End with why

At my last gig, we used Simon Sinek’s Start with Why framework for brand purpose work.

All brands are stories. Branding is about making sense of a business’s narrative and inspiring the action they want. Finding the common themes or threads motivating a business’s work comes down to finding their purpose.

All lives are also stories. At end-of-life, legacy work is about making sense of your personal narrative and writing the ending you want. Have there been common themes or threads in your life? These point to your purpose, your why. The summary of a story well-told.

The process of dying can be isolating in many ways, but one of the most surreal is the isolation from self, from the full, multi-dimensional personality you are. As loved ones rally at our side, we become a permanent patient addressed in the language of illness. There’s often a sense of juvenilization, where adults topics are skirted and language is kept uber-positive. There is sometimes hollow religious rhetoric that doesn’t necessarily align with your personal beliefs.

In the hospital after going into cardiac arrest, I watched sci-fi and listened to metal while people swooned and prayed around me. It wasn’t until an old friend sent me a playlist of comeback songs (Dolly Parton’s Here You Come Again!) that I felt real again. Someone had finally remembered who I was beyond a medical miracle.

It hit me: When we need our personal brand—the source of our purpose, our why—the most, it is far too often taken away from us.

People mean well, but constant efforts to be nice, to be cheerful and full of faith and hope, may conflict with or erase the dying person’s sense of identity. The point is not to avoid being afraid or angry or sad, but to do so in a way that is authentically yours.

Simon asks us to “Start with Why”, asking brand owners to get to the core idea that drives them (beyond profit). I suggest that we End with Why. We must ask ourselves what we have achieved in life, how we got there, and, ultimately, let it reveal our purpose.

Sinek’s Golden Circle, my additions