Your Big WHY

I’m holding the video today, so if there’s a little bit of a shake, then apologies for that. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Dr. Jane Lewis and I help women deal with the things that keep them trapped or stuck or feeling that sense of not enough purpose and help them to become happier.

So, I do this primarily but not entirely with Huna, the ancient spiritual and energetic teachings of the Hawaiians and I use other things as well.

Today I wanted to talk to you about purpose because one of the things that really stops us from doing what we want to do is not having a big enough why. The truth is that for most of us, if we have a big enough why, we would do anything. And one of the main reasons that we don’t do everything that we want to do is because the why isn’t big enough.

I’m going to be a bit contentious here for a moment. So, imagine that you’re a parent and that somebody is harming your child and the only way to save your child is to kill that person who’s harming your child. Now, for most of us, we wouldn’t normally go out and kill people but if the circumstances were right, if the why was big enough, then we might just possibly consider it.

So, it’s all about having a big why because the big why is the thing that can really help stop you procrastinating. I’ve been reading quite a bit about procrastination recently, various blog posts and people talking about procrastination and one of the reasons that most of us procrastinate is just because we haven’t a big enough why. The other reason for procrastination is that the fear is too big. So, the pain of doing something way outweighs the benefits.

I had that experience when I was thinking of teaching Huna. I kept telling myself that nobody would listen, that it wasn’t interesting, I would say things like well, who am I to go out and teach spirituality, I’m not that spiritual? So, my fear was too big for me to go out and do the thing that I really was here to do.

So, one of the things I had to do was strip away the fear, deal with the fear, release the fear and then I was really left with the why and the why not and the truth was why wouldn’t I do this when it’s my purpose, it’s what I’m put here to do? And once that why became bigger than the fear, then it was easy. I set out to do it and I find that’s true for a lot of my clients that the more aligned they are with their purpose, with their big why, with their sense of what are they doing on the planet, what matters to them, the easier it for them to do the things that they want to do.

So, one of the things that I hear a lot of from clients and from people on the internet in the social media sphere is how can I find my big why? I can’t find my big why. And the truth is that it’s not always easy to do but I have a few tips, a few steps that you can use in order to find your big why and the first part of that is to find your values, is to find what’s really, really important to you.

Values are a bit like the energetic equivalent of the edges of a jigsaw.

Jigsaw players, jigsaw doers among you will know that when you do a jigsaw, first thing you do is you find the outside pieces because if it’s a straight-edged jigsaw, they’ll be straight edged and if it’s a curved-edge jigsaw, they’ll be curved edge, so you find those first and you put them in place and values are a big like the energetic equivalent of the edge pieces on a jigsaw.

When you know your values, then other things fall into place and this is because your values are very deep, they provide a very unconscious level of motivation. When something clashes with our values, then we may not do it because it clashes with our values. So, find your values, establish what your values are, whether it’s your values for life as a whole or whether if you’re working on a particular area of life like your career or a relationship, find your values for the area of life in question because values are actually content dependent.

The values that I have in my career are different in many respects to the ones that I might have in a relationship, for example, in a relationship, I might have sex as a value. Unless I’m a sex worker or a sex therapist, sex probably isn’t going to feature heavily in my career values, so values very often are content dependent. So, find your values.

Look at who you really are, what you stand for, if people say to you, who are you? What do you say? Who are you? Ask yourself the question, what’s my identity? Who am I? And again, that can be a tricky question but it’s one that’s really, really wroth investigating in terms of helping you figure out what your purpose is, what your big why is.

Another thing then to do is to sit down and write down the reasons why you want to do something, the reasons why you want to have a relationship, the reasons why you want to be healthy and fit.

What are the real reasons, what are the real benefits to being healthy and fit? Similar to your values but whereas your values tend to be a relatively short list of abstract nouns, then the big why quite often, it’s an essay, it’s a journaling exercise, so those are a couple of things that you can start to do to find your big why.

Another thing that you can do is a vision board.

For those of you who are very visual, do a vision board. Sit down, get the magazines, get the comics, get the things you can cut out, get the pictures and create a vision board. You can also just do it as a visualisation.

Get yourself into a nice, calm state, maybe put on some music that’s good to visualise to, to meditate to, sit up because doing this lying down, you may fall asleep, so sit up and then just allow yourself to go out into the future, maybe five years into the future, maybe 10 years into the future, use the power of your imagination to take yourself out into the future and do it in a way, don’t censor yourself, just allow it to happen and as soon as you’ve done that, write it down and see what you notice.

For some people, this works absolutely brilliantly. Another thing that you can do is to ask yourself the question, what really matters to me? What makes me cry, what makes me angry? When I look out at the world, what really matters? Am I here to do something to change that? I’m seeing a lot recently from friends and clients, a lot of people are really interested in the whole plastics question. It matters and they’re getting out there and they’re doing stuff about it because it fires their passion, it motivates them, it’s important.

So, to find your big why, think about what’s really important to you, whether it’s your values, whether it’s the big why, whether it’s what makes you angry, whether it what makes you just feel very, very passionate about something.

Final piece then is there’s an exercise that you can do, divide your life up into chunks, so seven-year chunks, 10-year chunks and ask yourself the question in each of these seven-year chunks or 10-years chunks, what were the key things that I was doing back then?

So, age one to seven, what were the main things I was doing, what were the things that I was interested in? What were if you like my innate talents? And then seven to 14. Again, what were my innate talents, what was I doing, what was I interested in? What was I passionate about? 14 to 21 and 21 probably do it in 10-years’ chunks all the way up to however old you are. So, if you’re 30, it’ll be 21 to 30 and if you’re 40, it’d be 30 to 40 and just keep going. And look at your life in that way to figure out what you’re interested in and what motivates you.

So, there’s some New Year tips for finding your big why. If you want to know more, then Secret Art of Huna, the group, Laze, the Secret Art of Huna for Powerful Transformation, the Facebook group. Jump on a call, secretartofhuna.com/diary and I’m also running VIP days, so if you want to do something really intensively with me, get in the diary, book a call and we can talk about how to organise a VIP day.

Have a wonderful 2019. May it be prosperous, abundant and may you find your big why. Take care now.

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.