How to Become Your Own North Star | ep63
About this episode:
“I followed all the rules and what do I have to show for it.”
She said this during our discovery call. She was stuck in a job where she was underpaid and under-appreciated. A daughter of immigrants, the eldest in her family she had done all the right things.
She worked hard and was the first in her family to graduate from college and then went on to do her masters. But, here she was talking to me feeling so confused and lost.
She was trying to figure out how she had gotten here when she had followed the plan so well.
For so long I was her. Following the plan to a T. The plan that would have me coupled up, babied up and 401k’d by the time I was in my 30s (early not mid…..let’s not push it here, okay?). And so, I tried to do all the things they told me to do:
Stable job
Partner
Retirement Plan
I thought that if I had all these things then my life would be stable, secure and as a result, successful. Some of the things I got. Others eluded me. But I will tell you one thing, the closer I got to “their plan” the further I felt from who I was. I was trying to conform to a formula that was supposed to assure my happiness, and it was in fact, making me more and more unhappy the closer I got to it.
And all along the way I thought the problem was me. Maybe if I got one more degree. Maybe if I lost a little more weight. Maybe if I had just worked a little harder.
But the problem was never me. The problem was the plan.
You get to define your life, love. The only person who has a say in this masterpiece is… you. Now, I'm not going to lie and say this makes life easier. No, it's far more easier to follow the formula they've been telling you to follow.
But I will tell you, that once you do away with their plan, and start creating your own, life becomes so much more free, fulfilling, and joyful.
It’s time to steer this ship, love. If you’re ready to become the leader of your own life & create that plan, tune in to this week’s episode and discovery what being your own North Star means.
If this is resonating with you, then I encourage you to check out Inner Compass: The Course and join my email list to know when the next FREE 5 day masterclass is happening.
A quote to take with you:
“I thought that if I had all these things, then my life would be stable, secure, and as a result, successful. But, the closer I got to “their plan,” the further I felt from who I was.”
This week, I invite you to…
Ask yourself:
What do you think being your own North Star means?
What would life feel like if you were to be your own North Star?
Want to dive deeper through journal prompts?
If you want to be in the know and get each Mindset Monday straight to your inbox complete with journal prompts to take you even further, get on my email list.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to trust your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.
+ Read the episode transcript here
Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life and you have come to the right place. Let's create your dream life while living your dream life. Okay love. Hi love. Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my mindset Monday post which you can read on Instagram at wholehearted coaching or you can get the full post plus journal prompts when you sign up for my email list. You can do that in the show notes or you can head to my website wholehearted dash coaching comm so today we're Starting things off a little differently. Usually we get into our mindset Monday post, but today we're gonna start off with a story. And it's a story that I know is going to resonate with a lot of you. It's a story that was mine for a really long time. And I have a feeling that this story may belong to you as well. So a few weeks ago, I had a discovery call with a potential new client and I hopped on the call. And here is this incredible woman. She's working for a non profit organization and organization that she had dreamed of working with for a long time. She'd recently graduated with her master's from an amazing program. And she was the first in her family to do this. She's the children of immigrants. She has worked so hard to be where she is to defy the odds and really be the dream that her parents imagined she would be. And by all standards, she's crushing it right on paper, this human being this woman is crushing it, she's doing the thing. But she's connecting with me, right? This is a discovery call. So you know, something is up, something doesn't feel right. And so as we start talking, she starts telling me about how much she dislikes her work. She's undervalued, underpaid, and it's not the fulfilling career she imagined it would be. She was overworked and didn't have time for friends for travel for relationships. She had invested her entire life into getting here, getting her master's having this upstanding job doing this thing called adulting. And she had followed everything perfectly all the things she thought she was supposed to do. But she felt so lost. And then she said a phrase, a phrase that I have heard uttered so many times by clients, a phrase that I said so often. She said, I followed all the rules, and what do I have to show for it? She did all the right things. She followed the plan that we are all told to follow the plan that is supposed to assure us fulfillment, happiness success, right? The one that has us coupled up in a secure job with a 401k by the time we're in our early 30s. So why did she feel so lost so empty? When she had done everything? Right? The problem is that we are all sold this lie that there is this prescriptive plan for our lives. a formula that if we follow to the tee will assure our happiness. But the truth is, the closer you follow that plan, the further you get from who you are, the further you get from happiness, the further you get from true fulfillment. Let's take a moment is this resonating for you? Is this resonating in your body? This plan that we were all sold that if you do these things, if you work hard, if you go to school, if you are this type of person, then then you're okay then life is going to be okay. Then you're going to feel all those feelings you want to feel and you get there you tick off all those damn things they told you to tick off and you get there and you realize, Oh, that was a lie. Love, it's time to throw out those plans and create our own. And that's we're going to be talking about in today's episode, what stops us from creating our own plans and how we can lean into creating our own plans. In short, we're talking about how we can once again become our own North Star Star. Now we're talking about all of this because I have a really big announcement. This summer, I'm going to be teaching a live version of my online course inner compass. inner compass is a self paced online course. But this summer, we're doing things differently. We're calling it inner compass summer camp. This is hot girl summer, but for the sole, because you're going to be guided by me personally, on the inner compass journey. inner compass is the course for all the dreamers for the people out there who have a dream in their heart. But they're afraid to say it out loud, or for the dreamers who are caught mid dream, too afraid to take the next step for the dreamers who are following their dreams, but are doing it in a way that is so unkind to themselves, that it is unsustainable inner compass, the course shows you how to reclaim your purpose, breathe life into your dreams, overcome the fears that you'll encounter on the way and pursue your dreams with joy and ease as the foundation over the course of the next few weeks. On each podcast episode, we're going to be exploring the themes and inner compass and I'll be interviewing graduates from the program. We'll be talking about purpose, dreaming, failure, faith, all of the things you need to understand to achieve your goals. And each week, I'm going to have a worksheet to go along with each episode. So instead of journal prompts, there are going to be worksheets from the course. So if you want to get those worksheets, you need to sign up for my email list and you know how to do that. So if all of this isn't enough, right in May, I'm going to be doing a free five day masterclass that will give you a sneak peek into what the inner compass experience is going to be like. Now, I've never done anything like this masterclass before. It's five days with me teaching live teaching all this beautiful content from inner compass if you want in on that you can get on the waitlist right now. So if you're curious about what inner compass is about, you can sign up for the waitlist right now and you can be the first person to sign up for the inner compass experience so you can get on the waitlist by heading to the show notes or you can go to wholehearted dash coaching comm slash waitlist. And you can also find out more about inner compass the course itself in the shownotes, but also at wholehearted dash coaching, comm slash inner compass. Alright, so let's get into this week's Mindset Monday. And then one day you realize that you're supposed to steer your own ship, you're the one responsible for charting your own course. You create the map, lead the way and take the journey all at the same time. That's the most thrilling and terrifying part of creating your own life. No one's ever done it before. No one but you, which means you have all the answers. You have all the wisdom, you get the final say, you and you alone. For so long, I was following the quote unquote, plan. I worked hard, I got my masters, I moved to New York, I worked even harder in my field, I went on all the goddamn diets. And I went on all the dates with the people who looked good on paper. And I thought that if I did all these things, if I had all these things, then my life would be stable, secure and as a result successful, and some of the things I got and others alluded me but I will tell you one thing, the closer I got to their plan, the further I felt from who I was, the more empty I felt the less fulfilling life was. And I was confused because like I was doing everything right. So why did I feel so empty? So of course, I thought the problem was me. Maybe I wasn't working hard enough, right? So I would work even harder and in the process become even more unkind to myself and totally ignore my mental and physical health. And I thought maybe maybe I'm supposed to get one more degree, right. So I would sign up for another course or a program. I would sign up for another mentor that that promised that they would help me get where I wanted to be spending 1000s of dollars and using up countless hours of my life. Maybe if I lost a little weight, maybe if I tried this app, maybe if I asked this person, they would know the answer to what was supposed to make We feel fulfilled. But I look back now and see that I was looking for all the answers outside of myself. I was allowing everyone to steer the ship called My life, my parents society, my mentors, Oprah, Chani, whomever, I put my trust in them, I put my trust in the greater plan, the plan that told me it would lead to my happiness. But I look back now on that time in my life, and I realized that every time I went along with the plan, every time I went along what with what they thought was best for me, I was going against what I knew, to be true for myself, I was going against what my body was telling me to do. I was silencing myself. I was putting all my faith and trust outside of myself. Because the truth was, I didn't trust myself. I didn't trust that I knew what was best for me. I didn't trust that I knew how to make good decisions. Trust, this is the word I want us to focus on. Because we do not trust ourselves enough. And it's not our fault that we don't trust ourselves. We'll get into that later. But love when you will learn how to trust yourself. Again, when you start creating a life based on self trust. That's when this thing called life becomes amazing. That's when you're leading your own life. That is when you aren't your own damn North Star. I had to teach myself how to trust myself again. What that meant what that felt like what that was, because the truth was, I knew the answers all along the way. I always knew better. You know, that phrase, I knew better. We've all said it. In fact, I want us to pause and I want you to think of the last time you said that phrase I knew better. Take a moment, think of a situation where you said I knew better. It could be big or small. Like I knew better than to get gas station sushi. Or I knew better than to say yes to that job. Do you have your moment. So I knew better implies that you have inner wisdom. It implies that you know what is best for you. But it also means that you actively chose to ignore that wisdom. What we're talking about in today's episode is the foundation of inner compass work. inner compass work is the methodology that I created. After discovering that each and every single person I worked with from one on one clients to group coaching programs knew what they wanted all along. But they no longer knew how to listen to themselves, and more importantly, trust themselves, right, so they couldn't figure out what that inner knowing was. This is a methodology that started with me years ago. And it has been fine tuned and developed over the years as I have worked with hundreds of women. The truth is we all have a perfect compass within us and compass where we are our own North Star, that for so many of us that compass has gone off alignment. Our North Star is fear, fear of failure, judgment, the unknown. Our North Star is the suppose twos and shoulds. Our North Star is perfectionism, our North Star is our past trauma. And when we create a life that is based on a north star that is anything but ourselves, then we create a life that may look great from the outside, but feels empty and unfulfilling for ourselves. We create a life that is based on what we think we should be doing, or what they think we should be doing as opposed to what we want to be doing. When I look back, I realize that I was navigating my life with a compass full of fear, and shoulds and conditioned beliefs. I was going down a path that I thought I was supposed to go down, never questioning if this was the path for me. And at a certain point I realized oh my gosh, I have become everything to everyone that I had become no one to myself. Meaning I was so good at knowing what people wanted, what they needed, how to be perfect, what they needed from me and how to be needed by them that I had no idea what I was wanted or needed, my North Star was no longer my own. And that's what inner compass work is all about. It's the process of undoing and rebuilding. So I want you to think of the I knew better question that I asked earlier, the instance where you didn't listen to yourself and then said, I knew better. Can let's take that example, again, I want you to think of that situation as vividly as you can. Alright, that moment where something in your being was like, Oh, I don't know if this is right for us. And now I want you to think of what talked you out of listening to that wisdom, that knowing, think of all the thoughts, beliefs, fears, and factors that talked you out of listening to yourself. So what's coming up for you? Whatever you are naming those comprise make up your North Star. those beliefs, those fears are the ones that are ruling your compass love. So if you feel like you're off course, yeah, that makes sense. It's because you're not steering the ship. I believe that all of us have been given a superpower, which is our inner knowing, or intuition. And what the I knew better exercise shows us is that we truly do know, but our inner knowing, right, it doesn't come with facts or logic or reason, it's usually a feeling or a soft whisper. But this feeling this whisper, it never steers us in the wrong direction. It may take us down unconventional or uncomfortable paths. But it is the path that is most true for ourselves. So some of the most common reasons that I hear when I work with clients, or in my group programs, the common reasons of why we don't listen to this voice are letting people down. Right that if I say yes or no to this thing, I know I'm going to hurt other people starting all over or what I call burning it all down, right? realizing you did your masters in this program, and then finding out Oh my God, I don't I don't like this work. This is not the work. That's for me. fear of the unknown. Going against the norms or conventions, limiting beliefs, conditioned beliefs. And one of the biggest ones is that we've been taught not to trust ourselves. So I want to talk about a couple of these things that I just listed. And when you sign up for the inner compass experience, we get into so much more depth about this all. So the biggest one I want to cover is trusting ourselves has been conditioned out of out of us right that we have been taught not to trust ourselves. We live in a society that wants facts, logic and reason. And this is of course, rooted in white supremacy, capitalism and the patriarchy. These structures have taught us that we should value facts, logic, reason, proof, over our feelings, our gut, our truth, oh, that rhymes. I'm not mean for that to rhyme. But it's true. These structures do not value our inner wisdom, which is the ancient wisdom that so many of our cultures were founded on, right intuition. So we're taught at a very young age, especially if we are a fab assigned female at birth, that feelings and intuition are not important. And then of course, our intuition asks us to do really scary things, right? Whether it's quit that job, leave that relationship, you know, move halfway across the country. These are things that don't make sense. They're things that go against conventions, or things that possibly mean hurting others or letting them down. And I think another really big one is that we're afraid of using our inner wisdom, because what if it gets it wrong? Right? If you're trusting only you and you alone, then that means you and you alone, are responsible if things go sideways, right? Or if things don't go as expected, and the only person you can blame is yourself. And I think that's what gets really scary to about just trusting ourselves, right? What if I make a quote unquote bad decision? What if I fail? These are some of the uncomfortable things that come up when we think of trusting ourselves trusting our inner wisdom, but the truth is trusting yourself is not about making a right or wrong decision. It's about making the decision that feels most true for you, then the right decision is trusting yourself. the right decision is listening to yourself. the right decision is following your inner wisdom. I heard Rachel Cargill say this in an interview and I think it perfectly sums this up. She said I trust myself regardless of what happens if I jump off of this cliff and I To fail, I trust that I have the intellect and resilience it takes to move on. And I also trust that if I do have footing, I will take off running risks aren't as risky when I know what I am betting on, which is me, I am betting on my ability to do really well, or the ability to recover if I don't do well. I mean, that's what we're talking about. Right? Trust and decision making go hand in hand. However, our focus so often is trusting ourselves to make the right decision, which is so much pressure when the focus should really be trusting ourselves to figure it out, regardless of the outcome. Love when it comes to your life, no one knows better than you, you know, best. And that is terrifying and thrilling. I get it. Because it means that this thing called your life, it's you, it's yours. It's yours alone. On a client call this week, a client who had just finished my six month intimate group coaching program, wholehearted woman, you know, she's at the end of the course at six months, and she's rebuilt the sense of self trust in her life and a real sense of self awareness. And she was so excited to create her life from this place, but also kind of scared. And I said to her, I get it. You are the cartographer, the Explorer, and the very first visitor that's wild and amazing and scary. I got it. This is the work that we do in inner compass the course by the end of the course you are your own North Star. It's a self paced online course but like I said, this summer I'm teaching it live, which means I'm going through the course with you. We're going to have multiple group calls each month and surprise guests, right hot girl summer for the soul. So if you enjoy the podcast, I know you're going to love this live version of inner compass the course you can find out more in the show notes or head to wholehearted dash coaching comm forward slash inner compass and if you want a sneak peek of what inner compass is like, then get on the waitlist for the inner compass experience. This is a five day free masterclass that will teach you the foundations of inner compass work. You can head to the shownotes for that, or head to wholehearted dash coaching comm slash waitlist. I want to end with a Glennon Doyle quote that I've quoted on this podcast before but it's it's a very eloquent way of saying what I have been trying to say throughout this entire episode. So the quote reads, I understand that no one else in the world knows what I should do. The experts don't know the ministers, the therapists, the magazines, the authors, my parents, my friends, they don't know. Because no one has ever lived or will ever live this life. I'm attempting to live with my gifts and challenges and past and people. Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I've stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers. So love if you are ready to become your own North Star. If you're ready to claim this life is yours and yours alone, then join me for inner compass the course or get on the waitlist for the inner compass experience to get a sneak peek of what we'll be doing in the course. And remember, the next few episodes will be dedicated to the modules the themes in the course. So you're going to know the course really intimately and the next few episodes. And next week we're going to be talking about the P word. Purpose. Until next week, love I will talk to you then. Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you liked this week's episode, please share it with a friend. comment and rate this podcast until next week. See you later. Love