Why is a word concerning the cause or reason something is done? Sometimes these reasons are called goals, and some are called problems: either way, the attempt to find out why can involve receiving advice.
Goals often change before they are realized, suggesting they are not the best fit to accomplish what was wanted or wasn’t enough.
The goal can be about anything. The list of accomplishments is endless: winning a game, learning a new skill, doing well on a test.
Offering help to goal seekers is like selling books on how to market their books to newly published authors: an excellent business.
The number of self-help and positive thinking books seems endless. As I look back at my reading, I recall reading every positive thinking book I could find when I got out of college. After a few years, I started reading the classics, philosophy, religion, and history. Then after many years, I looked at Steven King, Lee Child, David Baldacci, and even Louis L’Amour and got hooked on good mystery writers. One conclusion might be that starting life or reading books about goals didn’t lead to me staying in that genre.
The self-help approach to goals is very much focused on accomplishing some specific thing. Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is an obvious example. Hill’s book does lay out approaches and mindsets that could be like a policy and procedure manual for life, but it assumes that the goal will be lifelong and doesn’t leave much room for what happens if that goal changes and why it did.
I recently read an article about setting goals, and the suggestion was that a person must find the “why” first. Why was the goal wanted or needed? If that was clearly understood, everything was supposed to fall in place.
Understanding the why of the things we seek is good, but goals can change even if we don’t change our understanding of why they would be good to accomplish.
As an employment career coach, I often meet with people who have been employed in a particular field for 10, 20, or even 30 years. Sometimes they lose their jobs and are bitter about the forced change. Sometimes they are overwhelmed and feel burned out. They often start their conversation by telling me why they don’t want to do what they have been doing.
They want to change directions and find something new. Of course, it usually is the case that their years on the job have given them a strong history in what they have done, and it is easy to ask the big question. Are they willing to start at entry level in a new job and take up to a 50% salary cut? A close examination of a person's skills and experiences will usually allow some different direction directions to use the same skills, which is the best direction in these cases.
Sometimes careers are entered with the idea that becoming good in that profession is a life goal. Then when the time comes that a change does have to happen, the question about why it happened turns into why their life failed. Did it turn out that the original choice was wrong?
If a career was picked was a deep passion for that career, then that needs to be accompanied by an ongoing focus on what changes the job and the need for it over time.
Asking why things change opens doors to where the next move is.
The smart chicken crosses the road because it pays attention to the side of the road and knows the best thing to do and when to do it.