There is no easy way to reach greater purpose and fulfilment, but finding your why brings fewer bumps in the road and more enjoyable scenery. Without having your why and what aligned and without the powers of belief, conviction and commitment to drive you, your travels may lead to a dead end.
For many, the first question is how? How do we create a picture of extraordinary business and life success? But is how really the first question? How is actually the second question. The first question should be why? Because having a compelling reason — having clarity around what you love, what you treasure and what is most important to you — is a massive step towards living a meaningful life. Our true values become our why. Once you have your why it’s about living that — making sure your why and your what are aligned.
Have you ever lost the connection between your why and the what? When life is good they are all in alignment running in parallel paths. When there is a connection life rocks. But when your why separates from your what — when what you are doing and why you are doing it separate — then problems appear. Have you ever had them separate? It’s pretty painful when they do.
Living with greater purpose and fulfilment is about keeping the why and what aligned. For True Believers a strong why is like a force of nature — an unstoppable life force!
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1 Comment
With a mindset in the present, a strong why is important to me as it attaches strongly to my present context. Yet if I'm a strategic planner or just looking 10 or more years ahead, I will not know for sure the contexts I will be facing. As Dan Gregory reminded us, 'why' is transient. My rationale for being evolves. As it does for my business. Likewise, as I think about the future, I will not know "how" I will face certain circumstances. But, I can think about "what" competencies will help me to be more adaptive to the various contexts that I see as plausible in a future world. Building new "whats" as core competencies now is how I form a concept of life in the future and hedge my bets today while I look forward. I will only think about the "how" as I get closer in time: relationships, passion and technology change. So today, I focus on serving my current context with a strong rationale for "why" I'm doing "what" I'm doing. And, I focus on "what" I need for the future in terms of the competencies I need to acquire to be prepared for my future. In that mindset, I'm not focused at all on "why". Simon Sinek who started with "why" is only partly right. For my future, I'm starting with "what". And, I shall say more in my book, due out in 2015! Good article, Christina. Cheers, Richard.