“If you can see the path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”
—
Joseph Campbell
For years, I’ve been texting myself.
I’ll open up the Messages app to jot down a reminder, capture an idea, or make a quick grocery list.
Anyone else do this?
Many times I’ll start texting, and those three little bubbles pop up in the lower left corner, and I think…“Oh! Somebody’s texting me.” Or even, “Woah…the person I’m messaging is messaging me at the same time!”
All of this happens in a split second before I realize what’s going on.
Yeah, ya ding dong. It’s you! It’s you texting you.
I laugh to myself in these moments, because how does this keep happening? Also, why am I surprised every time?
For me, this is a metaphor about finding a conversation you’ve needed to have.
Too often, I think the conversation I’m looking for is out there, when really, it’s in here. Many times the person I most need to hear from is me.
It can be hard to listen to your life. There are so many ways to get buried. And yet when we’re able to find this conversation, there’s always a surprise of self-recognition.
Of course, finding this conversation calls for deeper work than texting yourself. It’s the work of becoming conversant with your own story—to find the space to overhear yourself think, to excavate your purpose and longings, to get re-anchored to your values and reunited with your strengths, to see, with fresh eyes, the direction your life could take.
This is especially true when we’re caught in a decision, faced with a demanding challenge/possibility, or when we’ve come to the point where what was working isn’t working.
Sooner or later, we all come to the edge of our map.
Navigating vs. Wayfinding
What helps you find your way, when you’ve lost your way?
When you've lost the plot, run out of solutions, reached your ceiling? Or when a season closes, or worse—you wake up in the middle of one, only to find that you've wandered far from yourself?
Where do you go then?
Recently, I found out that there’s a difference between navigating and wayfinding. These are two different approaches for traversing a mountain, a forest, or a life. All of the many frontiers that we face.
A frontier is the space between the known and the unknown. Frontiers by definition involve uncharted territory. Which means that there isn’t a map or GPS that’s going to get you through it.
Navigating is helpful when the territory ahead is known.
Navigating is about finding the charts and signposts and coordinates. We make our way by following the right map.
Wayfinding is for when the territory ahead is unknown.
Wayfinding is an ongoing, living conversation between you and the elements of an uncertain terrain. We make our way by sensing, responding, exploring and expanding beyond our known world.
Wayfinding is how we move with and through fear, when we come to the edge of our map.
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.
The best creativity, leadership, and career all require moving beyond a map, moving beyond certainty and control.
My friend Colin Macrae introduced me to this definition: “Wayfinding is the ancient Polynesian practice of navigating the open oceans using deep knowledge and intense observation.”
Wayfinding is made of deep knowledge and intense observation.
What would this mean then for the frontier of your career? For how you move through your most important decisions, transitions, and aspirations?
Well, that the first steps of wayfinding your working life would involve deep knowledge and intense observation of you.
Which means, a different set of mindsets and skillsets are needed for this kind of travel. You need more than the classic navigation tools of downloading advice and apps—you need deeper awareness.
Wayfinding a career relies on a different set of questions to find your way. Questions like:
what’s my purpose?
what are my core values?
what’s my expertise?
what’s my unique voice?
It’s strange how many of the most important parts of who we are—what we stand for, our strengths, the impact we have on others—can be so close yet remain unseen by us. Our essence largely remains unconscious or slightly hazy at best.
Your wayfinder is made by increasing your curiosity and clarity about:
where you are,
who you are,
what makes you unique,
where you want to go, and
who you need to become to get there.
The Inward Journey
A few years ago, I had a season where I was weighing a number of opportunities. On paper it looked great. I had a job offer, a few contract offers, all the while trying to figure out a new entrepreneurial life. I felt confused, conflicted, and buried in obligation.
For a stretch of months I’d meet with my coach Molly to try and get my vocational path sorted. Every time we’d meet I’d lay out all the decision dynamics and details. And every time, Molly wasn’t interested in the details. She kept asking questions about me—my values, my vision, my voice. Honestly, it was annoying at times. I didn’t have time for this! I needed to get an with my work!
Over three months, her relentless curiosity was aimed at what was going on inside of me, not just around me. This led me to start paying attention to the same things. I started extending curiosity in my own direction. I was learning to listen beneath what others were asking of me, to what my life was asking of me.
There’s this well-known, well-instagrammed Carl Jung quote that I sorta love and sorta never want to see again: Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes. I think the context around this quote is important and it makes the idea more compelling and less cringe.
This quote is found in a short letter, written in 1916 as a response to Fanny Bowditch. As a psychoanalyst, Jung had just agreed to take on Fanny as a patient, when he was able to return from his military service. Jung wrote:
“I realize that under the circumstances you have described you feel the need to see clearly. But your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”
Jung was working with Fanny to begin the inward journey. This would require that she “devalue” him and his expertise, withdraw her projections on him, and begin to value her own voice. This is the work of individuation.
But that’s enough Jungian stuff for now. The point is that wayfinding involves resisting the attempt to work from the outside—in.
Wayfinding through your career journey requires walking the pathless path from the inside—out.
Perhaps you’ve heard by now about my project The Personal Brand Wayfinder. I’ve been working on this with my friend Colin Macrae and it’s our reframe on the tiresome and dysfunctional space of “personal brand”.
We’re both coaches who work in the creativity and leadership space and this project is born out of working alongside many brilliant people. We see people who are focussed on growing their capacity for creative leadership. We see others who are learning how to navigate big opportunities and decisions, inside and outside of their career. We see people seeking to deepen and expand their impact.
We also see people who are wrestling with a sense of being off-course. We see people battling low levels of fulfillment and high levels of fog in their career journey. We see people struggling to find a few next steps to make any of it better.
The Personal Brand Wayfinder is a framework, a toolset, and a process for excavating and evoking your identity. It’s made with the components of what makes you, you.
Having a clear and connected view of your essence becomes the ultimate companion for wayfinding your career, for making decisions, and for growing into the creative leader you know you’re capable of.
Colin and I will be sharing more about this in a free online Learning Session on October 2 at 12pm PST. We’ll introduce you to the Wayfinder, so that you can:
Get to clarity about your core identity
Articulate the attributes and expertise you can grow in your career journey
Define the benefits you bring to the teams and organizations you work with
Craft a Brand Promise that inspires and guides your path forward
It’d be great to see you there—please know you’re warmly invited.
Living and Leading from Essence
Location: Zoom
Date: October 2, 2024
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm PST
Cost: Free
Insightful distinctions. Thank you! Looking forward to learning more Oct 2.