Why Do You Do What You Do?

I want to ask you a straight-up question, and that is: Why do you do what you do?

Take a moment and just reflect on that, please. Why do you do what you do, your work, your business, your livelihood?

Some of us have spent a lot of time crafting our visions and missions. Some of us have come into our businesses, our entrepreneurial journey by happenstance. We've all come to it in our own way, and we all have our reasons.

What are your reasons?

Is it greater time? More freedom? The sense of being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it?

Is it the thrill of earning your own keep, earning your own money? Is it the thrill of being able to enjoy the lifestyle that you dream of, based on your own hard work, your own ingenuity, and smarts, and creation?

I’d like to pose a concept for you to play with.

This comes from psychology. It also comes from Eastern wisdoms and the path of the Warrior Sages. The idea here is that you do what you do because you're wearing an identity, and that identity is simply a viewpoint with a goal.

Right now, I'm in the viewpoint of a guide; my goal is to serve you.

When I'm with my children, I'm in the viewpoint of father, and my goal is to give my children a good foundation for their life, a good education, love and acknowledgement.

When I'm with my wife, I'm in the identity of husband. Let's see, what's the ultimate goal of that identity? It's to enjoy a great life with my beloved, it's to serve her, and be a good husband to her. That's my goal.

We're always entering and exiting many identities throughout the day.

Just think about it. When you wake up in the morning, what is the first identity that you're in? What's the viewpoint you're in? “Oh, I’ve got to go to work. I have to start my business. I need coffee. I need my newspaper.” You're in some identity in that moment, and that identity has a goal.

When I'm running my business, when I'm running my organizations, I'm in the identity of an entrepreneur, a businessman. My goal then is to create businesses and organizations that bring enlightenment, higher consciousness, joy and freedom to many people. That's the goal for me.

The challenge here is that many of the identities that have been running us day by day, hour by hour,

moment by moment, are ones we haven't chosen conscientiously. They're formed through traumas, through fears. Perhaps when we were younger, we experienced some type of challenge around money. Our family could have had tight circumstances, financial challenges. Or perhaps they themselves grew up in that atmosphere, so an imprint was made upon you, in which you took on the identity of someone who needs to do really well because you never want to go through that again, you never want to be poor.

So, you’re in the identity of someone who never wants to be poor, and whose ultimate goal is to make money to prevent that from happening.

Some of these identities that have formed unconsciously are born in reactive times, in times where you’ve experienced some form of defeat.

Maybe you had a bad experience doing business with someone, and you said to yourself, “I'll never be like that

again. I'll never trust those type of individuals again.” You formed an identity in the midst of a challenging situation by default. And that identity has a purpose; that purpose could be to be safe, to protect itself and its assets at all costs.

Many similar unconscious identities that you have formed are trying to keep you safe. The problem here is that when your goal is solely to stay safe, unconsciously you repel greater opportunities. You repel flow, because you are negotiating with reality to keep you safe. Most of the time, we aren't even aware of this happening within us.

Now, you have the key, and you can begin assessing your own identities.

You might have formed an identity whose goal is for you to prove yourself, to prove your worth. And I know this is very true for me; it comes from my father, from a lineage of businesspeople. The identity was of a perfectionist, and one who wanted to show up the other, to be better than, to win, to do more than. I thought I was running on pure ambition, pure energy, pure drive, but in a moment of deep meditation, deep self-inquiry, the truth came to me.

Can you comprehend that you might be driven, not by your true self, but by some identity that's a reaction to some feeling of insecurity, and need to gain self-worth?

My challenge and my invitation to you, my friend, is to look within, with true, burning crystal clear, vulnerable self-honesty, and ask yourself, “Why am I really doing what I'm doing, and what identity am I in when I'm doing that?”

Now I’m going to share with you a secret I’ve discovered to transcending these identities.

You can find the inner freedom you seek by going into that identity and behaving as if it's fulfilled.

So, for me, how I did it with this unconscious impulse that I realized and made conscious, this desire to please my father figure. Inside my consciousness, in my being, I fulfilled that goal. I became aware of the goal, and I united with it, with the aspect of myself that desired to prove myself.

So, I'm going to invite you to fulfill the goal inside your own psyche, of what you really are wanting to fulfill, the ultimate goal, the psychological, spiritual goal.

Because when you fulfill that right now in consciousness, you'll be in another new identity. It'll be a deeper

one. It'll be one not moved around and pushed around by your inner impulses, to prove to anyone or anything.

It'll come from your creativity, not your reactivity. It'll come from your power, not your defence against your own power. You will be driven by a why that is sourced in your freedom, in your wholeness and completeness.

I want to invite you to a new venture – the ultimate adventure. That is to feel who you were before any identity claimed your consciousness; and then, live from there.