What is your Why? What is your reason for hitting your goals and doing this challenge? Looking good in a swimsuit or losing weight isn’t a good enough answer. Your why has to be deeper than that. Your why has to sustain you after that feeling of inspiration and motivation wanes. Your why has to carry you day after day, even during times it gets hard and you want to throw in the towel. Your why is the reason you do what you do and what you will hold onto to succeed to the end. Not just with this challenge, but with any goal or obstacle.
But how do you get to the root cause of your why?
Toyota’s founder Sakichi Toyoda developed a system to get a deeper understanding of solving any problem. He used this exercise to figure out how to get to the root cause of a defective part, business-related situation, and he also used this exercise to motivate his employees. According to books such as Drive, A More Beautiful Question, The Power of Habit (All excellent reads by the way!), Toyota was the Gold Standard in leadership and the management of employees for years. And this one simple exercise developed the company into what it is today. That exercise is called The 5 Why’s.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the 5 whys exercise, and perhaps you’ve done it yourself, but if you have not, it is a very powerful exercise to find the true purpose and underlying reason of what you do what you do. You can use the 5 whys for just about anything, but I want to you to use it for your reason in starting this challenge.
So the challenge for today is to answer this one simple question:
“Why do you want to do this challenge?”
And after you answer that question, ask yourself “Why?” 5 more times. Your answer can get very deep. Your answer might make you emotional and might surprise you, but it is okay to take it there. Use that answer to drive you and give you a purpose.
If you want to share your answer, please feel free! If you want to keep it to yourself, that is okay too. I just want you to click the like button to let me know you completed this challenge for the day. If you want to share how you felt about the exercise in the comments section, that would be great too!