Here is a small personal activity I’d like you to try on your own after having watched Simon Sinek’s TED Talk. You do not need to share your results.

1. Listen to an excerpt (minutes 16-26) from this podcast with Simon Sinek and radio host Koren Motekaitis.

2. After you have listened to the excerpt, I’d like you to replicate the activity by looking back on your life’s work thus far. What is your “resume“?

• Identify favorite activities, service projects, creative projects, courses, or similar that you have engaged in during your adult years.
• Get specific: identify a particular moment, person, or product that you recall with a deep feeling.
• Tell the story of that feeling.

3. Identify an early childhood memory that stirs up strong emotions or visuals in your mind. Again, be specific and locate the memory in space and time. Tell the story of that feeling.

4. Perhaps you need to generate more examples of your core values. If that’s the case, pull together stories that you like to share with important people in your life, or perhaps with people you have just met and are connecting to. The key (in all of these steps) is to focus on the STORY aspects of these experiences.

5. Try to find a pattern in your stories. What are the common threads?

Have you found your WHY? Remember that the key is to focus on your emotional, visceral, and intangible experiences. You may need to do more than what is listed here, but this is a start.