Ep 131 | Uncovering Your Why with Brian Gubernick

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today we're going to be getting better at life, and we're gonna do this by discussing how we discover, or I should say uncover, our why. Now stick with me, right? Because I know this conversation around uncovering your why, finding your why is a little played out. Just call it what it is, right? I know in my world, since I got into business, everywhere I turned said, well, you gotta, you gotta find your why. You gotta know why you do what you do, what drives you. And, and it's, it's a tough topic. And one that I don't know if anybody's done a fantastic job addressing. Sure, they've discussed what is a why, but they've never talked around how to actually go discover yours if you're unclear. And I want to hopefully cover some of that today, or at least share a personal story with you that helped me better understand what drives me, why I do what I do. So the brief version of the story, uh, years ago, about 13, 14 years ago, I was being interviewed, uh, on stage. It was a really big accomplishment for me and, and a mentor of mine, had me in front of a fairly large crowd. And he talked to me all about my business. And at the end of it, he said, hey, Brian, tell me why you do what you do. And I said, well, why do I do what I do? I mean, should be pretty obvious. I do it because I want to raise a certain type of family. I want to do it for my wife. I want to do it for my newborn, you know, daughter at the time. That's why I do what I do. He said, oh, that's great. Thank you for sharing, sharing that. And, you know, whatever applause left, left the stage, came off the stage and And I said to myself, man, is that why I get up every morning? Like, is it really for Ellie, my wife? Is it really for my daughter Avery? And the truth was no, that wasn't necessarily why I was getting up doing what I was doing at the time, working 15, 16 hours a day. Not only was that, um, kind of shocking to admit, I found myself asking, well, why is it not that? What's wrong with me? How is my family not what's driving me? And as a result of this experience, I went on this journey to really try to find, you know, why I do what I do. Just this discovery process. And I wasn't quite sure where to turn. And, you know, a week or two after that experience, I'm sitting at my computer and I was on TED Talks. Many of you guys are familiar with TED Talks at the time. You know, this was 2011 or so, it was relatively new, 2010, 2011, new to me that is. And I came across a TED Talk by a guy named Simon Sinek. Now Simon's a pretty popular guy these days, even wrote a book called Start With Why. At the time he was just gaining in popularity. And I come across this TED Talk by Simon and the TED Talk is How Great Leaders Inspire Action. And I fall in love with it. And sure enough, How Do Great Leaders Inspire Action by Simon Sinek. It's about understanding your why, communicating it, understanding your organization's why. And I'm like, okay, this is great. And he had a beta program at the time. Sign up for his program, go learn your why. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm not all into the universe conspiring, but this was one of those situations. And so I go through Simon's program. And there were two key components of the program that I want to share with you today. If you're lost or you need a little bit more help, I should say, in figuring out why you do what you do. There's two core parts of this program that really helped me. Part one, what Simon encourages you to do, encourages you to do in this program is he says, sit down and identify what he calls the level 5. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So level 5 being the highest, the level 5 highest highs in your life. What are the fi— what are the level 5? What are the few things in your life that you would say are your highest highs, your greatest achievements, the greatest feelings you've had? And this could be, you know, this is in childhood, this is in college years, this is in your career. So you're kind of going through and you're saying, what are the highest highs? Now, in addition, He wants you to identify your negative 5s, so negative 1, negative 2, negative 3, negative 4, negative 5, your lowest lows over your childhood, say your college years and your professional career. So what are your highest highs and what are your lowest lows? Now, once you've identified these things, Simon encourages you to go share these stories, these events, these experiences with somebody. Not necessarily somebody that knows you or loves you or is married to you or a family member of yours, not even a best friend, but somebody that could be objective. And you tell these stories, the highest highs and the lowest lows, to the person listening. Now, the person listening, their job is to identify the themes. Identify the theme. See, there's themes as to why things are high highs, and there's themes as to why things are the lowest lows. And here's what Simon teaches you, which I found so accurate and amazing. That theme or those themes, the themes with the highest highs and the lowest lows, by the way, they're probably very similar. As you go through the process, you'll understand those themes have something to do with why you do what you do. They have something to do with what you're passionate about or what motivates you. For me, I found my highest highs being achievement of certain things around people that I care about. Making a difference, me personally making, making a difference, me influencing. I found the lowest lows in those scenarios when I let certain people down or where I didn't have an impact. Point being, the theme for me very much was about influencing or impacting people and influencing and impacting situations where I had a hand in the outcome. Now, as you go through it, you're going to find some themes. These themes likely are tied to why you do what you do. So that's number one. That's one of the two things, one of the core, uh, practices he teaches in this program. The second thing, rather simple, but you get a pretty amazing, uh, response. Go to your best friend, your best, one of your best friends, and ask a simple question. Why are we best friends? Now, some of you guys out there listening, you might think this is crazy. And by the way, when I did it, it's pretty damn crazy. I'm not going to lie. The guy I asked looked at me like, what's wrong with you? And your friends may look at you the same way, but go ask your friend. No, seriously, why are we best friends? And don't let them out of answering that question. Like, they've got to answer it. And what's likely to happen is the response they give you as to why you're best friends, it may catch you by surprise, or it may, may not be surprising at all. Odds are what they share is going to tie in some way to those themes you just identified, which is going, going to tie in some way to your why. Why are we best friends? Well, I don't know. It's because of this, this, this, and this. Well, those things that you're influencing, that you're impacting, that make you their best friend, it says something about you. It says something about your why. Are you dependable? Are you trustworthy? Can you be counted on? Do you always deliver? Are you caring? Are you empathetic? You know, what is it? You're going to get something from them and that's going to have something, some tie to your why. So in summary, going through your highest highs, going through your lowest lows and finding the themes with those things, as well as asking those that care most about you, your best friend or your best friends, why you're in fact best friends. You take these two practices that I described and you, and you listen to the feedback. You identify the themes, you listen to the feedback. You'll see a tie between all of this. And I'm not saying your, your why is going to be suddenly be crystal clear, but I assure you that through that discovery process, you will have a clearer idea as to why you show up and do the work that you do every single day. Try it out. Give it a shot. Give it a shot. I challenge you to do it today. That's all we have for you today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.