what's your why
BY WENDY ALEXANDER

What's Your Why

what's your why

  • I want to talk about the concept of why

    When we’re chasing success, whether it's career success, life, success, any success one of the first things we need to understand right off the bat is that there's going to be challenges

    Going through life, chasing a dream, a career dream, a life dream, an entrepreneur dream, a business dream - whatever dream - understand there are going to be challenges along the way

    Nothing happens smoothly

    Great success rarely comes without overcoming challenges along the way

    And this is why I want to talk about the concept of your Why and why it's so important, pardon the pun, to identify your Why

    You may have heard of a great book by Simon Sinek on leadership called - Start With Why

    I recommend this book, I suggest you get a copy of this book and read it at your leisure

    I've read it a few times and I re-read it regularly because I find it an excellent book on leadership and how to motivate others

    It's about tapping into people's Why because we all have goals, but if we don't have a strong enough Why, a strong enough reason for doing what we do we’ll quit or be knocked off course when the challenges come along

    And so that's why I want you to explore the concept of Why

    When you’re going for a promotion or going for a higher salary, a key thing is to identify Why

    Not just your surface Why, not just the Why that's about wanting to earn more money, wanting to travel more, wanting to have a leadership role

    I want you to look deeper than that

    So when you ask yourself this question - here's how you do it?

    It's why do I want more money?

    Why do I want that particular thing?

    Sometimes we want more money because we think it represents an opportunity to buy more things or to travel more

    Dig deeper

    Why do I want to travel more?

    What does travel represent?

    Is it about experiences, is it about having the things you didn’t have as a child?

    You'll find the more you dig into the why beneath the why and continue to ask why - you eventually get to the real underlying reason

    And for many of us, it can be about more freedom or feeling more fulfilled in life

    Many times the Why we chase is a higher purpose

    Start by sitting quietly and digging into the next why beneath your why

    I highly recommend you read Simon Sinek's 'Start With Why'

    Keep digging beneath your first answer to your Why

    Keep asking the why question until you get to what is your purpose-filled Why because here's the thing, when you know your personal Why it is the thing that keeps you going through the challenges

    Sometimes it's easy to give up, but when you’ve got a rock-solid purpose it’s the thing, the reason that keeps you going through the hard times

    So grab a piece of paper, sit quietly and think about your Why beneath the Why

    Very, very important to identify this as it keeps you going when you hit the challenging times

    And we definitely hit challenging times whenever we're trying to grow, whether it's growing our career, getting better in our health or growing our life or our lifestyle, growing our income

    You’re always going to hit some challenges and you must have a strong enough Why to keep going