Find Your Why: a practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team pdfdrive com

SHARING TIP
One little trick that can help the process is to circle the three most impactful stories you have and
tell those to your partner first. By focusing on the most impactful ones, you’ll avoid the temptation
to tell stories that just seem to tie together.
It’s the Little Things That Count
David conducted a Why Discovery workshop with someone named Todd. The following is a story
Todd told David; it’s the kind of story you might tell. Many people think they have to tell big stories of
major events to find their WHY. What’s nice about this example is that although it seems like a
relatively small story in the scheme of things, David was able to use this story to assist with finding the
golden thread that helped Todd articulate his WHY.
Prior to this story, Todd shared other details about his life. How he went to college on a full basketball
scholarship but ended up losing it due to drug and alcohol addiction. He had aspired to make it to the
NBA, so this more than ended his college career—it also shattered his dreams and his self-identity. He
was working at a bar, still battling drug addiction and alcoholism and contemplating suicide, at the
time this story took place:
Todd: I had gotten off work and was driving up a winding road on my way home one Saturday
morning. I passed a little girl selling lemonade outside her house. On any other day, I would have
driven past. For some reason, on this day, I had an inexplicable urge to turn around and give her all of
my change.
I pulled my car up to her lemonade stand and asked how much a cup of lemonade was. “Twenty-five
cents,” she told me. So I said I would take one. She walked back to the stand to get me a cup of
lemonade, and while she was doing that, I scooped out all the quarters I had in the cup holder in my
car. They had been piling up from all the tips I get at work. I probably had close to forty dollars in
there. The girl handed me the cup of lemonade, and I put a fistful of quarters into her little palms. And
then another scoop. And then another. Each time I watched her eyes light up. She turned and ran into
the house full of excitement.
I drove away feeling good, as you might expect. But then something happened that I didn’t expect. I
suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion. I started crying uncontrollably. I was crying so much I

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had to pull my car over. It was amazing.
David: Wow. That sounds intense. I’m sure you’ve done things in the past that made you cry. Of all
the stories you could have shared with me, what specifically is it about this one that made you choose
to share it?
Todd: It was the first time in my life that I felt that I had done something for someone else. It was the
first time in my life I hadn’t put myself first. This was a huge wake-up call for me. It lit my soul on fire
and for the first time I felt like I mattered. I wanted so much to help others feel like they mattered too. I
wanted to help others feel they could do and be more. From that moment on, I wanted to share with the
world what I had felt.
By the end of the Why Discovery, David found a thread of service that ran through many of Todd’s
most significant stories. As he did with the little girl selling lemonade, Todd’s WHY is to ignite
people’s imaginations about what’s possible so that they can find the motivation to do more with their
lives. What’s magical about Todd’s WHY is that is exactly what happened to him. His imagination was
ignited, and he was motivated to do more with his life.