What Does Remember Your Why Mean?

I’m not a fan of word art or these clichés that people throw around as mental health solutions.

“Positive vibes only” or “let it go” aren’t all that helpful when we’re looking to make real changes. These messages are just oversimplified. When we naturally can’t adhere to them, we feel frustrated.

One idea, however, does have some legs to it and that’s “know your why.” Now, knowing your motivation for change is just one piece of the puzzle. It’s not the end all, be all. Still, your reason(s) to change has to be stronger than your reason(s) to stay the same.

This cannot be overstated.

Changing behaviors is challenging for all of us. When the challenge is particularly hard, having clarity about what you’re moving toward and why can be the difference between achieving change and not. To understand why knowing your reasons for change are essential, we need to understand the process of change.

What Does It Take to Change?

Wanting to change isn’t enough. Knowing how to change isn’t enough.

There are so many reasons change is hard, notwithstanding that it takes a lot of energy for the brain to do something differently, so it’s not going to do it without a lot of structure around it. That being said, the change has a better chance of lasting when we move through the process laid out in the Transtheoretical Model of Change.

Developed by psychologists Prochaska and DiClemente in 1983, it says we need to go through all five stages of change (though we often don’t experience them in order) in order to be successful:

Pre-contemplation
Contemplation
Preparation
Action
Maintenance

Lapses and relapse are to be expected, and you can re-enter the process at different stages.

How Do I Find My “Why?”

Your “why” is the main reason you want to make a change. Maybe it’s a set of values you want to move toward or a goal. When you’re clear about it, it becomes your compass.

As you go through the stages of change, it guides you, and keeps you going. This is why people say “remember your why.”

To work, your why has to be authentic, and I think sometimes people don’t get to their real motivation. You have to really uncover the truth.

Maybe it’s too scary or too embarrassing to admit. Perhaps they’re judging the why as not good enough, too this or not enough that. For it to work, it has to be real.

If that wasn’t enough to consider, here’s something else. People do not change unless the discomfort of staying the same outweighs the discomfort of changing.

Side note … this is why vague reasons like “better self esteem” and “feeling better” aren’t going to be the “why” that you move toward. Not when your back is against the wall, you’re flooded with adrenaline, and need to decide if you’re going to try a new skill or revert to the way you’ve always responded.

Remember your why means you choose a reason or value that gets to the very core of your need to change.

Some questions to ask yourself include:

Why is this meaningful to work on?
What’s on the other side if I achieve this?
How do I want to be remembered?
How might I feel when I accomplish this?

How Can My “Why” Help Me Change?

Change is hard because we’re forced to do something differently — that’s why it’s called a growth zone. When we encounter distress or discomfort, our old stories pop up, most of which are self-limiting. That’s when we can talk ourselves out of doing something because we assume we cannot handle how we might feel.

In order to get better at change, we must get better at feeling distressed and uncomfortable. We must do distress and discomfort differently. I’m not talking about settling with tolerating and managing the feelings. I’m talking about building the confidence that you can feel them and move on with what’s important. This is called building your distress tolerance. And it takes a lot of willingness and practice to seek out opportunities to practice feeling the feelings and doing them differently.

Remember, that’s the definition of distress intolerance: the perception that you cannot handle negative internal states. The key word is perception. It’s not necessarily true. We just think it is.

When we have that perception, our behavior matches so we avoid or do things to eliminate the distress and discomfort. This could look like:

Talking yourself out of change entirely
Doing it but with safety behaviors (I can do it IF I have x/y/z)
Doing it but white-knuckling through the whole thing
Doing it but trying to eliminate the distress and discomfort