Many of my clients ask me “what is my why and why do I need to find it”; the answer is simple if you don’t know why you do what you do how will you ever work out how to do it better.
Why find your WHY?
Simon Sinek believes that to succeed we all need to know why we do what we do. The book Find my Why is one of the bestselling business books available today. Although this is not a book review, there are questions that you need to ask yourself on the road to find your why. The four questions below and explanations have been written by Maggie Warrell and will help you find your purpose. Maggie is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker and author and what follows is simply put and extremely effective. Give it 5 minutes of your time.
1. What makes you come alive?
The word inspire comes from the Latin, meaning “to breathe life into.” Accordingly, when you are working toward things that inspire you, it literally makes you feel more alive. What makes you come alive isn’t referring to taking your dream holiday or watching your favourite team play football. It’s bigger than that. I’m talking about a why that moves up the food chain from being about you to being about something bigger than you. It’s about connecting with what you’re passionate about, knowing that when you focus your attention on endeavours that put a fire in your belly, you grow your impact and influence in ways that nothing else can.
You don’t have to declare at this point that you want to invent the next iPad, solve the world’s energy problems or cure cancer. This is about you connecting to a cause that’s bigger than you are, but which is also congruent with who you are and what you care about.
2. What are your innate strengths?
Our element is the point at which natural talent and skill meet personal passion. When people are in their element, they are not only more productive, but they add more value and enjoy more personal and professional fulfilment. Accordingly, it’s also often where they also tend to make more money!
What are the things you’ve always been good at? Are you able to see patterns and opportunities amidst complexity? Are you creative, naturally adept at coming up with ‘outside the box’ solutions? Are you a natural-born rebel with an innate ability to identify where the status quo is in need of a makeover? Are you brilliant in the details, naturally good at executing projects with a precision that some find tedious? Or are you a naturally gifted communicator, networker, leader, problem-solver or change agent?
You can also be passionate about things you have no natural talent for, and talented at things for which you hold little passion. However, experience has shown that we rarely aspire toward ambitions we have no natural talent to achieve. As 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.” Indeed, they do.
3. Where do you add the greatest value?
Doing work that you’re good at, but which you loathe, is not a pathway to fulfilment. That said, knowing your greatest strengths and where you can add the most value—through the application of your education, skills, knowledge and experience—can help you focus on the opportunities, roles and career paths where you are most likely to succeed and therefore find the greatest sense of accomplishment and contribution.
Too often we undervalue our strengths, skills and the expertise we naturally acquire over time. If you reframe the concept of adding value through the lens of solving problems, you can ask yourself what you’re well placed and equipped to help solve in your workplace, career, organisation or industry. You can also ask yourself what problems you really enjoy solving, and what problems you feel passionate about trying to solve. You’ll then be more successful at focusing on your natural strengths and those things you’re innately good at rather than trying to bolster or eliminate your weaknesses.
4. How will you measure your life?
People who don’t stand for something can easily fall for anything. Deciding how you want to measure your life means making a stand for something and then living your life in alignment with it.
Ultimately, living with purpose means focusing on things that matter most. Ironically, the things that matter most are rarely “things.” That said, while some people are in a position to trade the security of a regular salary in order to pursue a passion, many simply can’t—at least not in the short term or without violating core values (like paying off debt or providing for their family). But following the money and following your heart don’t have to be mutually exclusive. By shifting the lens in which you view what you are doing now, you can profoundly shift your experience of it. No matter what your job, you can draw meaning from it and find greater purpose through how you do what you do. If you don’t think you’re the kind of person you’d want to work with, then consider that it may not be because of the job you do each day, but your attitude toward it.
Knowing your purpose may compel you to take on challenges that will stretch you as much as they inspire you. Just as a boat under power can handle any size wave if perpendicular to it when you’re powered by a clear purpose, there is little you cannot do.
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