What is the Compass Course?

The Compass Course is an eight-session group that combines education, discussion, self-reflection, and guided action. It is designed to help you discover your unique version of purpose in daily life, defined as the intentional use of our time and energy in ways that align with our values, strengths, and sources of personal meaning in the moments that compose a day.

We designed the Compass Course based on learnings from the growing body of scientific evidence that suggests that living with purpose in life is important to our health and well-being. Having a self-defined purpose in life predicts longevity, functioning, cognition, and health as we age and our adjustment to illness or disability, should that occur. Purpose in life is a key dimension of human flourishing and is increasingly understood to be a modifiable health risk factor. In other words, believing that our lives have purpose is important to our health.

Life transitions and the accompanying shifts in roles, relationships, daily activities and routines often disrupt how we see themselves, our aspirations and values, and ultimately how we define and enact purpose in life. People are often unprepared for transition-related disruptions and unpracticed in deliberately addressing them. Personal and existential losses are typically outside of the boundaries of medical care and so these core predictors of health and well-being are often ignored.

To address this unmet need, our team used existing research and theory from psychology and occupational therapy to develop the Compass Course. The content and processes of the Course are grounded in the following assertions, which are derived from research including our own.

Purpose in life depends upon attention and intention – paying attention to the purpose that already exists in our daily lives and intentionally making everyday choices that are true for us.

• Before we can truly experience a sense of purpose, we need to know a bit about what makes us tick at this juncture of our lives.  That is, the composition of our current strengths, values, and sources of personal meaning (which we refer to as a person’s inner Compass). 

• We experience our lives as having purpose when we intentionally spend at least some of our time doing things that are aligned with our inner Compass (unique strengths, values, and sources of personal meaning).

• This starts with making small daily purpose-informed choices, which lead to purpose-rich days. A pattern of purpose-rich days moves us forward with a sense of direction in life, which we experience as having a purpose.

• Investing in purpose in life is more of an attitude towards living than a one-and-done destination. How we define ourselves (and thus the composition of our inner Compass) changes as our lives do. And some days (or stretches) are easier than others. Here’s what is certain: the more that our days are composed of purpose choices, the happier we are.

We, the developers of the Compass Course, study purpose renewal after health transitions and this rich, ever-growing scientific literature continues to inform the Course. Just as living with purpose is dynamic across our life span, the Compass Course continues to evolve based on findings from our research. Our research and that of others affirms our beliefs that people have an innate drive to find meaning in their lives and that every person is entitled to know that their life holds purpose (including yours and ours). 

Sources:

Alimujiang, A., Wiensch, A., Boss, J., Fleischer, N. L., Mondul, A. M., McLean, K., . . . Pearce, C. L. (2019). Association Between Life Purpose and Mortality Among US Adults Older Than 50 Years. JAMA Netw Open, 2(5), e194270.

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