Stop Asking What’s Next, Find Your WHY

“Working hard for something we do not care about is called stress, working hard for something we love is called passion.”  — Start With WHY by Simon Sinek

When The "WHAT Search" No Longer Helps 

Have you ever had a strange time when nothing on the job search APP makes your heart pumping anymore? Not even the most reputable company names or the biggest job titles? That bewildering feeling happened to me a few years ago. For weeks, I stared blandly at the pages and pages of job descriptions on Linkedin and felt frustrated with why none of them excited me even just a little. A crisis forged inside. I couldn’t stop asking what was wrong with me? Have I lost the drive to move up in career? Or was I being too arrogant? But none of the explanations made any sense back then…  

Now looking back at that stance, I can see what the problem was — the old story of “why I do what I do”, which was a blend of the stories told by my ex-employer and professionals liked me, suddenly didn’t speak to me anymore. Lost faith to the “common sense”, and struggled to find my own word, for a period, I felt like a captain hanging to a broken compass, sailing aimlessly in the misty darkness… Light begins to shine only when I started to piece together my own version of the story. 

Many of us are experts in defining our “WHAT” because we’ve had a lot of practices since we were teenagers. From picking what subject to study in college, choosing what industry to entre professionally, to deciding what city to call home, most of our earlier years have only lived with the “WHAT” questions, and they seemed to do the job. However, if you have never thought about why you do what you do, there would come a time when the “WHAT search” no longer satisfies. And for some, this realization might happen only when it is too late. 

 

Your WHY Awakens Passion

 

The language we choose often gives away our blind spots. One in every three leaders came to me for coaching has “finding my passion” as their main coaching goal, as if “passion” is among the scarcest and most mysterious resources on earth. As a matter of fact, the meaning of the word “passion” in Cambridge dictionary is very brief and simple: a strong and powerful feeling. In other words, passion is a basic human instinct, is inside of us, and will remain there as long as we live. In calmer times, it resides like a small flame seed, waiting for the right kind of fuel to restore its glory and power, to be “on fire”! You don’t “find” passion, you awaken it from within. 

 

Searching for “WHY” fuels passion. Miraculously, when you begin to harvest answers from the “WHY” questions, before you noticed, the flame of passion is already making your eyes sparkle and making your cheeks glow.  That enchanting strong sensation is the best affirmation saying “yeah, you got it right this time!”. 

 

 

Your WHY Attracts

 

Think about the best leaders you came across inside or outside of your organization, there is a high chance that these leaders have a strong sense of purpose and actively share their purpose to drive “better” out of others. According to Linkage’s in-depth research on Purposeful Leadership in the US in 2017, companies with more purposeful leaders outperform companies with fewer; and purposeful leaders perform better in driving employee engagement, competitive differentiation and financial results. 

 

Purposeful leader inspires through connecting their PERSONAL “WHY” into the broader context and translate it into an ORGANIZATIONAL “WHAT FOR” that their people can rally around (Linkage Rethinking Leadership: The Power of Purpose, 2019).  This attraction applies not only in leadership, but also in relationship, marriage, mentorship and other domains of our life. Living with our “WHY” makes us more attractive to others and helps us to attract the right audients.  

 

 

How To Find Your WHY?

 

Researchers and philosophers from the past to present have pointed us to the same wisdom that our “purpose” or “calling” nests in the intersection of our “passion”, our “gift” and our “values”. 

 

Finding our “WHY” might be a lifetime pursue, and we might pick up different jewels along the way as we grow. As a starting point, create a quality “me time” and ask yourself three questions. And interestingly, you need to ask questions starting with “what” to get closer to your “WHY”.

1.     What do you CARE the most?

2.     What will be missed when you leave the room? 

3.     What were the times when you thrived?

 

These were the questions I started with when the inner crisis began a few years ago. A number of months of introspections, contemplations, and experimentations later, the “WHY search” led me to the courageous decision to pursue my calling, leaving the comfortable corporate job and ventured into professional leadership coaching. Though a beginner and learner in the new field, I can already say that it has been one of the best decisions of all times. 

 

Now it’s your turn. Stop searching for “what’s next” and start waking the “sleeping beauty” inside, named “passion”. 

Author: Dannie Zhuang is an executive coach and leadership development consultant at Linkage Asia, a certified coach by the International Coach Federation, and spent her earlier career in wide-ranging international positions in P&G and Unilever. Growing up in China, she lived and worked in UK, Switzerland, and now residing in Singapore with her husband and a little one.