What is Your True North and Why You Need it Now!

Situations vs. shituations. They can happen anywhere throughout the normal course of any given day, right? Shituations are those situations that tend to stop us dead in our tracks. They are those unexpected events that rock our world and tend to leave us feeling lost, confused and helpless. But at the end of the day there is one concept or tool that can help us navigate the most common of situations or the most overwhelming of shituations. That one tool is to develop a sense of our own true north. 

So what exactly is a true north?

True north is defined as the core values and beliefs that guide our decisions.

These values act as a litmus test for making choices, helping to clarify options and direct our actions according to what we fundamentally believe. Who we believe we are and who we want to be in this life. 

Once we are able to establish what our true north is and commit to using that true north as the guiding principle for all of our decision making,  the way through situations or shituations becomes so much more evident. When we’re faced with those difficult decisions and we look at our options, if we are true to our true north, the answers become clearer.

But first, the challenge is to figure out what true north means to you. So maybe ask yourself some of these questions:

• What is important to me? 

• What do I value? 

• What do I want to be remembered for?

When I first found out that my son was disabled at about eight weeks old I was bombarded with, what felt like, a new challenge or decision to be made every single day. Having never been a parent of a disabled child before and a disabled child with a very shortened life expectancy,  I was in uncharted waters. The decisions that needed to be made were actual life and death decisions. 

It was only after an experience that I had when I took my son to the doctor that my true north, in regards to his life, became very evident. Ultimately, that experience provided the framework and the foundation for every single decision that I made regarding his care. 

The story goes like this.

I was waiting to take my son in to see his doctor when a woman pushing a wheelchair, very similar to my sons, came out into the reception area. In the wheelchair was a child that looked very similar to my son but a little bit older. What was alarming to me was that of this child in the wheelchair, I could only see his head and his feet. Draped all across his body were coats, blankets, bags and all sorts of junk. 

For lack of a better visual he looked like a treadmill in a bedroom that had shit just piled on top of it.  

This vision impacted me significantly and I was really shaken to the core. I was crying when I went in to see our doctor. I explained to him what I had just seen and he explained to me that he knew who I was talking about. What followed was a conversation that resonated with me for the remainder of my son’s life. 

He explained to me that the individual that I was referring to was the case of a parent going to extreme lengths in order to prevent the loss of their child. So much so, in fact, that the decisions that they were making were not necessarily for the right reasons. They were so afraid of losing their child that it may have interfered with their ability to make the best decisions in regards to their child’s comfort and quality of life. 

After that discussion two things became my true north when it came to making every single decision when it came to caring for my child: comfort and dignity; those were my two true north beacons.  And once I had established that, not that I was calling it my true north at the time,  every decision moving forward was simple. 

To be able to ask myself those two questions: How would the outcome of the decision that needed to be made impact my son’s comfort? And would the outcome of this decision violate my son’s dignity in any way, shape or form? It was a game changer.

I recognize that’s a pretty extreme example of how I found my true north in that situation because I didn't even know that that was what I needed but it’s really no different than any situation that you might come up against. 

And I think the greater question that we have to ask ourselves is: What is the true north for my life?

Every day we are faced with making hundreds of decisions. Some of those decisions are very straightforward and simple.

Am I hungry? Yes. 

Do I need to eat?  Yes. 

What am I going to eat? Now that is always a loaded question.

But when we’re faced with a truly challenging decision, maybe with moral or ethical undertones, or like in my case,  life or death decisions, it is essential to know what your true north is. 

And when you are smack dab in the middle of it, whatever the challenging situation might be, that is not the time to figure it out.

Now is the time.