Simon Sinek distinguishes between your "why," which is your origin story rooted in past experiences and upbringing, and your "just cause," which is a changeable vision for the future. Your why is the fixed foundation that guides behavior and decisions, like a house's foundation versus its paint and shutters.
Chapters
So your why comes from your past. Everybody has a why. Every individual has a why. It's our God given right.
It is who we are. And it comes, it is basically an origin story. That's what a why is. So it's the sum total of how we were raised, the things we learned from our parents that made us who we are today. And there's no changing who we are. All that we can do is either be in balance or out of balance. So when you do things inconsistent with who you are, people say things like, it's like, I don't know who you are anymore, right? Think of a why. Like the foundation of a house. It's solid and everything else gets built on top of that. So if you suffer some sort of tragedy or trauma and things get knocked down, you rebuild on the same foundation. Ancient ruins, we lose the buildings. We always have the foundation. It's the thing we build upon. It's who we are. And the same goes for our businesses. Our businesses have a why. It's why we started them. Most of us who start businesses, there's a reason to take that overwhelming risk of failure. There's a reason that feels worth it, right? That it's worth the sacrifice and the hard work. And it's not just because I want to be my own boss. Because sometimes being your own boss is not worth all the extra effort. And sometimes you don't even make as much money. There's something that drives somebody to want to own their own business. That origin story, that reason that compelled you is the why. So the why comes from the past. It's a foundation. We build upon it. It's objective. A just cause is about the future. It's about where we're going. It's subjective. We can build any future we want. We can decide the future we want to build and head towards it. Can you change your just cause? I guess you can. I wouldn't change it too often because then you're a moving target. You, you can't change your why, the foundation of the house, but you can change the paint on the house. You can change the shutters. You can change. If you want to be a big or small house, you can change it at any time, but you still want it going in the same direction, built upon that foundation.
