Finding (and living!) your why
Do you want more fulfillment and joy in your life?
One of the easiest ways to do both is by finding your WHY and choosing to actively align your life with it.
What Is Your WHY?
Your WHY is your purpose for being. It’s your greatest passion. It’s the beliefs and values driving you to be your best every day.
Why Does Your WHY Matter?
Knowing your WHY allows you to identify what matters most to you, giving you a sense of purpose, focus, and determination.
When you start with WHY, you make decisions aligning with your values, goals, and beliefs—instead of based on money, power, fame, or outside opinions.
This alignment sparks joy and propels you to create your biggest, most inspired impact on those around you. That’s what we all want, right? To be a positive, loving, inspired light to everyone we meet. Finding your WHY helps you do that.
How To Find Your WHY
If you’re unsure of your WHY, it’s OK! We’re going to walk through a few questions to get you a little closer to finding it.
First, I want you to think about who and what are most important to you. Maybe it’s your kids, husband, wife, career, health, or business. Focus in on what brings you joy, adds the most value, and gives you a sense of purpose.
With those in mind, answer the following questions:
- What makes you come alive?
I’m not talking about your favorite food or football team—unless you want to be a chef or football coach. What makes you feel most inspired? What are you truly passionate about to the point that when you’re pursuing it, you feel more alive and energized than before?
True passion is about something bigger than you. It’s about impact going beyond your own internal happiness and satisfaction, and touching the lives of others. The answer should be congruent to who and what matter most to you.
- What are your biggest strengths?
Often, the area we can make the greatest impact in is also an area we greatly excel at. Think back to your childhood—what’s something you’ve always been naturally good at? Maybe it’s a skill you found easy and fun while others struggled to grasp.
For instance, are you extremely creative and great at out-of-the-box problem solving? Are numbers and equations your favorite language? Are you a naturally gifted communicator who’s great at dissolving confrontation and getting two sides to agree?
Of course there may be things you’re great at but have no passion for, those aren’t the strengths we’re after. Focus on what you’re good at and passionate about—at the same time.
Like civil rights leader Howard Thurmon once wrote, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive, then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
- How will you measure your life?
At the end of the day, how will you determine if you lived a life you’re proud of? You can’t do it all—even though we often want to. By focusing in on what you want your main impact and legacy to be, you’re able to set your life up in a way that gets you there.
Another way to ask this is, “What sentence will come to define your life?” When you’re gone, how will people describe your impact in one sentence?
Two great examples that Daniel Pink mentions in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us are Abraham Lincoln’s sentence: He preserved the union and freed the slaves. Franklin Roosevelt’s: He lifted the US out of the Great Depression and helped them win a world war.
What will yours be? And how can you ensure that happens?
How To Live and Lead With WHY
Knowing your WHY is only half the equation, the other half is using it to guide your decisions. Every time you’re faced with a decision or an opportunity to act, ask yourself this, “What do I need to do in order to align this decisions with my WHY?” Then do it.
Examples of WHYs
Still confused? Here are a few examples of personal WHY statements to get you started.
- To always lead with love and bring light into every room I enter.
- To use my gifts as a teacher to positively impact each little life that enters my classroom and encourage young kids to fall in love with learning.
- To spread awareness about poverty and help campaign for better policies that allow everyone to live a quality life.
- To create a life for my wife and children that makes them feel valued, worthy, and excited each day.
Now I ask you, what’s your WHY? And does your life align with it? Ready to dive in further and take a closer look at your WHY? Give us a call today—YOU are our WHY.