Your WHY!! That’s a relatively new phrase. If you haven’t come across it before, it simply refers to WHY you do things the way you do, WHY things are important to you or WHY you choose a certain course of action.
My first big interaction with WHY came from a video by Simon Sinek called “How To Inspire Action“. I came across it a few years ago and wrote a post about it last year.
But, life happens and sometimes things change. Health reasons cause you to have to work harder. Financial reasons cause you to have to delay your dreams. Family reasons cause you to have to make tough decisions. What happens in many cases is a total separation from the WHY or a rationalization as to why the WHY is no longer important. But the truth is that if it was really important in the first place, it will continue to be important. The difference is that now you might simply be stuffing it into a bag or the back of the closet somewhere.
In some other cases, the strategy is all wrong and so you are not making any progress. You keep banging your head against a wall hoping that at some point it will create a hole. Thing is, by the time the hole is created, you’ve got a headache. You get disillusioned along the way and you forget WHY you ever started the journey.
That’s why it is important to REJUVENATE your WHY! It’s critical to take regular moments to reflect, remember and re-route if necessary.
Here are 5 simple ways to REJUVENATE your WHY:
1. Join a mastermind.
You may or may not have heard of a mastermind. If not, it’s time to check out Napoleon Hill’s “Think & Grow Rich” I won’t detail the benefits here but I will say that a crew of like-minded, like energied (yes, I made that word up), creative people who can keep you accountable is one of the best ways to accelerate. They also keep you focused on your reasons for your actions, your business, your direction. How can you find a mastermind? Start your own or jump on Meetup.com and see what is happening in your area. In some areas, a good BNI group might serve a similar function.
2. Write and evaluate regularly.
Write down your WHY and then every 3 months, write down what you have done to accomplish anything towards that why. Most people just plod along and take each day as it comes. They live simply from moment to moment and never see where they are. I suppose it can work like that. I just don’t know any really successful people that do it that way. I could be wrong though.
3. Read.
If you are truly passionate about something, it will call for constant learning. As the world shifts, principles should remain the same but strategies and technologies will shift. You will need to read something…something new. If you can read something fun about what you are interested in, even better. But, you’ve got to read. Try it! If you are reading something that relates to your WHY, then you are learning. The rest of your friends are probably doing their reading on Facebook. That puts you ahead of them. And since they are stuck on social media while you are upgrading, that brings me to my next point.
4. Hang out somewhere new.
Most of us don’t realize how our environment affects us. It’s REALLY REALLY REALLY difficult to be positive if you hang out with people that complain all the time, work at a job where everyone feels powerless and live in a city where the crime rate is growing everyday. Your WHY drives you. You need to be able to look forward. And in order to do that effectively, you need clear glasses. You need glasses that are not clouded or jaded by negativity! Get out of your current place. What can you do to spice up that outlook and clear those glasses. It doesn’t have be a rock star vacation. Go hang out at a museum or go to your closest Mercedes dealership and get a test drive.
5. Talk to someone that really needs you.
Yes. I really believe that each of us has a gift that is perfectly suited to creating a solution for SOMEONE. Find that person or those people and simply talk to them. Remind yourself of WHY you should push forward. They need you. The world needs you. In fact, the world needs you to be your best self, your 100%. The world needs you to make an IMPACT!! You’re built for that.
It’s time to REJUVENATE your WHY!! Inject some new energy and reset your strategies!
Care to share your WHY? What are you up to and what are you doing to rejuvenate? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.
**Read this post on LinkedIn also**