Finding your Why means that you understand more than “what” you do, or even “how” you’ll do it. Finding your Why helps to make your goals and purpose more personal. It connects you to what you’re trying to accomplish at a different level. Simon Sinek famously talks about having your Why in his TEDx talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”.

Knowing “what” you do is important. You have to do your “what” in order to accomplish what it is that you’re doing. What are you trying to accomplish? You honestly have to have a “what” in order to be doing something.

You need to know your “how”. How will you accomplish what you’re doing? You need processes. You need a plan. You need to share your product. You need to build your product. You need to have a community. Whatever it is, you need to know “how” you’re doing it.

But neither of those is where you start. When you start with “Why”, you have a different focus. You remain connected to your purpose, and it will drive you to succeed. When your “what” and “how” become monotonous, boring, and hard (because they will), your “Why” will continue to fuel you, because you care.

Having a “Why” also slants how you do your “what” and “how”. As a simple example, I asked a small group of youth to draw a house. The older ones drew a box with a triangle on the top. They had a door and a window, and some even had a chimney. The younger ones took a little longer and drew something a little more expressive. They all drew a quick house because I asked them. Their “why” was to just draw a house because I asked them to.

I asked them to talk about their house. It was what you’d expect. The older ones said something along the lines of “It’s a house, it has a roof and walls”, things like that. The younger ones wanted to talk more about it. Again, they were trying to be more expressive about their house. I asked them if they would live in their house. Most of them agreed that they would not.

I asked them to draw a house they would want to live in, and to be expressive about it. They drew mountains, trees, pools, garages, cars, all sorts of different things. These houses were much more expressive. You’d expect that, given the new assignment.

As simple as this example is, it shows the inherent power of having a “why”. When they were asked to draw a house, they drew a simple house because that was their why. When they were prompted to draw a house they’d live in, their imaginations went to work, and they were creative. A simple tweak of the “Why” changed the results.

It’s like this in our day to day lives too. In our work, our play, our family life, our health, all of it. Nobody’s there to change the prompts for us though, we have to do that ourselves. It’s so easy to get drawn into the monotony of life, or to become distracted. We focus on our “what” or even our “how”. It gets boring. It gets hard. Or, we focus solely on the results, and we don’t remain committed because we don’t have a strong “Why”. Just getting through the day keeps us bored, depressed, and distracted.

Well designed influences take your limited time and energy and devote them to those things. Since so much of your “just getting through the day” energy is devoted to your distractions, you begin to over-identify with them. You begin to defend them for no other reason except that you feel emotionally attached to them because they make you feel better. You lose your purpose because you’re distracted. You’re distracted because you either don’t have, or forgot your “Why” for working towards your goals.

It’s so important to live intentionally, and not be somebody else’s product. You can start by having your own “Why”.

The MAKE ROOM Planner & Journal is designed to help you design your own life. You can discover your own “Why”, and live life intentionally, with purpose, and in alignment with your own goals.