UNEARTHING YOUR WHY!
In my opinion, we live in one of the greatest times there has ever been in the history of mankind. I have shared my beliefs in that regard on this show before and I don’t hide that. I am not blind to injustice, environmental issues, crime, suffering, or any of the bad stuff that exist in the world today. On the contrary, anybody who knows me knows that I like to consider myself very awake to all of these issues and, in fact, also like to consider myself fairly well educated on almost all of them. As many of you know, I am a constant researcher. I consume lots and lots of information and content on a daily basis, I am an avid writer, I take lots of notes, and I do this all in a way that I think most people don’t consume information, I research and study all sides of an issue.
Even though I may already have a pre-determined position on an issue based on my upbringing, my experiences in life, or whatever else informs our thoughts, ideas, and positions on things, I have learned to be open to the counter arguments on every issue I may hold in my head. In fact, I will often study all of the counter arguments to my current beliefs even deeper than I will study the arguments for my beliefs. If the research and data against my particular understanding or belief doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of much smarter people than I, I continue to hold my particular belief. What I am quite happy to share, however, is that in this age of information, many of the beliefs I held on topics even 5 years ago have been completely shattered and shifted to a new understanding based on this openness and willingness to be educated. Things I may have staunchly supported simply because that’s the way I was raised, or beliefs I may have held simply because they were beliefs that were given to me, as most of our belief systems are, once held up to the light and all of the available research or ideas on that belief, they simply crumbled and I was faced with a decision many people face daily: adopt the new belief or position based on all of the new information, or hold onto the old position and belief because it would be too painful and too disruptive to discard that belief.
We call these positions and beliefs pillars because they literally and figuratively hold us up in our daily pursuit of whatever it is we are pursuing. The crumbling of any of these pillars and we start to feel unstable. We feel like everything we once knew is in limbo. Its like coming home and finding your spouse or your partner has been cheating on your for years. Your world crumbles and everything you believed to be true is now in question. You question all of the previous events you were at where the person they were cheating with was also there. You question all the times they wanted to stay home alone while you went out or away. You question all of the things they told you that seemed questionable at the time, but you believed them anyways. Now, you’re faced with a choice: accept it and try to make things fit back into the neat little package they were in before, a decision often rooted in fear and the recognition of the sudden loss of security, or face the fear of the unknown and start writing a new story. Of course, that’s just an example and its not to say that every couple who stays together after an affair is doing so out of fear, just that there are many examples of this all around us, even in the news today, where we can easily say, “why is she or he staying with that person?”, and we all know the answer: its simply too difficult for many people to face the loss of what they thought they knew was true about life and face an uncertain future alone. We all often, as human beings, make decisions in our lives to continue pursuing paths, pursuing things we think have value, and choosing certain people, places, things, and ideas based on firmly held beliefs that, for many, were simply given to you by others. No thought or questioning has ever gone into examining those long held positions because, for many, it is simply too much work and the current belief system gives them comfort. In fact, many people, I’ll go as far as to say MOST people, unknowingly choose to sacrifice a future that could almost certainly be considerably brighter than their current life and they do so simply because of their currently held belief systems, what they consider to be possible for ‘somebody like me’, and because of what they choose to focus on moment to moment.
I started this conversation off by saying that I think we are living in one of the greatest times ever and I’ll tell you why. With all of the negatives, all of the suffering, all of the things we’re being exposed to today with a 24 our news cycle, terrorism, war, death, starvation, the constant droning on about politics and other unimportant things, the constant debates over vaccinations, climate change, which crook to put in control of stealing your shit only to have them hypnotize you into believing they’re giving you back what the previous guy stole, technology expanding at an exponential and unstoppable pace, the disappearance of jobs to technology, and on and on it goes, but with all of that, nay, because of all of that, we have never lived in a time when we’ve had so much material with which to ponder our existence and, thus, choose a very clear path for our lives. Prior to the internet, prior to the 24 hour news cycle, prior to the information overload we live with today, your path in life was largely dictated by what you saw around you, what you believed was available to you, and what you perceived as your best opportunity at the time. Life may have been a tad simpler back then, but it wasn’t because war wasn’t being waged somewhere. It wasn’t because there was no terrorism going on somewhere. It wasn’t because people weren’t starving somewhere. And it wasn’t because we had better people in political positions in Washington. It was because it wasn’t being thrown in our faces 24 hours a day via a variety of different devices. Most homes had one tv and the news ran at 5 or 6 o’clock, that was it. As our access to information and our awareness of all of the horrors of our existence has expanded, so has our opportunity. We now have a much clearer path to making one of the most important choices I believe one can make in life: choosing your why. We live in an age when we are not only bombarded with lots of negative stuff on a moment to moment basis, we also have access to an unfathomable amount of ‘how to’ information. We now have so much information being thrust into our collective worlds that we are being forced to make choices we didn’t necessarily have to make 30 years ago, at least not in the same way and not with the same urgency as before.
In the past, unless you were a naturally introspective individual, maybe a student of eastern philosophy, a flower child, a hippie, a Buddhist, or followed some other system or philosophy of compassion, any talk of figuring out who you really are or why you do what you do was looked at as a complete waste of time. Not only that, you were likely given some kind of derogatory label and chastised for being too soft. Irony of ironies, some of those same people that would’ve called you a hippie, a tree hugger, a granola eater, or a wuss back in the 60’s and 70’s went on to be very successful businessmen and women. Now in their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, many of them have had life altering realizations of lives lived for unimportant reasons. Many of them have become outspoken advocates of values driven businesses and of developing virtuous businesses that give more than they take and leave the world a better place for having existed. After decades of focusing on shareholder value at the cost of the consumer, the community, and the planet, many companies have realized that people are getting fed up with profit at all costs. Employees once secure in the knowledge that the company had their back and their futures have lost their 401Ks, their retirements evaporated, and their belief systems about what life was about completely shattered. People who thought they had things figured out September 10, saw planes fly into buildings and thousands of their friends, family members, co-workers, children, and parents also evaporate. Since then, we’ve seen thousands more perish overseas fighting for what they believed was a noble cause that, today, has simply become a thousand year occupation of foreign lands for who knows what purpose. Agree or disagree is not the point. The point is that we’ve been able to watch it all go down in high def with THX sound. We didn’t have the context to place the same value on a life well lived 20 years ago that we do now. We have more information. We have new data. We have more experience in those who have given up the greatest portions of their lives in pursuit of profits over passion. Even hustle porn guru, Gary Vaynerchuk, the foul mouthed hero for so many, the guy who used to preach hustle, hustle, hustle… work, work, work, has changed his message to one of figuring out your why, figuring out your greatest gifts and your passions, and then how to go after those.
Why am I bringing this up, you might be asking at this point, and I appreciate you hanging in there with me on this topic. The reason is simple: I believe in it! I believe in constantly asking ‘what is this all about?’, “why am I here?’, and ‘what do I really want to be doing?’ Do I think it’s necessary in order to build an extremely profitable business? Nope! Do I think it’s necessary in order to have some jet skis? Nope! Do I think its necessary in order to become a millionaire? Nope! In fact, I know its not necessary. There are lots of profitable businesses, and jet ski riding millionaires, in the world that are ready to suck on the boom end of a gun so you don’t have to know your why to be successful if your definition of success only entails a certain amount of money. Anybody who tells you that if you follow your passion and you’ll be rich is lying to you. And anybody who tells that once you have enough money you’ll be happy is also lying to you. There are no guarantees on any of this stuff or in life and there is nothing I could tell you that will work for everybody. There are simply too many variables, most of which lie within the people asking the questions. There are simply too many layers of hang ups and programming in most people that need to be addressed first before any kind of business strategies meant to lead to some version of success will work. The point, however, is that if the message resonates with you, you’re probably one of those people that doesn’t care as much about money as you do about living a life well lived, or about making sure your family knows who you are, or about sucking all of the marrow out of life that you know is there to be tasted.
For students of the coaching program,, we’re headed into the part of the program where we start to talk about figuring out your why. The popular author and speaker, Simon Sinek, wrote a book called Start With Why, where he goes over a whole process of discovering your why, or your core purpose for everything you do, and how to implement that into your life and business. I used to teach a class in my leadership and martial arts academy in the later 90’s and early 2000’s called, “Virtuous Leadership: getting clear on your purpose”, which was essentially the same process of digging deep into the core of who you are based on your past experiences, what drives you, what makes you laugh and what makes you cry, what you’re passionate about, what you would do for free and cant believe somebody would pay you for, and then developing a clear path for implementing this new ‘deliberate you’, as I like to refer to it, into everything you do. This is, by far, one of the most important evolutions, as we call them in the coaching program, that we go through as we we help you evolve your life and business. Without having a very clear ‘why’, or core passion and purpose, everything else is just a tactic and an exercise to see if it works to bring in some more money, or shave a little time, or whatever else you’re trying to do. What makes this process so powerful is the extreme clarity that it gives those who actually undertake the process and do the work. Now, I’ll share with everybody that I have a very specific method and reason for introducing this process when we do in our program. In the past, we used to come right out of the gate with a ‘find your passion’ exercise and homework. Students would put in some time and come back with some great stuff. Then we’d head into the goal setting process, then the profitability process, then the health and wellness module, then the marketing module, and so on. What we found was that, by trying to figure out your ‘why’, or your core purpose, first, most simply didn’t have enough context or motivation yet to come up with a really compelling purpose. At least not as compelling as after we’ve asked them to first set some goals, then learn about their numbers (P&L, Budget, Balance Sheet), and then unleash the core purpose module on them. And I’ll tell you why this works as well as it does now that we’ve changed the order of modules.
Remember earlier when I talked about perspective, belief systems, and pillars that prop up our actions? Remember when I talked about the example of being cheated on by a partner or spouse and how you have to go back and mentally ‘re-live’ all of your experiences with this person to put them into a proper context and perspective, instead of believing as you always had up to that point? You see, without new context and new information, we tend to operate on a path based on what we believe, what we have always believed, and what the world feeds back to us based on those beliefs. As another example, for those of us who have been driving for many years, we make an assumption when we’re driving down the road that the people driving the cars coming at us and only separated by two painted yellow lines want to live another day as much as we do. We make some assumptions that they’ll follow the rules, like we do, that they didn’t just come from happy hour, that they’re not texting while driving, that they have some greater reason to live, and so on. We’ve made that assumption for years and its worked well for the millions of cars that have passed us on the other side of the road. It worked well for us and it worked well for them. There was an unspoken, yet assumed, agreement that I wont cross the center line and kill you, please don’t do it to me. Until someone does. Somebody crosses the centerline and hits you head on. Your belief system is shattered and, assuming you live, you form some new assumptions going forward. With this new information, new context, maybe some pain, hopefully all of your limbs and family members, and you do things differently from that day forward. Life has new meaning, you probably never drive near the center line anymore, and you don’t trust cars coming at you from the other direction. Until something changes our perspective or the context for us, we have little reason to change. With these exercises, it helps tremendously to have some new context and perspective so we have everyone think long and hard about their business and life goals. This opens up their brain space and gets them thinking about things. We add in a consequence for not hitting their goals, which adds a whole other level of pain to the process and new perspective with which to consider their goals. With everybody nice and comfortable with their goals and settled into a process of daily activities toward them, we start on the financial accountability training. We teach how to hand write your profit and loss statement, how to hand write a budget, and how to understand the money coming in and out of your business. This adds new context and perspective. With new context and perspective on your numbers, many will inevitably go back and revise some of their goals. We expect this and anticipate it! This is a good thing, by the way. It means they’re really thinking from the position of the new context and perspective. Then we unleash the ‘core purpose’ exercises and pressure and a whole new level of introspection opens up that would not have been there had they not already been thinking about life and business goals, seen what their money habits are, and given some serious thought to those aspects of their life and business.
Without the context that the goal setting and money management exercises have given, what we find is that people’s ‘whys’ ultimately change. When we use to give this exercise first, we’d get things like, ‘my core purpose is to make enough money to live a life of freedom’, or ‘the thing that makes me the most excited to get up and do each day is to bill out the most I’ve ever billed out’. These, by the way, are not ‘whys’ or purpose driven activities, these are bullshit responses that come out of people at their first attempt at serious introspection. I have since learned that to get to the real core of what you are, what makes you tick, what gets you out of bed, and what gets you excited to do, I have to push you through a few other exercises first. This not only helps clear some of the BS outer layers from your outer brain, it helps prime you a bit to how I coach, push, prod, and provoke a bit to get you to think. After going through those other exercises, which, by the way, are not just warm up exercises, they’re legitimate goal setting and financial management exercises, but after going through those, we find people’s minds are much more open now to being asked ‘why’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ 4 dozen times. Why do you want that? Why does that matter to you? What would you do with that?’, and so on. I’ll be going over some of these core purpose exercises with you in the next episode so those who want to follow along and actually go through them, feel free. If you want to be pushed and pulled through the process, of course, you have to overcome your fear and join the coaching program, but absent that, you can certainly push yourself through the process and be better for undertaking the exercises. I will tell you that the people and businesses that do go through this process and get really clear on this stand out considerably in a very crowded and noisy market. When it comes to demonstrating your value to your market, the people and businesses who have a very clear and written core purpose, or ‘why’ for their life and business, attract far more opportunities to show off and represent their ‘why’ to the world than those who don’t. Its like somebody who works out consistently at the gym and eats well. It shows as they walk down the street. They carry themselves differently and they are more noticeable than those who don’t. As always, you get to decide my friends! Business as usual, until its not? Or push yourself through the crucible of asking the tough questions and doing the tough work of digging into your life and business to reveal some real purpose for both.
I’d like to thank you my friends for investing your most valuable currency with me again this week, and that is your time. I talked this whole episode about investing your most valuable currency into yourself by doing some very difficult introspective work. You can blow it off as too mamby pamby and snowflakey if you’d like, but do so at your own peril. You know the sayings about getting to the end of your life and having regrets, or the ones about what people don’t say they wished they’d done more of on their deathbeds. The choice is yours my friends and I hope you’ll join me as we walk through this all important process on the way to a life and business well lived and well executed. Until then, my friends, I’m out…
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