The Three Different People In Life And Why You Need To Choose The WHY Path

All human beings do the things that they do for a reason. They also avoid doing certain things for a reason as well. The reasons behind some of the things that we do are obvious. We eat because we are hungry and want to survive. We bathe because we don’t want to be dirty and smell bad.

But there are other things that we choose to do, or avoid doing, that have more complex reasons behind them. If you know someone that works a job that they really hate then have you ever wondered why they do this? The obvious answer that most people will come up with is “they need the money” or “they are desperate”.

But there are other reasons that can come into play here. Some people just don’t want the extra responsibility that comes from working a higher paid job. Others avoid applying for better jobs because they do not have the confidence and belief in themselves that they can do the job.

When you look at the overall population we believe that there are three different types of people in this world. In this article we will examine these and explain why it is your interest to choose the WHY path. You will understand this more as we go along.

1. The Drifter People

This accounts for the vast majority of the population. They may have dead end jobs or they might have reasonably good jobs but they have no idea what they really want from life or which direction they are heading in. These people drift along in life and “go with the flow”. They don’t like change and are usually happy to be a drifter.

If you were to stop one of these people in the street and ask them what they really wanted in their life then they would not be able to tell you. They may come up with a few material things like a nice house and a car but they do not have any real plans.

Ask them where they want to be in the next 5 years and you will get a blank look. Most of them don’t know where they will be in the next 5 days. These people never set any goals for themselves with the exception of setting New Year’s resolutions to lose weight and other things that they never follow through on.

2. People that find themselves Stuck

These are a much smaller percentage of the population who are not happy with their current situation and want to change it. They want to identify and follow their true purpose in life but they are stuck trying to find it.

As a result of being stuck then tend to go off in all different directions searching for that thing that will make them fulfilled. This is better than being a drifter but very frustrating as you are largely relying on luck to find real meaning in your life.

3. People that know their real purpose in life

This is an even smaller percentage of people that have identified their true calling in life. The know exactly what their WHY is and they are driven to achieve it. They have goals and plans and work on them relentlessly every day.

We recommend that you choose the WHY path. When you discover your true WHY in life you can set the right goals and attain total fulfillment. Don’t let life dictate your future – take control right now and identify your true purpose in life and go after it.

The Best Way To Find Your WHY

There are a small percentage of the population that spend a great deal of time trying to identify their true purpose in life. This is agonizing for them and some will find their true WHY and others will not.

The reality is that some people just don’t care about their WHY. They are happy for life to control them and drift along day by day. But you need to find your WHY because it is very important. Once you know your true reason for being then you can pursue this with passion and vigor to attain complete fulfillment.

Ways you can Find your WHY

Most people try to find their WHY using trial and error. They jump on every opportunity that they can to see if it leads to the Promised Land. This may work in a very small number of cases but will fail most of the time.

Another thing that you can do to try and find your WHY is to follow others. Maybe you have a friend or someone else that you are close to that you believe is a lot happier than you are and want to do the things that they do.

So you decide to set the same goals that they do in the hope that you will find the same fulfillment. The problem is that you are not going to be as committed to these goals as your friend is. When your heart isn’t really in something then there is not much chance of you achieving your goals.

Maybe you have seen something on TV or on the Internet. You see people are really happy with this so you decide to pursue it as well. But you need to bear in mind that most of this is marketing and that the people looking happy in the ads are being paid to do this. Please don’t believe everything that you see on TV or the Internet.

Finally you can decide to really find your true purpose in life. It is not going to be the easiest path for you to take but you know it is the right one. Trying to follow the passions of others is rarely the best thing to do. You need to know what your true passions are and then do everything possible to follow them.

We are all different and all have different passions. Only when you identify what yours really are will you find fulfillment. So don’t waste your time with trial and error or following someone else because it is not going to work.

Ask yourself Questions to find your WHY

If you want to find your true purpose in life then you need to take the time out and ask yourself some soul searching questions. This is not going to be an easy task and it will take you time to do this. But the rewards are certainly worth it because discovering your WHY is one of the best things that you can do in life.

So find yourself somewhere quiet where you can spend some quality time asking and answering the right questions to find your WHY. You don’t want any distractions while you are doing this. Bring your journal with you or a pen and paper as you will need to write down your answers. Here are the questions to ask yourself:

• How can I improve the life of others?
• What are the things that I do where time seems to pass by quickly?
• What did I really enjoying doing as a child?
• When people ask me for help what help do they want?
• What would I do if I didn’t have to worry about money?     

Use your answers to these questions to determine your WHY and create a WHY statement.                                                                                 

How To Write A Good WHY Statement

Once you have discovered your true calling in life you want to create a WHY statement around it. Your WHY statement needs to be compelling because you want to use it to motivate you every day to do the right things to attain fulfillment in your life.

There are a number of formats that you can use to write your WHY statement but at the end of the day it is up to you. There are no hard and fast rules here. The most important thing is that your WHY statement really resonates with you and that it is effective.

Four Elements of an Ideal WHY Statement

Although you don’t need to conform to any set rules there are four elements to a good WHY statement that we strongly recommend that you follow. Your WHY statement need to be very clear and as concise as possible for you and any people that you choose to share it with. So we strongly recommend that you include these 4 elements in your WHY statement:

1. Make your WHY statement clear and simple

It is really important that your WHY statement provides you with clarity about your life’s purpose. It needs to be simple to understand and as concise as you can make it. At the end of the day it needs to make sense and resonate with you.

2. Your WHY statement needs to promote action

Your WHY statement must inspire action. There is no point just writing a WHY statement and then do nothing with you. It needs to inspire you to work towards your true calling in life and motivate you to work on this every day.

3. Include your Contribution to others in your WHY statement

If you can help others then you will help yourself. Every good WHY statement needs a contribution element to it so make sure that yours does as well. Having a contribution element will inspire you to move forward each day.

4. Make your WHY statement positive and ensure it resonates with you

It will actually be pretty difficult for you to create a WHY statement that is negative but ensure that it is really positive. When you read your WHY statement it needs to resonate with you and motivate you to take action towards your life’s purpose.

How long should your WHY Statement be?

Again there are no strict rules to follow here. Your WHY statement needs to be as long as you need it to be. Having said that we recommend that you keep your WHY statement as short as you can.

The most important thing is that your WHY statement contains the 4 important elements that we discussed above. While others may be able to write their WHY statement in one sentence this may not be enough for you. This doesn’t matter at all so please do not concern yourself with this.

Aim for an Evergreen WHY Statement

An evergreen WHY statement is one that you will not have to change very often, if at all. You want to use your WHY statement in all aspects of your life both in your work and personal life.

When you are writing your WHY statement, think about it as a way to express the value that you provide to others at work and in your personal life. There is no need for you to write two WHY statements to cover this.

6 Reasons Why You Need A WHY Statement

Most people do not know what their true calling in life is. Some people just don’t care about this and are happy to be a drifter in life and just “go with the flow”. Others do care about it but have problems with identifying their real purpose in life. So here will show you 6 reasons why you absolutely must create a WHY statement.

1. It will provide clarity about what your purpose in life is.

If you don’t know your true life’s purpose then you will end up doing things that you really don’t want to do. There are so many people working jobs that they hate just to pay the bills. They dread Monday mornings and always feel apprehensive on Sunday nights. This is no way to live your life.

When you know what your true purpose is in life you can take action to achieve this. You will have more confidence and can get a job that will align with your purpose. You will have more energy and be motivated every day.

2. A WHY Statement Sharpens your Focus

Without the right focus in your life it is easy to set goals that you are not truly committed to. A lot of people follow their friends and other influencers in their life and end up setting the same goals as them. We are all different and this rarely works out well.

When you identify what you really want your life to be about this clarity helps you to work out your next moves a lot more easily. You can use your WHY statement to drive you forward each day and achieve what you really want from your life.

3. You will make the Right Decisions

Have you ever made wrong decisions in your life? Of course you have we have all done that. When you have a strong and compelling WHY statement it will help you to make much better decisions in life.

A lot of decisions have serious consequences and if you don’t know your true purpose then you can dismiss these consequences in exchange for short term pleasure or gain. With a good WHY statement you will assess the long term consequences and be able to make better decisions.

4. It Provides more Accountability

People that have no purpose in life tend to shy away from accountability. They are just happy to drift along but then complain bitterly when things go against them. It is never their fault of course and always someone else’s.

With a powerful WHY statement you will know where you are going in life and be accountable for this. You will think things through more and only take action where it aligns with your WHY statement. This additional accountability will make you a better person.

5. You will be Healthier and Happier

If you only want to consider one of these reasons to have a compelling WHY statement then this is the one to choose. There is nothing more important than your health and your happiness. When you are happy then you tend to be healthier. If you are unhappy then your resistance is down and you can experience all kinds of health issues.

6. Your Resilience will Increase

Everyone has to face problems in their life. For some people these problems are too difficult to handle and they become overwhelmed and stressed out. When you have a compelling WHY statement you can see these problems as opportunities for you to grow and attain fulfillment in your life.

Ways to Improve Your Strategic Thinking Skills

Having the ability to think strategically maximizes your problem-solving skills. When you improve your strategic thinking skills, you’ll enable yourself to be able to plan any part of your life, business, or job logically and quickly. You’ll be able to use your mind to make better decisions that align with your values and the intent you have for the situation.

Keep Your Mind Open

Being open-minded doesn’t mean that you’re being gullible. When you open your mind to new perspectives, it allows you to see additional, innovative ways to accomplish something or reach your goal. These new discoveries enable you make well-informed choices according to your needs.

Accept Your Biases

Don’t worry about how it’s always been done because that is a bias that you have that may or may not be correct. There may be a better way. However, if you stick to your old preferences without assessing and exploring new information, you won’t likely make new discoveries or acquire new knowledge that helps you grow.

Ask More Questions

Curiosity is essential in developing your ability to think strategically. The more questions you ask, the more information you can gain to help you see more sides of the problem. As you work through the various aspects of the problem, ask the questions that come to your mind. Don’t worry about if they’re right or wrong.

Listen More for Understanding

As you listen to and learn about the information that is going to help you plan, it’s essential to listen for understanding. That will help guide the kinds of questions you ask. When you get one answer, it should lead to another question.

Stay Alert for Opportunities

Keeping alert for opportunities requires that you are aware of what is happening in the environment of your life. For example, what’s happening in your industry of work or business? What’s new in parenting discoveries. It never hurts to learn about the ideas that exist, even if you disagree.

Understand the Consequences of Your Decisions

The impact of each decision you finally make is also significant. After all, that’s how you know when you’re going in the right direction. The results of the choices you make matter more than anything. For this reason, it’s a good idea always to map out the possibilities for any one option.

Keep Learning

Don’t stop learning new things. The more you learn, the more information you from which you can consult to help you think more strategically. Most choices we make in life are based on the knowledge and experience we develop over time.

Improving your strategic thinking skills requires that you are open to being wrong. You’ll also need to practice curiosity, ask lots of questions, and be open-minded enough to learn new things even if they challenge your deeply held convictions.

How to Be More Trustworthy and Trusting

One way to get more out of life and to become an influential person who is trustworthy is to be someone who has high moral standards and values and demonstrate that fact with your actions. The best thing about that is that the more trustworthy you are, the more trusting you will become.

Know Your Core Values

It’s hard to make decisions if you don’t know what you want your core values to be. For example, if you believe in peace, justice, and generosity as a core value, you can ask yourself before any choice whether the decision aligns with those values or not.

Keep Your Commitments

Don’t say yes to anything unless you know you can keep your commitment. When you do say yes, put it in your schedule so that you don’t forget. The more dependable you are, the more people will trust you.

Practice Transparency

It really depends on the situation, no one thinks you should be an open book offering too much information to the world, but you should be open and honest about anything that would cause mistrust if found out. For example, if you’re a vegan blogger who sometimes eats fresh fish from the ocean when you go sailing, you better be open about that because if you’re not your audience will discover it and think you’re a liar.

Be Honest

If you feel like you need to lie about something, it’s best not to say anything. Even compliments fall short if they’re not genuine. If you can’t say something nice don’t say anything but don’t say a lie to be nice either. An extreme example is telling your 100 pounds, overweight friend, that they’re not fat. They are fat, but it isn’t all they are. Don’t be condescending.

Don’t Be Late

One thing that can make people not trust you, and probably makes you not trust others, is never being on time. Yes, sometimes things happen, but if it happens to you regularly, people will not trust you. Find a way to be on time most of the time so that lateness is a sign of something going wrong for you and not part of the perception of you people have.

Don’t Gossip

If your friends tell you secrets, never say one word about them to anyone, not even your spouse. Being able to keep confidences makes you an extremely trustworthy person. Just remember, someone else’s story is not yours to tell.

Say You’re Sorry

If you do anything to be sorry for, tell people. Learn to offer a sincere apology too. Saying you’re sorry is only part of it. You need to really be sorry and really accept fault, and if possible, make reparations.

Control Your Emotions

Your emotions shouldn’t control you. If you are generally an emotional person and it shows, learn how not to overreact. For example, if you get angry when you are hungry, ensure that you keep a schedule for eating to avoid that. If you cry easily when someone else is crying, that’s okay if you don’t go overboard and grab all the attention. Read and learn about stoicism to help you gain control over your emotions.

Have a Positive Attitude

Positivity can go a long way to helping you seem trustworthy to others. In fact, think about the positive people with a good attitude that you know. You probably like being around them more than people who complain a lot. You don’t need to be a robot, but don’t focus on the negative aspects.

If you want to trust people more, make sure you are worth trusting yourself. Knowing your core values is essential to helping you become more trustworthy because you can always look to your values to guide your choices. The fallout from doing this is that you will start to become more trusting too.

The Secret to Finding Balance in Life

The biggest secret to finding balance in life is to accept that balance doesn’t always mean things are equal day in and day out. It really means that you can, most of the time, achieve your goals in life regardless if it’s about home or work. Achieving that balance in life takes an understanding of yourself, of others, and the ability to set goals and make schedules and plans that help you reach your goals.

Know Your Life Values and Priorities

It’s almost impossible to make choices when you don’t even know what your values or and due to that, don’t know what’s important. Take the time to create a life mission statement or purpose statement so that you can always look to that in any given situation to help guide your choices.

Practice Setting SMART Goals

Creating realistic goals is an essential skill. The easiest way to think about goal setting is to use SMART goals. You can learn about SMART goals by reading about them on Wikipedia, or on your favorite how-to site. In short you want to create detailed goals with specific metrics. You’ll need to ensure every goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Also, ensure that any goal fits in with your values and priorities of life.

Set Boundaries and Nurture Yourself

If people are always asking for more, it’ll be hard to balance your life. Take the time to learn to say no if you have no reason to say yes. Also, learn to put yourself first in terms of your health. Eat right, exercise, and get to your yearly appointments because if you’re not healthy, it’s hard to do well in life.

Organize and Plan

Don’t underestimate the value of organizing and planning. When you take the time to really get your life organized both mentally and physically, the idea of balance becomes suddenly much more possible and likely. Get out that calendar and write down everything you want to and need to do in life including personal and work. Put it all in one calendar so that you can truly control your time.

Put Family First

When you do start scheduling the things you need to do, when that calendar is still blank, fill it in with your family activities and responsibilities first. It’s more important to go out on a date with your spouse than it is to work overtime unless you are running out of money and need the money. Otherwise, put the family and fun before everything else and work around that.

Expect Roadblocks to Occur

The tricky part of balance is that you cannot always account for everything. As they say, you don’t know what you don’t know. But your mindset will play a massive role in how you deal with those roadblocks. Create flexibility in your schedule so that it won’t impact your life as much and make you feel off-balance.

Practice Positivity

The more you can practice a positive mindset, the more you’ll feel like you have balance in your life even during the times, and it will happen, that you feel anything but balanced. Keep a positivity journal and write down three things you’re grateful for each day to help.

Use Your Calendar Religiously

Don’t underestimate the power of a good calendar. If you compartmentalize your life and give yourself enough time to do each of the things you’ve determined are essential for your balanced life, all of it will be much more likely to happen. If you just go at life without a plan, you’re less likely to finish anything.

Let Go of Toxic People and Things

Toxic things and people in your life will ruin your balance. This includes mean people, but it also includes food, drugs, and activities that are not good for you to do. For each person, this will be different, and it takes self-awareness to come to the right conclusion.

Stop Multitasking

Whether you realize it or not, no one can multitask. Study after study shows that we only think we can multitask. This is important to know as you create your schedules in your calendar for the tasks you want to do each day to work toward the goals you set. Don’t watch TV while you’re reading, don’t do data entry while you’re watching TV, don’t spend fun time with your spouse while you’re reading emails on your phone. One thing at a time will work best to maintain balance.

Ask for and Get Help

You cannot do everything on your own. No one can. Ask for and get help in the areas you need it without apology. Your spouse, your kids, your friends (or someone you hire) can and should help you get things done so that you have more balance in your life. No one is alone on an island.

Finding balance in your life simply requires that you are open to setting attainable goals properly, creating a realistic schedule, and being committed to following it, to reach the goals you set.

Four Types of Awareness

As you work toward becoming more self-aware, understanding the diverse types of awareness can help you become more mindful and even intuitive. In turn, this knowledge will help you make better choices in life.

The more open and aware you are, the more likely you are to make good decisions for your entire life. Each author specializes or prefers to discuss certain types of awareness. Here we’ll talk about self-awareness, social awareness, organizational awareness, and knowledge awareness.

Self-Awareness

Getting to know your inner-self and your unconscious mindset is important. If you haven’t taken time to get to know who you are, what motivates you, what makes you unique, you need to take time to get to know and accept yourself as you are. This includes your strengths, weaknesses, emotions, behaviors, and your core values. When you do this, you have self-awareness.

Self-awareness is learned, over time. As you grow, learn, and experience all aspects of life, you become more self-aware. To become more self-aware, consider keeping a journal to track your behaviors and examine the issues that stop you from reaching your goals in life.

Social Awareness

When you’re socially aware, you have developed the ability to relate to and understand others. You know how you react with others in different environments. You know automatically that you’ll like or dislike any particular social situation.

To improve your social awareness, observe body language, ask questions, and listen more than you talk. Try adjusting your communication methods based on how the people you’re with are communicating.

Organizational Awareness

Whether you work for yourself or work in a business, there are values and norms for each group. Understanding those is part of your awareness growth. For example, how do you like to interact with people? Do you like leading groups at work? How does the organization serve you?

Learning to deal with diverse types of people in a mindful and productive way takes some time. Most people rely on their intuition in these situations. However, if you take the time to get to know the organization and know what the universal values and notions are, you can become even more organizationally aware.

Knowledge Awareness

This one is kind of tricky. Because as soon as you read this, you’ll have this type of knowledge that is so important for self-awareness growth. When it comes to knowledge, the moment you can accept that you don’t know what you don’t know (Jonathan Raymond), you can start making better choices in life.

There is always something that is unknown. The willingness to accept that you really cannot know everything and accept it is liberating. In fact, exploring the various levels of awareness can help you become more self-aware. As you go through the process, the more mindful you’ll be about the decisions and choices you make in your life.

Goal Setting to Take Actions

Goal setting is an essential part of your life if you ever want to achieve the things you set out to do. You can tell yourself (and others) all day long that you want to make seven figures and go on a cruise around the world, but if you don’t set up exact steps to take to get to that goal, it won’t happen.

Set SMART Goals

Read all you can about setting SMART goals. Essential learning how to set SMART goals will help you develop goals and make plans to achieve results. Learning this method is going to help you in all aspects of your life.

A SMART goal is a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. This means that you need to name the result, have a way to judge if you have met your goal, and ensure that it’s realistic. Also, the result needs a due date.

Start from Planning from The Result

Once you have figured out what result you desire, you need to plan from that due date backward until the day you want to start working toward the goal, such as today. Every single day, you’re working on something to get you to your goal in a timely manner without deadline pressure.

Develop Action Steps

From the planning phase, you want to come up with each action step that you need to take, other people need to make, and that must be finished to achieve the goals you have set. For example, if you’ve set a goal to declutter your home in 2020, you’ll want to start from day one of 2020 with small steps each day that will result in an uncluttered home by December 31, 2020.

Schedule Everything

Put everything you’ve decided to do on a schedule in your calendar. Remember that your calendar should have everything you need to do and want to do written down in it. This is the best way to achieve more by chunking your time for each goal you’re working toward in a realistic way. It’s so much easier to focus on today this way than what is going to happen six months from now.

Find an Accountability Partner

It really depends on your goal, who should be your accountability partner. Don’t think it always has to be a person or someone who is doing the same as you. You can gain accountability on your own by scheduling reviews of your progress during the action part of working toward your goal. You can also hire a life coach, get a counselor, or just ask your best friend. However, it’s vital that you choose someone who doesn’t struggle with the same blockers as you.

Keep Working Toward Your Goal

This is the most essential factor for goal setting for action takers. Perform the actions you’ve set up to achieve the results you desire. If you’ve done an excellent job scheduling and planning, it should just be a matter of following the roadmap you created for yourself.

Achieving goals requires action. Setting SMART goals will help you design the steps that are most impactful toward reaching those goals that you set. Take the time to use SMART goals for everything you want to achieve, and you’ll find yourself growing in success more and more every day.

How to Think Like a Leader

If you are trying to become a leader in your field, it will help you to understand how leaders think and act. There are things that effective leaders have in common that they do well. Leaders have a moral obligation to society, to be honest about their goals and vision for what they are trying to achieve so that their followers aren’t misled.

Share Your Vision Effectively

Excellent communication skills are imperative if you want to be able to think like a leader. Learn as much as you can about human nature and how people communicate in their environments to help you bring your vision to life to your team using the terms they understand.

Show Your Empathy

A truly effective leader can put themselves in someone else’s shoes and feel something. If you can’t look at others and understand their feelings based on past experiences, even if you’re not in their shoes, literally, you may want to practice. Find ways to show that you have empathy for other humans.

Listen More Than You Talk

A genuinely beautiful trait of a good leader is the ability to listen to what others are saying. Listening more than you talk will go a long way to helping you think more like a leader because you’re going to learn more when you listen.

Practice Confidence and Authenticity

Leaders usually exude confidence, but some leaders are faking it. Sadly, faking it until you make it is not really that good of advice because you’ll feel like a fraud. Instead, it’s okay to say you’re nervous about public speaking, or whatever it is, openly while still doing it confidently.

Put the Mission First

One way to be a good leader is to become mission focused. Sharing with others the mission in a way that helps others also want to put the mission first will require a lot of talent on your part because people want to distract you, but the mission is the goal or point of everything.

Practice Action Focused Goal Setting

Learning how to set goals that can turn into daily action for you and others is an essential function of a leader. Learn all you can about setting SMART goals and practice it in all parts of your life so that you will become a more goal-oriented mission-focused leader.

Be the Example

If you want to be a leader, you must do precisely what you say for others to do. In other words, practice what you preach. If you tell others that they need to save money for retirement and you’re not doing it, what kind of leader are you? If you blog about minimalism, but secretly you are a hoarder, you will be discovered.

Engage and Connect with Your People

As a leader, sometimes, the people you lead will not just open their lives to you or communicate with you until you open the door. Take the time to truly engage and connect with your people on an authentic level.

Roll Up Your Sleeves

Get to work yourself and do the things with your team. If you’re not afraid to scrub a toilet, neither will your kid be right? The same happens if you are a small business owner or project manager. If you’re okay with getting in there and working hard, everyone else will want to as well.

Being a leader carries enormous responsibility. Maintaining your values and character is essential to continue being a leader that others look up to and want to follow and emulate. Use your skills wisely.