Using AI to Find Direction: Discovering Your North Star and Life Purpose

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” - Aristotle

A couple of years ago, my new year’s resolution was to be the most consistent I’d ever been in my life. I wanted to answer the question- “What would my life look like after one year if I executed, every single day, without failure?”

Every day I had to:-

• follow a morning routine
• do a daily writing ritual
• do at least 2 hours of deep work
• clear off my admin checklist
• avoid alcohol and sugar
• read a book (at least 4 pages)
• consume a healthy green shake
• meditate for at least 5 mins

And then every week I had to:-

• lift weights three times per week
• do cardio three times per week
• practice my pool game three times per week
• create two self development videos per week
• create one blog post for Warrior Habits

And then every month I had to:-

• complete my personal financial status report
• do a full monthly self development review.

So, I did this for 6 months without fail.  

In that time I read 23 books and took notes on all of them, I did 1607 minutes of meditation, completed 163 sessions of deep work, took 140 cold showers, did 54 gyms/exercise sessions, completed 180 daily writing exercises, drank 160 green shakes, completed 90 pool practice sessions and so on…

But then, after 6 months of grinding and operating pretty much like a robot, the wheels fell off in a big way.  I was just so tired of the program.  I asked myself:- do I want the rest of my life to be like this? And what’s the point of all this?  I had a full on reset, turned away from my schedule and relapsed big time.

After a review, I concluded that the reason I fell off the wagon was because I had just burned myself out and needed to give myself a little more freedom and leeway to fail.

And so what did I do? 

Yet another consistency challenge!

And, you won’t be surprised to learn that the same thing happened:- I performed for months and then fell off again.

Something was missing, but I couldn’t figure out what.

Enter 2023

I sold my previous company and took up a leadership position at LevelUp, an offshore staffing company that I co-founded a few years earlier, and I experienced exactly the same thing:- I spent 2 years in a role that didn’t fit and relied too much on grinding and brute force.  The role left me sapped with energy, fighting resistance on a daily basis and ultimately led to my resignation.

For years, I thought I could grind my way through anything that’s in my path, but it turns out that the grind only gets me so far.  It’s been a stark wakeup call for me:- the grind is an unbelievable tool to have in your locker, but it’s not enough without alignment.

This has led me to thinking a lot of this year thinking about alignment, purpose and ultimately designing my ideal life.   

I have a real zest for life - I have a lot of ambition and I just love living, but this energy and motivation can fall off a cliff if I try and force myself to do the wrong things.  I’m 40 now, I don’t have that many two year periods left to throw away carelessly due to shortsightedness and lack of awareness.  It would be a real shame and a waste if I continually engage in activities and work that doesn’t light me up just because I didn’t take the time to properly contemplate.

So I endeavored to set out and answer a lot of important questions to me:- What do I enjoy? Where am I most effective? What gives me energy? Where do I thrive? What values do I believe in? What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of activities get me into flow? What would I do if nobody was watching? What does my ideal life look like? What kind of people do I admire? 

It’s quite funny - I first got into self development seeking answers but actually all that really matters is asking the right questions.  I’ve come full circle.  The answers aren’t really out there, but within.

The questions are simple, but the answers rarely are.

Why is it so hard to just figure out what you want from life? 

You’d think that figuring out what you want to do with your life is one of the most important and easiest to answer, wouldn’t you?  

Personally I found it to be quite the opposite: a challenging mix of facing uncomfortable truths, radical honesty, and having the courage to say no to a 1,000 things in order to do a few.  

But why is it so hard?  

Here are three headwinds I experienced:-

You’re A Slave to your Addictions

Alcohol, social media, porn, fast food, consumerism…to name but a few. 

Ooh, this one’s a little close to home…

For me, my main nemesis was binge drinking.  It took me three years of trying to give up alcohol completely before I finally managed to permanently kick it.  Looking back, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done, but in the throes of drinking I didn’t even want to consider never drinking again - I couldn’t even imagine it.  So, rather than tackle it head on, I worked around it.  I scheduled my gym sessions knowing that Friday night I’d likely be on a bender. And I left Sunday completely open to recover from the inevitable blow the night before.  

Here’s an uncomfortable truth that I didn’t want to admit: I was a slave to the cheap high of drinking and I would bend myself into a pretzel trying to justify it.  I’d say things like: “I only drink on weekends and I deserve it after all the hard work I’ve done during the week”.  

I finally managed to get to the point where I could be radically honest about the situation:- “My habit of drinking is actually completely opposite to the type of person I want to be: it ruins my health, affects my relationship, destroys my weekend and completely resets all progress that I’ve made during the week - the only reason I justify it is because I’m addicted to the cheap thrill and I’m imprisoned by it”.

That was hard to admit.  And it took me a few years to get there.

Addictions imprison you - and you need to be honest about it. 

You’re too Invested

Ever spent years climbing a mountain before realizing that you actually hate your life?  I’ve done that multiple times.  It’s a difficult realization to come to terms with.

I distinctly remember being 3 years deep into a fast track graduate program and looking around the office at my colleagues, most of whom were 20 years further down the path I was headed, and it hit me like a ton of bricks: “this isn’t for me”.  My family were proud of me for “making it” but I hated everything about it: I couldn’t be creative, everything required a bloody document to be approved and I just had no interest in the insurance industry that I was working in.

What did I do?  I dismissed the thought, doubled down and continued to grind.  I had invested so much time and effort to get to that position that walking away from my career didn’t even feel like an option.  So instead, I used to go home and unleash my creative side at night burning the candle at both ends.

Inevitably, something had to give.  And it did: I spent all my nights (and sometimes all night) creating a project on the side and eventually stopped going to the office altogether.  When I received my p45 through the post to say that I’d been fired, I was actually relieved.  I could finally build up the courage to turn away from the career that I didn’t want and find something that mattered.

You invest money, years of your life, build your identity around it and put your reputation on the line only to realize that it isn’t the life you want.  It feels far easier to just ignore the discomfort, put your head in the sand and just keep going under the illusion that “things will get better in time”.

Your Ego

I sometimes browse the FIRE subreddit - it’s a forum of people that are looking to retire early.  A common thread is that someone clearly has enough money to stop working and live their ideal life but their identity and ego are tied up in their job.  They feel important and recognized in their role and know that by stepping down they will no longer receive this validation.  

On paper, they’re free, but emotionally they’re trapped.  Letting go would mean facing a kind of ego death, and so they keep working, even though the life they really want to live is already within reach.

I had a similar experience when I sold my first company, Thrive Themes.  Overnight I went from leading a company of around 100 people to having nothing on my plate.  I needed to let go of my ego to fully experience what I really wanted: my freedom back to explore hobbies and opportunities.  It was uncomfortable at the time, I truly wondered whether I had made the right choice, but looking back it was absolutely what I needed. 

The Path to Ultimate Alignment

Many things stand in your way: commitment bias, ego, uncomfortable truths, skeletons in the closet, other people’s expectations, and societal norms. Each of these pulls you slightly off course, keeping you loyal to an identity that may no longer fit.

True alignment requires the courage to question everything you’ve built - to admit that some of the things you’ve worked hardest for might not actually matter. It means letting go of the versions of yourself that once kept you safe but now keep you stuck, and being willing to rebuild your life around what’s real, not what’s rewarded.

“I want to be Happy and make a difference”

Most people would say that their ideal north star is something like “to be happy,” “to be successful,” or “to make a difference.”  But those are surface-level answers: vague, comfortable, and socially acceptable. They sound good, but they don’t actually guide you. “Be happy” tells you nothing about what environments you thrive in, what kind of work gives your life meaning, or what trade-offs you’re truly willing to make.

A real North Star isn’t a slogan, but it’s a compass. It’s specific, textured, and sometimes even a little uncomfortable to admit. It’s built from an honest audit of what energizes you, what drains you, and what matters enough that you’d suffer for it.

That level of clarity takes work.  It’s also not something you figure out once and then forget about. It’s an ongoing piece of work that evolves as you do: a living document that needs revisiting every time life shifts, priorities change, or new truths emerge.

This is the process that I’ve been going through this year.  I’m still learning and fine tuning my approach, but I’d like to share what I’ve found to be my useful tool (although still not perfect) in figuring out how to shape my life.

A Snapshot into My North Star for Life

To start with, I thought I’d share some insights that have become clear to me for my own life so as to give some clear examples of what I mean by “North Star” for life.  These are subjective, tailored to me, and will probably be very different for you:

What I Value and Want More of

• Creating things that matter - apps, ideas, systems, content, or projects that express who I am and leave something of value behind.
  • Examples: Building tools like SparkLog or CompLaunch, writing for Warrior Habits, designing retreats or experiences that help others grow.
• Physical vitality - maintaining health, strength, and energy through training, nutrition, sleep, and recovery.
  • Examples: Running, strength training, hiking, challenging expeditions, tracking habits for longevity.
• Meaningful relationships - surrounding myself with people who energize, inspire, and challenge me.
  • Examples: Deep conversations, shared adventures, helping friends or teammates grow, mentoring.
• Adventure and exploration - seeking novelty and perspective through travel, challenges, and time in nature.
  • Examples: Races, hiking trips, retreats, new cultural experiences, spontaneous exploration.
• Freedom and alignment - working on my own terms, following curiosity, and staying true to what feels right.
  • Examples: Projects driven by purpose, flexible routines, saying yes to things that excite me and no to things that drain me.

What I want to Avoid

• Creating for the wrong reasons - chasing attention, money, or validation instead of authenticity.
  • Examples: Building products just because they’ll sell, or writing content for clicks rather than meaning.
• Reactive busyness - filling time with meetings, admin, or commitments that don’t move me forward.
  • Examples: Endless Slack messages, forced schedules, unaligned projects.
• Comfort and stagnation - avoiding challenges or growth because it’s easier to stay comfortable.
  • Examples: Skipping training, staying in the same routines, not trying new things.
• Energy-draining environments - being around people or settings that dull creativity, curiosity, or optimism.
  • Examples: Negative social circles, politics at work, places that prioritize appearances over substance.
• Living on autopilot - doing what’s expected, following trends, or measuring success by others’ standards.
  • Examples: Accumulating possessions for status, pursuing career milestones I don’t actually care about.

Disclaimer: I’m Still Very Much Figuring this out

Reading this, I’m wary that it comes across like I think I’m some perfectly aligned, high-performing machine. I’m not. This isn’t a declaration of who I am - it’s a description of who I’m aiming to become. It’s a reminder of the kind of life I want to keep building toward. The reality is, I still mess up, waste time, and lose focus but the more I come back to this North Star, the more my life starts to reflect it.

How to Find your own North Star

A few years ago, I would have said that journaling was my secret weapon for this kind of deep introspection.  Working through things in writing just brings such greater clarity than thought alone.  But now we are lucky enough to live in a time where we have journaling 2.0.

Of course I’m talking about AI.  

With the advent of LLMs and GPTs we now have a new and amazing tool at our disposal to help bring sharp insights about who we are from the consolidation and analysis of large amounts of data.

Whilte LLMs are amazing technology, it’s important to remember what they actually are: statistical language models that predict the most likely next word (or token) based on the context of everything that came before. They don’t have genuine understanding, beliefs, or consciousness - their “knowledge” comes from patterns learned across vast amounts of text.  In simple terms, they’re incredibly sophisticated pattern recognizers, not conscious thinkers. They can simulate understanding very convincingly, but they don’t actually know or mean anything in the human sense.

This means that the quality of insight that you get from an LLM depends heavily on the quality and regularity of data that you feed it.  

In order to use such tools to help with building a picture of your own North Star, you have to feed it a lot of data points.  More so than you might think to share with an AI model.  For example:-

• Your personal reflections, journal entries, and notes over time
• Lists of what gives and draings your energy
• Moments of pride, flow, frustration, or regret
• Core memories and pivotal life events
• People you admire and why
• Current challenges, habits, and recurring themes in your thinking

Practical Steps you can Follow to Start Building your North Star

I’ve found ChatGPT to be the best model to use for this.  

Firstly, create a new folder called “North Star”.  

From now on, you’ll log all relevant insights into this folder.  

A relevant insight might be something like this:-

These are the kind of insights that, if you log them into ChatGPT, will help the model build up a series of accurate data points about how you feel doing certain things, your subjective experience, views, beliefs and so on.

You can then use something like the following prompt to help figure out your north star:-

Tips for Using ChatGPT to Design Your Polar North Star

The more you put in, the better insights you’ll get out the other side. Personally, I’ve been logging entries of different sorts for the best part of a year and still continue to do so. Here are some things that will affect the quality of the analysis you receive:-

• Be radically honest -  the more open and specific you are about your thoughts, struggles, and desires, the more meaningful the insights will be. 
• Log regularly - treat it like a journal; short daily or weekly reflections build valuable data for self-discovery.
• Share both highs and lows - note what gives you energy and what drains it; patterns emerge fastest when you include both sides
• Ask meta-questions - for example: “What patterns do you see in what I’ve been writing?” or “What do my reflections say about my values?”
• Feed it stories, not summaries - describe real experiences, decisions, or moments; context helps the model detect emotional and behavioural themes.
• Revisit and refine - your North Star isn’t fixed; come back periodically to update it as you grow and evolve.
• Avoid generic prompts - ask specific, personalized questions (“What do you notice about my motivations?”) instead of vague ones (“What’s my purpose?”).
• Use it as a mirror, not a guru - ChatGPT can reveal patterns and perspectives, but you decide what’s true and what feels right.  You should course correct anything that feels “off”

A Daily Template you can use for Logging Journal Entries

If you haven’t done much journaling before, this process might feel a little odd, unusual and you may find it difficult to openly write about your subjective experience.  

Here’s a template that can help you get started.  You don’t need to write perfectly - just answer honestly and briefly. A few sentences for each section is plenty.  As you get used to logging entries, you can veer away from the template with more free flowing updates. 

Simply answer these questions for each update:-

1. What happened today?
2. How did it make you feel?
3. What might this be telling me?
4. What's one small takeaway or adjusment?

Here’s an example entry that follows this format:-

A daily entry done each morning or before you go to bed is a good starting point. Personally, I find myself adding journal entries a few times per day as thoughts and emotions arise.

Some Common Pitfalls and Traps to Avoid

The quality of the input really dictates the depth of insight.  Here are a few mistakes to avoid making when logging entries:-

Being Too Vague for Useful Insight

Consider this entry:-

“I want to change the world, have an impact, be successful and happy and attain freedom”

Those phrases sound inspiring, but they’re placeholders for something we haven’t yet taken the time to define. Without specificity, you can’t tell whether you’re getting closer to your vision or just spinning in circles.

Here’s a rich and specific counter example that you should aim for:-

“I’ve been thinking about what “impact” really means to me. When I look back at the times I’ve felt most fulfilled, it’s when I’ve built something that helped others - like when I launched LevelUp and saw our team members growing in confidence and skill. That kind of direct, visible change feels like real impact to me.

Success, for me, isn’t just financial - it’s about freedom of time and the ability to choose meaningful projects. I want to spend my energy creating things that improve people’s lives while giving me enough flexibility to explore, travel, and stay curious.

I notice I feel happiest when I’m solving problems, mentoring others, or building something tangible - not when I’m chasing vague goals or comparing myself to others.”

It’s A Practice, Not a Project

“Discovering your purpose is like peeling an onion - each layer must be lived fully before the next one is revealed. Purpose isn’t found once; it unfolds as you do” - David Deida, Way of the Superior Man.

10 years ago my polar north star would have looked entirely different.  If I look back, I saw the world differently: I was far more focused on grinding and achieving financial freedom, results mattered more than anything else and I was happy to sacrifice everything to get it.  You evolve over time and your polar north star evolves with it.  

This kind of self awareness, introspection and journaling is a practice not a project - something that you should continually do over time, such that your purpose and meaning becomes increasingly nuanced.

How Alignment Has Helped me with the Grind

I want to be very clear that productivity tactics, habit building, tracking, visual reminders of momentum, tackling overwhelm and all the other tips and tricks that I’ve written about here on this blog still have their place.  They’re the guardrails that help keep me on track.  

The track itself, though, comes from alignment.

Having clarity on my polar north star allows me to instantly answer those questions that came up when I fell off the wagon during my consistency experiments:- do I want the rest of my life to be like this? And what’s the point of all this?

Insights from my polar north star have taught me that I clearly want to be a creator rather than a consumer.  So when I feel extreme resistance to writing for 2 hours as part of my daily practice, it’s immediately clear to me why I need to endure.  I’ve already spent hours deliberating on what kind of person I want to be and what I value.  

The difference is that I’m no longer grinding away at something as a hack:- It’s now clear to me that this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I guess some people would call this my life purpose.

How to Use Advances in Technology like AI to Improve your Life

Everyone seems to be worried about new advances in technology like AI, and maybe justificably so, but what's clear to me is that the people that will thrive are those that embrace and use the new tools available to get the most out of life.

I believe LLM's and their power to consolidate large amounts of input and data to derive insights are one of its best use cases.  I highly recommended anyone that's feeling a bit lost or uncertain about things to regularly log entries and ask for insights that are hiding in plain sight to gain clarity on direction and purpose.  It's worked really well for me and a few others in my close circle.