north star
your navigational guide. your why.
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For centuries, the physical north star—Polaris—has been used as a navigational tool. Meanwhile, the business world uses the term to represent a core purpose that can be counted. Whether you’re navigating the high seas, running a corporation, or selling tarot workshops, you can combine the best of both worlds. Uncovering your own north star helps you create a navigational guide, a barometer for making and measuring decisions—it’s essentially your “why.”
What differentiates a north star from a core offering, mission, vision, or values is that a north star can be measured. A mission is an overall view of the what, who, and how. A north star is something you can count. It relates to the how, while reflecting the energy of your why.
While companies might have different goals than individuals, both benefit from tracking how aligned they are with their purpose. We believe a more abundant future of work means measuring things that go beyond just revenue. (Even a company's north star usually isn't revenue.)
Let’s look at a few examples of north stars to get a better idea of what can be “counted”:
🎧 Spotify’s north star is “time spent listening.”
🧥 If you’re a vintage store, your north star might be “clothes saved from the landfill.”
🔮 If you’re a tarot reader, your north star might be “readings I’ve given that also gave me life.”
It’s up to you to decide your own unit of measurement, and a good place to start is by asking how the thing you’re counting supports you. Does it support your business by generating revenue (so you can pay your rent or redistribute funds)? Or is it more energetic—something that helps you feel aligned with your soul contract?
In the examples above, each entity’s why is clear—whether it’s to make music more accessible for fans and artists, to protect the earth, or to do more of what you love. If you don’t know what your why is, the first question to ask is: do you want to know? A lot of us go about our daily life without ever considering why we’re doing—or not doing—anything at all. If you don’t want to know your why, there’s probably something deeper to be explored (and maybe outside the scope of this platform).
But if you do want to know your why, the next step is to engage in uncovering personal insights. This could mean revisiting your soul contract, exploring your parallel selves, identifying what aspect of your mission (if you have one) can be measured, decoding your flow state, or writing your vision down in detail.
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Once you know your reason why—and how you’re going to measure proximity to it—you can start making more informed decisions. Creative, ethical, or strategic choices at pivotal moments become clearer. You’ll be able to ask: will this support me energetically? Will it support me in a business sense? From there, you’ll have made a step in the right direction because it will be a direction you believe in.