Why Know Thyself

​Dear Why Team member,
Are you fired up for 2022 to be your Best Year Yet?
If not, then why not? 

​Audio:🗣

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​You don’t have to be the best to achieve the best but you do have to have the best intentions and to put forth your best effort if you are to have your best year yet; and typically best efforts at the beginning of a new year are fueled best by making 
New Year’s Resolutions.
 
Why did most people stop making New Years resolutions?
I hear it often from the crowd:
“because they don’t work”.
 
I wonder how many have gotten that new Gym Membership thinking that would be enough to get fit and stay fit? I once read that February 26th is the most depressing day of the year because by that date about 80% of New Years resolutions have been broken. 
Why?
My gosh, isn’t that the question to be asking more than ever in 2022: 
the question “why?” And moreover ask it of ourself: “Why did I do that?”
 
So how about a mission 
to bring back the tradition 
of the New Years Resolution?!
 
More than ever in 2022 consider asking this incredibly powerful question: “Why did I do that?”
It takes courage to ask, so I’m here to encourage- give you courage, to ask.
 
The Greeks knew the importance of self-awareness literally putting it on the temple of Delphi: Know Thyself
 
Ask “Why did I do that?” and then observe the power or weakness in your answer. Is the answer other oriented, external or is your answer internal, self oriented. I taught my children to first ask themselves:
“Who is responsible for this behavior?”
 
The sooner you own it, the sooner you can transform it.
 
No victims in 2022!!
Read “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink; knowing your Best Year will be the year when you own your experience of life entirely. As I share repeatedly, the way we experience life, comes down 100% to our ability to respond to life. Therefore, our experience in 2022 will be 100% our response-ability.
 
Step #1 for your Best Year Ever:
Be Accountable!
Enter into an accountability relationship. Together we’re Better!
The recent Matrix movie had that as a central theme- great power in unity.
Be not divided, but unified - let no one separate you from others. The ego thrives on being right and thus looks for others to be wrong. Let no one categorize you, put limits on you, tell you that you’re in the in-group or the out-group; and do not do it to others.
 
Step #2 for your Best Year Ever:
Be Flexible! 
Those who are flexible, understanding and willing to allow others to believe differently, they are purveyors of life.
 
Consider this wisdom from 2500 years ago in the Tao Te Ching, 
by Lao Tzu – chapter 76:
 
“newborn – we are tender and weak;
in death – we are rigid and stiff
 
living plants are supple and yielding; dead branches are dry and brittle
 
so the hard and unyielding belong to death 
and the soft and pliant belong to life
 
an inflexible army does not triumph, an unbending tree breaks in the wind
 
thus the rigid and inflexible will surely fail
while the soft and flowing will prevail”
 
How rigid and unyielding have you become? Ask “Why did I do that?”
Yes, our values are important, but we influence others most when we live them out ourselves. Be more a living example, talking and condemning less, moving and loving more. Less time looking out the window with the finger pointing and more time in the mirror asking “Why did I do that?”
 
Ask “have I made the experience of life better for myself and others or worse?”
Am I a purveyor of life or death?
Am I loving life and being a living example of how to live, or am I dependent on the circumstances around me to change for me to be okay?
Am I a victim or a victor?
Is life happening for me or to me?
Have my challenges been blessings or curses?  Do I love or do I hate?”
 
“Why did I do that?”
 
More than ever let’s come to 
‘Know Thyself’ more by leveraging more the question “Why?” to make 
2022 our Best Year Ever!
For surely removing the dirt from our own eyes will improve our view and behavior for ourselves and others.
 
Make it a great week!

Steve Luckenbach