What do you want to become one day when you grow up?

Almost all of us have got this question from parents, teachers, friends, or the people we met only once in the park.

Like every question, this question does its elemental job right: lead us to examine, hold a reflective conversation with ourselves, and make us responsible for the choice we make. But, blind to its impact on the child’s limitlessness and influence on becoming somebody.

This well-intended question with the benign advice “Keep believing in yourself” have abolished countless curiosities, enriching explorations, and wronged many limitless children to remorseful adults.

The little mind’s examination eventually crosses paths with their expanding intellect, explore, meet the quandaries, look around for the models, and find the road most travelled with elaborate landmarks from example figures — daily, weekly, monthly, yearly to-dos, and even life’s bucket lists.

This writing offers you a personal compass in the form of questions that can produce a powerful W-map, which supports you stay mindful, navigate uncertainties, and lead an empowered life.

1) being mindful :

The only way to get everything you want in life is to be very clever about what you ask. Questions have a significant impact on our lives because questions lead to answers, answers generate emotions, drive behaviour, and behaviour eventually projects us.

Allow me to ask you, knowing what you know now from your life, would you lead a loved one to the path of your life venture?

These points have changed. Mazes stand modified. Why can’t our questions change too? Why not we create new questions to embrace ourselves and others?

What do you want your loved one to be and feel every day, whatsoever comes?

I am sure your answer would be no different from mine. I want my loved ones to be:

• Happy & Healthy
• Kind & Compassionate (to self and others)
• Independent (with high self-esteem)
• Able to discern

Though the meaning of each word could be different, it would be. Some of us find happiness in helping others, learning new things, exploring possibilities, working on what they love; Compassion could imply accepting self and others, love and value self, share blessings; Success could intend to reach a mark, not stopping until they get there, doing better than yesterday and many more.

What will you want yourself to be and feel every day?

Isn’t the answer identical to what we want for our loved ones?

It presented me with my W-map (similar to the one below), which holds the power of my unique values.

These unique values are like fingerprints. None of us has got the same, but these identify our uniqueness and stays on everything we touch.

We all want to feel the power of our unique values, and this is human.

Listicles have the power to take us from a well-defined point to another well-defined point. Still, these lists cannot weather the uncharted territories: without appreciating the individual uniqueness, acceptance of the earlier charted path, and uncertainty of the future.

For that, you need a compass, a navigator, a guided map to cut through incompleteness, incongruence, and powerlessness.

2) navigate uncertainties:

W-map, driving from the meaningful questions, brings the why, what, and how of individual truth, beauty, goodness, all in all, unique values.

Is it not everything that we want in us to shine? But again, isn’t that we know already?

So, what is the point of documenting the W-map?

The difference between knowing and documenting is like remembering your loved one’s face and drawing it over the paper. It is like a picture clicked by a Kodak camera vs the touch and feel of its print.

Yes, I am a Xennial, the cusp of Gen X and millennials, and my experiences of a camera roll’s limited capacity, eager wait for getting a picture developed, and love for feeling the picture print are real.

Documenting W-map instils the confidence to navigate the jungle of thoughts, regulate emotional turmoils, and course-correct the path.

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

What is W in W-map?

Please do not fret if you do not resonate with W. W of why resonated with me. If you want to give it another name, go ahead. After all, it is your compass, your value map, so your name.

What is in a name? that which we call a rose; Any other name would smell sweet. ~ William Shakespeare

W-map is the tool that binds and frees both:

It is like the chord of the pendulum that helps it oscillate free. Oscillate between the freedom to explore uncertainty while having the confidence of not losing touch with own anchor.

It empowers to see beyond the limited tunnelled view of becoming to embrace being and take charge of each thought, expression, and consequence.

There are days when the map does not align with the ground, which means that time is for another quality question, feeling all you feel emotions, and choosing another action.

We’re not lost. We are just headed somewhere different ~ Emily X.R. Pan, in her book The astonishing color of after

3) W-map not only leads to fulfilment but also moulds the inner circle and empowers

When you navigate your life in the direction of your true north, you can work through challenging decisions and live more purposefully.

I understand that it is a big claim to make, especially when results-economy and productivity uplift are regarded no less than Nirvana.

Being a rational thinker myself, I want to offer you the research from World Economic Forum.

Source: Future of Jobs report 2020, World Economic Forum

To conclude, W-map is the map of self questions, that carries the power to lead the day, empowered.  It emerges from your invisible compass, which is personal. Name is just an association and has no power. Power is in the questions generating the map to stay mindful, navigate uncertainties and take charge of choices.

Compass leads inwards and holds the power to transport us from a limited position of ‘Predict, Plan and Control’ to the empowered zone of ‘Sense, Respond and Choose.’

What kind of questions we empower and embrace, the choice is ours.

“What do I need to do today?” which might limit the view and control feeling.

Or, “How am I feeling today?”, “What is the theme I want to live my day with?” and navigate limitless possibilities.

Happy navigating, and more powers to the questions that need to be asked.