Tiny Buddha

Tag: why

  • How I Found My “Why” in Life After Struggling for Years

    How I Found My “Why” in Life After Struggling for Years

    “Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” ~Gautama Buddha

    Each time I start a new course, training, or venture, the teacher or leader asks me “why?” “Why are you here?” “Why are you taking this course?” “What’s your ‘why’?” “What’s your purpose?”

    And I’m never prepared.

    You’d think by now, after all the years of working on myself and studying, I would have an answer on the tip of my tongue.

    Yet, I find “why” to be a difficult question to answer.

    I have wondered, “Do I really not know? What’s the block?”

    Then it dawned on me.

    The reason I find it difficult to answer the “why” question is because I don’t have just one.

    I have so many whys and I’m motivated by so many things that my head just gets overwhelmed and rolls up into a ball when I think I have to come up with just one.

    So I get stuck, draw a blank, and can’t answer the question.

    This was an enlightening insight for me because previously I thought I was only allowed to have one purpose.

    Yes, allowed.

    I would take what the authors, teachers, and books told me about purpose very seriously. I thought they really meant I could only have one all-encompassing purpose, and that’s that!

    So I spent a great deal of time trying to figure that big purpose out, to find, as one teacher guided me, the “why that could make me cry.” To no success.

    It was a relief when I realized and accepted how multi-faceted my purpose actually is.

    It doesn’t make it wrong, bad, or insufficient. It makes me smile and relax and allows me to enjoy the many aspects of my being.

    It has brought me a stronger sense of inner peace also, by letting go of trying to fit myself into a mold that someone else made.

    That’s right. I am breaking the mold and creating my own one.

    Here’s what I mean by a multifaceted purpose.

    Purpose #1: Personal Growth

    Without a doubt, I am driven by my relentless interest in growing as a person in all aspects of my life.

    For example, I read a lot about health and fitness. I’ve been doing CrossFit for over four years. I’m always adjusting my diet to find one that works even better for me. I love growing into the best health and fitness version of myself.

    The vision of myself at a CrossFit class when I am ninety is a huge motivator for me. I don’t ever want to be a burden on my loved ones. That’s wrapped up in this “why” also.

    I have studied psychology, trained as a therapist, and been in different forms of therapy my whole life. There are amazing emotional teachers and healers who I follow.

    I am always striving to grow into the happiest, most well-balanced person I can be who is kind, supportive, and loving to myself and others.

    My spirituality is my rock. I have meditated for over forty years. I have read spiritual books and studied ancient texts in school. I listen, I learn, I try. I hope to keep raising my consciousness forever.

    And I learn about my craft, my work, my business. I never stop learning.

    Yes, indeed, personal growth is one of my “whys” in life.

    Purpose #2: Fulfilling My Potential

    I have always had the idea that I was capable of much more.

    I was an athlete as a child. I played and watched a lot of sports.

    I was uplifted and excited when I saw people breaking records and pushing themselves beyond what anyone thought was possible.

    And I loved the arts. I was mesmerized by ballet dancers doing extraordinary things on stage. And musicians performing at their best. Even paintings by remarkable painters took my breath away.

    It’s genius that I was seeing. People pushing themselves to be the very best they were capable of.

    The idea that humans, meaning me too, could excel in that way fascinated and captivated me.

    I want to do that too. Fulfilling my potential is a huge “why” in my life.

    Purpose #3: Making a Difference

    I want to alleviate suffering in the world.

    Perhaps seeing my parents suffering with sadness and depression and not being able to help them fuels this purpose.

    Even so, my drive to alleviate suffering has evolved into something very satisfying and motivating.

    It is the cornerstone of my work; it colors all my relationships. It gives me a reason that is beyond myself.

    Being of service is another way of looking at this particular “why.”

    I’ve noticed that if I’m not careful, my first two “whys,” personal growth and fulfilling my potential, will keep my focus a little too self-centered.

    I really do want to be a catalyst for positive change in people. It’s also pretty clear that I’m not driven to go out there to actually change the whole world.

    At times, I have felt some guilt for not being more active for social change.

    But over the years, I have come to understand that the change I help facilitate in the world is very personal, individual, and intimate. And that’s okay.

    Whether it’s friends, family, or clients, nothing feels more meaningful to me than seeing someone’s whole energy shift, burdens lift, and excitement return to their faces.

    Pretty sure my love of alleviating suffering counts as part of my life purpose.

    So let’s try this again.

    “What’s your why?” you ask?

    “It’s personal growth, fulfilling my potential, and alleviating suffering in others.”

    That just makes me so happy. There is such a life lesson here in my awareness of my multifaceted purpose.

    We are so influenced by others’ teachings that sometimes we forget to look deep inside ourselves for the answers we seek.

    Yes, we can learn wonderful things from the stories and studies of people, yet our truest and most profound learnings must come from within.

    Rather than taking lessons at face value, we must explore them, put them on like a new piece of clothing to see how it fits, how we look, if it suits us, and if we really like it.

    We want guidance to resonate with us. That means it’s in alignment with our nature.

    Having one purpose just didn’t fit me. I’m not a one-size-fits-all kind of person.

    And now, allowing myself to be myself, to recognize and embrace my multifaceted purpose, has given me much more inner peace.

    The internal struggle with myself has subsided.

    I get to be who I am, regardless of what the experts may teach.

    Uh oh, I think I may have landed on another “why.” What’s my purpose in life?

    Purpose #4: To be myself

    I love it.

  • Ask Why: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Going When Things Get Hard

    Ask Why: How to Motivate Yourself to Keep Going When Things Get Hard

    “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

    My father was an amazing man. I’m sure most sons think that about their fathers, but it’s a belief held by more than just myself. I’m not saying he was a great father, but he was a great man.

    He was a Vietnam veteran, a carpenter, and a social paragon in the small town I grew up in. Our neighbors declared him the “Mayor of Bluebank” (the road he lived on.) His funeral was one of the most attended events that our small town in Kentucky had ever held.

    Dad believed in working hard, and, true to his word, his health began to sharply decline after having a lung removed (the unfortunate “cure” to lung cancer caused by Agent Orange exposure). He passed away on Veteran’s Day, 2012. A cruel twist of irony.

    I had the pleasure of working with my father on many projects, from building homes to cutting staves at a sawmill. I was fortunate to learn what a real work ethic looks like by working with Dad.

    When Things Seem Impossible

    Even though Dad isn’t here to give me advice, I still ask myself what he would do when I’m faced with something that seems impossible.

    “I feel too tired to work today…”

    “Where will I find energy to tackle this project?”

    “I don’t know where to start…”

    Everyone faces situations that seem impossible at times. It’s an unfortunate lack of grit and resilience that’s common to my generation.

    Luckily, I have one invaluable piece of advice that I managed to get from my father before he passed away.

    Advice on Working Hard

    When I was in my late teens and doing irresponsible crap, I once asked my father how he worked so hard. He enjoyed socializing on the weekends, but he seemed to enjoy working his butt off just as much (even with the occasional hangover.) I didn’t understand it.

    His response stuck with me. He smiled and told me, “Stop asking how I work so hard, son. Ask me why.” His response was rhetorical; he didn’t want me to actually ask him “why.” His point was that the reason he worked was how he found the energy to work.

    Dad’s wisdom didn’t quite click with me until my son was born. I’d always had what I considered an inherited strong work ethic, but it wasn’t truly tested until I was kept up all night for weeks on end with a crying baby.

    Babies, a Day Job, and a Side Gig

    It can be lonely at 3:34 a.m., especially when you’re awake with a crying newborn. The three minutes and fifty-five seconds it takes to heat four ounces of refrigerated breast milk can seem like an eternity when you want to go back to sleep.

    Once I manage to get the boy fed and back to sleep, I crawl into bed to wink before the alarm goes off at 6 a.m. so I can get ready for work. Quietly.

    In situations like this, energy at work can seem fleeting. You know your job performance is suffering, but you manage to grit your teeth and get back to it. Somehow. Your shift takes forty hours longer than it used to, but you push through.

    To top it off, I write articles in my downtime. That means research, writing, editing, submitting, promoting, etc. Work ethic seems like a stupid thing when the beautiful Siren of Sleep is calling you.

    Staying Strong to Get Things Done

    Fortunately, I remember the lessons that my father taught me. Not just, “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re late, you’re f*&^ed.”

    All I have to do is ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” when I feel like giving up.

    “Why am I working overtime at my day job?” So I can keep the heat on this winter for my family. So I can put food on the table.

    “Why am I pushing myself to write another article?” So I can build a business and legacy for my son. So I can spread ideas and wisdom.

    “Why am I feeding this thing that causes so much exhaustion and frustration?” Because it’s my son and I love him. I want him to grow up so I can teach him how to be a great person.

    Why Is “Why” So Powerful?

    Asking the wrong questions can get you stuck. We want to avoid questions that carry negativity.

    When you ask yourself why you’re doing something, you tend to attach a larger motivator to your actions. This becomes your motivating reason.

    Make sure you have a strong positive emotion attached to your motivating reason. When I ask myself why I’m doing something, it’s always attached to something large and promising, like my family and my future.

    A Recent Time When I Needed This Advice

    I was reading Smarter Faster Better, by Charles Duhigg, when I came across the following passage (edited for brevity):

    Quintanilla had been marching for two days by this point. He had slept less than four hours. His face was numb and his hands were covered with blisters and cuts from carrying water-filled drums across obstacles. […]

    “Why are you doing this?” Quintanilla’s pack buddy wheezed at him, lapsing into a call-and-response they had practiced on hikes. When things are at their most miserable, their drill instructors had said, they should ask each other questions that begin with “why.”

    “To become a Marine and build a better life for my family,” Quintanilla said.

    His wife had given birth a week earlier to a daughter, Zoey. […] If he finished the Crucible, he would see his wife and new child.

    If you can link something hard to a choice you care about, it makes the task easier[…] Make a chore into a meaningful decision, and self-motivation will emerge.

    My dad’s motivating reason was the same. He worked hard for his family.

    For the Impossible

    Going to work and writing articles with a newborn in the home is difficult, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.

    For the tasks that truly seem impossible, it’s important to break them into more manageable pieces. If I want to build a business so that I can eventually work from home, I can’t tackle the entire thing at once.

    Break your huge project into multiple SMART Goals—goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based (even if you have a newborn in the home). Don’t forget to ask why you pursue your “impossible” goal. The bigger the goal, the bigger your motivating reason will need to be.

    Check my goals again to see this tagging in action—I work overtime for food and electricity for my fiancé and my son. Not that big of a deal, still a big reason. I work on my articles so that I can grow my business and spread ideas. That’s a big deal to me, and ultimately a larger goal, so I have much larger motivating reasons.

    Find a Motivating Reason

    “Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.” ~John F. Kennedy

    Whether you have one purpose or multiple areas of your life that can give you incentives to tackle the impossible, find a reason and hold on to it.

    When things are getting too hard to move forward, when the baby is crying and you’re trying to get one more sentence typed out, when your day job seems like Hell and your alarm is the devil, just ask yourself why.

    The impossible becomes possible when you break it into manageable pieces and fuel the fire in your belly with a motivating reason. You’ll come out the other side of the “impossible” as a stronger person with more grit and resilience than you ever thought possible.

  • The Stage of Grief You’ve Never Heard of But May Be Stuck In

    The Stage of Grief You’ve Never Heard of But May Be Stuck In

    “Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

    Since I was a little girl I have believed in the power of wishes. I’ve never missed a first star, a dandelion plume, or load of hay (load of hay, load of hay, make a wish and turn away) to express to the universe my deepest desires.

    When I was fifteen and my dad was at the end stages of cancer, I would wish on the first star, not to save him, but to plead a peaceful end. Since my oldest son passed away very unexpectedly in October of 2010, I have made hundreds of wishes to remember every detail I can about the boy who was the other half of my heart.

    In the three years since Brandon’s death, I believe my wish to keep his memory alive have been answered by learning to turn my “whys” into “hows.”

    Asking “why” isn’t one of the official stages of grief, but maybe it should be. Anger and denial get all the attention, while getting stuck in the “why” freezes you in your tracks and prevents any opportunity for growth or movement toward healing.

    Not being able to let go of needing to know “why” forces you to focus on the rear view mirror. It keeps you in the past and prevents you from living in a way that honors the person or thing you have lost.

    It’s in my nature to ask why. “Why” can be a powerful question that leads to clarity and progress. It can also be a roadblock in the one-way traffic of life.

    Life doesn’t come with reverse, only neutral and various speeds of forward progress. “Why” firmly plants us in neutral, and that’s where I was in the months after Brandon’s death.

    I obsessed over the “why.” My brain whirled at sonic speed looking for it. I assumed if I found the “why,” I would find comfort and would be able to pick up the pieces and move on. I came up with elaborate theories of why Brandon died.

    Brandon was home on leave from the Army when he passed away, but was scheduled to be deployed within the next few months. I spun that into my favorite “why theory,” that dying at home saved him some horrible combat death in Afghanistan.

    It made me feel better, briefly, but I was still left with the bigger question that would never be answered—why did it have to happen at all?

    “What’s your why?” has become a motivational catch phrase. I remember seeing an inspirational quote on Pinterest after Brandon died, with a picture of a scantily clad, fit chick with “What’s your why?” typed beneath her sculpted abs. I shouted at her in the quiet of my room to eff-off—my “why” died!

    “What’s your why?” sounds absurd to the grieving person, and it’s not comforting!

    Not only had my “why” died, I also found myself pleading with the universe for the explanation to “why this happened. “Why” is a question with no answer when it comes to loss. “Why” offers more questions than comfort.

    Another word that isn’t included in the official grief process, but again, I think it should be, is “how.” “How” explores possibilities. “How” shines a light into the future. Exploring “how” to live a life that honors the memory of my son made my wishes come true.

    After realizing being stuck in “why” would never ease the pain of losing him, I began to realize that how I live the rest of my life is the outward manifestation of my son’s spirit.

    It is the only way anyone will ever get to know my son, and the only way I can keep his memory alive. If I continued to live in the “why,” I would diminish his memory, but by living in the “how” I magnify his memory by my actions.

    It doesn’t make the grief go away; rather, it ignites my grief as a powerful vessel for change.

    My “how” is manifested in cultivating a life of adventure and using radical self-care to ensure that I have the energy to embrace a life that reflects Brandon’s best qualities.

    It is a labor of love for my son that I embrace life, take risks, be courageous, pay it forward, and act in a way that makes people ask what I’ve been smoking. My actions are how I keep the memory of my son alive; it is how my wish has been granted.

    If you or a loved one is stuck in the “why,” let it go—it simply doesn’t exist. It’s time to live in the “how.”

  • Live a Big Life: Shift from “Why Me?” to “Why?”

    Live a Big Life: Shift from “Why Me?” to “Why?”

    “The journey is the reward.” ~Chinese Proverb

    We’ve probably all heard this famous piece of wisdom at one time or another.

    I’ll be honest, there were a few years where I just plain blew it off.

    Like, “Yeah, yeah, journey, reward, I got it. Cool. Now, when’s my ship coming in?”

    Not that I was greedy. Just impatient to arrive at a place called Made It. It seemed that other people were already there and I was eager to join them.

    I had seen the brochure for Made It and I knew then and there, it was my kind of place.

    The trick about getting to Made It is that there wasn’t a singular map. You’re supposed to make your own.

    In my case, my map started with, “First, take a hard right at Work Really Hard. Then, follow this for about three to five years.

    There won’t be any signs, but if you see exits to places called Partyville and Cul-de-lack-of-Discipline, whatever you do, don’t get off there.

    Keep your eyes on the road, stay awake, and eventually, you’ll arrive at your destination.”

    Once I’d sussed out my map, I thought it would be a short trip, relatively speaking since I had packed properly.

    In my duffle I had: my unique brand of fulfilling creative expression, plenty of determination (roll-on), focus (with back-up laser), integrity (large-ruled), networking ability (with stationary for thank you notes), and extra socks (tenacity can make you perspire).

    Oh and sunscreen, because I burn easily and it’s super sunny in Made It.

    I had big ambitions since my teens, so I planned to arrive in Made It early, settle in, and eventually get a summer place in Write Your Own Ticket.

    I thought I’d be flying high by the time I was twenty-five—living in a two-bedroom condo in a nice high rise in downtown M. I., complete with a jolly doorman and giant beige sectional sofa that could sleep a family of six.  (more…)

  • When Painful Things Happen and You Can’t Stop Obsessing Over Why

    When Painful Things Happen and You Can’t Stop Obsessing Over Why

    “We all have problems. The way we solve them is what makes us different.” ~Unknown

    I used to be a “why” person. Why, you ask? Because after receiving my middle daughter Nava’s diagnosis of a neurological condition, I got really hooked into “why me” mode, and it just ate away at every fiber of my core.

    I obsessed over “why.” Why did it happen? I needed to make sense out of a senseless fluke of nature.

    I was devastated and beside myself with the raging emotions of grief—the anger, bitterness, and resentment—and the dance in my head and the ache in my heart kept circling and banging into the graffitied wall of  WHY in big black letters.

    Here is where I remained for a long year of ranting and raving in a therapist’s office.

    I sought out lectures and classes on the famous theme of “why bad things happen to good people.” (As you may know, there’s a book by the same title.) I was totally stuck in this place.

    I felt so unwound and so out of control that I thought being able to wrap my head around a “real” reason would somehow help me in coping.

    I thought if I understood the “why,” I could deal with it better.

    I often say, and truly believe, that if I can understand where someone is coming from, I can more readily and easily accept our differences and disagreements; that this breeds tolerance and respect, and sets the stage to agree to disagree.

    I somehow thought this to be similar in my acutely grief-stricken situation—that if I could understand where this came from and why this happened to my baby, I could accept it more easily and therefore, cope with it.

    I was drowning in this “why me,” in the unfairness of it and the idea of bad things happening to good people.

    Then of course I went down the path of “what did I do wrong,” looking for that dose of self-recrimination.  And oh, I had plenty of arrows with which to shoot myself. We can all become our worst enemy when we look for that scapegoat. I was it for myself. 

    My therapist became my healer.

    He held my pain for months and months until it was able to wash through me and I could actually air it out. I came to understand and grasp the idea that these are the big unanswerables. There were no answers to the “whys.” (more…)