What is your WHY

The first step in the right direction on your road to success is finding your why. Knowing your why in life is correctly setting a foundation in which you will be building your future on. Why do you get up every morning? What is the reason that you chose the career that you currently have? Why do you have a certain social circle? There are so many questions that we may deem as “non-important”, even down to the things we eat on a daily basis, but in reality, they have a much bigger impact than we only tend to see on a singular level. Here is a little insight on how and why finding your why is crucial:

Let’s start with a simple example. Let’s say that you are on a mission to lose or gain weight (depends on the situation) it could be a voluntary doing or due to medical reasons—the bottom line is that it has to get done. You don’t want to let yourself down and you also probably don’t want to go against your doctor’s orders. Now, how quickly did you identify the why in this situation? Pretty quickly, right? This is such a common goal for many people, if not a daily basis, it has for sure been every single year—Yes, the beloved New Year’s resolutions! Individuals do have deeper why’s other than the surface reasons of just wanting to look good. One person’s why to gain weight could be because they want to build muscle or tone up, which in return will boost their self-confidence. This could be a complete physical to mental transformation that outsiders may not realize, but that individual will work their butt off for it. Could they be struggling with something mentally and their therapy is working out? You never know.

A counter example could be someone struggling to gain or maintain weight because of a medical condition, so to them gaining weight and being serious about what they are consuming is crucial to their success and livelihood. It could literally be a life or death situation for some. The point is, that their why is not gaining a few pounds just because or being picky about their diet, they legitimately have a huge and very valuable why.

Are you catching on? The reason I started with such an essential example is because our body is our one and only vehicle ( a topic we will discuss in detail on a later date), but do you see how our body and health could easily affect our other key life decisions: what we can physically do, what kind of job can we have, whether or not we attend social functions, and even what our confidence level is at.

Just a few things to think about.

Time for that pen and paper for the serious stuff! Here are a few things you can do to help you identify your why and assisting in clarifying your purpose. Remember that your why in life is an underlying belief that you will be using as a reference point when moving forward in life—so really take your time and analyze what you write down. Also remember, you can have “smaller” why’s when trying to accomplish specific goals as your driver, not just when finding the significance of your existence.

It all begins with identifying your values:

• List everything that is important to you. Take note of what things would be painful if you didn’t have them in your life, and what things you could do without.

• Write down what brings you joy. What things bring excitement into your life? What activities do you take part in that make you genuinely happy?

• Identify which of the things that you list bring you joy, love, security and rank them by importance. You will start to see what things you truly value.

• Take time to group these things. Everyone’s list may be different, so if you do this exercise with a friend, don’t be alarmed if you notice that maybe certain things bring them joy that don’t for you. Individuality is embraced here!

  This exercise may take a few hours, but at the end you will realize the importance of being clear and realistic with yourself. You will then have a personalized roadmap and what you have been looking for: Your WHY!