When Compasses Spin: Finding Coherence in Fractured Times

Tuning into our inner guidance is and always has been a powerful leadership skill. But it becomes absolutely essential when sources of external guidance begin to breakdown or become unreliable.

We’re moving through a time when. . .

• The data we rely on for decision making often delivers conflicting information;
• Seasons and weather patterns are no longer predictable;
• The world order and the assumptions it has supported since the end of WWII is reshuffling and reorganizing in often chaotic ways;
• Public discourse in the United States is and will increasingly be monitored, restricted (e.g. certain words stricken from government websites, etc.), and policed.

With so much changing around us, how do we stay grounded and oriented to a sense of aligned purpose?

This is where working with our inner compass comes in.

Evolution of the Compass

Before getting to the ‘inner’ part, let’s look at the compass itself. Today, we know it as a navigational tool, but that’s not where it started.

Sometime around 200 BCE, Chinese diviners discovered the directional properties of lodestone, a naturally occurring magnetic ore that, when shaped in a way that allowed movement, would always point South. The earliest compasses were used for geomancy and feng shui, helping to align structures and activities with the harmonious energies of the earth.

These instruments were seen as connectors between human endeavors and cosmic forces – tools for spiritual and energetic alignment rather than merely physical direction-finding.

It wasn’t until hundreds of years later, sometime during the Song Dynasty (950 to 1200 CE), that the Chinese developed the first true navigational compasses using magnetized needles floating in water or suspended on silk threads. The compass eventually made its way to the Islamic world and then Europe around the 12th century, becoming instrumental in the Age of Exploration.

Over the centuries, the compass has maintained its essential function – providing orientation amid uncertainty – while transitioning from a spiritual alignment tool to a physical navigation instrument. In both contexts, it served the same human need: finding direction when external reference points are insufficient or misleading.

Our inner compass can provide the same orientation, both in terms of energetic alignment and movement or action.

A Caveat: A Compass is Easily Distracted

For all of its power and ability to offer guidance, a compass is incredibly easy to mess with.

When I was a kid, I remember being on an orienteering trip in the mountains of West Virginia. We had to navigate our way from one spot in the woods to another using a map and compass. To mess with us, one of the chaperones held a kitchen magnet near the compass at one of the waypoints.

The needle went nuts. . .and 8 city kids lost in the woods panicked.

A compass orients to extremely strong distant forces. But all is takes to confuse it is a very close, weak force.

Our inner compass orients using the ‘magnetic pull’ of our inner knowing and Soul’s purpose. Most of us are pretty far removed from those strong forces and, often, all it takes to send our compass spinning is a social media post, blaring headline, or simply the buzz of a cell phone.

So often, we find ourselves disoriented not because our compass is broken, but because the environment itself has become magnetically chaotic.

We live in an evolving paradox of abundance and scarcity. We have access to more information than any humans in history, yet many of us feel increasingly unmoored, unsure of where to plant our feet. Traditional gatekeepers of knowledge have lost authority while new ones have emerged without accountability. Narratives compete not on the strength of their evidence but on the power of their emotional resonance.

What happens to our collective sense-making when we can no longer agree on what constitutes reality? What happens to our ability to solve shared problems when we can't even agree they exist?

This is the wilderness in which we now find ourselves – information-rich but wisdom-poor, connected yet isolated, saturated yet hungry for meaning. Our compass is spinning.

Calibrating the Inner Compass

So how do we cultivate an inner compass that remains true despite the magnetic chaos around us?

Our ‘inner compass’ orients to a complex weaving of factors that goes beyond ‘gut feeling’ or intuition, integrating the body's wisdom, the mind's discernment, the heart's values, and the soul's purpose. If you’re thinking ‘wow, that’s a lot. . .and we live in a culture that seems to have willfully cut us off from all of those things’ you’re not wrong.

Calibrating the inner compass asks for an ongoing process of learning, unlearning, and practice. At first, the calibration may be rough, but over time it becomes more precise until, eventually we are attuned to it even in small moments.

Here are a couple of simple practices to explore this process of attunement and calibration:

Self Inquiry

1. Find a quiet place removed from the bustle of the day. A comfy chair with a cup of tea works. A city park. The location matters less than the sense of separation from the swirl.
2. Bring to mind a situation or question that has you spinning or uncertain.
3. Ask yourself the following questions. I like to journal with these, but considering them mentally works, as well: What about this situation do I know to be true in my body? What does my gut tell me? Where do I experience expansion around this belief? Where do I experience contraction? If I weren’t considering the opinions or possible judgements of others, how would I move in this situation? What values or standards feel significant in this situation?
4. Take a moment to settle and integrate before moving on with your day.

This process is designed to help bypass the analytical mind which often gets ensnared in a seemingly endless loop of pro/con/what-if to access deeper layers of knowing and discernment.

The Multidimensional Checkin

1. Find a quiet space where you can be still for 5 to 7 minutes and turn off your phone.
2. Bring gentle attention to the breath, being aware that this is you breathing in and out in this moment. Allow yourself to feel your weight against the earth and invite your body to release tension into the ground.
3. The first dimension is to notice how breath and energy are moving through your body. Where do you experience a sense of flow and ease? Where do you experience a sense of constriction? The idea isn’t to change anything, but rather to notice your experience of the moment.
4. The second dimension is to notice any emotions that may be present for you. Again, simply noticing and cataloguing without needing to analyze or change anything. Often this is easier said than done. . .which is why it’s a practice!
5. The third dimension is to notice your thoughts. I like to think of this as watching adorable fishies swimming past while I’m on the banks of a river. Notice how quickly or slowly your thoughts swim by, what is their quality, how many of them are yours and how many have been incepted from other sources around you? We’re so used to identifying with our thoughts that this one can take a bit of time to sink into!
6. The fourth dimension is to check in with the world around you. What sounds do you notice? Just as you noticed energy and breath moving through your body, see if you can notice them moving through the space. What other information is available? What smells do you notice? How does the air feel against your skin? Notice how your inner world is always in relationship with the outer world.
7. Bring attention back to your breath. How has your experience shifted through the process of the check-in?

The Multidimensional Checkin is designed to help bring greater awareness to the many forces, sensations, and experiences unfolding inside of and around us at any given moment. As we build this awareness, it becomes easier to discern surface level experiences or sensations from deeper pulls.

Two Powerful Questions

Everyone is different. These questions are designed to help you connect with your essential self and begin navigating towards a life that allows it to express more fully.

1. Question 1: When do I feel most naturally myself without any inhibition? See how specific you can get with this, tuning in to a specific moment if possible. What about this moment allowed for your full expression?
2. Question 2: What small, concrete action can I take today to create more of that feeling of naturalness and less of everything that is not that?

With repetition, this process can bring us into deeper alignment with the essential self and enhance out awareness of those times when our decisions and actions are misaligned.

These are just three of an almost infinite array of practices and explorations that can help us connect with and calibrate our inner compass. While many of these practices have traditionally fallen into the category of ‘wellbeing’ or ‘personal growth’ and been dismissed as ‘soft’ or self-indulgent, they are essential to surviving and navigating through time of chaos and reorganization.

Benefits of Calibrating Your Inner Compass

With so much going on (gestures at all of the things), it can be easy to follow the flow of inertia and fall into a space of reactivity, hyper-action, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, frozen despair. So why should we dedicated time and energy to practices like those above?

Here’s what I’ve seen both in folks I’ve worked with and in myself:

A remarkable shift in clarity around decision making.

Recently, I worked with a leader who was experiencing ‘analysis paralysis’ in making a key decision that would guide the next steps of her organization. She had taken in the points of view, analysis, and feedback of her leadership team, political analysis, and financial projections for different scenarios. As is often the case, any move had pros, cons, risks, and possibilities.

There was no ‘right’ decision to make.

Over the course of a session together, we focused not on decision making, but on reducing mental and energetic noise. We dropped into a space of silence and allowed wisdom to emerge. In less than an hour, she had reattuned to her inner-guidance, received powerful information, and was able to move forward with clarity, purpose, and grounded intention. Importantly, she was also able to communicate about the path she had chosen with conviction.

When faced with conflicting information or competing priorities (which is every day in today's environment), the inner compass allows us to cut through the noise and discern what truly matters. This isn't about ignoring data or analysis, but rather about having an internal filtering system that helps determine which information deserves attention and which is distraction.

The inner compass becomes a source of data no less valid than a spreadsheet.

An increase in resilience and ability to navigate intensity

A calibrated inner compass doesn’t give us immunity to setbacks or challenges, but it does allow us to come back to center more quickly. I like to think of a storm in the ocean—when we’re on the surface, we get rolled and buffeted by wave after wave. Each tumble leads to greater disorientation and panic.

If we’re able to drop beneath the surface to tune into deeper currents, we can find pockets of coherence and calm that help us see greater patterns in the chaos above and move in sync with those more subtle, deep movements.

Inner Alignment that Radiates Outwards

One of the push-backs I get around this idea of taking the time and space to work with the inner compass is that it’s self indulgent and detracts from the core work of leadership. ‘Everything is one fire, I don’t have time to breathe,’ is a common refrain.

When a leader takes the time to calibrate the inner compass and come into a place of alignment and coherence, it opens space for others to do the same. Teams become more innovative, more collaborative, and more adaptable – not because you've implemented the latest management technique, but because you're modeling what it looks like to navigate from inside out rather than outside in.

In my experience working with organizations through turbulent times, teams led by people with strong inner compasses don't just survive disruption – they often find unexpected opportunities within it. They're able to sense subtle shifts in the environment before they become obvious, giving them a timing advantage that can be decisive.

There’s a quote that’s attributed to Nobel Prize winning chemist and complexity scientist Ilya Prigogine that beautifully describes this phenomenon:

When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order

Right now, our systems are out of equilibrium at both the micro and macro levels. Establishing coherence through inner-compass calibration not only benefits us as individuals, but our teams, organizations, and wider communities.

An Invitation

There’s nothing new about the idea of the ‘inner-compass.’

Bill George’s seminal leadership text True North and countless other books have explored the concept. But it takes on added significance and urgency in a world where compasses spin wildly and maps keep changing.

I also believe that, just as the Chinese diviners who discovered the properties of lodestone had no idea how their energetic alignment tool would eventually help explorers cross oceans and reshape the known world, we have no idea now far the ripples of reclaiming our inner guidance during this period of profound disruption and reorganization will reach.

What if the practices that seem so simple—sitting in stillness, checking in with our bodies, asking ourselves what feels most true and aligned—are actually our most powerful technologies for navigating through chaos and confusion to beautiful possibility? What if the moments we take to recalibrate our inner compasses are the very moments that determine whether we move forward with wisdom or simply react to the magnetic chaos around us?

The work of tuning into our inner guidance has been framed as spiritual practice, self-care, psychological work—and it can be all of these things. But in our current moment, I believe it's also a profound act of leadership and social responsibility. By anchoring ourselves in what we know to be true, we create the conditions for authentic connection, wise action, and emergent possibility in a time that desperately needs all three.

Each of us who commits to this practice becomes a small island of coherence—a point of stability and clarity that, despite what our rational mind may tell us, has the potential to shift entire systems toward greater order and possibility.

So here’s the invitation: if you read this far, take a moment to consider what small, concrete step you might take today to quiet the noise and listen for the deeper signal.

Then let’s do it again tomorrow.

If you or your team would like support in exploring some of the ideas, practices, and possibilities explored in this article, please feel free to get in touch either here on LinkedIn or via my website at www.storyandspirit.org!