I originally wrote this article for my martial arts blog.
It went around my head for quite few days as it relates to life in general so I have changed it to relate to us, our thoughts and our direction.
The basic idea is that any human endeavour is driven by three questions. What, How and Why.
‘The What’ is about you. What you want.
‘The How’ is about action taken by you to get what you want.
‘The Why’ is about others. Your effect on the world.
No real problem, or at least not yet.
Here is the reason: You see, 99% of endeavour is about the What and the How.
What do I want?
I want a better job.
I want a better car.
I want to visit another country.
I want more money.
Easy to create this bucket list.
‘The How’ is the action plan for achieving ‘The What’. It is your daily activity and how you achieve goals.The Internet is full of advice on how to achieve. Follow this plan, implement this system, get this result. And results usually follow even if you have to change the systems to suit you.
But the result is still empty. That’s the reason for most entrepreneurs wanting more, bigger and faster. Sort of like a treadmill.
The ‘Why’ is what’s missing. It’s usually only confronted later in life. Or after trauma. Questions like:“Why am I doing this?” “What is the reason I am here?”
True purpose and meaning in life comes from a clear “Why.”
The good thing is that a clear ‘Why’ makes the ‘What’ easier to define. With clarity comes ease of decision making. It’s easier to say no to time wasting activities that slowly bleed you dry. Finding your ‘Why’ is hard. No advice or process makes it easy. One way to start is to identify the things that you care about. The health and safety of you and your family must be a priority. But what about giving life meaning? It has nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth or how good looking you are. Or even how good you are at your sport.
These are all fun and do give you a heightened sense of self in the short term. But internal struggles continue even if you are surrounded by wealth and success. The rich and famous get depressed as much as the majority (sometimes more).
Now having said all of this, the urgency is not on ‘The Why’. You really can put it off. All you do is lose yourself in a flurry of activity and accumulation of stuff. The days and years roll by.
But ‘The Why’ will become very important to you one day.
One day you will stop in your tracks and contemplate ‘The Why’. This, I guarantee.
Ready to start thinking?
