In your pursuit of the things you want, sometimes you forget why you’re doing something. So many times, I’ve asked myself what all of this is for. I’ve asked myself why I’ve worked so hard. I’ve asked myself why I should read. I’ve asked myself why I wanted to learn a language. I’ve asked myself even why I should be a good person. But one thing that gets forgotten about is the destination we are going towards. And by destination I mean the goal. The WHAT that we want to achieve. Let’s see how the destination, the reasons and the map work together on this journey.
Start With “WHY” Ok, but why what?
At almost every single step of the way, people ask themselves HOW they can do something. The “how” is important. You need to know what steps you need to take in order to achieve something. But the “why” is more important than that. Starting with why is a principle you’ve heard before in Simon Sinek’s book – Start With Why. Tony Robbins also tells us to focus on the why first, not on the how. Because if we know why we want to do something, we can find out how to actually do it.
“Why” is a good question and it can be powerful. I’ve talked about it from a different perspective in The Legacy Manifesto. But now I want to take another perspective over the “why”.
Asking yourself “why” sets your priorities in order. It helps you understand if doing something is really worth it. It helps you find out the motivation, which is an important factor in the whole process. You always need a reason to do something.
Ok, the why is more important than the how. Reasons come first, answers come second. But is there something more important than the why? Yes, and it tends to get ignored a lot, because everyone assumes that you do have a purpose. But not everybody does. So before you ask yourself why you want to do something, you need to know what that “something” represents. The why cannot exist without the what. And if you consider this for a moment, you’ll find out it’s true.
How The WHAT Works
It gets confusing when we have so many of these questions in one place. What, Why and How are fundamental questions that we ask almost all the time. I am going back to Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”. Simon Sinek has developed the “Golden Circle”. A principle that is now a cornerstone for companies that want to improve the way in which they operate. He promotes it as a fundamental principle behind true leadership. I will not go into the details of what each of the three concentric circles represents. If you want, you can look into this and decide for yourself whether it makes sense for you or not. But either way, in the realm of personal growth, I think that the Golden Circle is not that applicable. And this is because it doesn’t follow the right order. It assumes from the get-go that everyone, including companies, know what they do or what they want to do. But that is not always the case.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you just graduated from college. And you don’t yet have an idea of what’s coming. There are so many possibilities for you and all of them sound really exciting, but you haven’t yet decided on a particular path that you want to go on right now.
The first thing you need to do is not to find the reasons why you want to do a certain thing. But to find out WHAT you want to do. The WHAT represents the destination in my view.
Let me give you another example.
You have been a very good employee in a great company. You have a great team of people that support you and you are somehow an informal leader. You like what you do and you also have an inclination to help others with the knowledge you’ve accumulated. You’re comfortable there. There might be ways to climb the ladder, but you’ve not really cared much about them. You just do what you like and you like what you do. At one point, a management role opens in that organization. You have the possibility to move into that role and be not only an informal leader, but also someone with the power to actually help the people around you. You’d also have the title and the compensation that comes along. You decide that this is something you’d want to pursue. That is the WHAT that I am talking about. And it goes like this:
Q: WHAT is it that I want to do? (Where am I going? – DESTINATION)
A: I want to be a people’s manager.
Q: WHY do I want to do it? (What REASONS do I have to get to that destination?)
A: Because I have a deep caring for people and I like to inspire them to grow, to develop and to drive them to success.
Q: HOW do I want to do it? (Which way do I take? – MAP)
A: By applying my knowledge, my determination, communication skills and systematic approach to this.
You see how things work? The WHY and the WHAT are interconnected. You first need to know what you want to do and why you want to do it in order for things to actually make sense in your head.
Finding Your DESTINATION (Your WHAT)
You don’t have to be young, a recent graduate or someone just starting out in life to be confused about the future. It’s normal. But the normalcy here means mediocrity. There are people who have reached 30, 40, 50 years, who still have no true purpose. No goal. No north start to go towards. And that is something that is visible in the world we live in. If you are in any way above average, it means that there are people who are below you. Not as souls! We are all equal as souls. But we do develop differently. We lead our lives the way we know and the way we think would work in our best interest. Which most of the time, doesn’t lead us to what is truly in our best interest.
You might be younger than me and just starting out in life, not knowing what you actually like doing. Or you might be older than me and now asking yourself “what am I even going to do with my life?” These are not unusual situations. If you’ve lost your career of over 20 years and you are now in an impasse, it would be only normal to ask yourself what you would need to do next. Maybe the career you’ve had is no longer something needed in the marketplace or the society as a whole. Maybe you’re just new to life and you haven’t got a taste of what it is all like. Regardless of your situation, you do need a destination.
If you don’t have a destination, where are you even going?
Nobody enjoys just floating in space. You need purpose. You need a direction. You need to find your WHAT – your destination, your goal. Mind you, this DESTINATION can change. It doesn’t have to be the same one throughout life. Maybe you get to the first destination. Then you move onto the next one. Or you might want to do one thing your entire life and make it a masterpiece. Whatever the case, you need to know WHAT you want to do with your life.
If you think that you’re at a disadvantage because you don’t know, it’s okay. There are ways to find out. And the best way to find something out is by trying out different things. If you’re just starting out, do an internship or two. Take a mini-job. Do volunteering. Or simply ask yourself what you are passionate about. Maybe you have an interest in Artificial Intelligence and you want to understand how it works. Study that! Find resources online and explore the subject. Get a better understanding on how it all works and develop your own GPT.
Now why do you want to do that? What is your motivation? Generally, motivation to do something big is in the world around you. What I mean by this is that if your goal is to do something big, motivation comes from what it will bring to the world. From the benefits that humanity will have. Of course, there will be advantages to doing something like this, but that’s not what you’ll want to focus on. Focus on the end goal. That of serving the people of the world.
And how are you going to do that? Well, the how is what will be revealed to you as you do it. Everything has to start somewhere. But firstly, it will have to start in your mind. See your end goal achieved. See the reason why you did it in the first place. And then, reverse engineer the steps that you would have needed to take in order to get there. The how will depend on what you want to do and why you want to do it.
And if you’re an achiever asking yourself sometimes why you should learn a new language, why you should work hard, why you should be a good person, then give yourself the answer by asking the second question – why not? Why not see how many languages you can learn? Why not see how smart you can get? Why not seem how valuable you can become? Why not see how much good you can do in the world? I learned this from Jim Rohn and I can tell you that it is the thing that keeps me going every day. So, if you’re sometimes not sure why you’re doing this all… Why not do it all?
Bless,
Daniel C
Daniel C Coaching 