Finding the WHY in your Business

“The real joy in life comes from finding your true purpose and aligning it with what you do every single day.”

Tony Robbins

Find your why and get motivated

If you have a business you will know that planning and goal setting are crucial to your success.  I wonder though if you have stopped to think about your purpose, the big WHY of what you are doing.    If you do that first, before setting any goals or doing any planning then you are much more likely to achieve your goals.  I believe this is  the main reason that we fail at goal setting.  We set goals that we “think” we should achieve, or even worse that someone else has suggested to us, like your well meaning Mother who mentions how much weight you’ve put on and you think you need to set a goal to lose that weight.  Is that going to motivate you, setting a goal that has been suggested to you?

So motivation is important and knowing your WHY is a big driver in this.  Unless you can find your WHY you will never feel fulfilled.   As humans, we are hard wired to find meaning in our lives, usually it is something that inspires us, that makes a difference in some way that is really important to us. 

So now that we know that the purpose is so important, what can we do about it?  How do we find it?  I know this is something my clients quite often struggle with.  They get into business usually because they are good at a particular thing and they want to do it for themselves, but when it comes to finding a bigger purpose, one that makes you feel intensely motivated and passionate, they quite often get stuck. 

To help with this I have devised an easy little exercise for you to check what is important to you and why that is.  Your purpose and why will come out of this.  Even better, it won’t take long!

 An easy way to find your why 

Step 1 – Let yourself imagine how you want your life, business or career to be.  Visualise this using all your senses.  Alternatively, if you like writing you can write it down.  Just let yourself dream of this as if there was no way you could fail at it.  Write/imagine it as if it has already happened.  Go into huge detail in this, eg in creating a perfect business, who do you sell to, why do they buy, what are you doing each day, how does that make you feel, who are you spending your time with, what are you seeing,feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting.  Sometimes it helps to create the perfect day, doing the things you love best with the people you love to be with.

Step 2 –  Write down all the goals that you would need to make this happen.  It doesn’t have to be perfect yet!  Just go with your gut feelings and write down at least 3 top goals that you want to achieve this year.

Step 3 – For each goal, write down why it is important to you, then write down why that is important to you and keep going until you run out of why it is important, then you have your deep, core, straight from the heart WHY.  Then you will do anything to reach those goals.  They will be goals that are meaningful and important and totally aligned with your values.  If they don’t, try some others until you get the ones that make you feel that way.  You will feel fulfillment through those goals and won’t have to force yourself to meet them.  You will wake up each day wanting to get closer to those goals, how awesome will that be?

Jann Meehan