Last weekend we were on Sanibel Island celebrating a wedding of our son’s friend. It was a fantastic reunion weekend with old friends. One night we were in a restaurant right around sunset and the discussion turned to where we should look to watch it. Everyone was pointing in a different direction, as we were all turned around! We weren’t sure where to look. Thank goodness for the compass on my cell phone! It helped us find our bearings and know where to look to find the sunset we wanted to experience.
Direction
Your WHY is a compass pointing you to your Masterpiece Work. The interesting thing about this compass is that it’s inside you. Once you find it, you’ll know your reason to get up in the morning. You’ll have the fuel to keep going when things get tough. You’ll have the motivator to keep working, even when a situation is frustrating and you just want to walk away.
Understanding
Finding your why is a process. Just as clarity comes through experience, your WHY morphs over time as you understand it more fully. It also deepens as your life season changes. While the compass inside is always pointing to your true north, you can only understand it at the level of life experience you have right now.
Transition
The core of your WHY will most likely be consistent over time, but the way you live it out can change. I’m watching a young woman who is a language arts teacher deepen her understanding of her WHY because her life season has changed. She can no longer support the level of commitment to teaching in the way she did earlier in her career. She’s exploring a new way to express her WHY. The transition process is rocky, but the core of her WHY is strong. Living it out is morphing and she will impact many more people as she moves through this transition.
Clarity
Greater clarity on your WHY can come through:
- Life Experience – the motivation you feel in a new experience helps you see that your WHY is connected to this “thing”.
- New Information – as we walk through life, connections, experiences, discoveries, technology….. can give us new insight into our WHY.
- Crisis – walking through crisis in my life has given me greater clarity in my WHY. Crisis crystalizes your priorities and helps you see that things which seemed important before the crisis are just not that important.
Reflection
Reflecting on your WHY requires time and diligence. It’s not as simple to find as the compass on my phone last weekend. Simon Sinek, author of “Start with WHY”, is the expert on this process. I bow to his expertise in this area. Over the past few years, I’ve covered this topic in blog posts and podcasts. To explore it further, here are several resources for you.
Resources related to your WHY:
Knowing Your Why, The Clarity for Authentic Success
How is Your WHY Communicated to the World?
©Rhonda Peterson 2019, All Rights Reserved
