Finding your WHY

I’ve been back from SOBCon NW, a conference held in Portland, for 12 days now. To say that my experience there was life changing is almost an understatement. It moved things inside of me that hadn’t been disturbed in years, it challenged core beliefs I have had about my life for way too long and it reminded me that all you have to do to change the world is “something”. Changing the world is never about undertaking that goal all by yourself, it’s about taking small actions that change the lives of others. No matter how small the action, you never know when you could be the person who changes someone else’s life for the better.

One of the main themes of SOBCon, which emerged very early on, and in a very grateful quote from Liz Strauss (in reference to conference co-founder Terry Starbucker) is that you need to “surround yourself with people who will not let you fail”. And I was lucky enough to walk away from the conference with a few such angels (you know who you are). Part accountability partners, part task drivers, part therapists, we vouched we would be there for each other.

So I left Portland inspired & with a built-in support system, not to mention a very long to-do list. I felt empowered. And almost as soon as I got home, I was terrified…

What if, despite all the tools I got and all the support I have, what if I still failed. Wouldn’t it feel like I was failing more than one person, wouldn’t it feel like I was failing everyone? These are friends and colleagues I have a lot of respect for, somehow failing them seemed worse than failing just myself…

So I procrastinated. Oh, I’ve “accomplished” a lot in the last 12 days, cleaned, de-cluttered, even got rid of all the clothes Em and I don’t wear anymore, all things that I could justify as being worthy of not getting started on my post SOBCon plan… That brain of mine is awesome at convincing me I am being “productive”…

And then my grand-mother passed away. The passing of a loved one has has a way of making you stop for a moment and evaluate your life and your priorities and your legacy…

Today is my grandmother’s funeral. We were very close. When I was a child we used to visit every weekend. In the summer I would often visit for a week or two… My grandfather, who passed away years ago, worked as a postman his whole life, but had always wanted to be a teacher, since I spent so much time there I was his student… He taught me how to play chess when I was 5, and to read and write at much more advanced level than whatever grade I was in school… My grandmother always said I was his favourite. I will miss them both very much. And again, I am back to thinking about what kind of legacy I will leave for my daughter and perhaps her children… And as I procrastinate away, the answer is not much (don’t get me wrong, I know I am a good mom and that we have lots of amazing memories together already, but I really feel like the people I met, the tools I got and the support I walked away with at SOBcon put me in a prime position to move forward and accomplish the goals I set out for myself, *those* are not being acted on…)

As I scanned Facebook this morning, I saw this post by my friend Barbara:

I’ve never run a marathon before, but I’ve run many half marathons. And the best piece if advice I ever got was this: before you start: “know your why, and make sure it’s the why at your core,  because when your legs are killing you and it’s too hot or too cold and maybe you lost your pace bunny, reminding yourself that you have 5 kilometers to go because you wanted to lose that 5 pounds 18 weeks ago when you started training just won’t cut it. Plus you’ll more than likely have lost more than 5 pounds by race time, so now what?” (I wish I remember who this was, it was a guest speaker at the Running Room…)

What fantastic advice for any endeavor that will take you out of your comfort zone. To find the core reason you are embarking on that journey in the first place, that one thing that you can use to motivate you when things get tough, that one goal that will make you work your butt off so you don’t fail.

Because if you do that, even if you do fail, the miracle, as Barbara would say,  is that you will have had the courage to start… Do you know what your why is?