Hello Goal Getter Nation, This is Tony Woodall, your host for Goal Getting Podcast.
Today we're going to be talking about Defining Your Why
And what we're talking about with that is, "why do you do what you do?
Or, "why are you trying to get the goals you set?"
One of the most difficult things, I think, to get the goals you set, is to determine what your why is, to Define Your Why.
I found it easier to write it down as I'm thinking about it along with
My What, which is what I want to achieve and
My How, the action steps I have to do to accomplish it
So I created a worksheet to help me create My What, My How and My Why
and you can download a copy of the worksheet later at GoalGettingPodcast.com/action
And, I've been to motivational speaking seminars for many years.
I've gone to more than I can think of, or as my grandparents use to say, More than I can shake a stick at.
You know I used to go to see a lot of motivational speakers since I was in my early 20's. When I first heard about products from Amway, I became an Amway distributor many, many, many years ago.
One of the things that got me started is I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make a lot of money. I wanted to be wealthy. I wanted to enjoy life.
And I wanted to be motivated so I started going to the motivational seminars to learn more about the business and things. I got involved along with Amway and later in life several other multi-level marketing or direct marketing organizations and I don't have anything bad to say about them. So I am not talking negative or positive about that particular experience because I did learn a lot business, about life, about sales and marketing working in those organizations.
But I also got my start listening and studying motivational speakers. And I love motivational speakers. I still listen to motivational speakers today. You know I’ve listened to some of the best. I went to several Tony Robbins seminars; I've got and read all of his books and several taped programs of his. Mark Victor Hanson, I listened to him before he did the Chicken Soup for the Soul series that he's involved in. I've listened to many, many motivational speakers. I did the sound for one, Mike... and I can't remember his name now.
He helped me when I spoke to him one morning at breakfast and we were talking about being motivated and being successful and you know, we talked about some family relationships I had with my birth father, and they weren't good relationships. He was talking about how we had to forgive those who had wronged us. We don't have to necessarily be around them or like them, but we do have to forgive them. That was the key. It has nothing to do with motivation, but it does motivate you because being angry with people doesn't get you motivated.
When we're talking about goals, one of the things I did going to motivational seminars, one of the things that you see frequently, is they ask you and they start bringing up all of these different things that motivate people and ask what motivates you.
Is it new cars? Maybe it's that Rolls Royce, or that Bentley or the Maybach. In my day, back when I was going through this as a youngster, it was the Cadillac that was the thing. It was the Cadillac El Dorado was my favorite car that I wanted back then. That was the thing you strived for was to have a big, fancy car, whether the Cadillac, Rolls Royce or Bentley, a Ferrari or BMW, a sports car or something like that. Was that what motivated you? A new car.
Or maybe it was a new home or a mansion. I remember talking about getting this big home with white columns on it. I am from the south and we always invisioned having the columns on the outside of our homes. One of the things you wanted a home on a golf course or a beach house, a mountain retreat or second home for vacations on the beach or whatever. So alot of times you are motived or try to get motivated for success or to make a lot of money or whatever. Money Motivated is the big thing alot of people talk about. I am personally money motivated. I like to do things to earn money. But, money isn't really the money that's motivating you and me. I got thinking about that later on in life. We think about money and what are the things that motivate you. In today's episode it's kind of about motivation. So I want you to think while we are talking here. What motivates you. What gets' you excited to get out of bed and to do the things like that. What motivates you? Because we start looking at these things as we start looking at new cars, new homes, vactaions, I love to cruise. I have been on many cruises with different cruise lines. I love to travel. I haven't traveled as much as I would have like to. I've been mostly in the Caribbean. My goal is to travel on the Pacific side. Out in the Pacific, go to Hawaii, Tahiti, Singapore, maybe some other places in Asia. I still want to visit Japan. As a martial artist my martial arts instructor and sensei, the gransmaster is in Japan. He's been to the states several times and I've taken seminars with him and learned, but i never got an opportunity to go to Japan and train with him there at the schools there. That's still one of my goals. So Travel is a motivation.
Finally maybe you've got a goal or the motivation is money. Again, Financial is a big motivator for a lot of people. You've got kids and want to put them through college or put yourself through college, or pay for your college you got. Most millinials today have so much college debt. Student loans and things like that. I am paying for my daughter's student loans. I'm paying for my daughter's student loans, or more so my student loans for my daughter, Not her's as she has her own student loans which are more than mine, actually, which is really sad when you think about it. Maybe you want to do something for putting yourself, your children, or your Grandchildren, though college at some point in time. Maybe you just want to increase your income or get a job. Those are some motivational things for dealing with Financial or money.
Maybe your motivation is health. To Lose Weight, get in better shape, to be able to run a marathon or an ultra-marathon. I found out about ultra-marathon and I didn't realize there was a such thing as an Ultra-Marathon until recently when one of my coworkers was talking about his wife and he, who do ultra-marathons on the weekend. I didn't realize they were called ultra-marathons until after. He talked about how she goes out to run 100 mile runs on the weekend. It's like a 36 hour of runnning they do. Man that is amazing that someone can run that far. You have to be able to be motivated to do that, in my opinion.
What we want to talk about today is not these type of motivation or the things that excite you or motivate you or want to have. These are goals, I believe, they aren't really motivations.
They are goals you can have, but when you think about goals and setting and achieving goals, one of the key elements I used to forget about and never rally thought about it, Why do I want that. Another motivational speaker, and I apologize I can't remember which one it was that I had heard and was talking to one day and listening to one of their talks and they said, You really have to know your Why! And I didn't understand that when I first heard that. I thought, Why, Why Why do I do this and that's really one of the biggest things you have to think about when you want to set a goal and learning the Goal Getting, Don't Just Set'em Get'em Program that I teach on this podcast, Goal Getting Podcast or at seminars, or webinars that I do is talking about knowing your Why. I used to just talk about in my presentations that I did for Goal Getting, even before I learned about the Why part, was that you had to understand your motivations.
Really, when you think about motivation there are two types of motivation I learned about.
1) People are motivated by what called "Away Motivation" They are really trying to get away from something, and that is what motivates them. So, the fear of going into bankruptcy is something that motivates a lot of people. They don't want to lose everything; they don't want to go to the poor house. That is one thing that motivates a lot of people, moving away from something bad. They don't want to get sick and die. They don't want to have a heart attack. They don't want to have an accident in their car, so they drive safely. Those are Away Motivations that people have. I used to teach and ask, “what are you trying to get away from”.
2) The other way people are motivated is "Towards Motivation". We try to get things to come towards us - like joy, happiness, a feeling of excitement, an adrenaline rush. Whatever it is that we want to get that feeling or excitement Towards us. We have the Toward Motivation and then we have the Away Motivation.
That's what I originally thought about as the motivating factors for setting goals. Until I heard that one motivational speaker talk, and I apologize I can't remember who it was I was listening to. But, what they really talked about was, and this is what I teach now is,
You have to know your Why.
Why do you do what you’re doing to be successful, or what is the reason why you do your goals. Why is very important and you have to start looking at it.
I have been studying Lean Six Sigma and Six Sigma type programs and one of the things they teach you in the six sigma process is to ask WHY. There is a minimum of 5-7 whys that you have to drill down to. It's kind of like a 3-4 year old.
When my daughters were young, I dreaded the 3-4 year old stage because they asked about 4000 questions a day, it seemed, one every minute, and typically my daughters would always ask Why, Why, Why. I never always knew the answer, so I eventually always said, "because I said So."
I did actually use that on my daughters a couple times and that was really wrong when they wanted to know why and especially as they got older and I had to tell them they couldn't do something. They always asked Why. But that's a different kind of why.
As a child, your curiosity is very strong so you always wondering, sometimes as a matter of habit after a while. You have children as they are growing up 2-3-4 years old that start asking why about everything, You say do this, they go why, do this, why, because you need to do it this way and they go why...everybody is questioning authority and questioning the reason for whatever you are telling them to do at that age. That's because they are learning.
And when you're working with your goals and you’re working with motivation and things like that you really have to understand what your Why is.
Why do I want to do this, for example: Why do you want to lose weight? I've wanted to lose weight for quite a long time and mainly you have to think about asking why you want to lose weight. Well, I want to lose weight because I'm tired of being fat. I actually had my youngest daughter came up to me one day when I was sitting on the couch. She was probably about 3 - 4 years old if that old. She came up and asked, "Daddy, Why are you fat?"
It hurt like crazy, but she didn't mean anything about it, she was just wondering and someone had been talking about fat people and may have even been talking about me. But, I was overweight, incredibly overweight at time and she goes, why are you overweight? I didn't have a good answer for her, other than the fact I liked to eat and I didn't eat properly. When I started trying to lose weight, I didn't think about my why for that. I started thinking about, well, I just don't like being overweight, I look ugly, I look fat, that was kind of my motivation at the time. I didn't want to be fat; I just wanted to be thin as people are supposed to be. As I got older, I got medical because of being overweight. I became a type 2 diabetic.
Now, as I start losing weight, and I am on a weight loss program. I lost a bunch of weight. When I hit that scale one morning and realized looking at the scale and it read it say 296 pounds, I well, I almost crapped my pants, to be honest with you. I just could not believe it. I had been travelling a lot and eating out a lot and eating terrible foods and usually eating very little during the day, and then a big dinner or an whole, entire Domino’s Pizza or something in the hotel room right before going to bed, which is a horrible thing to do.
That lead to obesity and it also led to the Type II Diabetes. Now when you get into that particular health situation, it costs money because you are spending money on all of these different drugs, because you not only end up with the diabetes medicine, you end up with high blood pressure and several other things you can get .. . High Cholesterol levels so you get on all of these different medicines and dad gum it, that's expensive. When I started my weight loss programs now as I got older I started thinking about what I need to do. What is my why? Why do I want to lose weight? It's not just to look good.
I'm married, I have two beautiful daughters. I'm not trying to impress the ladies, or anyone else. I got over that long ago. But as I start thinking about my Why now, my Why is because I want to be healthy. I'd like to live longer. I'm getting up in age. My parents didn't live as long as I would like them to have lived. My Grandparents also had health issues and passed away too early. I started looking at this with my children, who I love dearly, and want at some point in my life to have grandchildren and be able to play and love and run around and have fun with them and spoil the crap out of them and take them to Walt Disney World and take them to amusement parks and things like that and have fun with them. Play ball with them if it's a boy or a girl play ball with them, run with them. Just have a good time.
To do that, I have to be healthy. I have to live long enough to be able to do that because I don't know if my daughters are going to do it any time soon, have children so I can have grandchildren. So, in that respect, I have to live a long time to get where I can enjoy those bundles of joy. Right now, if I don't take care of myself I'm not going to be able to do that. The other is asking me, why that matters. I want to stop paying a heck of a lot of money for drugs. I want to save the 200-300 dollars per month I am spending on medicine. So if I just look at the why's for just losing weight, I realize that my ultimate why is for me is to not have to pay that money I am paying the doctor and to live longer and healthier. I want to be able to do a lot of things as I get older. I don't want to be restrained to a wheelchair or sit on the couch and things like that. I started thinking about your why and I started having my daughters and started raising my kids, I realized a lot of my why at that time became my daughters, my children. I wanted to succeed, to make more money, I wanted to have a better career so I could provide them with the things I never had. When you are thinking about your goals, I want you to start thinking about Why! Why do I want it.
You need to keep asking yourself - If you say, I want to be successful or make a lot of money, our double your income, WHY do you want to double your income.
I'm working with a client now who wants to double her income. We're talking about business and how she can do that, the different ways to do it. Let's focus on what your why is.
Why do you want to double your income? Yes, you want to make more money, you want to be able to spend your money and do different things, but Why? We got to talking and she said she wanted to be able to do this, or provide for women, to be a motivational person to other women of certain ages. And I asked why do you want to do that? She said, I want to be able to do it, so I can make a little more money and provide for my son. I want to help him go to college. So, as we start going into the why, we keep asking, why do you want to do that? Why is that important to you?
As you start asking yourself those questions, you start really defining, what is the real reason you are doing what you are doing. The reason I say that's really critical and the thing I found when I was talking to that motivational speaker that set me straight on this motivation as know your why because when you get frustrated, or get down, get extremely tired because things aren't going your way, instead of saying Screw It!
You start thinking, why am I doing this, that WHY is stuck in your brain, within your heart, you understand why you're doing this particular goal and what it's going to take, you are going to continue to do it. You’re going to continue to start fighting to be the success and to get the goal that you set. You are going to make that final decision to continue because you know why you’re doing that. It's really important to understand your Why.
It's not just because you want a new car. It's not just because you want to travel, It's not just because you want to have a big house. Bigger than the Jones' or whatever, or it could be, but it depends on what your why is. Everybody is different. What is your why?
Maybe your why is because you want to be better than the Jones' or have more than your neighbors. It's really your why and that's what is important. Knowing your why is very, very important. Not just in motivation but in life. So, you want to, when you are setting your goals, when you write down your goals you know what you want, specifically, you are very specific, you're being realistic, you set that deadline, you got your action plan. You working on the actions you have to take and you are taking actions. You're measuring it. You're tracking your progress as you go along. You're seeing that you're doing that. Every day you start thinking. Not only do I have the What and the How and now I have the Why. I know why I am doing what I am doing. It keeps you motivated. It keeps you wanting to go forward. It keeps you on that track and on that path to achieve your goals. As long as you know and understand what your why is, it will make traveling on that path to success and achieving your goal much easier. Make sure you sit down, you think about what is your why. Know you why and if you know your why, you'll be successful.
Michael Hyatt has a goal setting program he teaches and I was listening to his talk at the end of last year. His wife, Gloria, has a quote that she says, that he shared with us:
"When People Lose Their Why, They Lose Their Way." -Gloria Hyatt
That is a valid thought. If you don't remember or can understand what your Why is, you can lose your way while you're trying to achieve your goals. Get your Why! Find out what your why is and keep thinking about that. I like to keep My What, My How, and My Why available for me where I can read it and look at it on a daily basis. So, when I get where I'm frustrated and just say, "Is it really worth it?" I can say, "Yea, it really is, and this is why it's really worth it to me to keep doing what I am doing."
This is Tony Woodall with Goal Getting Podcast. Make sure along with the rest of the steps to Successful Goal Achievement, that you define your Why.
Know your Why and you won't lose your way as Gloria Hyatt says.
Have a great day. This is Tony Woodall with Goal Getting Podcast, I appreciate you listening and coming back every week and listening to the Goal Getting Podcast.
If you like what you are hearing, please go over to iTunes or Stitcher. I appreciate it, if you like it, leave a review, we would appreciate it. If there is anything you want to talk about or anything we can help you with you can go to our GoalGettingPodcast.com website and show notes.
We also have a comment section. Please leave a comment about the show or something you want to talk about, or about a goal you need help with. I do coaching. I'm happy to see if I can work something out to see if I can help. If you want to just tell everybody what your goal is or tell us what your successes are. We would love to hear your successes are as well.
Next episode we will be talking about visualization. Being able to visualize what you want to achieve and put yourself in it and how that can help you be more successful.
Thanks Again, I appreciate it, love listening with you and being part of your life and I appreciate you listening.
Again, Tony Woodall with Goal Getting Podcast. Check us out on GoalGettingPodcast.com. You guys make it a great day.
