoid the small work you need to do today. That’s why the dream alone isn’t enough. You need something steadier underneath it: a true north.

And I don’t think your true north is just a list of things you want to accomplish. It’s also a sense of who you want to be while you’re accomplishing them. Your values. Your priorities. The kind of life you want to live. The things you don’t want to sacrifice just to arrive faster. In that sense, your true north is both a direction and a reference point. It tells you where you’re going, but it also helps you recognize whether the person walking there is still you. Because what would be the point of reaching your destination if you had to become someone you don’t recognize to get there?

For that direction to hold, I think it also has to be something you can move toward on your own. Not something that depends on someone else to make it possible.

That doesn’t mean rejecting people or refusing help, though. If someone comes along and wants to walk beside you, let them. They might even change your vision for the better. Your true north doesn’t have to be completely fixed; sometimes the people you meet show you possibilities you couldn’t see on your own. What it shouldn’t do is disappear the moment the people leave.

I think that’s what makes a true north different from simply having goals. Goals can change. Plans can fall apart. People can leave. You can discover that something you once wanted isn’t actually what you want anymore.

Your true north is the reference point you return to when you’re lost, when you’re torn between options or when everyone around you seems to be moving in a different direction. It isn’t necessarily the exact life you will end up living. It’s the direction that still feels like you.