Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live

by Martha N. Beck

When you’re doing what you’re meant to do, you benefit the world in a unique and irreplaceable way. This brings money, friendship, true love, inner peace, and everything else worth having; it sounds facile, but it’s really true.

If you haven’t identified your own “deep joy,” you can find it in Square One, just by following your internal compasses. Remember the exercise where you listed the things you “are”? Well, now I’d like to see if you can finish the following sentence: “I was always meant to be a/an _________________.” The moment you can answer this with a sense of powerful, centered rightness is the moment of your rebirth. It will give you your new name, the name you will take back to your people. It signals your readiness to move into the rest of the change cycle. Do this right, and soon there’ll be no difference between what you are and what you were always meant to be. You’ll be living on your own North Star.

visions of the future that signal the beginning of Square Two aren’t so self-conscious. They arrive without effort or expectation, from the very core of your essential self. They have an almost ticklish quality; they make you smile or hum even when there’s no one around to be impressed. At first, these feelings will make an appearance, then vanish for days or weeks before another sighting. But when you feel authentic hope, even intermittently, you can be confident that the most difficult part of the change cycle is behind you. Though spontaneous images of the future are the single most important symptom that you’ve arrived in Square Two,

Don’t be surprised if, after surviving a catalytic event and moving through Square One, you suddenly develop an urge to do something utterly new. Very few people can predict what they’re going to want to do when Square Two finally arrives. Once your essential self has been freed, it may decide to take up flamenco dancing, or wildlife photography, or French cooking. These aren’t necessarily career choices. They’re just the things you sample as you begin to realize that you don’t have to be controlled by the old pressures and forces, that life is a smorgasbord and you’re free to sample whatever looks most delicious.

IF YOU CAN’T DREAM IT, YOU CAN’T DO IT. I’ve seen this a thousand times with my clients: As long as they can’t imagine doing something, it’s genuinely impossible for them.

You have to prepare for the major life changes of Square Three by dreaming, and dreaming big. This means valuing and nourishing every dream that pops into your head during Square Two—even if they seem like far-out

real dream, a wild and strange and true dream like those that occur during early Square Two, very rarely seems possible.

You have to get a feel for it. The feeling you need is a desire, a genuine heartfelt longing, for something that lies right on the border between possibility and impossibility. Your internal compasses will tell you when you articulate such a goal.

Being with my European lover Marrying my lover and moving to Europe

A “turtle step” is my label for the largest possible task that your essential self can do easily. That last word—easily—is very, very important. We’re not talking about how much you can do when you’re pushing a deadline, ignoring all other responsibilities, fueling yourself with gallons of caffeine, and receiving a fortuitous visit from the muse. Even on a bad day, when you contemplate your turtle steps, your immediate, genuine gut reaction should be, “Oh, yeah, sure. I can do that.”