Why aren’t you doing what you love?

I have been thinking about the upcoming Holiday’s, and the fact that the end of another year is quickly approaching, I am reminded of just how fortunate I am to do what I love. This brings a question to mind: “If life is so short, then why do so many people do so many things they don’t love, and love the things they don’t do?”

As I thought about it, I first found a flaw in the very premise of the question and then two possible suggestions to what I was really asking. First, to examine the premise. Do you really want to ask why? As a leader, it may interest you to know that whenever you ask a question, the brains in the bodies to whom you address your question will attempt to answer it. (By the way… This is true even when you ask your own brain) Brains are fantastic at answers… they can create answers most creatively and almost endlessly. Unfortunately, answers hardly ever lead to behaviour change. It’s emotions that move most of us to action. Why-questions, unless you are really, really interested and it’s important to understand root cause, will not generally get you where you want to go. Mostly they’re just a distraction. Do you really want to come up will endless reasons why you do things you don’t like and love things you don’t do? Do you want to invent more reasons and justifications for behavior you don’t desire? I think not. So let’s not ask why!

I remind my clients often… “There is no “why” in awareness.” You see, awareness is all that’s needed to make a choice. So, if you have noticed you do things you don’t love to do and you love things you’re not getting around to I have this first suggestion for you: Maybe it would be more useful to acknowledge that you have been making interesting choices to date and start asking. “What do I want to choose instead?” There’s a question! And co-incidentally never asking it is generally at the root of why we get stuck in stuff we don’t want in the first place.

Suggestion two follows closely on that: If you haven’t recently examined what you truly love or if you’ve never really asked, “What would it take to do more of that and less of this?” you won’t ever receive an answer that excites you. And without that emotional pull into action you’ll keep on the habit wheel indefinitely. Maybe it’s time to ask, “What would it take?”

Here’s the trick with a really good question… you may not know the answer. If you already knew the answer you’d already be doing it right? So, once you ask this question you may get some weird sensations about not having an answer. This is the energy of the unknown. You might want to call it anxiety and quit looking and quit asking. Don’t stop! All really exciting change is on the other side of the unknown! Heading back to the known and familiar just puts you back on the habit wheel. Same old – same old. Stay in the question. Keep asking. One of these day, and sooner than you think, an answer, idea, wondering or event will pop and you’ll have something you didn’t before; A new direction… And a new direction is what’s required for leadership.

Now change is possible! Growth is possible! Welcome to more of you!

Tools you can use:

Unless you’re doing a root cause analysis, “There is no “why” in Awareness.” The problem with using ‘why’ on human behavior is that there is almost never a single changeable root cause. More often our behavior is based on a complicated soup of history, entrainment, context and habit… Rather than sort all that out, if that’s even possible, try looking at change as just a matter of choice, a compelling vision of what else is possible and then work around habitual blocks to new action.

Stay in the question. Often we ask a question and then, if we don’t know the answer feel like we’re missing something or we can’t figure it out and we stop asking. Staying in the question, when we don’t know the answer actually tunes our attention to be more aware of ideas that respond to our question. Having the courage to ask “What do I really love?” and “What would it take to do more of that?” already puts you ahead of the curve. Most people never spend any time in those questions and consequently their context leads them. Once you start picking up answers to those questions you’ll be ready to lead your life, your work or your team.