Find Your Why

Find Your Why is an actionable guide to discover your mission in life, figure out how you can live it on a daily basis and share it with the world.

Once, Simon sat next to a man on a plane, who had been living his WHY for over 20 years. Guess what that man’s company did? They produced steel. Super boring, right? How could someone be passionate about cold metal?

Well, as it turned out, the man’s business was focused on low carbon emissions and making products that were easy to recycle. His WHY was to keep the environment clean for future generations. That’s pretty powerful and it doesn’t matter whether you apply it to steel tubing, cool apps or knitting socks – if your business becomes large enough, the impact will be big!

After Simon first found his own WHY – to help others wake up inspired to go to work in the morning – he sat down with others to walk them through the process. The most important part of that process was always for the person to recount old stories. Most of us can point back to childhood and find lots of buried passions, but even recent stories matter a lot, as long as they had a big impact on us.

If you want to do this for yourself, go through 10-12 stories with a friend or someone who asks you lots of questions along the way, and you should get a lot closer to your purpose.

We all have a WHY, and while finding it isn’t always easy, it’s only the first step. After all, you want to live your WHY, not just know it. This is where your HOWs come into play. They are the attitudes and behaviors that enable you to do your best work. Your HOWs include both very specific habits and more general points of view. Whether you’re a night owl or an early riser belongs into the first category, for example, while being good at marketing goes into the second. Knowing the former helps you move towards a job or style of work that supports those habits. The latter helps you make important decisions. For example, if it’s easy for you to market things, get traction on new projects, and capture some early sales, what you should work on next needn’t always be what’s most profitable. Instead, you can focus more on ethics and selling what you really want, because you can generate word of mouth quickly with a lot of different products. But how do you identify your HOWs? Just like past stories help you identify your purpose, past behavior can give you a good idea of how you should…