Details and Examples of Inner Compass Work

It’s time to pull back the curtain and explain what exactly an Inner Compass is.

Your Inner Compass is a decision-making tool for finding fulfillment and building internal conviction by laying out what truly matters to you:

First, you’ll build it by:

1. Uncovering what currently matters to you and what drives your behavior.
2. Examining your underlying motives.
3. Refining what matters to you going forward. We’ll articulate these motives as Tenets.

Next, you’ll use it to:

1. Make fulfilling life decisions with conviction.
2. Create opportunities for fulfillment in your daily life and in the future.
3. 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

We represent the Inner Compass with this table:

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.

Tenets are the structured building blocks of an Inner Compass. They encompass the principles, beliefs, and values that significantly influence your decision making, regardless of whether you’re happy about them.

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

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:

“Risk: Taking calculated risks in my personal life makes me feel alive and helps me avoid living a constrained life — opening up serendipitous possibilities, and continually surprising myself.”

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”

Before: Felt dissatisfied even though things going well. Found himself spending more time on side projects and wondering if this was a phase or if he was going to slowly grow more dissatisfied and eventually leave in a year. Was embarrassed by the idea of quitting his startup. Was scared by the idea of working on side projects full-time without a stable salary.

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”

Before: Felt dissatisfied even though things going well. Found himself spending more time on things outside of work (e.g., real estate) and reading more about companies tackling climate change. Was struggling to find a way to shift to a climate-focused company while leveraging his enterprise sales skills and maintaining enough income to support his child and their lifestyle.

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.