My 89th read of 2020 is a book that I have been waiting to read for as long as I can remember. The title “Finding your own north star” was just calling to me, and though I am still making my way through it, it is exactly what I was hoping for, and more. If you happen to be in a situation similar to mine, a book that has a headline that says “how to claim the life you were meant to live”, it’s like a magnet.

Martha explains, at the very beginning of the book, that each of us has two sides: the essential self and the social self. The first, is your inner compass to reach your North star, while the second, while supposed to be helping you reaching that star, is often an obstacle that gets in the way of manifesting your full potential. If the two sides are in harmony, than you are good! But if not, you will feel disconnected. And this comes with an array of consequences.

The essential self is formed before you were born, it’s the essence of your personality and it’s absolutely essential to find your north star. The social self, is the part of you that developed in response to pressures from the people around you, shaped by cultural norm and expectations. The issue is, “the social self is based on principles that often run contrary to your core desires. Its job is to know when those desires will upset other people, and to help us override natural inclinations that aren’t socially acceptable”. And if you let it take over you, you will feel disconnected, and the only way to rebalance yourself is to teach your social self to relax and back off.

The good thing, is that when your essential self prevails, everything becomes fun and easy, relaxed and natural. It sends sign to your mind and body in subtle ways. It makes you feel at ease, it makes you feel like you are in the right place, doing the right thing, you will feel the energy flowing through you and no matter what you are doing or thinking, it will feel like it’s meant to be, even though you can’t explain why. Until the social self comes in the middle and tries to sabotage how well you are feeling. “When you leave your true path and start heading away from your north star, your essential self will use any or all of its skills and tools to stop you”. The essential self will come to the rescue and will send you warnings in different forms, signals to make you stop and think and realize that what you are about to do, simply isn’t right for you.

These are some warning signs that you will come across when the social self is trying to sabotage your journey to your north star:

• energy crisis
• getting sick easily
• forgetting things
• force you to be socially awkward when you are with people you shouldn’t be with
• fight or flight mechanism gets geared up
• addiction
• mood swings

“The feeling of choked hostility or numb depression or nauseated helplessness is a sure sign that you are steering away from your north star. And when you feel all of the above, or some of the above, you know you must stir away and change”. Luckily, the essential self also sends you signs when you are going in the right direction, and it can be any of the below:

• you have the energy of a nuclear plant
• you are in good health and everything runs smoothly
• you have memory for certain things that people find miraculous
• when you are doing something that you love, time flies and you lose track of it
• when you are surrounded by the right people, you will feel relaxed and empathetic, like you have know that person forever
• you will feel a magnetic attraction, and this can be a person, a place, an activity, an idea, etc…
• you will feel like you are on a natural high

If you stop to think about it, all the above makes so much sense, doesn’t it? When you are with someone that isn’t right for you, you will feel it. When you are in a job that you can’t connect with, you will feel it. When you are doing something that you don’t love, you will feel it. On the other hand, sometimes you meet someone that you immediately connect with, or you travel to a place that feels familiar, or you get lost in an activity that makes you happy and you lose track of time. Your mind, your body and your soul is continuously sending you signals to help you find out what is good or what is bad for you. All you need to do, is listen to these signals. Be aware of them. And I can’t wait to read more and find out what you are supposed to do next!

Let me keep reading and will update you in the next post.