The Life-Changing Power of Asking Better Questions | How to Reinvent Yourself in 30 Minutes

Hello everyone and welcome to another YouTube Hangout. Super excited to be here with my special guest and friend Peter Sage. Peter is— what isn't Peter? Peter is an entrepreneur, a speaker, an author, a mentor, a philosopher, a YouTuber, and he shared the stage with Richard Branson and Bill Clinton, and he's here today to talk to us about how you can reinvent yourself. Peter, welcome aboard.

Evan, what a pleasure to be here and fabulous in today's technology. We can, we can stream this out live. What a great opportunity.

Yeah, I love it. And Peter has a great YouTube channel as well that I encourage you guys to check out. I've included in the description below. If you're an entrepreneur, there's insane value there on how to build a business. And if you're not an entrepreneur, there's still a lot of value there about personal growth and development and how to become a better human being with a lot more impact. So if you're a fan of my channel, I think you'll be a fan of Peter's and and highly encourage that you check that out. Today we're talking about how to reinvent yourself. And so Peter, you've got me curious. How do I know? How does someone know if they need to reinvent themselves? How does that start? What does the process look like?

Well, great question. I think that the foundation of that is, are you in a process right now of looking to change what it is that you're doing? Are you satiated? Is everything happy? Do you have the magic sweet spot of life where everything's happening, which usually isn't the case? Or are you struggling to get out of repeating a lot of the same patterns that many of us do throughout our lives, albeit with different stories attached to them or different circumstances or different players in the game. And so if you've got that level of sort of frustration where you think, you know something, I know there's more to life than this, I know there's a better way than this, and it's just not quite working for me. Maybe it's no longer time to try to change your circumstances, which is what many people focus on. Maybe it's time to reinvent who you are because everything starts there.

So I know you've got a book coming up next year talking about this, and you have a 3-day program where you really immerse yourself in helping people change their lives. Obviously, in the limited time that we have, what are, what are some of the steps that you guide people through of how they can reinvent themselves?

Well, again, everybody wants the sort of quick magic pill. And I think in the time that we've got available here, what I really want to do is guide people into some areas of focus that can really add some value. And the first one that I always pick is about asking better questions. Questions direct our focus, and if you're not directing your own focus, I've got news for you. There's a lot of people that pay a lot of good money to Madison Avenue to figure out how to do it for you. And that's not the life you want to live, being programmed by other people's agendas. And I liken the mind to a compass needle. It can only point in one direction at a time. And the challenge is just like if we take a needle and magnetize it, like back in high school, you take a magnet, a power source, and you align it and keep stroking that needle in one continuous direction till that needle aligns to the magnetic field and becomes coherent, pointed. All of the ions point in one direction. It becomes magnetized. Now, our mind is very similar. If we are open to unconsciously being programmed, which unfortunately as human beings we are, we're a 24/7 constant adaptation machine, our mind and our body. Now, we understand the body part. That's easy. The physical side of life, everybody gets because they have experiential evidence of. Your body will adapt if you put it in McDonald's or if you put it in the gym. It doesn't mind. It will adapt accordingly. Yeah, that's its job. But our mind is far more programmable, far quicker than our body. And if the magnet— the strong force that's constantly magnetizing us is usually the media and our peer group. And if those two aren't optimal, then we're going to be sucked along for the ride and don't really magnetize our true north for ourselves. So by asking better questions, what it does, it shifts the direction of that needle. Now the challenge is you can only do that for 10% of the time that you're conscious or sleeping awake is how most people are 90% of the time. That's why when we're driving to work, we can't remember the last 2 kilometers on the freeway, what happened. But if we focus on being able to magnetize or take charge of which direction our compass needle is pointing, we have a chance to start reinventing ourselves. Because otherwise, yeah, again, you're going to be drifting, especially in that 90% of the time when we do things out of habit unconsciously. That compass needle drifts back to its preconditioned magnetic north. And most of the time, that doesn't serve us, whether it's media conditioned, peer group conditioned, society conditioned. Look out of your window. There's not many examples who we really want to emulate and become that surround us on a day-to-day basis. So, you know, the first question is, you know, or the first step is ask better questions.

Yeah.

And what ignites you? You know, what causes you to come from a place of wanting to really give your gift, not survive in today's world because you've got a mortgage to make, not take the path of certainty, which if entrepreneurs, if they haven't figured it out yet, as I'm sure you let them know as well, yet there is no certainty in life. Yeah. So, The ability to handle uncertainty is one of the core characteristics of an entrepreneur. And so to be able to do that, ask yourself better questions. Now, what resources do I have that I'm not using yet? Great question because it'll start you looking in different areas. You know, this is one of the best things about the human brain is if you ask a question, it'll give you the answer. The challenge is most of us ask lousy questions. You know, why does this always happen to me? And it'll give you an answer. It's programmed to. Why? Because you're worthless, because you deserve it, because you're not smart enough. So by asking better questions, we can search for better answers. And that's really the first place to start.

I love it. Is there a series of questions that you recommend everybody ask themselves, kind of regardless of their situation? So the, you know, what ignites me? What gives me passion? What resources do I have that I'm not currently using? Are some that you mentioned. Are there others that you recommend people kind of get into the habit of asking themselves?

Yes, and it really ties into what I would call really the next part of getting into reinventing who you are, and that is to check your why. You know, we're driven by reasons as human beings. Yeah, everybody does things for reasons. Now, they may not be your reasons, may not be my reasons, but we do things for reasons. Most of the time, unfortunately, we do very little out of logical reasons. We do a fair amount out of passion, but most of what we do, we do out of habits. And those habits are formed based upon the repetitive questions we tend to ask ourselves, which usually are suboptimal. So if you were to ask questions that elicited your reason why, and here's what I found in the 3 decades of being an entrepreneur now, that is almost universal and consistent. If your why is focused on you, you are not powerful. You're not present. You don't have the ability to dig deeper than you could unless it was— rather than if your why is focused on something greater than you. And yet we can see this in evidence everywhere. I'll give a classic example. You take the New York or the Boston Marathon— not Boston because it's more pro, but say the New York Marathon is a goal for a lot of people in their fitness sort of resolutions. And for those that haven't run a marathon before, it's a big goal. It takes a lot of training. You know, I've run crazy stuff before, and it's not easy if you're not a professional athlete. So if you take New York, you know, 35,000 people lining the streets cheering you on. The amount of people that run the New York Marathon for the first time, not the people that do it for fun as an athlete on a regular basis, but for the first time, there is way more percentage of those people that complete the marathon that are running for something else, not themselves, not their ego, not the medals, not significance, not the bragging rights, yeah, to support somebody they loved, in memory of somebody they cared about, to raise money for a cause they believe in. Something beyond themselves. And that's because those that are running for themselves, most of those quit before the day of the marathon. It takes a lot to dig deep when you're just looking at going out of ego. So questions that ask you, you have to reevaluate your why. And most people's why by default is grounded in a an area that really is fear-driven. What if I fail? Therefore, my why for doing this is because I think it's going to give me the best chance of success, not because I'm passionate about it, not because it's giving my gift to the world, not because it's something I've always wanted to do. So asking questions like, you know, if I knew it was impossible to fail, what would I do then? Remove the fear of failure away and open up possibility thinking. And what it'll do, it'll start getting you in touch with what inspires you, what lights you up, what gives you that, that lift, not the motivational factor, which is usually avoiding pain and needs willpower to get you through getting up at 5:00 AM when it's cold. Inspiration, you don't need motivation. Motivation is a fuel tank in a car. It runs out. It needs topping up. Inspiration is a deeper wellspring. You're asking questions like, if I could only spend my life doing one thing, what would it be? And start tuning yourself into that passion center that a lot of the time we build bars around, you know, to imprison it through not having to face the possibility of failure and therefore admit to ourselves we're not enough, which is usually what I see with so many entrepreneurs that are burning themselves out. They're running patterns of chasing things that they think will give them the success that will validate them in the eyes of others, whether it's their parents, their business studies teacher, their elder brother who they perceive they're always trying to be in the shadow of. Doesn't matter, we've all got our reasons. Whereas if you're independent of what I call swimming in goop, G-O-O-P, the good opinion of other people, most people spend their life swimming in goop and it's a sticky, nasty, smelly mess that will lead you to a fast track to mediocrity and nowhere. And so if you can escape the good opinion of other people and stand proud in your truth, that win, lose, or draw, I'm not taking it with me. Yeah, the only people that tried that were the Egyptians, and what happened? 3,000 years later, we dug it up and stole it. You know, I'm, I'm here to make the time I've got count. I'm here to make a difference. I'm here to give my gift. And you can only do that with the freedom of being independent of the fear of not being enough, or the fear of having to adapt myself consistently like a chameleon to fit the pictures of what I think other people should see me as, rather than say, listen, Yeah, I respect where you're at. We're always going to see things differently because that's who we are as human beings. Let's celebrate. I'm in my truth and I'm walking this way and no one's talking me out of it. And providing that nobody's less than because you crossed their path, you know, there's a moral basis to that, then, yeah, swing the bat with a smile and strike out or hit a home run, but swing the bat.

I love it. I love it. Peter goes on the rants.

I love it.

Peter goes on the rants. I love it. So we're getting a lot of people watching live and the chat's kind of blowing up. And I thought we'd hit up some of the questions here to Give some love to the audience. The first one kind of related to what you're saying about Goop. MrsBugsBunny82 is writing to ask, how can I say no to others?

Great question. And if you want to see an area where people destroy themselves, it's around their fear of rejection. Yeah. And so let me give you a metaphor for this that I think may help. We all star in a very specific movie, yeah, a movie called our life. And as the star of that movie, yeah, we have various different, um, people that are cast into that movie. Now, if we're lucky, we'll have some supporting cast, you know, a spouse, a close friend, or what have you. But 99% of the people that star or come into the movie that you star in called your life are going to be film extras. Now, if we in the course of going through our movie, we make a fundamental error because we experience as the star, we fundamentally believe that everybody else sees us as the star in our movie. But they don't. You see, what happens is everybody else is starring in a movie called their life, which by definition means that at best we will only ever be a supporting cast for a few of them. And for most, 99% of people, we will be nothing more than a film extra in their movie. Now, when you come to say— no, it's the fear of rejection is usually what's driving that. The avoidance of the fear of rejection is usually what's driving that. And so if you start to understand that we're all running around in this bubble called our star of our movie, thinking, oh my God, everybody's looking at me as the star of my movie, forgetting that most people don't care enough about you to bother to give an opinion of who you are in your movie because they're too busy being worried about what they think you're thinking of them as the star in their movie. Now everybody's got this bubble factor going on. It's a big illusion where we're all trying to crave approval of validation, yeah, a good opinion and all of that. And it's a ghost. It doesn't actually exist. Yeah. So if you start to understand that if I'm going to say no to somebody and it's my truth, there's a couple of different ways you can do that. Yeah. You can, yeah, say it because you disagree and you think they're wrong. Well, I'm sorry, that's, you know, that, that's gonna offend somebody because then they're going to be shot down as the star in their movie, thinking, being worried about what you think of them and now going into a reactive pattern. Or you can honor your own truth independent of somebody else while making sure that they feel okay about theirs. So if somebody asks me to do something, if I'm not willing to say, oh, right now I'm afraid I don't have the ability to do that, yeah, maybe I can connect you with some resources that can, but for me right now, that's not on my— that's not my truth to do, then you have to start understanding that your role is to walk your path, not pander to everybody else's movie. You're starring in your own movie. And the second you compromise that, the second you give away your truth, the second you're essentially giving up the role of the star of your movie and saying, hey, whose movie can I be a film extra in? And that's not why you were born. Yeah, because the alternative is to be a martyr. Yeah, I don't want to say no to somebody in case I offend them. Maybe that's the lesson that they need to stop taking advantage of everybody who's scared to say no, and it's a gift that you can give them. Yeah, but you don't focus on that because you're focused on offending people and how they think you'll essentially be rejected. So, you know, there's elegant ways of doing it. You say you don't have to be an idiot about it if you say it with loving firmness, because you're more committed to serving them by being you in your truth rather than, oh yeah, of course I'll do that, oh no, let me take that on, which is really this, um, this chameleon of supplication, denying your own power. You can give so much more to somebody standing in your truth, right? And we admire people like that, do we not? We'd rather do business with somebody where we see, wow, I really respect that person because they appreciate their own boundaries. Doesn't mean, say, you've got to bump somebody off with a shoulder with your boundaries. Yeah, love them through it, but be the example of how somebody can step up and own themselves at that level. And you'll find that what you thought would happen, which you'll be judged you'll be unfriended, you'll be criticized. 99% of the time doesn't happen. And if it does, it's their issues that they're projecting, not the fact that there's anything wrong with you declaring your truth. Hope that helps.

I love it. I love the analogy too of living your own movie. I think it's easy to get caught up in somebody else's movie instead of living your own. Um, next up, the Lord Ivancito. I often get motivated, uh, for a while, but I— what can I do to consistently stay motivated every day? Maybe that ties into your why exercising before, but how do you stay motivated consistently every day?

Again, staying motivated is tough because motivation is not on call. It's like a sport button in a car. You press it when you need to overtake somebody, when you need some extra power. But if you run the engine constantly on sport mode, you're going to wear it out before it's time. And so motivation is great, but there are times we all know we just ain't motivated. And no matter how, what the heads are, and it's those times we can't afford to rely on motivation. And that's why if you're trying to get motivated to stay motivated right now, it's never going to happen. For a start, don't beat yourself up about it. It doesn't mean to say that you're not good enough, that there's something wrong with you, that you need to work harder, that you need to build your motivation muscle. We're just not wired for that level of constant progress. You know, I can have all the motivation to hang onto a branch of a tree over a cliff. But, you know, if you come back in 3 days, I'm not there. You know, it's not going to happen. So understand the difference between, you know, being inspired. Yeah? Which isn't like this crazy motivation, let's go get 'em cowboy kind of deal. Yeah? You look at somebody like Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest inspirational figures in modern history. He didn't have all of this pent-up energy kind of, you know, rah rah, I'm going to get up at 5:00. No. There was a calm surrender to a mission that was bigger than him. And if we just look at that word, for example, surrender, most people that are motivated think surrender means to give in, to give up, to capitulate, to acquiesce, to be less than, to sell out. Whereas the more enlightened, the more, the higher the level of consciousness, the more the emotional maturity that one progresses to by getting out of our own egos and significance needs and start focusing on what we can contribute to life rather than take from it. We'll start to hear surrender from a different point. Oh, I've got to get up at 5 AM for the next 3 weeks to get this project done. Well, I'll simply surrender to that because the project, you know, means more to me from an inspirational perspective because I'm giving my gift than it does, yeah, needing to stay motivated so I can be good enough by getting a tick box on the project. So again, check your why. If you need to motivate yourself, your why is not big enough, or It's as big as you can make it about you, and that'll never be big enough.

I like it. Cool. Next up, Sarwat. What should one do when it's difficult to choose the area of interest for ourselves?

Simple. Yeah. When you come to a fork in the road, what do you do? You take it. Yeah. The challenge is that our left brain is designed to do one thing, and it does it so impeccably that we tend to miss the point as to why it does it. And our left brain is designed to balance the equation of being right. It'll justify, it'll self-analyze, it'll come up with all sorts of esoteric reasons to say, you know, why it should or shouldn't— we should or shouldn't do things. But its job is to make you right the way that you emotionally feel. And it's a muscle that's overdeveloped through 20th and 21st century educational systems which focus on left-brain activity because that can be measured. Objectivity can be measured, subjectivity can't. So, you know, we study maths and we study science and we take tests and, you know, we score 75% and we can be measured. How do you take a test for creativity, imagination, how much you love somebody, emotional expression? They're just not encouraged. So the left side of the brain gets built like walking into the gym with huge biceps and skinny legs. You know, the right side of the brain doesn't get much attraction. So we tend to default to the left side of the brain. And in a situation where I say, how do I choose between the two? What's really going on most of the time— and if this isn't true for you, then that's okay. But in my observation, what's going on is, how do I procrastinate so that I don't have to face the fear of actually doing something and committing to it because my history around that isn't inspiring enough to validate the fact that I'm not going to fail? So, oh, do I do left or do I do right? Well, they're both good. And the left side of the brain at that point jumps in as a complete con job to start evaluating and SWOT analysis and pluses and minuses and go ask my friends and do all this. No, you will get the feedback you need by walking one of the paths. Yeah, no need to have stress. No need to— yeah, trust that. Ask yourself the qualifying question: if I could only do one or the other for the rest of my life, which would it be? And you'll tend to find that one has its basis in certainty. Oh, well, I think I should do this business because I think I've got a better chance of getting into the market quicker, but it totally doesn't turn me on in terms of what I'm doing. Or, you know, oh, well, yeah, this particular business, there's less chance of success, but boy, you know, I really, really feel something for it. So again, the left side of the brain will balance your ability to avoid fear and go with certainty. Whereas, you know, what really should be going on is saying, you know, pick one and then work off the feedback as to what comes that way. You know, if you're stuck in the road and there's a fork and you, you sit there for 2 hours debating which way to go on the map, whereas if you'd have taken one and it turned out to be a dead end, you'd have already come back and took the other one. Yeah, nothing in this life is undoable. You know, when it comes to making decisions, a new future is always available. So don't think it's finite or life and death. Pick one and go forward. And if after 3 weeks it seems like it's the wrong decision, pick something else. It's okay. Learn and see what the difference was for next time. I love it.

I love all the analogies you use too. It's really good. It's easy to follow along and people are freaking out in the chat. This is powerful stuff. Great subject. They love you. So it's good. Next up, Amy is asking about reinventing yourself. How do you know that you're in the right direction of reinventing yourself?

Easy. You don't. Again, remember what we talked about in terms of the ability to handle uncertainty. However, there are pointers that I can give, and that is to understand, as we just touched on briefly, the difference between what I call the thinking center and yet the feeling center. Yeah? The thinking center Yeah, will essentially talk you in and out of everything that is designed to avoid the emotions that you feel unconsciously are uncomfortable. Yeah, I'll say that again. It's a critical point. Your thinking center is predominantly designed to justify courses of action that will lead you to avoid emotions that you voted on as being uncomfortable. Such as rationalizing why you should say yes to somebody instead of no, because that, you know, they're really nice, I'll do it this once. Case in point. So the thinking center will always sell you a dummy. Now, it'll be wrapped up in amazing wrapping paper, it'll be shiny, it'll look like it's the right choice. Yeah, trust me. And everyone already has examples of this, I don't have to point. But the feeling center is different. So your heart Listening to your heart, it's a different language. The heart only knows two things, and it's a binary response with the body: fear or love. That's it. Now you can rephrase it any way you want— positive, negative, feels good, feels bad, move towards, move away— doesn't matter. The same thing that's going on, every cell in your body has two states: growth and protection, fear and love. Now, at a biological level, a lot of different things go on.

Yeah?

If you come from justifying it, but there's that little niggling thing because you can't lie over the top of unresolved self-feelings from the heart. The heart knows truth, your truth, which is always subjective, but it's your truth. So your cells will go into a protection mechanism to a point where they will squeeze the blood out of the— through the viscera, out of the organs, into the muscles because you're in protection mode. Now, you don't go hit somebody with your spleen. You hit them with your fists. So if you're fearful or something's not right, you'll have a physiological response to that. It'll even squeeze blood out of the frontal lobe into the rear brain so you can act off reflex, which is more protective than trying to figure out which strategy to duck or hit with and then end up getting sucker punched. So you become less intelligent and you become more stressed when you operate from fear instead of love. Now here's the problem. If you put the, the mind and the heart on opposite sides of the debate table, which is kind of what we're being asked here in the question, who wins? Well, it's usually the mind. Why? Because it's right and it knows truth? No, because it has access to more tools— logic, reasoning, language, deduction, metaphor. Yeah, labels. All of that stuff is the job of the mind, but the heart doesn't care what the mind rationalizes. Heart knows truth, your truth, which may be different to somebody else's truth. You know, the only truth with a capital T is the fact that we don't know the damn truth. That's, that's the only truth that you can really take to the bank. And so, you know, what your truth is, which I believe is the reason we're here, is to be authentic. Not to be happy, not to be rich, but to be authentic. And in the process of being authentic in business, we tend to get happy and rich as a byproduct or a consequence, not as a destination, as a journey. So how do you know which path to take? You already know which path to take. There's people listening to and watching us right now, Evan Carmichael, that walked down the aisle with somebody that they knew, that sounded good on paper, ticked every single box, but they felt something different from the heart. And within 2, 3, 4, 5 years, that truth became more self-evident. Now it's, you know, so the feeling center is what you want to trust, not emotions. That's different. Yeah. Feeling center should be like gut feel. Yeah. It's that intuition, that inner feeling. Emotions are just the afterproducts of thoughts. That's all. So don't get caught up in your emotions where we also make decisions from. Now it has to have some logical basis. You don't want to suddenly start a business selling house bricks in the Arctic. It has to have some, some level. That's where the mind is useful to come and validate validate the actual decision, but lead with the heart and let the mind serve that as a tool. Hope that helps.

I love it. I have a feeling people are going to want to rewatch this a couple of times, let everything sink in to fully digest what you're saying. It's great. Maybe time for one last question. Vijay's writing in, and this is kind of on topic. How do I get out of my comfort zone?

Well, probably rewatch this and take some notes. And yeah, I say that somewhat facetiously, but we've been covering a lot of that. It's about getting why that's bigger. If you're in your comfort zone, see, the comfort zone acts almost like the rumble strip on the freeway. Yeah. And there's many rumble strips. In other words, you're going down and what happens? You start to drift to the side because you're not paying attention. And next minute, it's designed to wake you up. Now, we have many different forms the rumble strip of life can present itself. One of them is procrastination, being bored, sitting in our comfort zone. Life is saying, hey, dude, right? This isn't where you're going. Go get up and go find something that inspires you, that motivates you. Get out of your own way. Start getting out and swinging the bat, you know, or stop being shy. That's another excuse that's a racket that most people sometimes hide behind. If you want me to dissolve shy, I can do it in one sentence. Yeah. Shy is please don't let you discover me because I'm afraid of what you may judge me for. It's a racket. Go back to the movie star metaphor. Doesn't exist. Get in the game and swing the bat. The other rumble strip could show up as an illness. As a— you've been driving down the freeway of eating healthy, and then you start drifting off to the side towards some fast food or some unhealthy habits, and boom, guess what shows up? Oh, you got stage 2 cancer. You've got diabetes. You've got what have you. It's a rumble strip. Yeah, no problem. It's okay. Thank the rumble strip for being there. Don't resist it. What most people do is say, oh, this rumble strip is interfering with the music that's in my car. I'll just turn the music up louder. And carry on what I was doing? No, you pay attention. It's feedback. People come to me with an illness and I said, when was the last time you made that illness your friend instead of your enemy? Thank it for the job that it's doing. And it tends to go away a lot quicker. But that's a mind shift that's very, yeah, at loggerheads with many different forms of traditional medical views because they don't understand the metaphysical side. They just ignore it. And when the placebo effect shows up, they call it an anomaly. Anyway, that's a whole other conversation. But yeah, so motivate yourself by stop trying to be motivated and recognize that that's a rumble strip, yeah, out of procrastination. Get inspired. Go help somebody else. Go dedicate yourself to a cause that puts a smile on somebody else's face because that's when we feel most alive and that's when we're really being who we should be at our core and giving our gift.

I love it, Peter. I feel like we could talk for hours and hours. People would still be lining up with their questions. People are freaking out in the chat. Wow. Next level stuff. This is awesome. That was good. This is crazy good today. People are going crazy. I know we're at time. For people who want to follow up, they just discovered you. They want to learn more about what you're doing, your book, your website, YouTube channel. What's the best place to reach out to you? What's the thing that you're focusing on right now that people can find you out?

Great. Well, we do— obviously there's a lot of stuff on my YouTube channel, which is easy to find. And thanks for putting the link in. My website, PeterSage.com, nice and simple. If you want to come and play with me at some of the events that we do where we get to spend a few days together and really go deep on some of the aspects of reinvention, then reinventyourself.io is a place you can go and learn more about that. And yeah, it'd be an absolute pleasure and a privilege to, for anyone who wants to come and play or participate, or for those that are starting their business or really looking for some stuff. I put as much content as I can on my YouTube channel just to help as many people as I can. Similar to yourself, Evan Carmichael, who always inspire me as well.

Love it. Well, guys, thank you so much for watching. Really appreciate all the questions that we also couldn't get to. Peter, uh, just super appreciate the time today and, and your awesome YouTube channel. I learned a lot from it as well. Thank you guys so much. Continue to believe, and we'll see you soon.

Brilliant.