Know YOUR why

The concept of intention or motivation is not a new one – all we ever hear is that if we have a strong reason for achieving something, we can reach that goal, no matter what. Although there is a question of privilege and access to resources, I am going to put aside that part of the discussion for today. I will focus solely on our personal motivation for pursuing our goals.

Sometimes it is helpful to start with a simple exercise. Try it out if you have a couple of minutes. Try listing out everything you are hoping to achieve at some point in your life – any personal, professional, or spiritual goals you can possibly think of. It may be helpful to first list important areas in your life such as work, school, friends, health and so on. Don’t worry about making the list organized or very detailed – just jot down whatever you believe to be your goals at this moment in time.

Great – once we have the list – we can analyze it a little. Let’s first agree on the basic premise, that there must be a reason for a certain goal to be on our list. Then, as we consider each of our objectives separately, we can note down the WHY, by answering a simple question: Why is this goal on the list? Let’s aim to be as truthful as possible, even if sometimes the answer may simply be “I have no idea why this is on the list!”

To give some examples, I have listed several things below that I am currently striving towards. This list is by no means exhaustive as there are more things I would like to do, but I am limiting it to those items that hopefully will illustrate the main point I want to make.

Behaviours and habits I want to cultivate…	WHY?
Practice mindfulness meditations every day	To develop more wisdom, kindness and compassion for myself and everyone around me
Practice Intuitive Eating and mindful movement every day	To take care of my wellbeing by attuning to my body’s needs instead of following external rules or rewards
Write a thought-provoking blog post once a week	To share my experience with anyone who may wish to consider a counter-cultural belief system on their own journey to personal freedom
Read an inspiring book every month	To broaden my own understanding and knowledge by learning from the experiences and the wisdom of others
Spend quality time with my family, friends, and clients every day	To build strong, loving, and supportive communities to benefit everyone I care about

The last step in this exercise is to evaluate the reasons. The question we are asking at this point is, “Are those OUR reasons or have we “inherited” them from the societal expectations, norms, culture or perhaps our upbringing or family history?” This is the hardest step, because it is very difficult to assess whether the why is our own or not. How can we be sure that it is not a social norm that is driving our motivation? Or, if our why is aligned to a social norm (and often it is), does it mean it is not “ours”? These are just some questions we might be having…

I cannot answer these questions for you or anyone else. We will all have different opinions on every single goal on our lists. Even a simple health-oriented goal that many of us have such as a wish to develop a daily movement / exercise routine can have many motives. Some of these reasons may be, for example:

• Increased fitness
• Leaner or more muscular physique
• More energy
• Feelings of pride / satisfaction
• Joy of movement
• And many more

For one person, the goal of being strong and fit will be their true motivation but for another it will be only something they internalized when they were growing up – that being strong and fit is a desirable state so perhaps they should do something to achieve it. Same goal, same WHY, different ownership!

So, how do we know if it is OUR why?

I propose a very simple test. We know because we see the evidence in our own behaviour. If the WHY is truly ours, we will engage in activities and behaviours that are aligned with our goals. I can tell you, for example, that nothing will stop me from finding time to work towards the objectives I have listed earlier. I always find time to meditate, to nourish myself, to walk, to read, to write, to connect – despite the busyness, the tiredness, the distractions. Of course, I am only human and there are days when I find it more difficult to make progress or keep up with my own expectations. But these days do not stop me or cause me to give up on my most important priorities.

In contrast, when I was dieting, the reasons were usually very externally motivated. I was dieting because I believed I was unattractive. I was trying to make my body smaller because I wanted to show the outside world that I was disciplined and not “lazy”. I was trying to lose weight because my doctors told me it would help with the X health condition (it didn’t by the way). None of these reasons were really MINE so how could I succeed?

You may ask, what if one did find a good internal motivation for following a strict diet? Wouldn’t that mean one could achieve the weight loss one desired? Absolutely! About 5% of people can lose weight and keep it off for longer term. They sacrifice a lot to achieve their goal though and I believe their motivation for it must be very strong indeed. They believe in their WHY wholeheartedly (until they don’t 😉 so they can persevere despite anything.

Do I want to be in this small fragment of population? No, I don’t. I do not want to sacrifice all my other goals in life to pursue the goal of weight loss. None of the reasons sound convincing enough for me – I won’t do it for the looks, nor for the health, nor for the ease of buying smaller sized clothes nor fitting in a small airplane seat. I can take care of my health and feel “pretty” regardless of my body size, and I can advocate for access and acceptance for people of all sizes. I feel much stronger about my reasons to fight fatphobia and diet culture than I could ever feel about fighting with my weight.

Today, I leave you then with this question: what is YOUR why? I invite you to take a closer look at it, because you may also be pursuing some goals, that are no longer aligned with your values. Feel free to contact me if you feel like sharing and, in the meantime, I wish you all the success in achieving what you truly desire and in releasing what is no longer yours.