Why

There are 6 posts tagged Why (this is page 1 of 1).

Finding Your Why

I was sitting on the balcony of my apartment in Ulcinj, Montenegro, overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The sound of small construction echoed through the valley as men worked on roofs and inside houses preparing for the big tourist season that was just around the corner. 

I looked over at one of the workers on a neighboring roof and wondered, what's his 'why'? Why is he doing what he's doing right now? He likely wants to earn money to feed himself or his family or to provide himself or his family shelter. 

What are his 'whats'? What does he do that backs up and reinforces his why?

Well, he spends large amounts of his time doing work that is laborious and difficult. He travels whatever distance is necessary to get to that work and he acquires the tools necessary to complete the work.

I've been listening to the audio version of Simeon Sinek's book, Start With Why, and the insights are fantastic. I highly recommend it. The premise of the book is that everything starts with why and that "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." But this principle extends much further than just business. In fact, it applies to everything in life. 

Everything starts with why. 

This got me thinking about my own 'why'. Why do I do what I do? At first, the answer seemed obvious. But in reality, this is exactly the trap that nearly all businesses in the world fall into: they confuse their why with their what and their how. (Simeon gives many real-world examples in his book, all of which are quite eye-opening.)

I decided to make two small lists in a text file on my laptop, a list of my whys and a list of my whats. I didn't bother with the hows immediately but instead focused on making sure that only real whys were put on the why list. Here are my raw, unedited lists:

WHY'S (Why do I do it?)

  • I believe in living deeply
  • I believe in thinking beyond myself
  • I believe that technology will unite humanity
  • I believe in living and thinking deeply beyond myself
  • I believe technology empowers human evolution
  • I believe that technology is a catalyst for human progress

WHAT'S (What do I do?)

  • Write
  • Publish and share things online
  • Value quality, strength, durability, thoroughness, thoughtfulness
  • Seek other perspectives
  • Remain realistically optimistic
  • Dig deeper
  • Ask Why
  • Helpful
  • Think deeply 
  • Think deeply about what matters most in life
  • Question the status quo
  • Seek change
  • Learn new things and share what I learn
  • Live minimally, while maximizing the potential of available tools
  • Think sustainably
  • Ponder the future
  • Ask what role technology plays in human evolution

The whats list came surprisingly easy, but the whys list was hard! I started adding things to my what list and it kept growing. Every time I thought that I had a why to add to the why list, I realized after a bit of thought that it was actually a what, not a why. It was something that reinforced my why, not the why itself.

Eventually the real whys began to emerge and I was easily able to cross-check them. From Simeon's book, I knew that whats should always reenforce whys, so I was able to take any of the whys and ask myself, "do my whats reenforce this?" If the answer was no, then I knew immediately that it wasn't really my why. (Asking myself that question assumes that what I do is already in alignment with my why, which I feel that it is, or at least that it's pretty close.)

If you're interested in trying this exercise, take a few minutes and follow these steps:

  1. Make a list with two headers: "WHAT'S" and "WHY'S"
  2. Start with listing what you do, the things that you love doing in your spare time and that you see yourself always doing in the future.
  3. After you have 10-15 items on the list, start looking for patterns and overarching themes. Start asking yourself, "why do I do these things? Why do they matter to me?"
  4. Now slowly, but cautiously (remember, whats are easy to confuse for whys) add things to the whats list. If you come up with something that seems like a why but ends up being a what, simply transfer it to the what list.

(If you try this exercise and you're willing to share the results with me, I've love to see them.)

I certainly haven't figured out all of my whys or all of my whats, but I do feel a lot closer. I will continue with this exercise and add a third list of hows. Then I'll keep revisiting this and checking if what I'm doing in my life properly reflects my core why. 

Exercises like these can be helpful for everyone in many ways. They help clarify why we wake up in the morning, why we do the work we do, and why we make the choices we make. But it's easy to miss the why. If you go back and re-analyze the construction worker that I mentioned earlier, you'll discover that even his whys go much deeper than food and shelter.

If we get more clear about our why, then we can make better decisions and better choices and live more productive, happy, and harmonious lives.

For some additional reading on this topic, check out How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love.

Losing Focus Through Association

Where is my focus? Am I focusing on the right thing? Am I putting too much effort in the wrong direction? Am I inadvertently stunting my growth?

These are questions I ask myself quite frequently. I'm not sure when I started asking these questions or even why, but I do know that asking them often leads to recognizing areas of my life where I'm stagnating or where I'm otherwise unconsciously holding myself back or underutilizing my potential (or simply walking in the wrong direction).

The world is full of people who want to tell us how to do things. And I don't think that's bad. I don't think they're doing it with malicious intent: sharing what we know is an innate human quality. I also don't think it's bad to listen to what others have to say: I've grown so much in my life thanks to the advice and experiences shared by others.

But I think there's a danger in following too closely, in listening too intently, in modeling our life too closely around the lives of others. We lose a bit of ourselves through association. If we permanently associate with anything but our true selves, we will easily forget why we're doing things we're doing. We will lose sight of what feels innately important to us.

To really get at the core of what matters, to really focus our energy on growing in the right directions, we need to strip away everything, all the labels, the assumptions, the role models, and the beliefs. 

Who am I? 

When I strip away everything, I just am. And when I approach life from that state, I become a paint brush and everything else becomes the paint. There are no labels, no genres, no niches, no must-haves and have-nots. There are no limitations, no restrictions, no "this is who I am" or "this is who I am not". There just is, and pure potential.

How important is it?

Why do we set out to do something only to dismiss it entirely? We forge ahead at the beginning (mentally and perhaps verbally) but then something happens just before the point where we take action. 

The intention is there, but something is missing. We know exactly what needs to be done and we know how to do it, but something prevents it from ever becoming reality. 

I believe everything we intend to do that doesn't get done is a direct result of this one thing: it wasn't important enough.

Or at least we didn't decide it was important enough. We had the motivation and the know-how, but we didn't put enough thought into the "why". At first glance the "why" seems obvious, a no-brainer that shouldn't need much explanation, to others or to ourselves. But it's actually crucial to maintaining momentum.

In analyzing why certain recurring intentions never become reality -- waking up early, doing daily yoga and meditation, writing in this journal, running regularly -- I've discovered one missing component that is common to all of them: I had not decided how important they were and why they were important.

It's easy to say to myself, "it's important, now let's do it", but that's not enough. I need to understand the why inside out. I need to come to terms with what will happen if I don't take care of these things. 

I told you, and myself, that I'd do an experiment for the last 10 days of this year. I would write and publish at least one paragraph a day in this Journal. Well, here I am with 8 days to go and I haven't written in this Journal.

Why not? I have the time. I haven't run out of thoughts or words. I do still want to do it. So why haven't I done anything with it?

It's simple: I hadn't decided how important it was to me. If the intention was there and I had all the resources necessary to get it done, but I still didn't do it, then it must not have been important enough.

Luckily, making something important enough is easy: you simply decide it's important enough, understand why it's important, and then follow up with action. Repeat those three steps frequently enough and eventually a habit will form. 

I decided today that writing here is important enough to put aside other things. I understood why it's important: I need to share, to grow. The last part, action, is taking place right now, as I write this entry. This is me repeating those three steps. This is important.

Hang a Question Mark

Nature has no broken status quo because the moment the status quo breaks down, nature adapts. When the status quo stops working, nature takes action and changes to maintain its harmonious existence.

Humans have the ability to adapt as well, but our intelligence -- our ability to ask 'Why?' -- also gives us the ability to resist adapting. Unlike nature, we can maintain a status quo even if that means causing harm to ourselves, our family, and our environment.

When something is accepted as-is, its flaws, no matter how great, are irrelevant. The status quo is the status quo because it's not questioned. This can be -- and usually is in the long-run -- disastrous.

If no one ever challenged the status quo of wheel design thousands of years ago, we'd still be rolling around on stone tires today.

If no one challenges the wasteful and irresponsible culture that exists today, we will have a future human species diseased with distrust, living on a planet depleted of resources.

The gift of curiosity and intelligence comes with a responsibility to adapt and to look towards the future. It comes with the responsibility to determine when the status quo is broken and when it needs to change.

Accepting things as they are now ignores the one thing that makes us all human: the ability to hang a question mark on the status quo and ask, 'Why?'