The Ever Important Why Question

For much of my corporate career I have done data analytics in some form or fashion. A very long portion of my resume covered it extensively in somewhat recent years. I know excel pretty well but, excel is kind of like the ocean just when you think you've got it you find another way to do it that makes what you just did look archaic and there are so many other things that you can do with it that it makes you wonder if anyone is truly an expert at it. I mean seriously I've seen people do things I had no clue it would do that made me look like I didn't know anything to turn around and find out that they had no clue how to create a pivot table (my niche). So, when I'm talking to people about excel and they ask me what level I am (yup, people ask that) I say 'user friendly' they look at me weird, but that's how I describe it. I use it all the time and yet I learn something with it every time I turn around.

That also relates to life. I pray I never stop growing, learning, evolving, changing, the day I get stuck in my ways is the day I don't get wake up, like at all.

I say all that to say this. When your any type of analyst you have a question that you always want the answer to before you can understand or perform the task at hand. "WHY?" Simon Sinek explains it best with his "start with why" approach to everything. It's because if you know the why you can get so much further with whatever it is your doing.

See the way I see it when I learn something new it helps me to know why it's done that way, why it works like that, why you do it that way and not another way, why you haven't tried this way etc... from there. It's What. Once you understand the why you can find out the what. This applies to every day life large and small problems. I'll give you an example. The car won't start. Why? Well, it smells like gas so it's probably flooded. What? What would make it flood? The computer tells the fuel system how much fuel to give it and the fuel system delivers the fuel so the delivery system is off. Now what? Check those components and fix the car. A smaller example, Why? Why is the kids room a disaster? Because they're kids. Because they didn't clean it up. Oh and Because.... they thought it would be a good idea to climb the ceiling and knock everything down along the way and pretend the dog made the mess so that they didn't get in trouble. What? the kids. Solution . the kids made the mess, the kids clean it, I'm not their maid, I'm their mom.

See

On the larger scale I'm looking at life right now through those analytical lenses and I'm asking why to a lot of things. Why on the philosophical side is so much harder to answer because most of the time we know "WHY" we just don't want to admit it. Some questions I'm asking myself.

Why did my marriage fail, again?

Why did I get married again to start with?

Why did I take that job?

Why didn't I wait for a different opportunity?

Why couldn't I get along with that last boss?

Why did I make the decisions I made that got me here today?

Why didn't I ask myself some of the hard questions sooner?

Some people have said and will say 'don't worry about why you're here now so deal with what's in front of you'. I don't function that way. For me If I know why I things were done, and why I did them, and why they didn't work, then I can work on "what" and for me right now, I know the why, and a lot of it has to do with I made some decisions without God and got off track and now to get back on track God closed some doors that desperately needed closing to get me back on track for his plan in my life. So, my what questions today...

What will I do better today than what I did yesterday?

What jobs will I apply for that I haven't seen yet?

What will I accomplish today that needs to be done to make room for God to work in my life?

What next?

I'm a type A, OCD, planner. I don't know how to just sit back and trust God and have faith and leave it in his hands and do all those things that the bible tells me I'm supposed to do. I'm trying. I really am and oh man it's SOOOOO HARD.... but, the thing is. I'm learning. So today when someone asks me the "what" question of all times (at the moment) "what about job prospects, you got any?" I won't be snapping back with "what makes it any of your business" (like I'd really like to) instead I'll say "you forgot the Why" and for me the "why" that goes with this question is "why is God moving in a direction I can't see yet" and my answer is simple "God is bigger" his plan for my life, whatever it is, is so much bigger and so much better than anything I can think of right now.

Short answer to Why as ask Why. If you don't ask why, and really be honest with yourself and try to understand why, then you can't ask what and you need what to be able to get to "what next".

If you made it this far;

I pray for you that God closes doors in your life that need to be closed and opens new doors, windows, alley ways, whatever it is that you need to make the change you need to make. For me I pray that also. I also ask God to reach people who otherwise wouldn't know about him today. God is large and in charge and I pray that he reveal himself to everyone reading this.