Day 11: Discover Your Why

Today you will learn about the power of having a WHY, why it is central to your purpose, and the how to process for uncovering your own WHY.

Summary

What is a WHY?

A WHY is the motivating force that has occurred in each of your experiences, the thing that is compelling you to take action in your life.

The concept of WHY was most famously introduced in by Simon Sinek's TED Talk (or see below):

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Why are WHYS important to purpose?

A WHY brings you clarity, structure, and direction to your own life and to those you will inevitably need to recruit in order to help you fulfill your purpose.

• Your why can be an inspiration for others, a rally call for others to get behind organizing people and resources aimed at fulfilling this one purpose.
• People will be more than happy to help you because of how inspiring a WHY can be.

How to discover your WHY

The process for discovering your why takes 4 steps:

1. Gathering stories.
2. Find themes within those stories.
3. Draft your why.
4. Try out your why and refine.

Step One: Gather Stories

• List out the significant past stories of you life, high and low points, standout memories, and defining moments.
• Examine the details of each story, finding the deeper meaning and significance in them. Focus on the emotions associated with these stories.
• Share these stories with a partner, asking them to take notes on facts about the story in once column and meanings of those facts in another column.

Step Two: Identify Themes

• These themes will be reoccurring ideas, words, phrases, and feelings that merged from your stories.
• If something comes up more than once, write it down. There's no limit to the number of themes your stories may yield.
• With all the themes listed in front of you circle one or two that seem bigger than the rest. One that you get a visceral reaction from seeing. The ones that inspire you or seem to define you in what you care about most. Is there one you love more than all the other themes on the list?

Step Three: Draft Your Why

• A WHY statement should be simple, clear, actionable and focused on the effect you'll have on others and expressed an affirmative language that resonates with you.
• The WHY statement format is as follows:

• Using the themes that you've identified from the last step, spend 5minutes to write a first draft of your why statement.
• The goal here is a draft, not perfection. We're trying to get as close as possible to our why and come up with something that feels right. The actual words of it can, and most likely will change as you continue to spend time with your why reflect on it. And most importantly, putting it into action.

Step Four: Test Your Why and Refine

• Go to your closest friends asking them "Why are you friends with me?"
• Continue to ask them questions searching for what specifically about you makes them want to be a friend.
• At some point, your friend will stop describing you and seemingly start describing themselves. And what you'll hear are phrases where they're not talking about your personality, but about how you make them feel and the difference you make to them. In other words, your friend will be articulating your unique contribution to their life.
• As you do this, maybe your friend used a word or a phrase in talking about you that you like better. In which case, if it feels right, you can go ahead and incorporate those words into your why statement.
• Your friends may also bring different themes to light. That's something to consider as well to see if any of those sit better than the ones you identified in your own process.
• Continue to refine your WHY statement, letting each draft sit for few days before refining again.

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Activity

Go through the four step process for discovering your why and create a working WHY statement for yourself.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.