Creative Writing Wizard

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Have you ever thought about your why? Ever taken a moment to look at what you’re working on to see if it’s aligned with your ‘why’?

I believe that understanding your ‘why’ will help you, as it has helped me, to align your direction in life with what you believe is most important.

Fair warning, reading this post may lead to change in your life as you ask questions of yourself. The positive side is that, I believe, through these questions you’ll be more aligned with what truly matters to you, you’ll gain another way to help minimize creative burnout, and you’ll have greater motivation to go out and do what you want to do.

What Does it Mean to Know Your Why

Every one of us is driven by something, whether we know specifically what it is or not. We all have passions, dreams, goals, and aspirations. When we decide to do one thing over another, there’s a good chance it’s driven by your ‘why’.

Knowing your ‘why’ means to me that you understand what is truly important to you. You understand the reason behind your efforts and the underlying driving force that propels you forward in a given area.

This concept can be phrased in other terms like purpose, ikigai, or meaning. The reason I like this phrasing, your ‘why’, is that the phrase recognizes the process to get deeper into what ultimately drives you. If you continue asking the question ‘why’, you will dig deeper into the deep and underlying driving force behind the things you’re looking to do.

This is different than skeptically questioning why you should do something, though the distinction is subtle. The difference lies in your intention. When you ask yourself what your ‘why’ is, you are digging into your motivations to align with yourself (“why do I want to write a fantasy novel?”). When you ask why to question the necessity of your actions, you can limit yourself from opportunity (“why would I do that?”).

It can be difficult to differentiate these, but an easy way to check you’re asking the right questions is to measure your progress towards your goal. Asking questions leading to a deeper understanding of your ‘why’ will lead to progress. Questioning your actions with skepticism will lead to stagnation.

Finding My Why (WIP)

I remember the first time I really started thinking about my ‘why’ and what I should do with my life. I had grown up living in several countries around the world and had seen people in need. I wanted to ‘do something’ about it, but I didn’t fully understand what to do specifically.

This budding question of how I could ‘do something’ eventually led me to understand that a more accurate statement was that I wanted to ‘help people’. I tried a few different things from serving in the military, to working as a nurse, to working in various tech roles, but my ‘why’ still felt incomplete.

I continued to ponder it as I progressed through several years working in tech. Through working in these fields, I’ve come to add to this definition by being more specific in my ‘why’ that I want to ‘help people in meaningful ways‘. ‘helping people’ was too vague, being that I could do that in a lot of different ways (from passing someone the salt to solving world hunger).

The other realization that I’ve had of late is that I have been leaning more into my creative side through my writing, art, and music. This is still a work in progress, but I feel like I’m slowly getting closer to my ‘why’ and what truly matters to me, which I can currently describe as two major driving forces:

1. Help people in meaningful ways (something that matters)
2. Use my creative abilities (writing, art, music, etc)

How Finding My Why Has Helped Me

While I do feel like I’m still working on refining my ‘why’ and discovering what it means in regards to what I do with my time, I have been able to use what I know to guide what I do.

An opportunity presented itself recently that was something I thought I had wanted and was progressing towards. It was a natural step forward towards something that most people in my situation would go on to do. But as I continued to think about what the opportunity meant for me, and I reflected on my ‘why’, I realized that it didn’t align with what matters most to me, and so I ended up not going forward with it.

As I evaluate what’s next for me, I have a better lens to look through as ideas come to mind or opportunities come up. I’ll be honest in saying I’m not completely sure what is next. But by having refined my ‘why’ to a more specific degree, I have a better idea of what direction to walk in, what skills I should be working on, and what opportunities I should keep an eye out for.

Discovering Your Why

Do you know what your ‘why’ is? If you don’t, or if it’s not something you’ve defined in detail, one of the tools I’ve found that’s helped me to really narrow down my ‘why’ is the Japanese concept of ikigai, (pronounces ‘ee-key-guy’). There are many videos, books, and articles about it, but I like how Calm has summarized the topic in their blog post. The essence of ikigai is finding a balance in the overlap of four areas: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

If you haven’t gone through this exercise before, I recommend taking some time and thinking about each of these areas for you. Finding ikigai is when you’re able to find something that has an overlap in all four areas.

Another method of digging into this is via a free 20min multi-choice test based on the concept of ikigai (shout out to a fellow Thread-er, Sana (@shewritescozy) from cozymysterymastery.com, for letting me know about it!). Going through it, I found it was asking questions that I didn’t consider or areas that hadn’t previously occurred to me. It reminded me of when I took another personality test (16personalities) which I quite enjoyed. While I don’t necessarily think I should be a tattoo artist like the main job it suggested in the end, various highlights in each of the areas of ikigai resonated with me (things like being a creative type but also someone who cares about humanitarian needs) and aligned with my current understanding of my ‘why’ (it also provided a paid detailed breakdown, if you wanted to dig into it more). These tests aren’t necessarily prescriptive but can help be a guide when things are uncertain or point out blind spots.

While a good deal of this process for me has been through introspection, there is also an element of needing to go out and try something. Something that I found also echoed in the book ‘80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good’ by Benjamin Todd. One of the pieces of advice being along the lines of, you can only go so far with introspection. In order to test out these theories, you’ll need to go out and try things.

I’ve seen this to be true for me as I’ve evaluated certain endeavors. From the sidelines, I could only go so far with mentally evaluating the idea. It wasn’t until I tried a path that I could see if it was something that was aligned with my ‘why’ or not. There have been some paths that have been easy to say aren’t aligned, so I didn’t need to try them. When it’s not clear, and there’s an opportunity to dip your toe in it, why not give it a go and see what happens?  

Open to Change

With a better understanding of your ‘why’, the next part is being open to change. Getting to the core of your ‘why’ may lead you to challenge things you previously had accepted as the norm. I like how Jill put it in her post via Journeying through the Seasons

“Maybe it is not about re-inventing completely. But being open to changes that may need to take place.”

Maybe the change you need to undergo is a minor adjustment. You’re headed in the right general direction, you just need a minor course correction to get you closer to your ‘why’.

The harder change is when you realize, like I have a few times along the way, that where you’re at isn’t at all where you need to be and it doesn’t speak to your ‘why’. This kind of change is hard, having gone through it a few times. I can personally attest, though, that as long as you keep to your ‘why’ as a guiding light, you will tend towards something better aligned. Sometimes that change will lead to some mistakes, some failures, but if you keep pressing onwards I believe you’ll find your way.

I hope this post helps you as you ponder your ‘why’. If you know someone who is going through some of these questions, consider sharing it with them. Even small gestures to help another person can go a long way.

References:

• 4 Strategies to Minimize Creative Burnout
• Calm: Ikigai
• 80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good
• Journeying through the Seasons: Re-inventing what?