Alignment: Balance or Baseline?

“Alignment” is one of those enticing New Year Buzzwords. It feels like something meaningful we should pursue as we flip the calendar for a fresh start. We can try again to be better, more self-actualized, more disciplined, more something

Alas, it’s very easy to think of alignment for ourselves the way we might for our cars: Take it in once or twice a year to get everything back in order, and off you go. And that certainly is one way to approach it, but what if we zoomed out and looked at things from a slightly different viewpoint?

What if, instead of pursuing the thing — like alignment — the thing is the place where you already are, and from which everything else is derived and created?

The difference here is subtle but powerful: By being in constant pursuit of something better, you will never arrive at a destination. By constantly fixing what’s “wrong,” you are always broken. However, if where you are is already the peak, the source, you are the destination. Everything stems from you.

In this case, alignment becomes a state of being, a continuous check-in to assess what fits and what doesn’t. It can be uncomfortable at first, and a bit taxing on the brain as you go through your initial evaluation of the things around you, but it sets the stage for a day when you can instantly look at a situation or person and know it’s not for you. 

When we shift to this kind of thinking, life becomes a pursuit of mastery instead of a continuous reboot every January. 

For the past few years I took on “being” words to set a foundation for bringing all aspects of my life into alignment: personal, business, wellness, creative, sensual. In 2019 it was “Unapologetic” (2020 and 2021 we’ll just gloss over), and last year was “Commit.” These framed a context for each year that enabled me to distill everything through a particular lens for evaluation, and pursue a specific course of action. Now I’m moving on to the phase of doing, with “Results” as my theme for 2023. 

I will now evaluate everything by asking what results I’m looking for, assessing if it fits into the big picture, and executing or not.

I realize this can sound overwhelming, but it’s really just one word at a time. One year at a time. You are building a foundation of alignment for who you are at your core, and what you are building in the world, so the inside matches the outside.

This month at IMPERIA, we’re taking a look at alignment from various perspectives so you can create your own harmony, so I hope you’ll stay with us. We don’t think of it as work-life balance, because we think that’s a BS concept (you have one life).

If you’d like some help with crafting your sense of alignment, you can sign up for our free newsletter below and receive the recording we use with our startups to assess where they are. It’s a very helpful starting point to frame your year. Here’s to your best year yet!

With love from NYC,

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Jennifer’s Table is a monthly editorial about our focus at IMPERIA, based on her decades as a successful entrepreneur and startup coach, her global travels, and the work we do with women founders around the globe.

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