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Ever thought of the word – Why? Do you question life and aspects of your life with this word? This word has so much purpose and meaning when you take the time to really appreciate and understand its scope. You can ask yourself a simple question or try to understand something that is important in your life and come up with a convenient answer, but by asking why, you find a much deeper purpose and meaning. For example, I ask people what are the five key elements that make up their foundation, their life, or their passion? These are the things that are your DNA and are important to understand when trying to decide your life and career decisions. People will come up with five key points that they think are important…and then I ask the difficult question…WHY? Why? worth hearing you is important.

When I ask you what are the five elements that drive you and I am told things like, “I like working with people, I am interested in technology, and I want to make a change in people’s lives…” I stop them and say why. Often times it stops them because people have not taken the time to really understand why these things are important to them. For me, my five foundational aspects are: leadership, public speaking, community/corporate relations, student development and teaching. Take any one of them, and ask me why. Lets take public speaking.
• ‘WHY’ is public speaking one of my foundations? Well, I feel I have a messages that I need to share.
• ‘WHY’ is the need to share important? I believe that by sharing my experience, it will help other people understand my journey and how it might apply to them.
• ‘WHY’ is helping others on their journey important? It is important because I want others to be the best they can be in their lives and true to their path and I can do that through storytelling.

The idea is you keep going till you exhaust your ‘WHY’. This is how you go about finding your five key elements…by asking yourself ‘WHY’. Often times I think I might know what is important but when I go on a journey to ask myself ‘WHY’, it might offer me a different and more important perspective. The road I start may not be the road I go along or end up on.

Now an action item for you. Start thinking about what are the 3-5 key elements that make up who you are…or who you think you are. Now take one of the five and ask yourself ‘WHY’, answer it and keep asking it and see it holds true or you need to change the word. After that, move to another word and keep doing this. What ever the words are, hold on to them because they are important to you but also understand that you can change them any time along the way or add to the list. By doing this, you will learn a lot about yourself. If you doubt this, ask yourself, ‘why not’.