YOUR WHY
Understanding — What Drives You
Knowing why you set a goal means being clear on the reason behind it — the values and the outcome that make it worth the work. When the why is strong, you keep working when it gets hard; when it is vague, motivation runs out.
People who set goals have a reason for them. The challenge is when those reasons are surface answers — the goal would be nice to have, you like the idea of the goal, it sounds correct, it would look good. Without the goal being built upon a solid foundation — your values, beliefs, and needs — it is likely to collapse the moment conditions get difficult.
What makes a goal last is how deeply it connects to who you actually are, not how ambitious it is.
Where does your foundation come from?
Your values and beliefs are your foundation, the accumulated result of everything that shaped you. They are not a framework you consult. Your upbringing. The environments you had access to — the family home, school, sports club, workplace. The people around you. The experiences that left a mark, including the difficult ones. You did not choose these. You lived through each of them in the various moments of your life. They were formed within you, over time, through everything you lived.
Four Sources That Shaped Your Foundation
Upbringing
The household you grew up in. What was modelled. What was expected. What you were praised for and what you were not.
Environments
The family home, the schools, the clubs, the workplaces — every setting that taught you what mattered and how to operate.
People
Parents, siblings, teachers, coaches, friends, colleagues. The voices you absorbed, the standards they held, the example they set.
Experiences
What you lived through. The successes, the failures, the difficult moments. The things you would change and the things you would not.
That matters because it means your values describe who you already are, not who you aspire to be. And when what you pursue is a genuine expression of that — when your goals are rooted in your actual foundation, not just something you think you should want — they have a different quality of durability. You will overcome challenging moments and do the extra that is required to move toward them. You will be more resilient. There will still be moments of doubt and difficult times, but the likelihood of overcoming the obstacles is greater. You become much harder to break.
Goals that are not connected to a strong foundation will struggle to survive the first serious challenge. The discipline and the commitment may well have been there. The reasons behind the goal were not strong enough to keep working for.
The research behind this
Self-determination theory — developed by Deci and Ryan and one of the most extensively tested frameworks in motivational psychology — distinguishes between two fundamentally different types of motivation. Autonomous motivation, where behaviour is driven by genuine values and personal meaning. And controlled motivation, where behaviour is driven by external pressure, obligation, or reward.
Studies applying the theory in education, sport, health and the workplace have repeated the finding: goals rooted in genuine values produce better persistence, greater wellbeing, and stronger recovery from failure. When the goal is an expression of who you are, the effort does not rest on how motivated you feel on a given day.
Recognising what is actually yours
Inspiration and passion matter, but they are the result of being rooted, not the way to find your foundation. The questions that get closer to what is actually yours are these. What are your deep rooted values, beliefs and non-negotiables? What is the goal founded upon, to the point where you would give almost anything to achieve it? What would you pursue even when no one was watching, and when a more sensible option existed?
Honest answers to those questions get closer to your foundation than anything you would write down for an audience.
“When your ambitions are rooted in who you genuinely are, they hold, because abandoning them would mean abandoning yourself.”
Why this matters within performance
Understanding is the first condition because the chance of succeeding diminishes without it. Your values, beliefs, and experiences are the part of Understanding that provides the building blocks anchoring you, your goals, and the work that serves them. These are shaped by your history, expressed in your actions and behaviours, and visible in what you refuse to compromise even when pressure rises.
Making that foundation explicit is what gives the rest of the system something to stand on. The Personal Performance Charter is built for exactly this — capturing values, strengths, behaviours, and identity on a single page, so the foundation is something you can see and work from rather than something you carry unexamined.
Start with the free 7-Action PDF. Seven actions drawn from performance psychology research, each one explained, each with a practical exercise. You also get the monthly letter, which applies one idea at a time.
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