How I found my WHY by Simon Sinuk

   
   The Why was born out of pain. It was never an academic or a commercial exercise. It was born at the time of my life, many years ago, ten years ago. Where I had lost my passion on what I was doing. I own my own small business. I was living the American dream. Superficially was fantastic. And yet I don't want to wake up and do it again. And I was embarrassed by that. Who am I to complain about my life. My life seemed perfect and yet I hated it. So I kept it to myself. Every ounce of my being, all energy that I had invested in pretending that I was happier, more successful and more in control than I ever felt. It was debilitating quite frankly. Strange things start to happen when you put yourself in that cycle and the stress starts to build. You start to become paranoid. So for example I was convinced that my employee hated me. I didn't go out much and it was really a bad time and it wasn't till a friend of mine came to me and concerned that I wasn't acting myself and basically offered me nothing more than a moral support. What do you need, I got your back, I'm worried about you. It was that simple act that gave me the courage to face my own problem.


   It was that simple act gave me courage to seek out solution to go back to the way I used to feel, be passionate about something again. It was a confluence of events and I made this discovery that every single organisation on the planet even our own career always function on the same three levels. WHAT we do? HOW we do it? WHY we do it? It was based on human decision-making. It wasn't some highfalutin management theory. It was based on brain stuff. I realized I knew what I did. I was good at it and I know how I did it. I can tell what was the different special a bout the way I did things but I couldn't tell you WHY I was doing it. That was the missing piece. You have to have all three. I became obsessed on this thing called the WHY. I figured out how to find my why and restored my passion to levels I had never experienced before. More importantly, I figured out how to help others find theirs. I did what anyone would do. When you discovered something beautiful, you share it with your friends. My friends started making crazy life changes themselves. They started to find happiness and passion that they'd never experienced before. It was me sorting my own problem that happened to help other to solve it for them too. People just kept inviting me and I just kept saying YES. I was making huge decision that were really easy to make. Like shut down my office, started over again because I realized the business that I had built was so inconsistent with my WHY. All my friends thought I was out of business. They were worried about me. It was the easiest, easiest decision that I ever made. In other words, when you know your why,the filter is cleared. it'snot like the are options. The option is OBVIOUS. There's only one option. Share. Give. Inspire.

   Everything that I've achieved, any success that I've enjoyed has all been a hundred percent because of the gracious, just amazing generosity of people around me. My friends. My colleagues. People who just believe what I believe. They're the ones who either introduced me to others or took a risk or said let me tried that or bought a book or watched TED Talk or more importantly sent it to somebody else because they thought they would be inspired by it. Foe all the things I've done over the past decade, I still feel I'm at the beginning. I have been saying that for 10 years and everybody says to me, you know, congratulations on X,Y, or Z. My answer is always the same. Tip of the iceberg. I think that's what keeps me inspired which is for me it's a journey,I'm on the right path. I'm walking past the right mile markers. In other words I know making progress to the visions that I have to build this world which the vast majority of people waking every single morning inspired to go to work, feel safe when they're there. Returning home at the end of the day fulfilled by the work that they do. When I started race I ran by myself and it's lonely. Lonely. Lonely. And now, I don't like here, like a thousand people to the left of thousand people to the right then a thousand people behind me and I look around I'm like, yep, we're gonna change the world. We're gonna change the world. There you go.