I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired to go to work and come home every single day fulfilled by the work that they do. My hope is that this course takes us a little further down that path. If people learn their WHY, it makes them better qualified and more importantly more confident to choose the careers, choose the jobs, and find the companies that create environments in which they are more likely to be inspired and feel fulfilled. And that's the goal. The discovery of WHY was not an academic exercise or commercial exercise. It was something deeply, deeply personal. I had a small business and after a few years had lost my passion for what I was doing. People gave me silly advice like "do what you love." I was doing the same thing, I didn't love it anymore. Thanks to the confluence of some events I discovered this naturally occurring pattern.
I knew what I did and I knew how I did it but I couldn't tell you why. And I realized I had to answer that question if I was going to find that balance and so I became obsessed with answering this question, why do I do what I do? Not only did it restore my passion, it restored it to levels I'd never experienced before. And as we do when we discover something beautiful we share it with the people we love. And so I shared it with my friends and my friends started making crazy life changes. And they invited me to share it with their friends and I would show up at someone's apartment and literally give a little talk about this discovery I'd made. And I would just get more and more invitations and this thing just sort of spread organically and it’s really changed the course of my life and changed the course of my career where now I'm completely devoted to spreading this idea and helping people either find their passion or amplify it if they already have it. Having a job we love is a right and not a privilege. It's not for the chosen few. And so my hope is to share this idea with as many people as possible so that indeed saying "I love my job" becomes the standard and not the exception. I used to do the WHY Discoveries myself that's how it began. I would actually help my friends learn their WHY.
I used to sit down with them and go through this process, it took hours, where I'd ask them all about their life and try and see the patterns to try and discern their WHY. And it was great and highly effective but I was the only one doing it, so I shared it with others and there was a few of us doing it but still, you know, there was this desire to do it with more people and so we took this process that I used to do manually and took everything that I learned and put it in this online course but it's basically the exact same thing I used to do by myself so it's it's really fun to see it come to life in a course. The best thing about the WHY is that it's a biological constant, it has nothing to do with what we do. It's based on the biology of how we make decisions and what drives us and motivates us, which means that it doesn't matter whether you're retired or whether you're a student, it doesn't matter what industry you're in.
This course is designed to help people understand what makes them tick and what drives them, what inspires them, And that's why I'm really proud of this. I mean this will give people something to grasp on to and find inspiration and fulfillment and in everything they do, hopefully for the rest of their lives. All you need to do is have the will and the desire to want to understand what drives and inspires you. And that's why we designed this course. It's designed for people to find that thing, to understand the thing that gives them their true north and helps them wake up every single morning inspired and come home fulfilled, I mean, who wouldn't want that?
Bring your WHY to life
So, one frequent question that we get is now that you've found your WHY, what do you do with it? How do you use it? Well, one of the things you want to do is keep it all around you. One of the things that I've done is I actually would write my WHY on my desk, next to my bed so that I was reminded of it. That's number one. But also start talking about it. I start meetings with it. When I sit down with a meeting I say, before we start this meeting I'd like to tell you why I took this meeting or why I called this meeting and I refer to my WHY and say how I believe that this potential partnership or this potential relationship could help me advance my cause, could help me advance my WHY. It works every time. It's extremely valuable in resumes and interviews as well. When somebody says, so why do you want this job? You say, let me tell you why I do everything and maybe tell a story from your childhood or one of the stories that you told in the WHY discovery process to communicate your point. I used to do that in all my interviews.
I still do it now. I start meetings, I start talks, I start all kinds of things with it and it gives people a context for who you are and where you're coming from. It's a huge advantage on resumes as well. I've never really understood at the top of resumes when people write "purpose" and they say "to get a job at a top performing law firm blah blah blah ..." Of course, that's why everybody's applying for the job. Rather, use that space at the top of your resume to explain who you are, basically WHY you do what you do. It gives context to all the other jobs you've ever had. It gives context for who you are and it helps us stand out in the crowd of people who have similar experiences to us. It also helps us understand sometimes where relationships fail. Where we sometimes did things or said yes the things that in our guts it felt wrong but if we compare to our WHY we realize that we should never have done it in the first place. So use it front and center. Speak about it. Tell the stories. Use the stories as metaphors to explain who you are. Talk about it constantly. Start meetings with it.
Start with Why
We imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired to go to work, feel safe when they're there and return home fulfilled at the end of the day. We as an organization see ourselves as leading a movement to build this world. We want as many people as possible to start with WHY to become the leaders they wish they had so that they can build the organizations that put people first. But we know we can't do it alone which is why we're looking for as many people as possible to join us. Because we know that together is better.
What's the WHY?
So a lot of people write in and ask the difference between the question "why" and the WHY, as we talk about it, like start with WHY. The WHY is a purpose, cause, or belief, the underlying reason why we are motivated to do something? The reason a company exists, the reason why we're passionate for something. The question "why" aims to get at and assert the same thing in a generic sense, like why do you do something, what's the underlying reason for that? That's why I called the WHY, "the WHY." Another reason why I called the WHY "the WHY" is because when I would ask people, "What comes first: vision or mission?" People would debate it. There's no standardized definition of vision or mission. So people who believe mission came first, I asked them, "So what's the definition of mission?" They said, "It's why we get out of bed in the morning." People who believed vision comes first would say," Well, it's why our company exists." And whether it's brand or purpose, all these things, everybody gave me the same definition: why. So that's why I called it the WHY.
Does your WHY change?
The question is, "Does your WHY change in time?" The answer is, no it does not. We all only have one WHY. Our WHY is fully formed, probably in our late teens, something like that. And the rest of our lives offer us opportunities to live in balance with that WHY, or not. Now, the language can evolve for sure, but the basic idea, the basic sentiment of what the WHY is, is permanent. It is basically an origin story. That's what a WHY is. A WHY is a sum total of who we are based on how we were raised, the experiences we had as kids. Just like the WHY for an organization is also basically an origin story. It's where the organization comes from. It's based on the problem that the founders were trying to solve or the opportunity they were trying to grasp, whatever it is. So, your WHY is fixed. Your WHY is permanent. The language can evolve but you are who you are. We are who we all are.
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