Why Do You Do What You Do?

If we’re going to get serious about defining a crystal-clear purpose that drives us to serve the team members who are counting on us through even the worst of times, we need to understand why we do what we do. Before we dig into that though, I want you to think back to when you were just a kid… What did you dream of being when you grew up? Who did you pretend to be?

The first person I remember pretending to be was Bo Duke. (Yeah, I know he was a character in a show and not a real person but you get the point…) To this day, I don’t know what Bo and Luke Duke did for a living. I know they helped Uncle Jesse on the farm but they spent a whole lot more time outrunning Roscoe than they ever did farming so I can’t imagine that kept much food on the table or paid their tab at the Boar’s Nest. The one thing that stands out about the Duke boys is that they were also helping someone…

Fast forward a few years to my first full time summer job as a carpenter. I remember thinking it was one of the coolest things ever that the guy who owned the company could wear jeans every day and help with the work from time to time but mainly did owner stuff, even though I really didn’t know what that owner stuff consisted of at the time. Similar to Bo and Luke, it seemed like Dan helped a lot of people; by providing jobs for those of us on his crews and by building homes for his clients.

Guess what I never gave the slightest bit of consideration to being… Some guy who showed up to an office each morning to check the proverbial boxes in a safety or human resources role! Somehow or another though, that’s exactly where I landed - and I got pretty stinking good in both fields. When I was able to see where my work was helping the people around, I actually enjoyed it. But when I could no longer connect those dots, the misery soon followed! Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not belittling the safety and human resource professions; I’m being as transparent as I can be about my journey. And when I couldn’t connect what I was doing to a purpose strong enough to fight through the tough days, that journey became a lonely one.

Looking back, I can see a common theme between what I dreamed of being or doing and what gave me the most fulfillment in what I actually ended up doing. I’m convinced that understanding where we find that fulfillment and connecting the dots between what we dreamed of being as kids and what we do as adults is based on understanding our clear purpose so we’ll dig into that more next time!