Because It's There
Almost every time they ask a mountain climber, or similarly devoted adventure seeker, why they climb the mountain they answer with the same non-answer: "Because it’s there."
It is such a flippant answer and an easy way to deflect the answer from what is probably a complicated truth about what truly drives them.
Down here at sea level, the question gets asked differently in a business setting: Why do you do what you do?
It gets answered with an equally surface-level answer. Some version of "I'm an entrepreneur."
In all of us, there is something that is driving us to make the decisions we make in our business and in our life. But we rarely bother to figure it out because we do not think it matters.
It turns out that it does matter. A lot.
If you know anything about my past, you know I ran a sizable business that endured tough times in the late 90’s. I worked so hard to fix it but only was able to get it to a point where it could be sold. It is a failure and a regret that I carried and has haunted me for years.
Though my motivations seem obvious to me now, after the sale of my business I turned my energy to helping turn around the business and lives of entrepreneurs as my next career without really understanding why.
About 10 years ago, a decade into my business revival work, I was working with a coach who was listening to me drone on and on in despair over a particular business I was working hard to save. I found myself often stressing over the business more than my clients. Treating the business as if I owned it and its problems were all mine.
Probably out of sheer exasperation, he asked me “This is so agonizing for you, why do you do it?”
At first, I had a bunch of simple answers. "I want to help people, I like business, I am good at it, etc…" As he pressed further, the conversation blasted a light on was I was reliving the pain and stresses of what I felt was my past failure. Trying to fix my past. To reverse a regret, over and over and over again. This was the honest answer to why I was doing what I was doing. It took a decade for me to realize it.
So I asked my coach if I was doing what I chose for my profession for the right reasons. Was I going to create the future that I wanted and the impact that I wanted to make if I was forever trying to fix the past and forever fueling the pain I associated with it?
His answer? “Only if you can turn it into a sacred wound.”
A Sacred Wound
No one wants to be wounded, yet almost everyone is at one time or another. Some are small and short-lived and others are prolonged and deeply painful. Many (dare I say, most) of us carry wounds, of all shapes and sizes. They can be from a year ago, a decade ago or from our childhood. Whether or not we take the time to investigate the pain we carry, to understand what it is there to teach us, will determine if we can turn our wounds into sacred ones.
As I went down the internet "rabbit hole" to understand more, this is the concept that clicked for me: When you can turn your wounds into a way to help others instead of unconsciously infecting others with them, it becomes a sacred wound. In short, you find a way to create positives for others from the negatives you have found peace with.
My desire to use my past wounds to help others avoid or heal theirs could be a superpower for me ONLY if I could do it without carrying the negative emotions that would cloud and diminish my work. To focus my passion for my work on the impact it makes on others, the joy that provides me and not to constantly try to fix wounds of the past.
As you can imagine, that took a while to sink in and digest.
Understanding why I do what I do has helped me understand it at a level that has allowed me to do my work with more joy and purpose. It has improved the quality of the work I do with my clients immeasurably.
This is why I wanted to share the story.
I want you to ask yourself why you do what you do. Not your purpose or your “why.” The thing, often buried deep, that DRIVES you.
The thing that pushes you to endure stress and frustration time and again. That thing that may have happened in your past that has left such a scar on you that it is your fuel but also your subconscious tormentor. Maybe it was a past failure. Maybe it was how you were perceived years ago. Maybe it was someone who wronged you.
Maybe a few of the above.
Your first 10 (or 100) answers are likely not the real reason. Excavations take a lot of time to get to the treasure.
Here is what I know, you are not enduring the stress, worry, fear and angst that comes from owning a business “just because it’s there.”
I know entrepreneurs like to think we were just born with some rare gene that forces us to take risks and be business daredevils. That answer is our equivalent of “because it’s there.”
If you want to have more peace in your business and the life it provides you, then understanding and coming to peace with why you do it is a worthy place to begin.
You will find that digging deep will not cause you to lose your edge or drive. Instead, it will allow you to drop the baggage you are carrying so you can focus more on your expertise, skills and your craft.
At the risk of getting too “woo woo” here, turning your past wounds into sacred ones will prove to be an unlock to the next level of your business and life, as it did for me.
So, tell me, why do you do what you do?