Finding Your WHY & the Most Important Goal to Have

Already you can tell I was a troublemaker and it probably caused a lot of my leaders a lot of consternation.

“After our conversation, I realized that my religious leader did not know how to answer my questions and did not care to know, which is when I realized not all people had a desire to know. In fact, most people do not.”

Now, you need to realize that I had very good religious leaders. I had very good teachers and parents growing up. All of them would have done anything for me. At this point I just started to realize that some people did not care to know what was going on as much as other people. In fact, I found out most people do not really need to know what is going on.

Although this was a religious conversation, as I got older, I started to realize this conversation meant something much deeper. It was me asking the question, “If you’re doing something as an adult, shouldn’t you know why you’re doing it? Why don’t you know these big questions and the answers to them if this is something that means a lot to you in your life?”

How to Find Your Why

I started to realize the issue I was dealing with is accountability. People who are accountable for themselves will care about what they are doing. They will care about what they think, why they believe what they believe, what they’re doing, and what they spend their time on. I found that this idea of accountability, it is actually a skill. It’s a capability that you must learn at a young age. The problem in our society is our education and child development systems of a robs that child of accountability. It allows that child not to have to be accountable for who they are.

When you look at it, parents tell the child how to live and what they have to do. School tells the child what they have to learn, how they have to learn it, and when they have to learn it. Everybody in this child’s life is telling this child what to do and making the decisions for this child. This robs the child of the accountability of having to really make their own decisions and take responsibility for their choices. In fact, it’s so overbearing a lot of times children will give up. They won’t even care anymore; they will just follow along blindly.

When you look at it, the logic is really simple. If a child is told what to do for 20 years of their life, then when this child gets out on their own they can’t function without someone telling them what to do. This is what we call a follower; someone who waits to be told what to do. If we want to develop more leaders in our society, more people who are accountable, proactive, and don’t need to be told what to do, then we have to stop doing this as. We need to give children more room to be accountable for who they are. They need to make their own decisions and realize what the consequences are if they do something that’s not as accurate or not as efficient.

In my life, I was given this accountability. My parents let me do whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to go to church, hence I always questioned why I was doing it. I didn’t have to go to school, hence I questioned why I was there. I always asked, “What’s going on? How is this going to benefit me?” I realized that in the end, it’s my life. This is what we need to start teaching students and children at a young age.

The Most Important Goal for Students

Now, even if you’re older this still applies, you should be figuring out what you need to do in your life, why are you doing what you’re doing, why do you work where you’re working right. It’s a lot harder to figure out when you’re older. It takes more time because it’s a skill to develop, but if you allow a child to do it when they are younger, they will able to become a leader quicker. Moving on, you can see I took this mindset into everything I did.

“In high school, I joined a lot of student clubs. Two of them that made an impact on me were Speech and Debate and Model United Nations. While most people went into those clubs to further their careers and gain experience in public speaking and politics, I went into them to figure out life.”

At that age,  I was banking on my father working at the University and getting a full ride waiver—meaning because my father worked at Arizona State University (ASU), I would get my tuition waived and not have to pay anything to go to school. I knew I was going to ASU. It wasn’t going to cost me anything. So, when I was going through my high school career, I didn’t need to join any student clubs. Anything I did was for me, and the reason I started joining these student clubs was to figure out life.

I found that Lincoln Douglas debating gave me a perfect platform to determine what principles were correct and which ones were not. I found it amazing that most people did not care to know the truth; they just cared about winning or socializing.

I have found that as students go through the academic system, they go through it not knowing why. Many of them spend a lot of time doing homework and doing things because they know that’s what they have to do because it’s been forced upon them. What we really want them doing is asking “Why am I doing this? How is this going to benefit me when I get into the workforce? How am I going to add value to society by spending my time going to school?”

This is a mindset that is not in most students nowadays, but because of the freedom I was given, it was in me. Everything I did, I was always trying to figure out, how it was going to benefit me and where it was leading me.

Weekly challenge

Your challenge for this week is to go look at what you are doing and TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR IT. Ask yourself:

1. Why are you working where you’re working?
2. Why are you spending time doing your homework?
3. Why are you going to school? How is this going to benefit you?

Even if you’re doing something that you feel you’re being forced to do, if you try to gain more accountability and understand what’s going on, I guarantee that you will get more out of it. You will get more out of school. You will get more out of work. You will get more out of spending time with your family.

Good luck!

In Search of Truth is an independent publication by Dr. Jacob Kashiwagi. All proceeds are donated to the Leadership Society of Arizona 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. 

The views expressed in the book are based on independent research and personal experience. This publication does not necessarily represent the views of LSA.