This is my /why page — an evolving page to help me codify some of the purposes, reasons, philosophies, and ideas that drive my life day-to-day, and that I want to continue to drive my life into the future.

These are principles that help me make decisions all the way from the smallest things, like “what I’m doing to do today?” all the way up to huge things, like “what career / training am I going to chose? where am I going to live? how will I spend my life?”

You can learn a bit more about the idea of a /why page (and maybe get ideas for making your own) here.

The Big Four

Years ago a friend said something that has stuck with me.

He said that the Christian Bible is a story about how God wants to restore four sets of relationships that have been damaged or destroyed.

He said that:

1. God wants to restore our relationship with Himself — to make us new and right in His sight, and bring us back into peace with Him.
2. He wants to restore our relationship with Ourselves — the real us, who we’re really created to be.
3. He wants to restore our relationships to Others — our family, our friends, our communities, our neighbors, and even our enemies;
4. He wants to restore our relationship to Creation — for us to return to our created roll of steward and sharer in the abundance of the amazing world around us, instead of extractors and destroyers.

As I’ve thought about it in the years since, I realized that these four relationships are a fairly good marker of how I’m doing wholistically. If my relationship God, with myself, with others, or with creation isn’t in the place it should be, then all the others hurt with it.

If my relationship with God isn’t where it should be, then I can’t love myself well, I can’t love my wife or those around me well, and I can’t love creation the way I’m commanded to and created to.

Each one of these relationships affect every one of the others.

So, I will always seek to keep them all healthy and in harmony.

There’s obviously lots of nuance to be explored within these (like, how these categories do have sub-categories — “Others” includes my wife and my family, and my nation, and other nations, and immigrants, and those I’m scared of… and living in restored relationship with each of these looks different). But I think navigating that is where the art and the adventure comes in.

Frameworks That Shape my Decisions

As well as the Big 4 above, there are a few phrases and frameworks that I’ve found especially powerful for helping me approach decisions in life. They’re listed below, under the context that I apply it in, along side a little explanation.

For Culture Building and “Impossible” Projects

Stubborn optimism - Endless abundance - Radical regeneration

These 3 come from Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac’s 2015 book, The Future We Choose. They describe these three paradigms frameworks to use in ideating and implementing solutions huge problems we’re facing.

Figueres and Rivett-Carnac specifically use these in approaching the issue of climate change, but I’ve found it useful for approaching any issue that’s big, difficult, and easy to lose hope in the face of.

No.

Let’s instead chose stubborn optimism.

Let’s implement systems of endless abundance.

And let’s regenerate, radically.

For Navigating Internal Struggles and False Beliefs

Dignity, Expression, Truth

These come from one of Mark Queppet’s self-development programs.

He gives them as a framework for addressing and correcting lies we believe internally, that impact our lives.

They represent the 3 areas that we might need to talk ourselves through false beliefs to help us align ourselves with the truth (or with what we actually want).

Example (not reflective of my reality; I’m happily and gainfully employed) :

False belief: I don’t deserve a well-paying job.

Dignity (Identity): My value and my worth are not tied to a job. If I have a good job, it makes me no better or no worse than if I have a crappy job. If I have a good job, I’m good. And if I have a crappy job, I’m good. And if I have no job, I’m still good. My worth as a human is not reflected by my employment.

Expression (What to DO?): Even though I don’t NEED a better job to be good, I still do indeed WANT a better-paying job than what I have right now. So, I should take steps to make sure I am a good option for the kind of job I want. I should learn the skills that employers would find valuable to give me better employment than what I currently have, and I should learn better communication skills and tools to be able to demonstrate to my future employer that I’m the best person for their role (and they should pay me accordingly).

Truth (Goal/Dream vs. Reality): There are a number of skills I need in order to be able to succeed at and thrive in the role I want. The truth is that I don’t currently have what I need for the job I want. So, I should take steps to learn those skills — sign up for the class, start reading the book, put in some reps to learn and get good at the skills. I’m not less of a human because I don’t have these skills, but I do need to aquire these skills to do the job well. So, I need to put in the work I need to do to learn them. And I WILL.

Dignity. Expression. Truth.

I’ve found that, whenever I’m navigating something internally, coming back to these 3 is a good place to start in dealing with my stuff and moving forward. Plus, it’s a great framework for walking other people through those kinds of issues too. (“I’m a bad person because I lost my phone” isn’t reflective of anyone’s true dignified identity, and they need to know that. They’re no better or no worse because they lost their phone. It happened, it sucked, and we need to now ask “now what”. But, any response needs to be on the foundation of dignity.)

Marriage, Work, Life

Restoring Together

This is a new one.

My wife and I got married a few weeks ago.

“Restoring Together” is phrase that we have gotten engraved on our rings, that was also on many of the decorations at our wedding. (It was also engraved into Kami’s wedding shoes 😄).

We want to make all the choices we make, in our work, in our lives, and in our marriage, towards the goal of restoration.

That, together, we would do and be fulfillers of Isaiah 61, and that we would bring restoration to the brokenhearted, the marginalized, the hurting, the sick, the broken, and those subject to injustice.

That we’d help those who have been displaced and work to help prevent displacement.

That we’d work together to see peace and restoration everywhere we can.

What’s your Why?

It can be a really helpful practice to codify your “why” a bit like this.

Why don’t you think about adding your own /why page to your website? (Don’t have a website yet? Start there!