In the blog post, Four Principles of Reinvention, I introduced the following principles:
1. Reinvention is the focus, but it’s not the main event.
2. There’s no map.
3. Your first priority work in any reinvention is to stay tuned into your true self.
4. Your emotions are your personalized, customized, internal navigation system.

This blog post explores Principle #4 in more detail.

Reinvention Principle #2 states that there is no map. Joseph Campbell said: “If there is a path, it is someone else’s path, and you are not on the adventure.”

So, if there’s no map, how do you navigate in a reinvention? How do you know which direction to head, which decision to make?

You use the compass that you were born with, your inner guidance. Your compass, your inner guidance, is already calibrated to the true you; it comes that way. Your compass is accurate.

So, if that’s true, what’s the real issue here?

First, we reinventers need to keep ourselves aligned with our true selves so that we can hear/read/feel our inner guidance, i.e., so we can read our own compass accurately (Principle #3).

Many of my clients tell me that their inner compass is gyrating wildly, and that they therefore cannot get a good reading of who they are or where they are, much less where they are going.

I know what it’s like to feel like your compass is fluctuating wildly. I’ve been there many times.

But it isn’t really that the compass is fluctuating wildly. It’s more like we are fluctuating wildly. It’s like the reading is shaky because we aren’t steady in our relationship to our compass.

We’re not holding our compass steadily enough to get an accurate reading; we aren’t still enough to feel the signals. This is why Principle #3 is so essential.

Once you are steady and grounded in the ‘true you,’ how do you read your compass?

Let’s assume that now you have taken Principle #3 to heart, and you know what it is to stay aligned with your true self, and you’re doing a pretty respectable job of it.

Onto Principle #4: Your emotions are your personalized, customized, internal navigation system.

When you are choosing which direction to head, or whether to make a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision on something, how do you read your compass?

It’s remarkably, staggeringly, simple.

When you are aligned with your authentic self, i.e., ‘tuned in’, a good-for-you decision or direction will feel good, or better, or right. And a not-so-good-for-you decision or direction will feel not so good, worse, or not right.

To reiterate, when you’re tuned into your true self, good feels good and bad feels bad (or worse or not right).

When you are grounded in your authentic self, your feelings or sensations (it can be a gut feel) are true and accurate. They can be used as directional signals or indicators.

Your emotions or gut feelings/sensations can be your truest allies in a reinvention.

Sometimes, the problem in using our inner guidance to navigate our reinventions is not in getting the guidance. It is in trusting our guidance once we get it, because the guidance we get often does not seem to make sense. We can’t explain it rationally or logically, to ourselves or anyone else. Therefore, we think it can’t be right, and we question it and then override it.

Often, habitual overriding of our inner guidance then becomes our ’standard operating procedure.’

Once we allow this to happen, we really are lost, because there isn’t a map for our reinventions. Each of you is unique, and since your reinvention is a coming home to you, your reinvention is unique.

I’m guessing that there will be a lot of readers who will take issue with my proposal that your emotions can be your personalized, customized, internal navigation system. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I think the only way to see whether this principle works for you is to try it. Experiment, and notice the results, the impact.

Get yourself tuned into your true self, and then gently hold your question about a possible direction or decision.

Sense what feels right to you. When you are aligned with your authentic self, the decision or direction that is most authentic will feel good or right to you. Rooted, vs. restless. Usually you will also feel a sense of relief in addition to the sensation of ‘rightness.’

Conversely, from this creative resourceful state of alignment, any feeling of bad or worse signals a departure from your authentic direction.

Keep practicing this. It takes a commitment to stay with it to see if it will really work for you. It’s like any skill development, it takes regular and frequent practice in the beginning.

If you aren’t getting a steady or reliable reading, with a ‘knowing’ feeling to it, return to Principle #3 and practice alignment until you feel like you are steady, tuned into the true you, and thus able to get an accurate ‘compass reading’ from your inner guidance.

There is much more to learn about this concept and practice than what I have have introduced here. For an unsurpassed teaching about this, please refer to this book: The Astonishing Power of Emotions: Let Your Feelings Be Your Guide, by Esther and Jerry Hicks (Abraham-Hicks).

Filed under: Four Principles of Reinvention on November 16th, 2007