The why question
Do you ever have times in life when you feel like there’s something missing, or that you aren’t completely passionate about the things in which you invest your time into? Perhaps you are starting your own entrepreneurship journey, and you got stuck in the practicalities of setting up a business losing your motivation. Or you have a feeling you want to make an impact in the world that’s far greater than what you are currently doing, but you just don’t know where to begin. In this article, I will share some insight into the importance of purpose.
Children have an innate curiosity, they are full of “wondering whys”. They ask the “WHY?” question because want to make sense of the world around them, it helps to build concepts, skills, vocabulary, and understanding of the unknown. However, when the child becomes an adult it already made sense of the world (at least that’s what we adults like to think), and becomes full of certainties, forgetting to ask the “why” question. Instead, the focus shifts to the “how” question. “How do I do this?”, “How do I become successful?”, “How do I get a well-paying job?”. We become more action-driven, focusing on the results, forgetting our values, our true will, and motivations.
Don’t get me wrong, we need the “how”, but before we get to the how we should ask “WHY?”.
“Why do I want to do this?”, “Why do I want to become successful?”, “Why do I want to get a well-paying job?”, “Why am I starting my own business?”. When we have a clear why the how comes later and it is much easy to keep motivation high when we have a sense of purpose.
The purpose is one of the basic human needs, and when you get to a stage in life where they don’t have to think about the other basic needs, the need to have purpose becomes more evident and can create a big sense of lack in your life.
Our heart is the best compass (or GPS), to access our purpose, and our purpose is our fuel, which is what will keep us going when times get hard. When we feel lost we can use our internal GPS to set the route and our purpose as fuel to move us forward.
I found this particularly meaningful when setting up my own business, I got so immersed in the practicalities of setting up a business, building a website, marketing, social media, getting clients…that I started to feel drained, and I was questioning myself if I was doing it for the right reasons. I was focused too much on the “how” and I forgot my “why”. I thought about giving up, but then I read my “Why”, and why I even decided to start this journey at first, and suddenly I was energized and I had fuel to keep going. That is why I advise everyone to write down their why, their purpose, when starting a new project. But if you still don’t know why, your purpose, your passion, don’t worry I got you covered!
The first step is to become familiar with yourself. You need to know what drives you, what you are naturally good at, what you enjoy, what inspires you, what excites you, what do you pretend to like, what scares you and what lies you’re telling yourself about your skills, natural talents, abilities, and gifts. As you become more familiar with yourself, you’ll be able to determine what’s most important in the limited time you have in a day, a week, a month, a year, and throughout your lifetime. By doing this you can maximize your time doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t love. Most of us are so busy reacting to the events in our lives that we don’t take the time to examine what’s not working too well for us.
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain
