Forget Your “Why.” There Are Three Better Questions To Unlock Your Life.

Why? What's your why? What is it? That's where your purpose lives. That's where your best life is hiding. You hear that all the time. And it's fine. It's fine. I'm not picking any fights with find your why. I am not picking any fights. But this week on Becoming you, we've got three other questions for you to help you get unlocked and on the way to living the life that's right for you and only you. Hello, everyone. This is Susie Welch. I am a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, where I teach classes on careers and management. I'm a researcher into careers and human values and the director of the Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing. And this is the podcast where each week we endeavor to walk alongside you supportively and lovingly and very realistically on your journey towards living your purpose, which is very big and important stuff. Of course, we are also a podcast where we will interview reality stars about the problems in their marriage. So we also will do that. And I also spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about my dogs, but really glad that you're here today. We are going deep into real becoming you territory. And if you give me 20 to maybe 30 minutes of your time, my promise to you with this week's podcast is that we're gonna get you closer to where you wanna be by having you ask and answer three possibly uncomfortably hard questions. So stand by for those questions. We're coming to them. But first, I wanna say, if you're new to becoming you, thank you so much for being here. We're really, really happy. You could be listening to anything you could be listening to. Or you could be listening to a ray singing where the Hell Is My Husband? Because who. That song has been so stuck in my head, I feel like I'll go back and forth between Ophelia and Where the Heck Hell Is My Husband? Over and over again. You could be listening to that, and I wouldn't blame you. So I'm really glad that you're here. And if you're returning, thank you so much. Thank you for being part of the Becoming youg Community and for helping us with the kind of astounding growth that we are experiencing. I'm very appreciative. Now, if you're a returning listener, you also know that becoming you is a methodology. It's a methodology that helps you answer the question, what should I do with my life? And we help you answer that by excavating three big data sets that are generally in you. The first is your values. The second is your aptitudes, and the third is your economically viable interests. And we synthesize all that data to help you figure out, generally three life paths or a purpose that is perfectly aligned with who you are and where the world is going. I created the Becoming youg methodology originally to teach to my students at NYU Stern. But over the past five years, it's grown in all sorts of exciting ways. And putting it all together, we estimate that about half a million people are probably using Becoming youg in some form right now, either with our assessments and tools like the values bridge and pi360, or by reading the book or listening to this podcast. And that's incredibly humbling and exciting. So I'm very excited about becoming you. I keep on saying that one of the reasons I'm really excited is because I'm not the only one teaching it anymore. This is a fantastic thing. It's in a lot of universities and schools. But also, we are now starting to certify becoming you coaches at the NYU Stern Initiative on purpose and flourishing. And I can't tell you how happy this makes me, because I know that becoming you works. And we have very wonderful data that shows that it works, but also because, really, because I know our coaches, and they're about 120 of them so far, and they are just amazing. They're smart, and they're passionate, and they're creative, and they're committed to their clients. And that is why a few weeks ago, when I was meeting with our coaches on the NYU campus, I actually put something to them. I said, look, imagine a new client has come into your office or is new on your screen, and you want to start to unlock their journeys to their purpose. You want to get right into their heart to sort of unlock them so they can go forward. What is the question? What's the first question you put to them? I was flooded with the fantastic questions because our coaches are amazing. They all gave great answers. But I want to share three of my favorite purpose unlocking questions that were offered up by the coach becoming you coaches. And I want to put those questions to you, and I want to talk about what the answers might tell us. Okay, so let us start with a fantastic question from one of our coaches who lives and works in Europe.

Hi, I'm Sylvia Winter. I work as a strategic designer and founder of WinterWorks Studio Suisse, where we design for transformation across workplace and everyday life, starting with people, leadership, and culture and shaping the conditions and systems and space and even sound that help people flourish. I'M also obsessed with the metaphor of flight. And as founder and host of the When Women Fly podcast, I'm devoted to the idea that every woman has a spirit of flight, something in her that she harbors that is meant to break the mold and dismantle expectations and aim for more, even when the obstacles, like gravity, are real. Because the truth is, when we're avoiding a risk, it's rarely about logistics. It's often identity. It's a bit like the Four Horsemen showing up those protective voices that can pull us towards shrinking, settling, and staying on the ground. When I'm helping you find your purpose, the one thing I want to know about you is, what risk are you avoiding that might actually be your Runway? And what support would make takeoff feel possible?

Okay. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's unpack Sylvia's question. It's such a beautiful way of saying that we have to understand what is stopping us, our why not before we can take off and soar. I mean, at the beginning, I said we're always being told to find out what is our why in life. And what Sylvia is saying is that we need to figure out our why not now. She says that every woman has in her the spirit of flight. And I love that phrase, and I think it's true. But personally, in my experience, it's actually not just women. When I teach becoming you, it is 50, 50 men and women, people young and old, from all around the world. And I am actually constantly seeing this. This spirit of flight in people. And I think, actually, it's the human condition to have this spirit of flight. And I also. I agree with Sylvia when she says that we all want to make a break for it. We want to aim for more. But so often, something holds us back. Something is our gravity, she puts it, and she says it's not always logistics. It can be very often, it's identity. And right there, she mentions the Four Horsemen. That's a little bit of inside baseball. That's. That's a term that we use in becoming you all the time. The Four Horsemen. These are the forces that get between us and our dreams and our goals. I've named each one with an E. Starting with an E, let's talk about them. These are often the buckets into which our why not fall? Okay, so the first one is economic security. We have the spirit of flight. There's something we really want to do. Maybe we even know our why. Okay, my why is that I want to work in animal rescue or something like that. And then we Say, yeah, but I'll never make money. So the first horseman, the first why not that gets it between us and our dreams and our purpose is economic security. This feeling that we need to make money. And guess what? We do. Guess what? We have got to pay the bills. I no shade on that. But here's the problem. We will give a lot of weight of financial security, even if we don't really care about it all that much. And then what happens is we get to be a certain age and we have not lived our why. And we have given it entirely to the why not of economic security. And we think, was it ever worth it? I didn't have the life of my dreams. Was. Was the second car worth it? Was the third trip to, I don't know, Florida worth it? I would have rather had the life that was fulfilling in the. In. In its everyday fabric. So that's the first E. Economic security. The second, huge expectations, what we expect of ourselves. I had this kind of education. I have to be this kind of professional, or my parents did this and I've got to do that, or my culture tells me I've got to be a doctor or a lawyer or in this city, nobody has that job or whatever. Expectations weigh on us and they're so often BS or so often later in our life, we think, why did I care about that stuff? People got over it five minutes after I announced it. I mean, it's just we're trapped by expectations. That's the gravity that stops us from flight. The third is expedience. Just so much easier. So much easier. Just keep doing what we're doing, you know, not to move, not to go back to school. And our why not? The gravity that holds us back is the fact that life is hard enough as it is. So why would we put something hard in it to get to that why? And our why not overcomes us. And the fourth is events. And that's like, you know, you get laid off or you have a baby, or you find out, you know, you're diagnosed with a chronic illness, diabetes or something, and you think, okay, everything I wanted and hoped for, I can't do anymore. And there's certainly, after you've taken a body blow like that, a period where you're in such shock you can't move forward towards your dreams. You can't take flight. But then a new normal develops. But we don't have the energy or the intention to get back to chasing our dreams and our values again. And so those four horsemen really can get in the way. And they are our why not? And I, I think what Sylvia is saying is that to get people to a place where they can start to really find their purpose, they have to confront, they have to stare into, they have to admit out loud what the why not is. So I actually play a game in my class when I teach becoming you, I teach it two different ways. I teach it at Stern to my MBA students, but I also teach it in open enrollment. We have these things called the three day intensives, where people come from all around the world. You do not, you can't be enrolled in Stern to take this. And they take becoming you in three very fast days. And when I teach it that way, or at nyu, I play a game called Sliding Doors, which is based on this movie that I think it was 1998 that Gwyneth Paltrow was in, where you sort of see two different lives. She could have had one if she. The. The subway doors had not closed, and the others, the subway doors had remained open. Sort of two different versions of life. And so I call this game Sliding Doors. And I ask people in this game, you know, what was your secret crush career? What was the job that you always kind of secretly wanted, but you just didn't go for because of probably one of the four Horsemen or whatever. It's usually one of the Four Horsemen. It's. There's some gravity involved. And every. Nobody ever says, I've got the exact life I want. Everybody writes down a secret crush career, an alternative life. I was. I became an actress, I became a teacher, I became a. A world adventurer, I became a novelist. I. I've seen everything. And then I ask in the second part of the Sliding Doors exercise, well, why didn't you do it? And it's always, my parents told me I couldn't make money. I didn't have the courage. I had a baby. So one of the four horsemen pops up and gallops away with your dream of a life. Now, I'm not saying that any. All of these dreams of a life were things people should pursue because guess what? Maybe they weren't actually good at them. Okay? So maybe somebody wanted to be an actor and actress and that's what they really wanted, but they were kind of terrible at acting and they couldn't read a cue card or whatever it was. So becoming you has three legs to it. It has, you know, what you want to do, your, Your interest and your values. It has what you're good at doing because life's going to be a lot more fulfilling and Successful if you're doing what you're good at doing, and then it has what the world needs and wants, that's your economically viable opportunities. And so there's three legs to this stool. So I'm not saying everybody should have their secret crush career, but we take out that optionality really early on because we rivet our attention on the why not. Okay, so the point here is that what Sylvia is getting at, and I love this question, is you have to ask, what's my why not? Be real. I want you to do that. What's your why not? No excuses. What's the horseman that is galloping away with your life? Do it right now. I don't. Go get that coffee. Let the kids stay in front of the TV for a few more minutes. Okay? Get a piece of paper and write down what is your why not? And what is your flight path that your why not is blocking? And actually, Sylvia goes on to say, what would it take to allow you to break free of that why not? And I'd love you to do that thinking. So I love that question. That's our first one. Let's move on to our second question.

Hi, my name is Chris Reyna. I work as a leadership coach and consultant, as well as the faculty director for our MBA program at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as the executive director for the Institute for Transformative Leadership. And when I'm helping others find their true purpose, I often say we don't have infinite time or infinite money or infinite attention. And so I often help them think, what would it look like if I had more time? What would I do if I had more attention? What would I do if I had more money? What would I do?

First of all, coming off of this great question, I want to say that Chris, like Sylvia, is incredibly smart and we are so lucky to have them as part of the Becoming youg Community. But second, I want to say that I love this question because it's so. It's so counterintuitive. Usually we try to get a purpose in a very reductive way. And I'm talking about usually not in becoming you, but sort of in the common discourse. We ask people, if you only had one month to live, what would you be doing with it? Okay, but Chris's approach, it flips that on its head. It assumes that you are doing right now just the stuff you feel you have to do in life, probably because of one of those horsemen we just talked about. It assumes that you're living a life of emotional and logistical and maybe Financial scarcity. And what Chris's question is saying is, blow that up in your mind and imagine a life of abundance when you have no constraints. Imagine you had all the time, not limited time, Imagine you had all the money, all the energy, and all the attention you wanted. Then what. Then what would your life look like? This is actually kind of a terrifying exercise. I do it in my class when we do an exercise called six Squared. And I want you to do it right now because it reveals all the stuff you're yearning for, but you're leaving on the cutting room floor. Okay, so when I do this in class, I ask people to imagine the life that they totally want, and I tell them not to edit themselves. And I say, just imagine it all worked out for you. And you should see people, they're like, closing their eyes. I'm not kidding. They're struggling. We never let ourselves imagine this. And, you know, I think that the assumption with this question might be in your head. Well, you know, I'm going to imagine going boating more or laying on the beach more, but I. I don't. I don't know if that's necessarily true. I'd love you to try it because I want to know, if you had more time and energy and attention, would you start a business? Would you take a trip? And where would it be now? Actually, when I did this exercise in my class one time, a very successful career woman came to me. She was taking the three day because she was considering a really big promotion, and she had imagined herself having as much time and energy and attention as she possibly could have, not having to leave anything on the cutting room floor. And she said, if I had all the time in the world, I'd go find a husband, because I've always wanted a husband and children. And I put all my attention on building a career because that's all the time I had. That's all the energy I had. And I had to pick one. But if I could do anything. It's very, very interesting. After she went through this process, she decided to take a sabbatical from work and spend the entire year seeing if she could find a partner. I have to check in with her and find out if she has. But I think that this allowing ourselves to imagine a life of abundance can be really, really can really shake us up. All right, you know, what's your. Why People have a little trouble wrapping their head around it, but say, okay, guess what? You have. You have 48 hours in a day, and you have unlimited energy, and money's not an object. What would it be? I love this question, and I want you to stop everything right now and answer it for yourself and find out what's left on the cutting room floor by your why nots. So your mission is to play this game with yourself. What would you do with unlimited time and unlimited energy, unlimited money and unlimited attention? What would you do? You have to access what you hear. First of all. You have to let yourself answer it and what values are being suppressed when you answer. And then I think you should combine your question with why not? Why am I not doing these things I want to do with my one wild and precious life? This is data you have to confront. You cannot let it bubble up in ways where it comes out in really unhealthy manifestations. I told you this was hard stuff. All right, let's end with an unsticking question from one of our Becoming youg coaches. That I am not going to lie. I definitely did not see coming. Okay, here it is.

Hi, my name is Heather Sully. I work as a chief people officer and also have an executive coaching practice. When I'm helping you find your purpose, the one thing I want to know about you is, is what would your dog want for you? The reason I ask this is because I find it hard for people to understand what they want for themselves without judgment or expectations. But your dog does. That's how your dog looks at you. They just love you wholly fully in whatever form you bring. And so it's a way to ask my clients what they actually want without any judgment or expectations. And, Susie, if I was asking you this, I would definitely ask, what does Audrey want for you? Because I feel like Pierre might have a titch of his own judgment.

I think Heather's a genius, and I've never thought of this question before. I think it's a question of genius because it's asking you to do something really interesting. It's asking you to enter the mind of someone who loves you unconditionally and knows you very deeply and to imagine their hopes and desires for you. And the truth is, we do not love ourselves unconditionally a lot of the time, and we do not know ourselves very well a lot of the time. So I love this. And by the way, you can do it even if you don't have a dog. You can do it if you've got a mother or father who loves you this way, if you're very, very lucky, or a partner who loves you this way or a best friend who loves you this way or you Sometimes we have a child who loves us this way. But I think dogs, or maybe a cat, works especially well because they don't have any agenda. All those other people often have an agenda for you. And they don't know about the Horseman. A dog never thinks, why not? They only know you. Now, for the past several months, I have been in a kind of little torment with my dogs because sir has been getting me up between 2 and 4 every morning. Now, Heather mentioned Audrey, but Audrey, she's one of my German shepherds. She's very easy and never gives me a moment's thought. And she doesn't think all that deeply either. And she's right. Also, Heather's right. We cannot pay too much attention to Pierre because he is busy being world famous and he has too much attitude and he's just not a normal dog. And so that leaves sir, my oldest dog. He's my big old German shepherd. I sometimes call him a grumpy bag of bones. And he has been the one getting me up. And I have been assuming that sir was getting me up because he wanted to go outside because he's older. And so I have been getting up every night and between 2 and 4 and I've been trudging down three flights of stairs and throwing them out. And I've been very annoyed. But the weird thing about this is that I do it every single night with him, but I travel a lot. And what I've been hearing from the people who have been taking care of sir while I've been gone is he never does it to them. You know, he's babysat by my daughter and by others, and they don't. He's not getting anybody up between 2 and 4 in the morning except for me. And so the fact that he was not getting anybody up suggested to me that it wasn't actually a physical thing, but whatever, he would still get me up and paw me. And so one morning not too long ago, at 4 in the morning, he did this to me. And I was exhausted and I woke up and I said to him, sir, you're ruining my life. I hate you. I've never said I hate you to an animal in my life. But apparently my phone heard me. And the next morning on TikTok, I was served a video by a, like, a very renowned dog expert. And it asked, like, is your dog waking you up in the middle of the night? Is it actually showed a video. I mean, it actually showed a recreation, a graphic recreation of a dog cawing their owner between, like, in the Middle of the night. And I thought, well, that's exactly what sir does. He comes right up on my bed. He stands over me, and he has a way of sticking his paw, like, in my armpit in a way that cannot be ignored. And, like, breathing really close to my face. And this is exact picture of what would have been happening to me. And the dog expert goes on, and what he says is, this has nothing to do with anything physiological. Your dog does not need to go out. Your dog is waking you up because they sense something is wrong with you. Your breathing is uneven, you're tossing and turning, you're grinding your teeth. You're not yourself. And your dog's worried. Their job is to protect you. I mean, he's a German shepherd. He is a very protective animal to begin with. And what they were saying is, that dog is worried about you. They're waking you up because something's up with you. And I thought, oh, my God, that is what's happening. And I tested it the next night, 3:12, sir comes up on my bed. He starts poking me in the armpit. And I came awake, and I said to him, everything's okay, sweetheart. I'm fine. I'm just very stressed out about work. I love you. Let's go back to bed. And then I patted him, and he flops down, puts his head on my shoulder as usual, and went right back to bed. And so, in fact, my dog, like, knew exactly what was going on. I am. I love my work. I'm building something with becoming you. My team is unbelievable. The growth is amazing to us, and I'm. I'm loving every minute of it. But I'm. I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you. I'm stressed out by it because I've not built a company like this before. And so it's clearly coming out of my sleep. I. I'm doing something between two and four, and my dog knows it. And what my dog wants for me is rest. And my dog wants stillness. He wants peace. He wants my heart to stop pounding all the time. And he wants me to let go of my inner hurricane, even just for a few hours at night. And so I love this question, Heather, and for everybody, because I want you to ask yourself this question. What does your dog want for you? They know you and they see you. And so if you could put yourself in their sweet little furry brain and ask yourself somebody, if somebody loved me unconditionally and knew me fully, what would they want for me? And my dog, with his little paw. You know, he is so right. I need to do that so that I. So that I can keep going. I mean, I. I need. I really want to keep going because I love what we're building and I. I love. I love him now. I'm not mad at sir anymore. And I love you. All right, so I love that third question. I love all the questions in this podcast. And that's exactly where we'll end it. You have your homework, asking yourself these three what's your why not? What would you do if you had unlimited everything? And what does your dog want for you? And if you had any eurekas about these, you can drop them to me in the comments or you can write me@hellouziewelch.com and if you want to learn more about becoming you, and I hope you do, you can check out susiewelch.com, you can subscribe to our newsletter, totally free. You can go to the Becoming youg Labs website and you can watch me on Instagram. And also I think I'm on LinkedIn as well. I'm everywhere there. And so I. I hope you learn more and stick around. Thank you so much for being with us. See you next week. I'm Susie. Welcome.