Just finished Simon Sinek’s Start with Why. Great book by the way and highly recommended for anyone who can read (and if you can’t, there’s an audible version too!). However, I will have to admit that now that I have read the book, I am more confused than ever. But as Tony Robins used to say in his seminars, if you feel confused, rejoice, you’re close to a breakthrough. Sinek even tells us straight up that answering “the why” question is extremely difficult. It is difficult because the answer is buried deep within our limbic brains. That is the part of the brain that governs motivation and emotion, but has no capacity for language. It is where the why resides, but it does not provide the capacity of putting the why into words.

Yet, we need to put it into words. So Sinek’s book has sparked a struggle to do just that. Actually, I have struggled in the past with things like mission and vision statements, or statements of life’s purpose. I actually have one that I created during the Anthony Robbins, Date with Destiny seminar in Miami, Florida back in, what, I believe 2000? But the problem with those “statements” is that I believe they rarely ever get at the true why. They are usually more in line with the hows and whats, but not the whys.

What was particularly thought provoking towards the end of the book was the chapter on the Origins of Why, where Sinek compares metaphorically the process of getting to why with the English longbow, which must be pulled back in order to have the momentum to do the damage needed going forward. In other words, our whys are buried in the past. Yea Yea, I know I have been fond of using the phrase in this blog that “the past does not equal the future.” And it doesn’t. We certainly shouldn’t allow whatever has occurred in the past to limit our futures. But what we are talking about here is something that is buried in our brains and the reason it got there in the first place has everything to do with our past.

So this morning as I closed the book (or shut down the IPad), I began the process of thinking through how the past events of my life have shaped my why. Because, as I sit here this morning I still really can’t seem to find the capacity to rationally express, in cogent fashion, what the hell my why is. And it is frustrating. Why have I taken the actions over the course of my life that I have taken? More often than not, those actions have been driven by how or what. Such as how do I use this law degree to provide for my family and what job offer will I take to provide a practical platform to do just that. But leading with hows and whats generally means settling for something that is just not in line with why.

Leading with hows and whats generally means settling for something that is just not in line with why.

And that is where dissatisfaction and disillusionment usually begin to set in. Or, even worse, despair and depression, which ultimately lead to poorer decisions in the vain attempt to get those “monkeys” off our backs (so we just end up replacing them with others). When all the while, if we just knew why and could actually communicate it to ourselves and others, our lives could finally make sense. We could finally achieve the momentum to do some real damage (in the positive sense).

So I encourage you (as well as me) to (1) read the book and then (2) spend some serious soul searching time putting why into words. It may make all the difference in finally getting the ladder leaning on the right wall.