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

Share Your Stories
(This Is Where Your Partner Comes In)
Your preparation is complete. Now it’s time to sit down
with your partner and find your WHY. It can feel uncomfortable to share this
much about yourself, but you don’t have to abandon your comfort zone entirely
—we just want you to push the boundaries a bit. If some stories are just too
personal to reveal, then don’t tell them. But for the ones you do choose to share,
know that the more you open up, the easier it will be for your partner to see the
significant patterns. Share only the stories you feel right about sharing. But when
you do share, allow yourself to be vulnerable enough for the process to work.
You may surprise yourself with how open you can be as the process unfolds.
Specificity is key to the process. We can’t emphasize this enough. When you
made your list or chart of stories, we told you not to worry about the details.
Now it’s time to dig in. Tell your stories in as much detail as you can. Keep in
mind that by “details” we don’t mean the temperature on a given day or the
outfit you were wearing (unless those were particularly significant details to the
story). While this kind of information can provide context, the information we’re
really interested in goes far beneath the surface. Since feelings are at the heart of
your WHY, it is vital that you connect viscerally to your memories and the

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emotions you experienced at the time. Specific stories will allow you to do this
is in a way that general statements won’t. The following are some examples:
General Statement: We used to go to my grandparents’ house every year for
Christmas. It felt so good to be surrounded by loving family.
Specific Story: We used to go to my grandparents’ house every year for
Christmas. The year that really sticks out in my mind is when I was nine years
old. That was the last Christmas my grandfather was alive. He was a powerful
force in my life, and I’m not sure I realized how powerful until he was gone. I
had a great relationship with him, but only now do I see how he rubbed off on
me. He was a crazy, eccentric character who marched to the beat of his own
drum. People called him strange or odd, but he always seemed perfectly normal
to me. I remember sitting with him on the couch—just him and me. I was also an
odd kid, people called me weirdo at school. But with him I felt safe. With him I
felt proud to be me, proud to be different. Thinking he was the coolest person
ever gave me the confidence to be my weird self. If he was odd and that amazing
—well heck, I better get comfortable being who I am if I want to have the same
impact on my kids or grandkids one day.