Discover Your Life's Dominant Question

So a part of the book, I talk about a dominant question that I believe that everybody has a question that they ask more than any other question. And that question can determine a lot of your focus. And because your focus determines how you feel, what you do, and what you're experiencing in life and the results. So, for example, a friend of mine, you know, we talk about this dominant question. We found out her dominant question, the ones she's thinking about consciously or even unconsciously throughout the day, Is how do I get people to like me? And now you don't know her career, what she looks like, you know what, you don't know anything about her, but you probably could guess a lot of things about her. If somebody is obsessed with answering the question, how do I get people to like me? What would you say her personality is like?

Insecure.

Very. She's a martyr. A lot of people take advantage of her. Some people call it a sycophant or a people pleaser. Maybe her personality— and I've seen this dynamic— changes depending on who she's spending time with because she likes whatever they like and does whatever they do. So you don't know anything about her, but you know a lot about her. And you only know one question she asks herself. I'd use this story with Will Smith in the book. I help a lot of actors. Remember their lines or be focused on set or speed read their scripts or whatever. We're in Toronto and they're shooting. We were training during the day, doing some brain training, and at night they're shooting 6 PM to 6 AM. And it's very cold. It's February, winter Toronto at night. And a lot of people think it's very glamorous, Hollywood, but a lot of it, as you know, is very hurry up and just wait, right? And there's waiting all the time. And it's an outdoor shoot and his family happens to be visiting and they're all just watching the monitors and there's a big break. And during that, they— he brings them— he makes hot chocolate and brings it to them, to all of us, right? Even though there's a crew that would do that, he's there cracking jokes and telling stories because we realized that his dominant question earlier that day is, how do I make this moment even more magical? He asked that unconsciously, wherever it came from. How do I make this moment magical? And I realized that he was living that question, his dominant question, which determines his dominant thoughts and actions. For me, I grew up with a broken brain, so I was like, I didn't have answers. So I was like, how do I be invisible? And for years, I would just, like, shrink down and get sick psychologically before I had to take a test. So I get to go to the nurse instead of having to perform. But later, I switched it to, like, how do I fix this? And then my dominant question ended up being, how do I make this better? And I'm obsessed— you and I were talking before we started recording— this idea of being the best version of yourself. And at some level, you must have thoughts or a defining question that says, how do I make this better?

Because that's probably— how do I convince the world that I'm enough?

Ooh.

I think that's probably— that's definitely what the dominant question started with in my life. Now it's not that as much, and I look at my behavior as evidence. So I don't look at my words because I think my words and my thoughts have often deceived me going back. But I look at my behavior and the choices I make, and they seem to be more intrinsically motivated than extrinsically motivated.

Mm-hmm.

So they seem to be more about, um, doing things for me, not for the approval of someone outside of me.

Is this something that's more recent, or was there some inciting— something that kind of put you on that, where you went for, how do I prove to the world that I'm enough?

I did the things that I thought would prove it.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, it's interesting because I've never really talked about this before, but I know a lot of people close to me that grew up with that feeling of, like, they didn't feel like they were enough. And so they committed the next sort of decade of their life to proving that they were in some way, whether it's business, sports, athletics, often to their parents, whatever.

Mm.

And this might be wrong, but my observation is they had to do that and then have the evidence let them down, or they had to do that in order to kind of change the question. So it's funny because I— you'd hate to say to someone, listen, the only way you're gonna believe that you are actually enough is if you go and become really, really successful, right? And then you can stop buying all that stuff you don't actually like and stop showing off or whatever. That's the only way you're going to be able to do it. But that seems to be the case for a lot of my friends that are— I've got one friend that's the son of a billionaire. He went and built a billion-dollar business himself, and until he did, he was one of the most insecure, materialistic, superficial people I've ever met. And then once he had built that tremendous business and established his own identity, kind of gotten out of his father's shadow. He sold everything. He sold the 9 sports cars, he sold the house. And I, I can kind of relate without making a billion. I can kind of relate to what he's saying, um, or that experience. So I think my question changed to, um, what is my potential?

Hmm.

That seems to be my dominant question. Yeah.

And I would invite everybody— everybody has a question, and not only for yourself, because you just Just sometimes we're silent or we're under stress. We realize that those questions come out of us. We start asking questions, especially if we're faced difficulty and we go, mine is like, how do I fix this or how do I make it better? Some people, because some people ask questions like, why can't I do this or why can't I ever have this, whatever it is? And they're getting answers that aren't very supportive.

Right.

It's this equivalent of when people read and they want to understand more of what they read.

Right.

A lot of people read a page in a book, get to the end, and just forget what they just read or not even understand it because they didn't have any questions to begin with. And so I think that a lot of times we get used to just listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube or reading a book, and then we feel like our lives are different because of just that process. And I just want to remind everybody, for every hour you spend listening to a podcast, I would challenge everybody to spend an equal hour putting that into play. And one of the ways you could do that as you're listening something is ask yourself three dominant questions. For me, is how can I use this? So I I am obsessed with this question: How can I use this? You know, because then I start saying there's an answer, there's an answer, there's an answer. Second question: Why must I use this? Because common sense is not common practice. Your listeners have probably forgotten more about life-changing transformation, health, wellness, business than most people. in their lives come across. That's just the truth, right? They're probably like, why are you always watching, you know, Steve's podcasts and videos and all this stuff? You know, because sometimes family and friends don't want to lose you and they want to kind of keep you in a certain place. And, and, but if you ask yourself, why must I use this? And you get into head, heart, and then hands, then you have this incredible purpose and drive. And then another question I ask besides how can I use this? Why must I use this is when will I use this? I think one of the most important productivity performance tools we have is our calendar. But you'll see people will schedule investor meetings, they'll schedule team calls, sales meetings, whatever, doctor's appointments, but they're not always scheduling their execution of things that they read from that business book or something that they watched. And so I just want to encourage everybody that, you know, it's better It's better well done than well said, you know, and, and to practice what we post. And the way we do it is I think the life we live are the lessons we teach others. The life we live are the lessons we teach. Because you're absolutely right that people could say something, but that does— it's better to show it. You know, it's not one thing to promise it, it's another to prove it, right? You know, especially in the, in the world that we are today.