1+1+1: Wayfinding
Sooner or later, we all come to the edge of our map.
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What helps you find your way, when you’ve lost your way?
Sooner or later, we all come to the edge of our map.
These are the challenging moments in a life and career, where you’re seeking change, trying to find a path, hoping to navigate a crossing—but you’re at the end of your known world.
Seth Godin offers this perspective on these edge of your map moments:
“Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.”
Art.
Leadership.
A career journey.
All of these require the act of navigating without a map.
Yes, Seth, I do sorta hate that. Because I like maps. I like having directions. Mostly, I like feeling oriented.
There’s nothing wrong with maps, of course. Except for when they’re useless. When you’ve come up to a new frontier. When you’re on the edge of a territory that’s yet to be explored.
I think Seth Godin is right. The best creativity, leadership, and career all require moving beyond a map, moving beyond certainty and control.
Which means, a different set of mindsets and skillsets are needed for this kind of navigation. This is where we rely on the art of Wayfinding. Wayfinding is a way of navigating without a map. In the case of navigating a career, it means relying on a different set of questions to find your way. Questions like: what is my purpose? what are my core values? what’s my expertise? what’s my unique voice?
Later this week, I’ll send you a short essay on Wayfinding. It’s about Wayfinding through your career journey, but it applies to any of us who are looking for ways to traverse our most important transitions, decisions, and aspirations.
Related to this, I want to let you know of a project I’ve been researching and working on. It’s called The Personal Brand Wayfinder. It's a framework and process for navigating your career, that I’ve created alongside my friend and collaborator Colin Macrae.
It’s our reframe on the tiresome and dysfunctional space of “personal brand”. It’s somewhat of an anti-influencer approach to the topic. This is for creative leaders looking for a holistic approach to traversing the frontier of their career journey.
Colin and I will be hosting a free one-hour Learning Session on October 2 at 12pm PST to share the model and some of the tools for doing this work. I’d love to see you there.
You’re warmly invited!
Quote
“A true vocation always calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place.
Strangely, we find that all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, but an essence we could not understand until we had undertaken the journey.
A calling is a conversation between our physical bodies, our work, our intellects and our imaginations, and a new world that is itself the territory we seek.
A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones, onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, in conversation with the elements. Looking back we see the wake we have left as only a brief glimmering trace on the waters.”
—David Whyte
Question
What if you’re not lost? What if you’re at the threshold of something new?
Poem
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
—David Wagoner
Thanks for reading,
Lance Odegard
unstucking.co
Hi there! 👋 My name’s Lance - I’m a writer, coach, and learning designer from Vancouver BC, Canada. In my work as a professional certified coach, I help people create the future. I truly believe that the future is made by the conversations we can and cannot have. If you want to know more about my practice or how we could work together, drop me a line. It’d be great to meet you. Thanks for stopping by.
