Finding your Own True Path (Air)

Your Own True Path is a felt sense of going in the right direction. You know when you’re on it, and you know when you’re straying off it. It’s not just your career, or your projects, or your family (although it could involve all of these.) and there’s no way to define it, as it’s unique to every person. Your path is yours alone. But when you’re on it you feel aligned with something deep within you – it is your meaning, your purpose, your path allows you express your talents and gifts to their fullest, and give something back to the world. It is far more than simply “being my true self” but about becoming and growing.

One thing that happens when you’re on your Own True Path, is your brain will release dopamine – a neurotransmitter linked to reward and motivation. It signals “keep going, do more of that!” and gives us a sense of positive wellbeing. Dopamine release happens when we make progress toward a goal, so if you don’t have a goal, you’re unlikely to experience much positive emotion. Many of us have felt like this at times – like we’re going round in circles, with no direction, no purpose, no passion. The only relief is cake, or wine, or sex, or drugs, or whatever stimulates the brain to release some dopamine, and even then it’s very short-lived.

What we need is a Path – something that stimulates feeling good naturally and consistently. Something that opens the dopamine tap every time we progress in that direction. Because progressing toward a manageable goal produces dopamine, you feel more excited to be alive, and more motivated to engage in life, and look after yourself. When following your Own True Path, you’re locked into a positive feedback spiral of increasing wellness.

So how do we find our Own True Path? Do we discover it, or do we have to build it?
There are four elements to the path, and each element needs its own tools. Let’s look at the elements in depth, and start (or realign) our journey:

Fire – Personal North Star

Fire is the element of burning passion, and of transformation. It leads us toward something outside of ourselves, something higher, something bright that burns in the distance, calling us home. It provides warmth and safety, but we can never get too close, or we get burned. It is not to be touched directly – for this reason we’re looking for something that we can align ourselves with, but never reach – our Personal North Star. This is not something to be achieved, only moved toward. Your North Star is your core values – what’s really important to you? What do you really care about? What quality do you most respect in yourself or in others? This could be wisdom, kindness, courage, power, truth, connection – something that you can embody but never reach 100% (no one is maximally wise, or kind, or truthful 100% of the time – values are ideals to be lived, not things to be completed). What do you live for? What are you willing to suffer for?

Air – Skills and Learning

Air is the element most aligned with conscious thought, and consciousness loves to achieve things and reach goals. It loves to know, and to understand. Air is aligned with skills and seeks mastery. The airy part of your Own True Path asks – what am I good at? What natural talents do I have? What skills have I learned, or could I learn? What training is available to me? Your Own True Path has to be both discovered and built. You discover the potential within yourself (your Personal North Star), but then need to build it with effort, training, and practice. You don’t have to be a natural, it may well take years of development, but every journey starts with a single step – what single step can you take today to increase your skill at something you’re passionate about?
It may be helpful to look back at early years – what were you like as a child? Were you sporty? Academic? Well-mannered? Brave? Any trait can be valuable, when used in the right context.
Were there any school subjects or interests you now regret never exploring, or that you gave up? What can friends and family tell you about yourself? (We all have blind spots that only others can see).
If you could meet your younger self, what encouragement would you give them? What would you want them to study, or to learn? What skills would you want them to have developed? What’s stopping you from getting started now?

Here’s a tool – list your skills (don’t be humble here) and ask yourself – do I like doing this? Do I feel fully myself when I’m engaged in this skill? If so – great! Do more of that, work it into your daily life as much as you can. If not, then give yourself permission to try something different. Use more of the skills that feel aligned with your purpose, and less of the skills that don’t. And here’s the important bit – they don’t have to make you money, progress your career, or be of use to anyone for anything! Your Own True Path will not be straight – it will meander here and there, this way and that. Give yourself permission to be playful and explorative – you won’t always know what skills will turn out to be useful months or years down the line. As long as you are guided by your Personal North Star, your core values, you will not veer too far off course.
Your Own True Path will be marked by achievements along the way, but they themselves are not the path. Identify goals, chase them down, earn them, achieve them, but don’t be fooled into thinking everything will be OK once you have achieved them.
The path doesn’t end at a fixed destination, the path is the destination.

Water – Find your tribe.

It is an inescapable truth that humans are hard-wired for connection. We are social animals, and have self-organised ourselves into families, tribes, societies, and religions in every place and time throughout history. The need to feel connected to other humans is so deeply ingrained in us that forced solitary confinement is considered to be a form of torture. Your Own True Path must exist within an interconnecting web of other people’s paths, and the more paths you can connect with, the more you will feel connected you with something greater than yourself. If your path seems to lead off into the wilderness, perhaps that’s because your tribe is out there somewhere. But make sure you keep looking, for there will be others out in the desert too, walking their own paths, looking to connect with you and yours.
So after you have identified your Personal North Star and then applied some skills and learning and maybe hit a small goal or two, your next step should be to ask something like “How can I use this skill to connect with others? Where can I find a group or community that shares my passion, or needs my skills?”
It is an essential aspect of walking your Own True Path that it brings you closer to a sense of belonging. Almost all our stories and myths tell us this. The Hero’s Journey (the archetypal blueprint for our most foundational stories) typically involves a group of supporting characters that share the adventure (Frodo had The Fellowship of the Ring. Luke Skywalker had the Jedi Knights etc) and the reward at the end of the journey is always brought home to be shared with others – the hero never adventures purely for personal gain.

Earth – your Inner Compass

The last component is to make it real – start walking. You have an idea of your values, you have learned or developed some skills, you are connected with others who share your enthusiasm, so what are you waiting for? Why are you stuck?
Fortunately, evolution has equipped us all with an Inner Compass – the human nervous system. It constantly scans our environment, assesses whether or not we are on our path, and lets us know by generating emotions. It is crucial therefore, that we not only listen to our emotional world, but act upon what our emotions are telling us!
We’ll look at four of the most common emotional responses – Joy, anxiety, anger, despair – and what they may be telling us.

Joy
When all is going well, if we are aligned with purpose and walking our path, we can expect to be rewarded with dopamine and will experience joy. It is our brain’s way of signalling “Yes! Keep going in this direction! Do more of that!” Joy should not be confused with pleasure, although there may be significant overlap. Joy is a deeper feeling of meaning, passion, connectedness, and purpose. A feeling that we are going in the right direction, and making good progress. Doing whatever brings us joy is an essential aspect of wellbeing, and it will never take us far from our true path.

Anxiety
If, however, we veer off our path, our brain may alert us with anxiety. We feel that unpleasant shaky tingle, our thinking system ramps up and never seems to stop, searching for threats (and often finding them in unlikely places) and looking for solutions it can’t see. Anxiety is something like the warning lights on a car dashboard – it signals that something is wrong but just because you don’t know what that is, it doesn’t mean that your brain is necessarily malfunctioning. Perhaps you are doing well in a job that you don’t find meaningful. Perhaps your marriage is no longer satisfying you but you’re afraid to face that. Anxiety is often a warning signal, an essential tool that tells you when you’re no longer on your path. Lean into it, listen to it, ask it “What do you need me to know?” (Therapy can be very helpful here, as can dreamwork).
If you’re able to analyse what anxiety is telling you, then make changes. It will be hard, of course, and anxiety may even increase while you’re breaking out of an old pattern and building a new one. The Inner Compass is a guide, but it evolved millions of years ago to deal with the threats of a very different world to the one we face now. Don’t expect it to give you a comprehensive and nuanced report! It just signals “Something wrong. Make change”.

Despair
Making change is hard though, and distracting pleasures are easily obtainable, so the temptation is to ignore anxiety, or dispel it with the usual suspects (TV, scrolling, drugs/alcohol, medication etc) and we carry on going, further and further off our path. Soon we may find ourselves stuck in the mud with the fog rolling in. We’ve lost our way and our nervous system no longer trusts us to make movement in any direction. We experience despair – that feeling of being lost and helpless, no path in sight, and all effort seems useless, dangerous, or impossible. This is one explanation for depression. It’s our nervous system’s way of making us stop and wait until either the fog clears, or the threat passes.

Anger
Anger is complex – it can feel overwhelmingly distressing, or shameful, and it can absolutely wreck lives and relationships. Many people will go to great lengths to avoid their own anger, often because they’ve been taught that it’s unhealthy or wrong. But it can also be powerfully liberating when used well. It can be the fuel that we need to clear obstacles off our path or pull ourselves out of the mud. Defending ourselves from threats, establishing healthy boundaries, standing up to injustice, these can all be made easier with a helping of righteous anger. It is a sign from our Inner compass that something needs to be paid attention to – a block needs clearing, an obstacle needs removing, and anger can be the motivating fuel we need to take action, and regain the path. Anger can be a vital and powerful tool.

Using your compass is not about giving in to every emotion. It’s about being informed by them – using them as the valuable information signals that they are. By paying attention to how we truly feel, we can then make the conscious decision to act differently. We’re not slaves to our emotions, but nor are we cold calculating machines. We’re human, and our complex feeling system combined with our self-awareness and free will, are some of our greatest gifts.

Use them, and be guided by them.

Your Own True Path is the feeling of alignment with your passion and your purpose. Life feels right when you’re on it, and wrong when you’re not. To find and build your path, explore these steps:
Fire – Find your Personal North Star – your passions and values. If you don’t know what you value, take an online test and find out. Then orient your daily life toward that wherever you can.
Air – Skills and learning – get good at something you value. Get some training, book a class, set some goals and start working towards them.
Water – Find your tribe – your Own True Path will connect you with others. You can follow your passions on your own, but it’s not your path until it leads you to community and connection.
Earth – Follow your inner compass and get walking – this isn’t just a cognitive exercise, you need to make it real. And for that you need to feel your feelings, embody them, allow them to guide you, and act upon them.”No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.”