Do You Have A Big Why Not?

Well, Aloha and good morning and welcome, once again, to The Secret Art of Huna.

I wanted to talk to you today about the big why not. We spend a lot of time, I spend a lot of time when I teach people talking about the big why.

And a lot of my teachers and colleagues and people I know in personal development, we talk about the big why. But today I wanted to talk about the big why not.

And the reason I wanted to talk about the big why not is that I have, as a result of doing a retreat over the weekend.

I’ve had a big realisation about an area in my life where no matter how big my why, my big why not outweighs my big why which is why I’m not getting the results that I want in that area of life.

So I hope that’s gonna be a useful piece of thinking for you.

So, a bit of context, four years ago I joined a programme called Lead the Change, it’s part of the, One Of Many programmes offered by, the One Of Many organisations run by Joanna Martin.

And Lead The Change is a great programme. It’s a leadership programme for women, supporting women to step into their leadership, whatever area of life that is, whether it’s family or community or an organisation, wherever you want to be a leader.

So becoming a leader, but doing it A, without burning out, which a lot of women do, and B, without becoming a man in a frock.

So becoming very masculine, so leading from the feminine, from a healthy feminine, and being healthy while you’re doing it. There are, the program’s got many components but one of the components is for retreats.

There’s the wealth retreat, there’s the love retreat, there’s the fulfilment retreat which is about career and vocation. And there’s the health and vitality retreat. When I first did it, I wasn’t able to do the health and vitality retreat.

There was something else happening. And so I put it off and for the first couple of years I’ve not been able to do it, there’s always been something, it’s usually clashed with my twice-yearly trip to teach in Hawaii.

Anyway, this year I could do it, so we decided that I would do it as a delegate. Usually I coach on these become I’m an in-house coach, for One Of Many, that’s what I do when I’m not doing Huna.

But decided to actually do this as a delegate. And I am so, so glad that I did because in the work that we did, I had this realisation.

Now the issue that I’ve got, I feel my life is so sorted, I’m at my most contented and joyful and connected in terms of my spirituality than I’ve ever, ever been in my entire existence.

So when people say, how’s your life, it’s good, and there’s just this one area at the moment which is health and health and fitness, health and vitality.

I’ve put on a lot of weight lately, I’m not really motivated to eat well. I’ll binge eat, I’ll do all the things that I know I shouldn’t do.

And I’m not particularly motivated to move much. That’s even walking around, getting up and doing stuff. I’m leading a very sedentary lifestyle.

So for a while, I’ve been asking myself the question, why am I doing this, what is stopping me from really stepping into my full vitality from being motivate to eat well to be motivated to take, no.

don’t need to go to the gym everyday but to take a decent amount of exercise so that I’m moving, actually moving my body.

People say to me, but Jane, you know you look gorgeous, you got a good body. I like my body, it’s not that I dislike the look of it.

The problem is, that it’s not as mobile as it used to be and that’s completely down to the actions that I’m not taking. It’s not as mobile as it used to be and I know that because of the weight I’m carrying and the age I am, I’m much more prone to things like diabetes and cardiac disease.

So, there are good reasons for wanting to reduce the weight and get more mobile. In the retreat, we did all the usual things that you do.

We looked at values, now values are, your values are what’s important to you in an area of life. So my health and fitness values would be what’s important to me about health and fitness.

And because health and fitness is such a critical part in life itself, then also looking at what’s important to me about life itself. I do a lot of work with this, with clients.

A lot of clients come to me because they can’t find their purpose, the big why. We talk about the big why. They’ve got an area of their life that’s not working. We talk about the big why for that area of life.

I’ve done all that, I’ve got lists of big why’s for health and fitness and I’ve got lists of big why’s for life itself. I have my purpose, I know why I was put on the planet. And I love it, and I’m working with it, and it’s amazing.

So the values then, what’s important to you about an area of life or what’s important to you about life itself. In the past I’ve done my life values and actually they’ve been pretty good, they’ve been a small number and they’ve been quite positive.

Because your values provide your deepest level of motivation, it’s very, very unconscious, what’s important to you. Ideally, probably the first, the top five to eight values are the ones that are going to give you the greatest motivation.

And ideally they want to be towards things. Why is fun important to me. Well fun’s important to me because I just enjoy having a good time.

I like having a laugh, it gives a sort of zing to life, that’s the towards. The away from might be, because I don’t like being bored. I like fun, if I don’t have fun, I’m bored. For example, anyway.

So my values, my life values previously, have been pretty well formed, and actually my health and fitness values haven’t been too bad.

But what I found this time was, firstly, that my life values, health and fitness have dropped out of the first, not just the first five, not just the first eight, but health and fitness was down to 10.

Which yes it was in there but 10 is low for a high-motivation in terms of life. And health and fitness really, ideally, you want health and fitness to be a little bit higher if it’s gonna work for you.

So health and fitness have dropped down for me. And there was more of an away from in terms of health and fitness. Well because I don’t want to because it’s too difficult, all sorts of reasons, things that I didn’t want.

And it caused me to start to think hard. And the harder I thought, the more I realised that yes, I have these lists. There’s a 100 big why’s on life, a 100 big why’s on health and vitality.

But I have a big why not. And my big why not, it’s a single why not, but it’s so big that it outbalances, it outweighs all my why’s. And my big why not is a fear.

And this particular fear for me is a fear of a lonely old age with dementia. Dementia’s a pattern in my mum’s family. So specifically, a lonely, painful old age with dementia.

And the fear of that is stopping me from doing the things that could give me a happy, active, long old age. Because my fear is that old age inevitably will be sad, lonely, and probably in a home with dementia.

Whereas, in order to fulfil my purpose, in order to have a joyous, long life, which is possible, then I need to be doing the health and vitality things, but I’m not, because I’m frightened that I will actually live a long time and it won’t be good.

So there’s all sorts of little, little twists and turns in this thing that I haven’t previously picked up. There’s a bit more journaling to do, there’s a bit more pulling out the bits and pieces to do.

But at least now I know what the problem is, it’s the big why not. And I’ve got the tools and the techniques to release the big why not, which is just fantastic.

And the reason that I wanted to share this with you today is that, if you have got most of your life working and there is a particular area which, on the face of it, when you look at it, you think well it should be working for me, it should be going well but it’s not, then, it might be worth exploring what is your big why not. For me, why choose life, very clear.

Why not choose life, hasn’t been obvious. But now I’m starting to understand why I’m not choosing life, because I’m not, and therefore, not choosing health and vitality.

It’s shocking for me, because of what I do, because as I said that the beginning, I’m at my joyful and contented. I’ve got some amazing things going on in my life.

My life, I love it, but it’s the future. It’s the fear of the future. So I hope this has been useful to you. I hope it’s provoked a few thoughts.

If you’re interested in knowing more, then do join the Secret Art of Huna For Powerful Transformation group and we can talk more there.

And if you’re interested, I am running retreats and the next retreat is in July. It’s the 22nd to the 26th of July in Salisbury, secretartofhuna.com/retreat and I look forward to seeing you somewhere, very soon.

Take care now, Aloha.

Prefer To Listen?

I’ve added this to my podcast too! Listen or download by using the player below. Or subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher or your favourite podcast app by searching for Secret Art Of Huna.