How to reconnect with your purpose when business starts to drift
Have you ever felt like your business is running, but something feels off? You are doing your thing, always busy but things are starting to feel mechanical, or extra chaotic, or you have to keep explaining things to your customers you thought they’d know by now. You are going through the motions, do what you do every day, but it feels like you are stuck and you don’t know what the next step is. This is all normal, you navigate by what you see around you, while you should really navigate from within. Reconnecting with your ‘why’ is a really powerful first step to get back in alignment, building a business that works for YOU, your values, your needs and your boundaries. A healthy business.
The Subtle Drift
Misalignment usually doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes we just drift. One small decision, a tiny step or moment at a time, you move away from what you originally set out to do. You say yes to projects that really don’t feel great, but they pay. Or you start using a different language when you communicate to your customers, to make you seem more professional. You use “We at the yarnshop.com have ideas about…” instead of “I was recently thinking about something, and you know what…?”. You close your shop to sell at festivals and markets, but it feels wrong to nog be there for the regular customers. Strategy is a word you really don’t use for your business. It sounds like man-in-suit language, so you really don’t know if there is a roadmap or a step-by-step plan, you just do what you see other people do. It’s ok, you can get back to your own path. That’s exactly what I’m here to help you with. It’s my ‘why’!
What “Finding Your Why” Really Means
You can get a clear idea of what your ‘why’ is and use that to navigate. Simon Sinek wrote ‘Start with Why’, he says –“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” And “If we want to feel an undying passion for our work, if we want to feel we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves, we all need to know our WHY.” Find your purpose and use it to navigate as you go on different paths in your life with your business, it changes, life changes, you can reconnect with it as you evolve. Here are some self-reflection questions to get you started: Why did I start this in the first place? What do I care about now? What kind of business do I want to wake up to every day?
Why your “why” matters
Here’s why knowing your “why” can change everything: It gives you direction. Your “why” acts like a compass when business decisions get messy or overwhelming. It keeps you motivated. When you know what you’re working for, it’s easier to keep going through hard or boring stretches. It helps you connect. People love to hear the reason behind your work—it builds trust and creates real connection. It quiets the noise. Your “why” helps you cut through trends and outside pressure. It’s your filter. It brings your business back to you. It’s the thread that ties together your ideas, your offers, and your voice. This isn’t fluffy—it’s foundational. Your why shapes everything else. It’s not just related to your business, it’s related to who you are as a person. As a care giver, as a friend.
Ways to Reconnect With Your Why
There are lots of ways to reconnect with your why. My favourite one is off course journalling. You can use the questions from step 2 as a starting point for long form journalling. Another way is to use the Bullet Journal® method and log how you are feeling, noting the patterns you see emerge during your weekly and monthly rituals. If you don’t really know what’s off, start tuning into your body. What are you literally feeling. Does your stomach hurt and your gut cramp when you have to do certain things. Does your face flush or do you lose the ability to think straight in certain situations? Are you resisting certain tasks over and over again? A great way to learn more about yourself is to learn more from others. That is the whole reason I build our little friendly fiber village online; the Ja, Wol Community, so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel and we can learn from the wins and woes of our peers. (Our Monthly meeting in the Business Circle Membership is called ‘Wins & Woes’). Sometimes you have to stop putting more info in your head and you just have to be still for a while. Meditation, and if that idea alone sends you up the wall like a vampire with blood-thirst crawling up to a student rooftop party, then try a walk in the park. With your phone at home or turned off. I find that twice a year I get a reset for my why. It happens during the summer and Christmas break. It’s when I’m away from my business when I can see it so much more clearly. I usually return full of life force and ideas and back in alignment with my why.
Your Why Is Your Compass, Not Your Cage Y
our ‘why’ statement doesn’t have to be perfectly worded and isn’t fixed forever, it changes with you. Life changes, you change, your why can change too. It is a thought proces you can return to again and again, it’s not homework that -once done- is done forever. So don’t start an embroidery or Fair Isle project with your why-statement. You drift, you find yourself off-course. Then you re-align, re-adjust. You find your way with the help of a Wayfinder (coach in training) like me, with the help of a community of likeminded people or by yourself. But you’ll adjust your course in any case. Might as well do it mindfully. Because when you use your ‘why’ as your compass and work from a reason that comes from within, you’ll much less likely burn out. We burn out from doing work that isn’t aligned with us.
✍︎ A Journaling Prompt to Try
I would like you to consider these two questions. Keep them in your heart when you go through your week, then at the end of the week sit down with them and journal. “What’s one thing I’ve been doing in my business that no longer feels like me?” “What would it look like to let that go?”
Reconnecting with your why is the foundation for your whole life, not just your work. It’s worth doing a bit of thinking and non-thinking to find out where things seem ‘off’. Doing the work of finding your why can then (re)commence.
In this blogpost I have been talking about the W in W.O.L.; Wayfinding. Next time, I’ll come back and we’ll move into the O, which stands for Organise–how to make space in your business to actually support your values and energy.
If you want to explore this kind of work, we would love to welcome you to the Ja, Wol Community where we Wayfind in very good company.