We all have unique advantages, and as the name suggests, they’re unique to us.
I’ve been building up to this in my three-part series on unique advantages.
If you’ve worked with me at all or spent a lot of time with my material, this one won’t surprise you.
Your greatest unique advantage is due to purpose.
Your primary purpose, my primary purpose, and even those on your team and their primary purpose in the world.
By identifying and stepping into this purpose, you’ll be maximizing your business potential, sure, but you’ll maximize the fulfillment you feel in life.
Power Of Because
I want you to think about that for a moment.
There are all kinds of great stuff in sales and sales psychology because people want to hack the system.
They want to hack humanity, whether it’s themselves or their clients.
I recorded a training years ago for the trades that we serve at Blue Collar Success Group.
It was called the Power of Because.
There are all kinds of different studies that have been done around the word “because.”
It’s all about validating so many things, moves people to take action, all these different things.
You get food because you’re hungry.
You make this move career-wise because of so-and-so.
I want to help you today make your “because” a unique advantage.
I want you to turn your “because” into a driving factor of success and greatness in your life.
And today, I want you to think about your unique advantage being due to your purpose.
Do you have an answer when someone asks:
“Hey, why did you do that?”
I do.
It’s due to my purpose.
I am doing this, that, or the other thing because it’s my purpose.
It’s all about a unique advantage and your reason; your purpose is that advantage.
Putting All The Advantages Together
When we think about the last three episodes, including this one together, we dove into the mindset and really being able to identify and grow our growth mindset over our fixed mindset.
Then we looked at how we manage the gaps that we live in.
Every time we set a goal and create goals, and we want to manage those gaps.
Now, today, we’ve got to wrap it up with a unique advantage around your purpose, and the most successful people in the world, in my opinion, are directly tied to their purpose.
I’m currently writing another book.
That’ll come out in 2021. Maybe it’s already out by the time you’re reading this.
It’s about Purpose Guided Leadership.
It’s about creating companies and leading teams that are based on your own unique purpose.
Today’s article is really just helping you to take a step back and go:
Wait a minute.
What if there is a reason behind everything that I do?
What if there’s a why behind the behaviors that I continue to execute that maybe might not serve me at the highest level?
At the end of the day, it always comes down to a strong enough.
Why?
So you’ll hear me talk a lot around “who before how, but after why.”
I believe that why is the secret sauce.
I believe that why is the gift that keeps you going.
Fuel Your Life With Purpose
I believe that why is the fuel in your gas tank of life.
When you know why you’re here, why you do what you do, why you want to do what you want to still do, why you want to accomplish certain things, why you want to be around certain people, why you want to earn the income that you want, your life becomes stronger.
All of those different things are tied to a strong enough why.
And if we don’t have a strong enough why, then we don’t have the emotional connection.
If we don’t have the emotional connection, then we’re just kind of flailing along through life and just getting bounced around like a pinball in the pinball machine.
We don’t want that.
We want to live the life of our dreams.
We want to step into our next level of greatness, but how am I going to know what that is?
The Seven Whys
Today I want to reinforce an exercise that you may or may not be aware of.
If you have done it, I would encourage you to be like me and be mindful of the power of this exercise when you continue to use it in your life.
Different people teach it in different ways.
I was originally exposed to this exercise by Dean Graziosi at a mastermind event that I was at, that the Dean was at as well.
He talked about the seven-levels-deep exercise.
When you think about it, it really comes down to seven whys.
I want you to kind of just take a step back for a moment and think about something you want to accomplish or something that you want to do, or something that you want to have.
Then I want you to kind of embrace this whole concept around why.
Why is that important?
Why do you want to do that?
It could be as simple as I want to be successful.
OK, number one, that’s super general.
I’ll tell you right now; the more specific you get, the better result you get.
As you keep thinking as digging, you’ll find something big.
I encourage you to leave a comment or email me at kennyATchapmanDOTcom.
If I can help you with this exercise, if you want to share your results, I would be honored by that.
It’d also be great if you could help me by sharing this post too! If it helps you, maybe it’ll help someone else too!
Seven Levels Deep: Emotion
Many of us are taught to stay away from emotion.
That when we say things like “I want to be successful.”
I want to go do this thing.
OK, cool.
Well then, why do you want to do that?
Well, you know, I want to be successful.
Why?
Maybe so I can show other people that they can be successful too.
OK. Well, why do you want to show other people that they can be successful?
Well, I want them to know that they’re not different than anybody else and that they actually can have, you know, their cake and eat it too, so to speak.
OK. Why?
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I really want people to know that there’s a higher level of life available to them and that, you know, they can really live with more passion and more fulfillment.
Now, here we are four whys in and understand the emotional shift that’s beginning to take place.
When this exercise is done effectively, somewhere around questions three and four, you start diving into a little bit deeper emotion and a deeper level.
Now, the other thing that’s important is that if you get through all seven and you still don’t feel like you’ve got a super deep emotional connection, just keep going.
I’ve seen this done as, as deep as 11 or 12 questions, but ultimately, you’ll get there.
Exercise In Action
I working with someone and going through this exercise; they started off with that same statement.
Why? Because I want to be successful.
After many whys, their answer was:
I want my kids to have an example that somebody in our family didn’t give up on themselves. Now think about that for a minute.
The original answer is, well, I want to be successful.
Why do you want to be successful?
Well, so I can show other people that they can, and you start going through that.
And then this individual, that will remain nameless, ultimately got to the point of where it was emotionally tied to her children and them having an effective example that she was breaking the socioeconomic bonds that had been created barriers, chains that had held them back as a family unit for decades or generations.
Holy smokes, my friends.
Here’s the reality:
There’s no wrong way to do this exercise, but it’s something to think about when you really dive into your unique advantage, being about your purpose and go: “well, due to my purpose, I want other people to be successful.”
Part Of My Primary Purpose
And guess what? Maybe it’s part of my purpose to be successful myself in order to show other people where their success lies.
Maybe part of my purpose is to build companies that allow people to execute their own unique abilities and to be able to maximize their own opportunities and live the dream life that they once only thought was a vision or a dream.
As you go through this exercise, it’s important to slow down and take a step back because, you know, here we are rocking and rolling in 2021 (as of this writing), and many people have their goals and had their budgets set and know what your KPIs are for the year and what you want to go out in the world and accomplish and all these incredible, great things.
That’s amazing.
I love every a bit of it, but I’m here to tell you psychologically, it’s one thing that it’s cool and it feels good to set goals, but if there’s no emotion tied to it, the odds of you accomplishing what you want are minimized greatly, statistically, that you fall off the curve.
Emotional Ties
You must have an emotional tie.
Now understand that.
Ages ago, if I’d have done this exercise, I might have left it at: I want to be a millionaire.
Now, here I am years later, and I have no attachment to that purpose. I feel no real satisfaction or fulfillment.
In today’s world, that’s not even that much money compared to costs and what some successful people make.
But I wouldn’t, and I didn’t feel satisfied or purposeful.
So I dug into the whys.
Why did I want to become that?
Well, so I could have freedom.
Why did I want freedom?
So I could choose the life that I want.
Why?
I would get all the way down to because I grew up wearing secondhand clothes and not going on vacations and not being able to have nice things, and not driving cars that I wanted to drive. Yeah. I drive luxury sports cars.
Now, why? Because it’s important to me.
Why? Cause I get an emotional tie.
Why? Because I feel successful.
Why? Because I like to go fast.
Why? Because you can go to all these different things and guess what?
It’s OK to want what you want. Just embrace it and know why you want it.
That’s the problem.
I don’t need some philosophical, you know, zen thought out, amazing cool answer.
It’s OK to want what you want, but dig deep and get some emotion tied to it.
Final Thoughts
Your primary purpose is a hybrid.
Find what you want and then dig deep through your whys to tie a real, meaningful emotion to it.
I wanted to be a millionaire. Why? So I had financial freedom and the ability I didn’t have as a kid.
That’s OK.
If you want to be successful, why is that? Maybe you want to provide a good example for your kids to live up to.
Great!
With emotion tied to your purpose, you’re more likely to succeed and drive with your unique purpose toward your greatness.
It’s OK to want what you want.
And you can judge me for wanting what I want.
I’m a hundred percent OK with that.
When you have an emotional tie, you create emotional freedom.
When you create emotional freedom, you get to enjoy; you get to live in bliss; you get to operate with hope.
You get to just be a part of the ever so incredible existence of humanity on this planet, in this life together.
And it is super fun.
That’s what it’s all about.
Now go make it a better-than-fantastic day!