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Picture this.
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You and I are standing at a trailhead.
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We're about to head up into the mountains.
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And I turn to ask you, so where are we headed today?
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And you shrug.
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I don't know.
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All right, no problem.
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So I pick a trail and I point us in the direction and off we go.
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In a couple minutes in, you slow down and you're like, wait, are you sure this is the right way?
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And I stop and I ask you, the right way to wear.
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And you get quiet.
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I don't know.
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So we keep walking, and about 10 minutes later, should we turn around here?
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I don't know.
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And somewhere out on that trail, you and I would finally figure out the same thing at the exact same moment.
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The problem was never that we ran out of directions.
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We had directions for days, left, right, up, down.
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Take your pick.
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The problem was we never decided where we were trying to go.
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So last week we talked about your North Star, that guiding principle that points your whole life in a direction.
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But today, I want to ask you something that matters maybe even a little bit more.
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And here's the thing: it's a question that most of us go our whole lives without ever stopping to consciously ask ourselves.
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Who handed you your compass?
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Think about that for a second.
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Because I'm telling you, every life is oriented around something.
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Every single life is oriented around something.
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So the real question was never whether you got a North Star.
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You do.
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We all do.
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The question is whether or not you're the one who chose it.
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Hello, my powerful people.
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This is the Info Power Podcast, and I'm your host, Jasmine Conway.
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Real quick before we dive in, if you haven't followed the show yet, consider this your first powerful move of the day.
00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:09.120
One tap, it's totally free, and every episode just shows up for you.
00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:14.479
So go ahead and treat yourself to some weekly power by hitting subscribe.
00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:18.879
And if today hits you right where it counts, don't keep it to yourself.
00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:22.080
Send it to another powerful person who needs to hear it.
00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:26.319
And then come find me over on Instagram at she's in full power.
00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:35.680
So last week we talked about choosing a North Star, a direction, a guiding principle for the season of life that you're in.
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And today we're going somewhere that has really transformed the way that I think about and understand my own story.
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Because before we can choose where we're going, we have to be really honest with ourselves about what has already been steering us.
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And sometimes, hear me out on this.
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The compass that you have been following your whole life is not one that you would have ever actually picked for yourself.
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And this episode is for the person who has checked every box and still feels a little bit lost.
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The one who has built the stable life, hit the goal, made the money, earned the title, and then stood there thinking, wait, is this what I really wanted?
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It's for the person who is really good at making decisions, but couldn't exactly tell you why they keep making the same decisions over and over, the same kinds of decisions.
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If you have ever caught yourself chasing something very hard and had no memory of ever deciding that you were gonna chase it, this one is for you.
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Stay with me today because today's episode is for you.
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I don't think that any of us starts life off with a blank slate.
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Like long before we're old enough to make a single major decision, we have already soaked up so many different messages.
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Some of those messages get said out loud, some of them never do.
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Maybe you actually hear the words get a stable job, don't take risks.
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Success means good money.
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You've got to prove yourself.
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Or maybe nobody ever said any of that.
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Maybe you just watched.
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You watched what you got praised for, what got celebrated, what got criticized, what made the adults around you relax, what made them tense up.
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Kids are incredible observers.
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I'm telling you, long before we are making choices, we are studying what kind of life gets called a good one.
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And here's the part that gets me the North stars that we inherit, they almost never feel like they're inherited.
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They feel normal, they feel like plain old common sense.
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So we don't question them.
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Why would you question common sense until one day they stop feeling like they fit you?
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Now, as I was building this episode, something occurred to me that I want to name because I don't think it's only about what other people handed us.
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Some of our North stars didn't come from anybody, they came from what we lived through.
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And a lot of them aren't protective.
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They showed up on purpose to keep us safe.
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And here's the thing that is a meaningful difference.
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Because if you grew up in chaos, maybe your North Star became control.
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If you got rejected early and it left a mark on you, maybe your North Star became achievement.
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If you spent years feeling invisible, maybe your North Star became being needed.
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And if your world kept shifting under your feet, maybe your North Star became certainty.
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And none of that makes you broken.
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And I want to be so clear about that.
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That makes you human.
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That makes you human.
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Your mind is so remarkably good at building you a compass that keeps you alive.
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And that is not a flaw, that is a future.
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So the question is not whether those North Stars served a purpose, because they absolutely did.
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The question is whether they're still taking you somewhere that you actually want to go.
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So allow me to give you an example from my own life.
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Let me get a little personal with you.
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So, growing up, my family knew what financial insecurity felt like.
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And for me, money was never just money because I live with type 1 diabetes.
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So money meant insulin, money meant doctor's appointments, money meant supplies, money meant staying healthy and staying alive.
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And I knew as a kid what it felt like to wonder if there would be enough.
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So without ever sitting down and deciding it for myself, my North Star became financial security.
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Brightly, boldly, no apologies.
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Every career move I made was bent around security.
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Which option pays more?
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Which job was more stable?
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Which path gave me the most protection?
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And that was my filter.
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That was the whole filter.
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And looking back, that North Star made perfect sense.
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It was trying to protect me.
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And honestly, I am so grateful for it because it helped me build a stable life.
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It is part of my story and part of my journey.
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But here's what surprises me now.
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Back then, I don't think I ever once asked myself whether my work needed to mean something.
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I don't know if that question even crossed my mind.
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And I'm gonna be real with you.
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If somebody had told me they were choosing meaningful work over a bigger paycheck, I probably would have thought they were privileged or maybe even a little naive.
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I would have thought, okay, I mean, that's cute, but some of us have real bills.
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But looking back, I don't think that I was chasing money at all.
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I was chasing safety.
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Money was just the language that my nervous system used to be able to spell the word safe.
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And when I understood that, it changed how I see the younger version of myself.
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She wasn't shallow.
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She wasn't obsessed with success.
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She was just a girl trying to build a life where she would never wonder whether she could afford the thing that keeps her alive.
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Of course, financial security became her north star.
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Of course it did.
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But life has taught me something since then.
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Your North stars are not meant to be frozen in place.
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They are meant to guide you through through a season, maybe a few seasons.
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The North Star that protected you at 22 might not be the one that's supposed to lead you at 34.
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The version of me who needed financial security was not wrong.
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There was nothing wrong with her.
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She was responding to the life that she had actually lived.
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But once I built that stability, new questions started showing up.
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Not can I afford my life, but does this life actually feel like mine?
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Am I using my gifts?
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Do I even like how my days feel?
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And here's what's wild those questions could not exist until the first ones got answered.
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You can't ask, is this meaningful?
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While you're still asking, is this safe?
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The second question waits its turn.
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So sometimes we look back and judge an old version of ourselves for caring about the wrong things.
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But maybe she was caring about exactly the right things for that season.
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So I wonder what your story is.
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Maybe it's not money for you.
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Maybe it's achievement, and you've spent your whole life trying to prove that you were enough.
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Or maybe it's approval and you've gotten so good at reading everybody else's expectations that you forgot to ask what you actually want.
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Or maybe it's certainty, and every decision has to come with a guarantee before you'll make it.
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Maybe it's comfort, maybe it's being the indispensable one, maybe it's just never disappointing anybody.
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And none of those make you weak.
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They are orientations, they are the direction your life learned to travel before you were old enough to weigh in.
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And if you've never once stopped to look at the compass in your hand, you can spend decades of your life faithfully following a direction that was set for a temporary season, for a season that you've already outgrown towards a place that you don't even want to end up.
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So let me tell you what this looks like.
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Operating in full power means that you get to pick up your own compass and actually read it, not just follow it on autopilot.
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You get to read it.
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It means that you are brave enough to ask where a direction came from before you give it another year of your life.
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It doesn't mean that you just throw out the North Star that protected you.
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But operating in full power means that you can hold two things at once.
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You can say, This direction kept me safe and I'm grateful.
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And it might not be the one that I need anymore.
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And all of that, all of that gets to be true in the same breath.
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Some North stars help you survive, others help you come alive.
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And there's a moment in a lot of our lives where survival stops being the only question on the table, and you finally get to ask the deeper ones.
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Like, who am I becoming?
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What kind of life actually fits me authentically?
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What do I want my days to feel like?
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Those are not selfish questions.
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I need you to not think about that as selfish.
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That is growth.
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You deserve to ask those questions.
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You earn the right to ask them by answering the hard ones first.
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So here's your power practice for the week because you know I love to leave you with a power practice.
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And I actually want you to do this one.
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I want you to name your compass out loud or on paper.
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Finish the sentence.
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Most of my decisions have been pointed towards fill in the blank.
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Maybe it's money, approval, control, being needed, certainty, whatever it is, name it plainly.
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And then I want you to ask three questions in order.
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Where did it come from?
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I.e., did I inherit it or did I build it to protect myself?
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That's question one.
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Question two, what part of it still serves me?
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Because some of it might, some of it will.
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You don't have to throw out the whole compass.
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And question three, the big one.
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What part of it belongs to a version of me who already did their job?
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And you don't have to rush to answer that last one.
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Don't force it.
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Just let yourself notice it.
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Because I'm telling you, awareness has this way of opening doors that you didn't even know were there.
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And you don't have to change a single thing this week.
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All you have to do is name it.
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That's the whole practice.
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So before I let you go, I want to leave you with this.
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Maybe this week, instead of asking yourself, what's wrong with me?
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You ask, What has been guiding me?
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Because if you can answer that one honestly, you're gonna find out that most of the choices you've made have not been random.
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They were incredibly logical responses to the life that you have actually lived.
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They protected you, they carried you, they got you here.
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And maybe that's exactly what they were built to do.
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But here's the beautiful thing about being a person: you get to evolve, you get to let life ask you brand new questions.
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You get to redefine what success means to you now in this season, not the one that you were surviving a decade ago.
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You get to choose meaning after you've chosen stability.
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You get to choose peace after surviving years of chaos.
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You get to choose courage after years of playing it safe.
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You get to update the compass.
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You get to update the compass because you have grown into someone who needs a different direction than the first one who picked it up.
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So here's where we're headed next week.
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We are bringing it all together because once you've chosen your North Star and you've looked honestly at the compass that you've been carrying, the real question becomes how do you actually use the damn thing?
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How do you make a hard call when every option in front of you is a good one?
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How do you know when to stay, when to go, when to let go?
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We're gonna build a decision filter, y'all.
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That's what we're doing next week.
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Something that helps you move through uncertainty without second guessing yourself to the ground.
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And you don't want to miss it.
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Until then, remember this every life is oriented around something.
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The question is whether it's pointing toward the life you're actually trying to build.
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Thank you for spending this time with me and stay powerful.
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If this resonated with you, share it with another powerful person who needs to hear it.
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I'm Jasmine Conway.
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This is the Infopower Podcast.
00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:26.879
I'll talk to you next time.
00:00:00.239 --> 00:00:01.120
Picture this.
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You and I are standing at a trailhead.
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We're about to head up into the mountains.
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And I turn to ask you, so where are we headed today?
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And you shrug.
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I don't know.
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All right, no problem.
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So I pick a trail and I point us in the direction and off we go.
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In a couple minutes in, you slow down and you're like, wait, are you sure this is the right way?
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And I stop and I ask you, the right way to wear.
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And you get quiet.
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I don't know.
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So we keep walking, and about 10 minutes later, should we turn around here?
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I don't know.
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And somewhere out on that trail, you and I would finally figure out the same thing at the exact same moment.
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The problem was never that we ran out of directions.
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We had directions for days, left, right, up, down.
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Take your pick.
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The problem was we never decided where we were trying to go.
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So last week we talked about your North Star, that guiding principle that points your whole life in a direction.
00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:18.879
But today, I want to ask you something that matters maybe even a little bit more.
00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:26.879
And here's the thing: it's a question that most of us go our whole lives without ever stopping to consciously ask ourselves.
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Who handed you your compass?
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Think about that for a second.
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Because I'm telling you, every life is oriented around something.
00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:38.560
Every single life is oriented around something.
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So the real question was never whether you got a North Star.
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You do.
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We all do.
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The question is whether or not you're the one who chose it.
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Hello, my powerful people.
00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:56.000
This is the Info Power Podcast, and I'm your host, Jasmine Conway.
00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:04.799
Real quick before we dive in, if you haven't followed the show yet, consider this your first powerful move of the day.
00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:09.120
One tap, it's totally free, and every episode just shows up for you.
00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:14.479
So go ahead and treat yourself to some weekly power by hitting subscribe.
00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:18.879
And if today hits you right where it counts, don't keep it to yourself.
00:02:19.120 --> 00:02:22.080
Send it to another powerful person who needs to hear it.
00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:26.319
And then come find me over on Instagram at she's in full power.
00:02:27.039 --> 00:02:35.680
So last week we talked about choosing a North Star, a direction, a guiding principle for the season of life that you're in.
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And today we're going somewhere that has really transformed the way that I think about and understand my own story.
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Because before we can choose where we're going, we have to be really honest with ourselves about what has already been steering us.
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And sometimes, hear me out on this.
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The compass that you have been following your whole life is not one that you would have ever actually picked for yourself.
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And this episode is for the person who has checked every box and still feels a little bit lost.
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The one who has built the stable life, hit the goal, made the money, earned the title, and then stood there thinking, wait, is this what I really wanted?
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It's for the person who is really good at making decisions, but couldn't exactly tell you why they keep making the same decisions over and over, the same kinds of decisions.
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If you have ever caught yourself chasing something very hard and had no memory of ever deciding that you were gonna chase it, this one is for you.
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Stay with me today because today's episode is for you.
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I don't think that any of us starts life off with a blank slate.
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Like long before we're old enough to make a single major decision, we have already soaked up so many different messages.
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Some of those messages get said out loud, some of them never do.
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Maybe you actually hear the words get a stable job, don't take risks.
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Success means good money.
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You've got to prove yourself.
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Or maybe nobody ever said any of that.
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Maybe you just watched.
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You watched what you got praised for, what got celebrated, what got criticized, what made the adults around you relax, what made them tense up.
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Kids are incredible observers.
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I'm telling you, long before we are making choices, we are studying what kind of life gets called a good one.
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And here's the part that gets me the North stars that we inherit, they almost never feel like they're inherited.
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They feel normal, they feel like plain old common sense.
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So we don't question them.
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Why would you question common sense until one day they stop feeling like they fit you?
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Now, as I was building this episode, something occurred to me that I want to name because I don't think it's only about what other people handed us.
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Some of our North stars didn't come from anybody, they came from what we lived through.
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And a lot of them aren't protective.
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They showed up on purpose to keep us safe.
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And here's the thing that is a meaningful difference.
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Because if you grew up in chaos, maybe your North Star became control.
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If you got rejected early and it left a mark on you, maybe your North Star became achievement.
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If you spent years feeling invisible, maybe your North Star became being needed.
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And if your world kept shifting under your feet, maybe your North Star became certainty.
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And none of that makes you broken.
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And I want to be so clear about that.
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That makes you human.
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That makes you human.
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Your mind is so remarkably good at building you a compass that keeps you alive.
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And that is not a flaw, that is a future.
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So the question is not whether those North Stars served a purpose, because they absolutely did.
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The question is whether they're still taking you somewhere that you actually want to go.
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So allow me to give you an example from my own life.
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Let me get a little personal with you.
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So, growing up, my family knew what financial insecurity felt like.
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And for me, money was never just money because I live with type 1 diabetes.
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So money meant insulin, money meant doctor's appointments, money meant supplies, money meant staying healthy and staying alive.
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And I knew as a kid what it felt like to wonder if there would be enough.
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So without ever sitting down and deciding it for myself, my North Star became financial security.
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Brightly, boldly, no apologies.
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Every career move I made was bent around security.
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Which option pays more?
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Which job was more stable?
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Which path gave me the most protection?
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And that was my filter.
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That was the whole filter.
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And looking back, that North Star made perfect sense.
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It was trying to protect me.
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And honestly, I am so grateful for it because it helped me build a stable life.
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It is part of my story and part of my journey.
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But here's what surprises me now.
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Back then, I don't think I ever once asked myself whether my work needed to mean something.
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I don't know if that question even crossed my mind.
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And I'm gonna be real with you.
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If somebody had told me they were choosing meaningful work over a bigger paycheck, I probably would have thought they were privileged or maybe even a little naive.
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I would have thought, okay, I mean, that's cute, but some of us have real bills.
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But looking back, I don't think that I was chasing money at all.
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I was chasing safety.
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Money was just the language that my nervous system used to be able to spell the word safe.
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And when I understood that, it changed how I see the younger version of myself.
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She wasn't shallow.
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She wasn't obsessed with success.
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She was just a girl trying to build a life where she would never wonder whether she could afford the thing that keeps her alive.
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Of course, financial security became her north star.
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Of course it did.
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But life has taught me something since then.
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Your North stars are not meant to be frozen in place.
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They are meant to guide you through through a season, maybe a few seasons.
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The North Star that protected you at 22 might not be the one that's supposed to lead you at 34.
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The version of me who needed financial security was not wrong.
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There was nothing wrong with her.
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She was responding to the life that she had actually lived.
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But once I built that stability, new questions started showing up.
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Not can I afford my life, but does this life actually feel like mine?
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Am I using my gifts?
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Do I even like how my days feel?
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And here's what's wild those questions could not exist until the first ones got answered.
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You can't ask, is this meaningful?
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While you're still asking, is this safe?
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The second question waits its turn.
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So sometimes we look back and judge an old version of ourselves for caring about the wrong things.
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But maybe she was caring about exactly the right things for that season.
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So I wonder what your story is.
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Maybe it's not money for you.
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Maybe it's achievement, and you've spent your whole life trying to prove that you were enough.
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Or maybe it's approval and you've gotten so good at reading everybody else's expectations that you forgot to ask what you actually want.
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Or maybe it's certainty, and every decision has to come with a guarantee before you'll make it.
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Maybe it's comfort, maybe it's being the indispensable one, maybe it's just never disappointing anybody.
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And none of those make you weak.
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They are orientations, they are the direction your life learned to travel before you were old enough to weigh in.
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And if you've never once stopped to look at the compass in your hand, you can spend decades of your life faithfully following a direction that was set for a temporary season, for a season that you've already outgrown towards a place that you don't even want to end up.
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So let me tell you what this looks like.
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Operating in full power means that you get to pick up your own compass and actually read it, not just follow it on autopilot.
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You get to read it.
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It means that you are brave enough to ask where a direction came from before you give it another year of your life.
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It doesn't mean that you just throw out the North Star that protected you.
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But operating in full power means that you can hold two things at once.
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You can say, This direction kept me safe and I'm grateful.
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And it might not be the one that I need anymore.
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And all of that, all of that gets to be true in the same breath.
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Some North stars help you survive, others help you come alive.
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And there's a moment in a lot of our lives where survival stops being the only question on the table, and you finally get to ask the deeper ones.
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Like, who am I becoming?
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What kind of life actually fits me authentically?
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What do I want my days to feel like?
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Those are not selfish questions.
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I need you to not think about that as selfish.
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That is growth.
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You deserve to ask those questions.
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You earn the right to ask them by answering the hard ones first.
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So here's your power practice for the week because you know I love to leave you with a power practice.
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And I actually want you to do this one.
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I want you to name your compass out loud or on paper.
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Finish the sentence.
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Most of my decisions have been pointed towards fill in the blank.
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Maybe it's money, approval, control, being needed, certainty, whatever it is, name it plainly.
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And then I want you to ask three questions in order.
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Where did it come from?
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I.e., did I inherit it or did I build it to protect myself?
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That's question one.
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Question two, what part of it still serves me?
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Because some of it might, some of it will.
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You don't have to throw out the whole compass.
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And question three, the big one.
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What part of it belongs to a version of me who already did their job?
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And you don't have to rush to answer that last one.
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Don't force it.
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Just let yourself notice it.
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Because I'm telling you, awareness has this way of opening doors that you didn't even know were there.
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And you don't have to change a single thing this week.
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All you have to do is name it.
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That's the whole practice.
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So before I let you go, I want to leave you with this.
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Maybe this week, instead of asking yourself, what's wrong with me?
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You ask, What has been guiding me?
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Because if you can answer that one honestly, you're gonna find out that most of the choices you've made have not been random.
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They were incredibly logical responses to the life that you have actually lived.
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They protected you, they carried you, they got you here.
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And maybe that's exactly what they were built to do.
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But here's the beautiful thing about being a person: you get to evolve, you get to let life ask you brand new questions.
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You get to redefine what success means to you now in this season, not the one that you were surviving a decade ago.
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You get to choose meaning after you've chosen stability.
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You get to choose peace after surviving years of chaos.
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You get to choose courage after years of playing it safe.
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You get to update the compass.
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You get to update the compass because you have grown into someone who needs a different direction than the first one who picked it up.
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So here's where we're headed next week.
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We are bringing it all together because once you've chosen your North Star and you've looked honestly at the compass that you've been carrying, the real question becomes how do you actually use the damn thing?
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How do you make a hard call when every option in front of you is a good one?
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How do you know when to stay, when to go, when to let go?
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We're gonna build a decision filter, y'all.
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That's what we're doing next week.
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Something that helps you move through uncertainty without second guessing yourself to the ground.
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And you don't want to miss it.
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Until then, remember this every life is oriented around something.
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The question is whether it's pointing toward the life you're actually trying to build.
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Thank you for spending this time with me and stay powerful.
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If this resonated with you, share it with another powerful person who needs to hear it.
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I'm Jasmine Conway.
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This is the Infopower Podcast.
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I'll talk to you next time.
