Details and Examples of Inner Compass Work
It’s time to pull back the curtain and explain what exactly an Inner Compass is.
First, you’ll build it by:
- Uncovering what currently matters to you and what drives your behavior.
- Examining your underlying motives.
- Refining what matters to you going forward. We’ll articulate these motives as Tenets.
Next, you’ll use it to:
- Make fulfilling life decisions with conviction.
- Create opportunities for fulfillment in your daily life and in the future.
- Strengthen your resilience to distractions, intense emotions, and self-imposed constraints.
In the future, you’ll keep it updated as you evolve.
The anatomy of an Inner Compass
What matters to me (Fulfilling Tenets) | Root | Visualized Future |
A fulfilling Tenet… | … | … |
… | … | … |
What beliefs get in my way (Derailing Tenets) | Root |
A derailing Tenet… | … |
… | … |
What I want to explore and experience (Interesting Tenets) | Root |
An interesting Tenet… | … |
… | … |
Why this specific structure
During the process of articulating your Tenets and separating them into three groups, you’ll identify the root of each one, which is crucial for using our Tenets later on.
Additionally, you’ll visualize what your future looks like if you embody the fulfilling Tenets, suppress and overcome the derailing Tenets, and experience the interesting Tenets, which is helpful for reasoning about your Tenets with both your logic and your emotions.
Because people seldom ponder their Tenets, having your Inner Compass table on hand allows you to quickly recall your Tenets each time you plan to engage or update your Inner Compass in the future.
Introducing the concept of a Tenet
Your Inner Compass should capture what truly matters to you in an easy-to-understand way that can be actioned upon. Thus, how we articulate your underlying motives determines how useful your Inner Compass is.
Why we’re choosing to formally define Tenets instead of using “values,” “beliefs,” “motives,” or “priorities”
Unfortunately when you search for “core values” online today, you’re inundated with bullet-point lists of several hundred standalone words such as “Intellect,” “Honesty,” “Success,” and “Courage.” For our goals, using these lists is no better than opening a thesaurus.
As an example, what does it mean to value “Intellect” in your life? In what context? Is this how you want to live or an end-state you hope to achieve? Is this something you want for yourself or for others? And importantly, how well does valuing “Intellect” guide how you should make life decisions?
These one word statements lack specificity, making them too hard for most people to work with.
How to construct a Tenet
While there’s no perfect solution, we’ve found Tenets that satisfy the following criteria are often specific and actionable:
- Tenets are foundational base-level principles, beliefs, or values that influence your decisions / shape your behavior / define your emotions.
- Your Tenets exist in you regardless of whether you’re aware of or happy about them.
- Tenets describe a way of living life, rather than an end-state you want to achieve.
- Tenets are often limited to specific context(s) in your life.
- When writing Tenets, be explicit about how they should be embodied, and by who.
- When writing Tenets, state them as a sentence rather than a single word.
Examples of useful Tenets
Here’s another example: “Risk” is not a sufficient Tenet. Two people who both value risk-taking may do so in completely different contexts and for different reasons. Thus, valuing “Risk” isn’t useful or actionable. Here’s one direction a Tenet about risk-taking could take:
Here are additional examples of Tenets, clustered by common domain:
Success stories from Inner Compass Work
People come to us when they feel dissatisfied with the current chapter of their life. The average person avoids confronting their dissatisfaction by suppressing it with false narratives and superficial distractions. If they ever leave this chapter of their life, it is due to circumstances out of their control – their fulfillment is at the whim of outside forces. Successfully using Inner Compass Work means people acknowledge their dissatisfaction, intentionally design the next chapter of their life, and transition into it confidently.
Case Study 1: “Bohemian”
Inner Compass Work: By uncovering his Tenets and building his Inner Compass, he realized that he currently values agility (small teams), creativity (what to work on and how to do it), tangible impact and value (instead of speculative value), and minimal company distractions (avoid hiring, managing, fundraising, investor relations, internal politics).
Result: Decided to leave his startup. Informed his co-founder, employees, and investors. Enabled his direct report to take over his role. Exited the company smoothly and amicably within two weeks. Began working as an indie developer building a portfolio of profitable lightweight software products.
- Inner Compass helped him decide to leave his old path, navigate the difficult and emotional process of leaving, and design his current path.
- His new path lets him creatively and agilely build multiple software products with tangible impact without the need for (many) team members.
Case Study 2: “Narwhal”
Inner Compass Work: By uncovering his Tenets and building his Inner Compass, he realized that he currently values time affluence (time with kid whenever), autonomy (decide how to grow his businesses), and impact (unblock progress tackling climate change).
Result: Decided to leave his job. Decided against working directly at a climate-focused company. Began expanding his real estate agent business, growing his real estate investment portfolio, and angel investing in promising entrepreneurs interested in tackling climate change.
- Inner Compass helped him decide to leave his old path, pass on a potential path, and design his current path.
- His new path gives him time affluence and business autonomy, and lets him feel impactful to the climate change problem he’s passionate about by unlocking a huge bottleneck for, and staying involved with, the climate industry, all while shielding himself from it’s uninteresting minutiae.
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