What drives you to do what you do? What gets you out of bed in the morning – besides your responsibilities? What keeps you moving forward to achieve what you have set out to achieve? What is the deep push to do what you do?
Remember Your Why
I know that there are times that you need to have crystal clear what makes you get up and go. There have been times in the last 19 months when I haven’t wanted to get out of bed. When you find out you have breast cancer and you have four surgeries, shit happens. A lot of shit happens, and there were many days when I just wanted to call it quits and say screw it. But I didn’t. One morning after I heard the words, “You have breast cancer,” I couldn’t get out of bed. I was freaking out, I reached out to my mentor, and he asked me the question: “What is bigger than this?” He had to ask a couple of times before I gave him an answer, but it got me up – it got my feet to the floor.
The thing is I went back to my why. My why is what drives me; my why is what keeps me going when I want to say screw this and pack it in; my why is what keeps me sane when everything around me seems crazy.
Shitty Days at Work
When you are an entrepreneur, you probably have days when you feel meh about your business. We’ve all felt this way at some point or another. These days we want to say, “Fuck it,” call it a day and even think about getting – gasp – a job. It is ok. It happens to all of us. It is so easy to get in a rut and get stuck. When you feel you’ve hit a dead end, it is precisely when you have to go back to what drives you.
Have you ever thought about it, really thought about it? You may say that what drives you are your goals, what you set out, you are going to achieve. Think again. I have a client who says, “Success is the only option.” When I ask her about it, she can’t tell me why. She can’t tell me what drives this statement. Yes, this is something we are going to work on.
Get Clarity
Think about the goals. You’ve set them. You work towards them, but where do they come from? For example, if your goal is revenue based, “I will make $25,000 this quarter.” Great, you have a goal, but why do you want to make that amount? Some answers could be, “I don’t want to worry about money,” “I want to be able to have money in the bank.”
The next question is be why. What is behind the answer you gave? Maybe it’s that you know what it is like to not have money – the struggle around paying bills and the stress that comes with it. These are just a bit of an example. Start asking the questions.
Two steps to your why
- Look at your goals.
- Ask yourself why do you want that. Keep asking the question why. It will start you down the path to figuring it out. Peel back the layers, and eventually, you will figure it out.
Those mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed, those days you want to pack it all in, if you know what drives you, it will get you out of bed. Getting your feet to the floor is half the battle.
If you need some help with this, please reach out to me. We are no longer just doing things for the sake of doing them. Let’s get to the real reason we do things.