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

sound better; it’s to make it feel better.
How much time does it take to hone your Why Statement? We really can’t say
because it’s different for everyone. Finding the perfect words for your WHY
could take weeks or months. You may go through one iteration or a dozen.
That’s proved true even for members of the Start With Why team.

---

Take David, for example. David’s Why Statement used to read:
To propel positive change so that people can live a more fulfilled life.
This statement was in the ballpark, but the phrase “fulfilled life” didn’t feel
exactly right to David. It was too broad and, it seemed to him, somewhat clichéd.
So he spent some time digging deeper. He had to answer the questions, “When I
‘propel positive change,’ what am I actually doing? And while I’m at it, what
does ‘a fulfilled life’ mean?” He lived with his Why Statement and practiced
saying it and implementing it—all the time making little tweaks until this got to
something that felt even more like himself than the previous version.
The answer resulted in a revision of his original Why Statement:
To propel people forward so that they can make their mark on the world.
What David realized when he thought more deeply about his word choice was
that, for him, to propel people to live a fulfilled life meant helping them be a
little better than they were the day before so they can have a greater positive
impact on others—and that specific definition of “fulfillment” is spelled out
clearly in the second version. That’s why David’s current Why Statement is
stronger than the first: because it is both more precise and more personal.
Refining your WHY might make it more powerful for you, as it did for David.
But it won’t make it more valid or actionable. The words don’t need to be perfect
in order for us to begin to put our statement into practice. As former Secretary of
State Colin Powell said, “I can make a decision with 30 percent of the
information, anything more than 80 percent is too much.” In fact, as you live
with your WHY it will become easier to find the perfect words, because you’ll
be more conscious of your goal and how you’re trying to reach it. So take some
time to sit with your Why Statement, but don’t sit for too long. The reason to
find your WHY is so that you can act on it.
We envision a world where everyone knows their WHY. Well, we know that
reading a book is not the only way, or even the ideal way for some, to discover
their WHY. As we are dedicated to having a Golden Circle on every desk, we’ve
created multiple ways to find your WHY. Our team conducts live events and

---

workshops and we have resources available online. Learn more and find tools to
inspire at www.StartWithWhy.com.

---