How can you be a better you? In this episode, host Phoebe Mroczek talks about a fun trick that she has discovered to help you get answers to life’s biggest questions. Offering alternative questions to life’s big questions, she also teaches how to be better versions of yourself. Have a conversation with yourself and ask, “What do I really want, who am I really, and why am I here?” This episode will help you understand and inspire you to create alternative questions so you can get better answers.

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A Better Approach | Alternatives To Life’s Biggest Questions

On this episode, we are talking about a fun trick that I’ve discovered to help you break down life’s biggest questions. Grab a pen and paper or your episode integration worksheet and let’s get this party started.

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I can’t wait to dive into this very important topic about life’s biggest questions. We all know the phrase, the quote by Tony Robbins that says, “The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself.” I have three major questions that come up for me all the time and also for my clients. I want to share an alternative approach to answering those big questions. Before we jump into this episode, I want to give thanks to those of you who have been sharing this show on your Instagram Stories through email to a couple of email lists. It’s so interesting when I see a spike in the numbers and then I have to go and do a little research to see who is sharing, where that’s coming from. I do know when I see my little inbox on Instagram be full of people mentioning me and this show, it shows me that whatever I’m talking about that week is resonating.

If our show resonates with you, please do me a favor and do the people around you a favor and share the show. Some of the things we’re talking about are so important that I only have a certain amount of reach, but I rely heavily on the hope that what I’m delivering is of value to you and anything of value. Personally, I love sharing with the people I care most about, whether that’s the people in your life, being your family, your friends, your clients or whatever it is. I ask that you be somebody of service and of enormous value that I know you are and share the show. That is how this show grows. That’s how we get more opportunities and also how we get better guests on the show. Thank you for doing that. I have called out a couple of people in the last few episodes, so I’m not going to do that now, but I do want to let you know that it does not go unnoticed. I see you.

Thank you so much for being such a huge part of this show. I appreciate it. With that said, the people who have left reviews, I think we’re almost at 100. My goal for the 100th episode is to have 100 reviews. That’s also only in the US market. I can only see the US ones, so that’s how I am counting them technically. Everyone else, if you are out of the country, wherever you’re listening to this and you have left a review, I saw that and it comes through every week. Thank you for those reviews. If you’re here in the US, please take a moment and do me a massive favor and to your yourself. Whatever we give we get. If you want a review or you want positive feedback, then you might as well leave positive feedback for me. If you like the show, wherever you are, leave a review. It means so much and it only takes just a second. I consider reviews to be a tip jar. Until there are tip jars on podcast apps, which I won’t get too much into it, but it’s in the works and until we have that, consider your review a free tip to me. It’s a win-win situation for us both.

I do want to put it out there that I am looking for some opportunities to speak and to be of value to other organizations, schools and universities. I’ve been approached by my own alma mater, which has been pretty cool to talk hopefully, in 2020 at their Business Week. We’ll see how that goes. I have put myself forward in so many different arenas that I thought the one place that people listened to me every week is here on the show. If there are any opportunities that you’re like, “This would be great locally for me or in my community or even virtually.” I’m trying to do more in-person stuff because I love to actually put a face to some of these names that I see popping up each week. If there are any opportunities, send me a message, let me know. I would love to meet you in person and to help your community either in business or with some life and personal development. Those are my two real passions among many other passions that I have at the moment and those could change. However, I do want to mention that here as you’re reading this that I am available for that.

Also with the conversation about traveling, I’m thinking about doing a live tour. I was at Podcast Movement and there were a couple of shows that took their shows on the road. I thought, “What better way to actually come and meet you than to do a live tour.” That is in my periphery maybe for 2020. If you want to be a stop on the tour, reach out to me and let me know. I am most active through Instagram. You can find me @PhoebeMroczek. I would love to meet you and to come and record an episode live. Maybe have some people come up and I can ask them questions and I can give my insights. We would just have the most fun time ever and then maybe a couple of coffees or cocktails after the show. I want to throw those out there as possibilities for us to get together. If you’re here in Austin, Texas, I would love to meet you as well. That’s probably the easiest way to make it happen, but I do realize that you are probably reading this from somewhere else in the world and no place is off-limits and I truly mean that. I’ve been all over the world, in 70 countries and I love to travel. I love to see people in person.

What Do You Want?

Let’s go ahead and get into the show. I am excited about this conversation because it’s something that has been building for many months now. I have been sharing these thoughts with my clients. A lot of times, I like to share things and test it out first before I put it on the show and sometimes, I just decide to go for it and we’ll see what happens and see what the feedback is like and how many people are sharing the show or commenting or responding on Instagram or through email and sometimes Facebook. This one is important to me because I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I go to these personal development workshops or these business training, I’m listening to all this stuff and they’re asking the same questions over and over. Personally, “What do you want?” is a very impactful question. I don’t think enough people consider what they actually want and if you don’t know what you want, you don’t know how to get there. You don’t know what actions to take and that’s when we feel stuck.

If I sit in front of you face-to-face and I keep asking you, “What do you want?” I have found that sometimes it loses its magic. It loses its ability to actually inspire a response. I know what I have said through all of these personal development training. I was having this conversation with a girlfriend and we were talking about, “What do you want?” That’s what she asked me. I said, “It’s so interesting. Every time somebody asked me that, I go to my default answer, which sounds good.” The answer that I say in many personal development workshops or have in business training and all of these things and masterminds and whatnot, “I want to create adventure experiences for entrepreneurs.” That is such a pre-packaged bubble-wrapped fancy way to get everyone off my back because it feels concise and people are like, “She knows exactly what she’s going for.” When in reality, what I want has changed so much. Permission for you to change your mind. I say that probably once in an episode because I do think it’s important that we have that permission and this adventure experiences for entrepreneurs. That is also happening. It doesn’t always have to look a certain way. It can evolve and change.

When I hear myself say that, it’s almost like I roll my eyes in my head because I know that’s not the truth based on where I am now. We can continue to ask ourselves the, “What do you want?” question, “What do I want? What do you want?” We can have somebody sit in front of us, whether that’s a coach, a friend, a colleague, a peer, whatever, asking us, “Ask me what I want. Is that it? Is there anything else?” For me, it loses its magic, but it also loses the charge. Because I’ve heard it so much, I start to tune it out. I was thinking, “What is an alternative way to asking the same question or to getting the same answer?” I came up with the question, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” It’s almost a game and here’s how this game works. If you’re by yourself, it works. If you’re with friends, it works. It puts you in a really vulnerable state, which is where I believe the most empowering and the most honest answers come out.

If we inspire play and if we all just played a little bit more, that’s what we’re designed to do. As kids, we’re in our natural state. If you are a fan of this show and a fan of the concept of the show, you know that the quote that I have modeled the show after is the Paulo Coelho quote, “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s actually about unbecoming everything that isn’t you, so you can be who you are meant to be in the first place.” If we look at the origin of that quote and we consider who it is that has come into this world in an unbecoming setting, who has already unbecome, it’s the little kids in us. It’s the little two to three-year-old kids.

 

We know that the majority of our developmental growth happens before the age of seven. All of those patterns and beliefs happen before then. We look at that and we say, “These kids are the representation of who we are at the core and they are not sitting down journaling. They’re not sitting down and rubbing crystals together, meditating their way to the top and meditating their way to what they actually want. They’re going out and they’re playing.” Play is our natural state. It’s adding a little bit more play to these serious questions.

One of the hardest things that I have around personal development and growth is that it all feels heavy and serious a lot. There are a lot of tears for me and in all of the conferences. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve spent a lot of money in personal growth and development because I love it so much. In those conversations, we leave and we go home and we think, “I’m exhausted from thinking, from crying and from digging through those painful memories oftentimes and the mess.” What if we just made everything a little bit lighter and we actually had fun discovering who it is that we are and what it is that we want? In this question, “What do we want?” the game that I created was, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” Here’s how I play is I get one of those big poster boards and I write at the top, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” and I label everything. I set a timer, I put some music on, I light some candles, I do all the things to make me feel safe and also light and fun.

I’ll put some music on. I don’t like music with lyrics when I’m doing creative stuff like this because my natural inclination is to sing to the music or to think in terms of lyrics. What I want is the honest truth of who I am to come through in what I’m writing down. If writing doesn’t work for you, maybe it’s sitting on the couch and thinking through all of these things. It’s important for me to capture what I’m actually thinking and feeling. One of my things was, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I aged backward and look 28 forever?” It brings this lightness. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I made $1 million in the next 90 days by not changing anything that I’m doing?” I say, “That would be awesome.”

I can also play and expand my vision into some fun things. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if all of my friends had babies in the next year and I got to be the best aunt ever?” I’m just making things up off the top of my head. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I got a Netflix series and all of a sudden was helping people film and create a version of their life that they didn’t even see possible?” That would be awesome. I’m looking at my office, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I no longer had chairs in my office and I only sat on pillows?”

It’s the stupidest things that can come out. We get to look through and sift through some of those things that it gets us out of the left-brain logic into the right-brain creativity because that is where we are able to see beyond what we know possible. We are able to see past all of these beliefs that we think things need to look and feel a certain way and into this creative version of who we are. If you have friends that want to play this game and I actually was just talking to a good friend of mine here who was looking for some exercises for entrepreneurs in Austin to get out of their heads. We were talking about being on a boat every Wednesday at a specific time and we’re going to bring together the connectors here in Austin. He was like, “I don’t want it to be classical, what we would consider networking.” He wants to pull people out of their shell and I said, “I have the best exercise. It’s called, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?”

Inspire play and just play a little bit more; that's what we're designed to do. Click To Tweet

We would go around in a circle and set a timer for ten minutes. I have two of my clients coming and maybe by the time this blog has been published, it also may have already happened. My plan is to have this exercise and the three of us are going to go around in a circle for ten minutes because it feels light and fun. It’s what we want comes out of that. If I tell you that I want my whole office instead of a chair and a desk and whatever to actually be pillows and for it all to be white, what does that tell me? We’re not going to overthink it, but I want my business to look a different way than it does at the moment.

Maybe sometimes it feels a little rigid with a desk and a bookshelf and all of my things around and I want it to feel more fun, playful, comfortable and safe. We can read through the lines, but we’ve got to get that bigger picture out. The way that we do that is through fun and play. You can play this with your friends and it also brings the level of depth. I strive to create in my friendships is to bring that level of depth, understanding and vulnerability out in a way that feels a little scary but within a safe environment. All of this play helps me personally get there with my friends.

When you’re ready and if you’re doing this on your own and you put, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if” at the top and then you just go nuts. Write in different colors or let your brain turn off for a second and let the intuitive right-brain side come through your pen, come through the pictures you’re painting, whatever it is. When you’re ready, see if you can assign one action item to each thing. I’m going to use this example now throughout because it’s a little ridiculous that I want my office to be full of pillows. I can look at that and be like, “What could I change? I’m going to take the bookshelf out because maybe it feels a little rigid. Maybe I’m going to add a pillow to my chair. What is one action item that we can take?”

I got this from this friend who has the boat and we were talking about it and he actually wrote to me. It truly brought a tear to my eye. He said, “I want to thank you. During my meditation this morning, I focused on the question, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if?’ and spent about 30 minutes thinking of things. Once I came out, I decided to journal on them. As crazy as the notions and desires went, there’s one action item to almost every one of them. It’s amazing, you made my day.” Getting that text, I can’t even put words to it. Just the fact knowing that there was something that I did that impacted him and now he’s going to take more steps in the direction of what he wants is so inspiring. It’s so exciting to me and it fills me with such joy.

The action items are just the bonus. What we need to do is get all of the mess that’s in our head that’s tangled so tightly. We need to unwind that. I always think of it as like a big ball of yarn. We start by pulling the end and seeing where the ball of yarn takes us. If we look at that, it is all this exercise is designed to do and to create for you. What we look for now is then the left-brain logic wants to come in and evaluate everything. Some things look crazy and my crazy notions and desires that he texted me, they’re not crazy. There is some truth behind everything, behind every joke, every throwaway comment. There’s a little bit of truth in that.

 

Before you get in a rush, immediately assign an action item. Even if I give you the homework to put an action item behind it, you’re naturally going to go into that state before you even start the exercise. I don’t want you to do that. I’ve never assigned an action item to any of those things. There are two approaches. He decided to make that call, to assign an action item. However, I look at that list all the time and there are some things I laugh at. They’re like, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I aged backward and looked 28 forever?” “What? Why did I write that? I don’t know.” In that moment, that’s what felt important to me to write down.

I actually don’t assign action items, but if you want to go back and I would encourage you or invite you to give it even three days. Don’t be in a rush to assign an action item. Here’s another version. We’re going to get off the “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” but I want to encourage you to try that. Even if nothing good comes out and whatever we label is good. It’s all a label, all the meaning-making machine that is our brain trying to create something from nothing and from just words on a paper. Please try this exercise. Even if it doesn’t work for you the first time, whatever that means, try again in a couple of days. See what comes out and grab some friends. That’s another way that you can do it.

Under the umbrella of what do you want, here’s another great thing that I have worked through, which is to follow the envy. We are told all the time that we shouldn’t envy people because it’s negative and we’re as good as them and all of this stuff. The truth is we all have it and I don’t care who you are. There’s somebody that pops up on your Facebook, your Instagram or whatever that you’re like, “I wish I had that,” or that makes you feel that type of way. When we can look at the, “Who do you admire?” because that is obviously a lighter, nicer, more positive approach, but I have found personally asking myself, “Who do I feel jealous of? Who am I envious of?” That leads me quicker to the path of what I want. What I think of is, “Who do I feel envious of?”

I was doing this exercise with one of my friends and I said to her, “Sometimes I envy Rachel Hollis.” If you don’t know her, you should. She wrote the book, Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing. The thing is what I am envious of when I go there and I put myself in her shoes and when I look objectively at why I envy certain things. I’m going to go here because I wasn’t planning on it, but I might as well. What I envy about her is that it seems like she’s got a great home life. She’s got a supportive husband. She’s got amazing kids. Obviously, we can always say, the grass is greener or it always looks great, but we just remove all of that judgment and I say, “What am I envious of?”

I’m envious that she has some bestselling books. That’s awesome. When we talk about envy, it feels negative and it feels heavy. What if we remove those feelings and say, “This is a magnifying glass for what I really want?” She’s got the books. She’s got a loyal cult following. She’s got people that believe in her and are taking action. She is not somebody who’s just preaching to the masses and nobody’s taking action. They’re signing up for her events. She has these massive live events that have thousands of women and men and she’s carved a unique path for herself. She has shut out all the noise and gone her own way. I’m very envious of that. Those feelings I think are normal.

Envy is a shortcut to the things that we want. Click To Tweet

I’m trying to normalize those feelings in my own head because I actually don’t think envy is a bad thing. I think it’s a shortcut to the things that we want. Ultimately at the end of the day, I look at that and I say, “Here’s what I want. I want a supportive partner and family. That matters to me. That’s what I want. What else do I want? I want people that subscribe to what I’m talking about and are taking action, are implementing some of the crazy thoughts and ideas that I have and putting that into practice in their own life. She’s having such an amazing impact. I want that too.”

I look at her books and what is it about? “Do I want to be an author? I do.” I love to write. She’s just gone and done it. She sold out on QVC or something crazy like that. I think about it and I’m like, “Do I want to be on QVC with a clothing line?” I don’t know. Maybe. There’s something about that that I see that I’m like, “She’s building an empire. That’s what I want.” What does that mean for you? Follow the envy. Who are you envious of? Who do you listen to? Rachel Hollis is a very small person in the grand scheme of things and I’m like, “That’s what I want.”

It’s basically real-life vision boarding. It’s no longer cutting things out of a magazine, but it’s thinking things through to put on your mental vision board. Those are things apparently that I want. Who knew? I just knew that if I identified somebody that I envy that there are characteristics. If you’ve ever heard the work of John Demartini, he talks about normalizing things and that with every positive there’s a negative. I’m sure that having four kids looks beautiful and they have a beautiful family but there is probably a downside of that too. I’m not even going to look at that right now because I’m not trying to equalize or normalize anything. It all comes out in the wash. This is getting back to, “What do I want?”

My invitation to you is to look at the people in your newsfeed, the people that you pay attention to, whose books you’re reading, who you see at a restaurant, even strangers. You’re like, “She looks cute. He’s got it put together.” Think of all of the things under that. Why is it that came to your attention? What are you telling yourself about that person and how does that apply to your life and what you want? We can look at who we admire, but why don’t we look at who we feel jealous of and let’s normalize that? Let’s call it out, call it like it is. That happens and it’s a feeling that everybody has.

The next part of this, “What do you want?” is to follow the feelings rather than the outcome. How do we want to feel in our life? If I say I want to feel inspiring, I want to feel creative and intuitive like I’m making a difference. I want to feel important. I want to feel significant. All of these things that I want to feel, those are now the guiding feelings that are helping me make better decisions in my life and business. We can list all of those out. List them all out on a piece of paper. I love to journal, so that’s how I do it. I also love to paint. That’s a recent thing. That’s only a couple months old, but I’m going to own that. When we get to the, “How do you want to feel?” and you’ve listed all these things out or drawn them or whatever, then the next question becomes, “Is there a better way to achieve that or is there a faster way to achieve that?” My favorite, “Is there an easier way to achieve that feeling?”

 

Let’s say for me, I want to feel rich. It means a lot of different things. Rich in my relationships, rich in my business, rich in life, rich in love, rich in significance, so many different things. I noticed through a conversation that I had with a friend of mine when we were mapping out our whole lives and going through this and if you don’t have friends like that, you need to find some. If you don’t know how, ask me and I’ll tell you and I’ll create it because I want a community, this Rachel Hollis type cult following of people that want the same things in life and are committed to taking actions towards those things.

In that conversation, we were talking about how I want to feel. When I was talking about the Netflix, I want a Netflix series. Why? What is the feeling associated with that outcome? With Netflix, I want to impact a lot of people. I want them to see what their real gift is. I want to tell a better story and asking people tell different stories. It’s not just a story about me, it’s not about the fame. For me, it’s about highlighting other people and fanning the flame of empowering people so that the viewers or the listeners feel empowered to take action.

“Does it have to be Netflix?” “No, it doesn’t.” These are questions that one of my girlfriends and I were going through, “No, it doesn’t have to be that way.” “Is there an easier way to achieve that same feeling?” Yeah. If I just grew this show and was impacting people that were taking action and felt empowered to make better decisions in the direction of what they want. Do I really need Netflix? No, but I have hinged so much of my identity and my goals and my dreams on this one thing, which is not a great way to go through life. Because then what you’re telling the universe is that you know better and the universe, God, whoever you believe in, you’re like, “I know better so it has to look this one way.”

At the end of the day, is my heart going to be broken if Netflix never comes banging on my door? Of course not. I know that there are other areas. This is right-brain creative thinking that is like, “If it doesn’t look like this, what other ways could it look?” It expands your level of possibility, expands the responses or the answers, or the way that other ways that could show up for you. Is there another better, faster, easier, cheaper, insert whatever adjective you want to put in there to achieve that same feeling? Then continue to ask yourself, “What else is possible?” I love that question. Just keep going down that train. If you’re like, “It’s pulling the yarn.” I want to feel significant. There are other ways for me to do that. I want to feel like I’m inspiring people to take action. “Are there other ways to do that than Netflix?” “Yes.” “What other ways?” “Through the podcast, through the books I’m going to write, through showing up live on Facebook, through my Instagram posts, through my communities that I’m building, through my clients. What else is possible?”

Who Are You Really?

Keep asking yourself until all of a sudden at the end of the day you’re going to be like, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if?” and then you’re like, “Wow,” full-circle moment where now we’re tying all the pieces together. This is the beauty of taking the time to refine your goals, visions, dreams, and we’re going to get into that. That’s all I have for the, “What do you want?” question. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if? Who are you envious of? How do you want to feel and is there a better, faster, easier way to achieve that feeling? Then ultimately, what else is possible?” The second question that I tend to see here in all of these personal development things is, “Who are you really?” I ask this question at the beginning of all my interviews because first of all, it sets the tone for the show and it brings that level of depth right off the bat. That’s why I love asking that question.

Follow your feelings rather than the outcome. Click To Tweet

I find that people tend to struggle a little bit through that. Everyone’s like, “Oh God.” It’s the same response because it’s unusual for an episode to start off that way or for an interview. Whenever I’m in an interview being interviewed on different podcasts and shows and masterminds and training and stuff, the first question is always, “Phoebe Mroczek, how do you say your last name?” It’s always the same thing, but I don’t actually care about any of that, any of the surface level stuff. Let’s just drop right into it.

If you are wondering how you would answer that question. If I brought you on the show and I said, “Who are you really?” Would you get uncomfortable? If yes, cool. Me too. It’s designed to do that. I have a couple of questions that I have used to figure that out for myself and it’s a practice. Unbecoming is a practice. I talk about that all the time and that’s in the intro. It’s the practice of releasing judgments, expectations, past conditioning to find out who you are at the core so that you can create this more meaningful life and business. That’s ultimately what we’re out to create is more meaning. I asked myself, “How do I consistently show up for myself and others?” It’s important, that first point, “How do I consistently show up for myself? Am I putting things that I say I want on the back burner all the freaking time?” That’s not good. That’s putting my own dreams.

I’m basically pursuing something inconsistently. We all know that first of all I wouldn’t do it to a friend. I don’t like to show up inconsistently for my friends. I like to be that unwavering support that they need whenever. I am a 4:00 AM friend is what I call it. If you don’t have 4:00 AM friends in your life that if something happened at 4:00 AM, you know you could call them unless my phone is on Airplane mode or the sound machine is too loud or something. Normally, I am that kind of friend. You can call me at any time. I’m very reliable. I can say that I’m reliable to everybody else but am I reliable to myself? I’ve gotten so much better. If you had asked me that question a few years ago, definitely not. I was the last person on my totem pole and that’s so backward. How you show up for yourself is how you show up for others. How you show up for others is how you show up for yourself. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

That is a great way to see who you are is how you show up. Sometimes that will change, the version of us, the evolved version that we want to be better and we all make mistakes. That version that we want to be better can dictate who we are or who we want to be but who we are really. The first step of the unbecoming process is the audit. We have to assess where we are in life and how we’ve been showing up. Who are we really? I think a lot of us lie to ourselves and say that we are this unwavering support, but at the end of the day is that how you show up across all relationships, across all areas of your life? If it’s not, then maybe you need to reconsider or reevaluate. This is the tough love that we all need sometimes in our life.

I’m saying this to you as much as I’m saying it to myself. I love having this show because I listen back to my episodes and a couple of weeks later I’m like, “I needed to hear that.” My belief and my trust is that somebody needs to hear what I’m talking about. That’s always whenever I turn on the microphone, that’s the way I do things. “Have I consistently shown up for myself and others? Also, what habits have I built that honor my greatest values?” I got this question from the interview that I had with Jon Vroman. If you haven’t yet read that interview, go read it because he talks about how we build habits and then those dictate our actions and those all need to be in alignment with our values. That’s something I talk about all the time and the way he encapsulated it I thought was beautifully done. Go read that episode.

 

You are your habits. You are how you consistently show up. That is a great question to figure out who you really are and then also how do you spend most of your time and money? I always say I can tell who you are and what you value by your calendar and your bank statements. If you looked right now at my calendar and my bank statements, I can tell you what I value. I value personal growth and development. I value myself. I’ve been doing a lot of self-care, booked out my mornings for a lot of this. I value business and being of service. I value creativity. I block out time for creativity, for this painting thing that I’ve been talking about. I think that might be its own episode because it’s cool some of the things that have come out of that. That’s how I spend a lot of my time. My money is spent in safety and security like rent. I love where I live. It’s spent traveling. I value travel and adventure and then a lot of personal growth and development. I spent a lot of money in that. I spend a lot of money in my own spiritual development. Where do you spend your time and money?

We can take it a little higher level, “How do I hope people describe me at the end of my life? Who are you really? In that conversation, it’s how are you showing up. We can also go back to that question that I asked about the, “Who do you envy?” If you’re envious of somebody, that’s going to tell you who you really are. I’m not envious of a violin player in an orchestra. There are parts of that I’m like, “He or she is in the moment and I’m envious of their presence or whatever.” In reality, I have never thought about that person in the orchestra because that’s not my path. Whereas somebody who is doing all the things that I want to do, that’s the piece of the puzzle that you’ve been missing and you only have a reaction because it’s a reflection of who you are. How do you hope people describe you at the end of your life and looking at other people to see how you see them? How you see them is how you see yourself.

If I had to give you a couple of building blocks and we wiped out all of your past and wiped out all of your future and you only had now, what three building blocks would you include in terms of your identity? What three values would you put together? I liken it to dumping your purse out on the table or your suitcase or whatever. I tell this to my clients, “I don’t care what you put back in the purse or back in the suitcase as long as it’s intentional.” This is a great question for communities or in your own friend group if you’re having a girls’ night in or you’re doing a dinner with a bunch of people to get vulnerable and bring the conversation to a depth that I believe most people want. We want that real true connection.

That question is something that came from a gentleman that I met here in Austin who I interviewed for my new show called New To. I went over to his house to meet his family for dinner and he said to me, “Phoebe, you seem really well put together. What area of your life are you not put together in?” I was like, “I’m going to delay it for a minute because I’m thinking, but that’s a great question. I’m going to use that in more of my conversations with other people,” and so I have. I’ve probably asked that question ten times because it brings that depth, it brings that vulnerability and oftentimes we have to go first.

When he asked me that question, I immediately jumped to the area of my life that I feel like I’m not put together in. I went first, then he went first, then his wife and then his daughter and it was such a much more impactful conversation. Goals and dreams are important. We were bumping up against some real vulnerability there and that opened the flood gates. It became a much more impactful, inspiring, honest conversation. If you’re sitting around with a group of friends, I would invite you to ask that question and then go first because the depth that you are willing to go is what opens the invitation for everyone else to go just as deep. “What is one area of your life that you’re not put together in?” and that will tell you who you really are. That wraps up the, “Who are you really?” question.

How you show up for others is how you show up for yourself. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Click To Tweet

The last one is, “Why am I here?” What I hear a lot of people saying is, “What is your vision, your legacy, your purpose?” insert whatever word feels the most honest to you. I have struggled with this so much. The concept of purpose is something I speak very openly about because I don’t believe that we should be chasing our purpose or that it’s something that we’re trying to get a grip on or we’re trying to catch it or whatever. To me, I hear and feel so much pressure. I have always felt that. In any conversation that I’ve ever been in any mastermind, seminar or whatever, when people are like, “This is my purpose,” it gives me such anxiety because I don’t believe that I have this one thing. What I do know is that I have a passion for several things.

Why Am I Here?

When I talk about your vision or your legacy, the legacy for me doesn’t resonate as much. I’m going to make a sweeping generalization. With the male clients that I’ve worked with, I find legacy to resonate more strongly with them than it does with my female audience. When I speak to my female audience, vision or purpose seems to resonate more. Whatever that word is for you or maybe it’s just the, “Why am I here?” conversation, which I have a lot with myself and with my friends. One of the questions that has come up for me a lot has been, “What is one issue or problem that creates a real visceral reaction in my body?” Not in my head, but it’s something that’s uncontrollable. That when somebody says something I’m like, “Oh God.” Maybe it’s not plastic straws, that problem in my life is not a real issue for me. It doesn’t create that discomfort in my body. When I hear about kids not getting an education or poverty or anything having to do with sick kids, anything having to do with people not really fulfilling on their purpose or not believing in themselves or talking negatively. Even saying that brings up tears in my eyes. I feel a tightening in my chest. That is what I’m talking about.

If you don’t know what that is for you, then that’s okay. This is why my conversations are here to activate something in you to dig a little bit deeper than where you’ve gone potentially before. Maybe if you’ve already asked yourself these questions, it’s an invitation to do it again. What is one issue or problem or something going on in the world that creates that response in your body, whether that’s the tightening of your chest, whether that’s your palm starts sweating? You feel generally uncomfortable when that conversation comes up. Maybe for you, it is plastic straws and that’s awesome because we need someone to care about that. Maybe it’s the environment, maybe it’s the burning of the Amazon, maybe it’s an illness. Whatever it is for you, know that there is something in that for you. When I see people not believing in themselves and not going after what they want, that puts a pit in my stomach. It’s this heaviness where I feel I could cry over the microphone. We’re so much better than that. I believe so strongly in people that when they don’t believe in themselves, it makes me want to cry. That’s the first part.

“What are you doing or what are you talking about when time seems to fly?” That for me is such an easy answer. I don’t know if that is the case for you too. For me, what I’m talking about when time flies is this visioning this, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if? What do we want out of the world and our life?” When I lived in China from 2010 to 2013, my friends called it the Phoebe Corner. It’s because whenever I would have too many beverages, they’d be like, “I got Phoebe cornered last night.” I remember being embarrassed about that and I’ve mentioned it on a couple of episodes. There was a lot of truth in that for me, which was when I have had too many Baijius, which if you don’t know what that is, it’s like Chinese vodka. It’s gross.

If I had had too much of that or too many beers, I would corner people, not in a creepy way, but talk to them about either how much I love them or what they want out of life. I thought, “All I want is connection.” That’s what that tells me that I give a crap about what you want out of life. If you were here and we were having too many cocktails or even just coffee at a coffee shop, all I would want to talk to you about was who you really are, what your real gifts are and how do we communicate that in an authentic way. That is all I want to talk about.

 

It starts with connection. I want you to know that you’re safe here, that I’m a good friend of yours, that you can tell me anything. Nothing is off-limits. I want you to feel that connection with me. That’s why I’m going to tell you how much I like you. That goes back to some of my personal stuff, which is like you should never leave a conversation where somebody doesn’t know how you feel about them. That’s my personal communication and how I want people to feel connected to me. The other side of that, which is how I want you to express your thoughts, feelings and dreams and how can we make that happen? How can I fan your flame? I’m sharing all of these not to tell you how wonderful I am. You might be hearing this and you could have one or three responses like, “Me too. I’m with you,” and another part that’s like, “No, this doesn’t resonate at all, but here’s a conversation.” Then if you’re like, “That’s the worst.”

Hopefully, you’re in one of the other two camps. I’m hoping that this is inspiring you to have that conversation with yourself, “Why are you here? What’s your vision, purpose, legacy or whatever word you want to use? How could you be of service now? How could you support one person now?” When I’ve always heard the, “What is your purpose?” I focused so much on the utility and what that means and then breaking that down, the total left-brain logic, “What is that? How do I break it down?” I compartmentalize. I’m like, “Three action steps that I can do every day. How am I building the habit?” What that loses is the spontaneity. What it loses is the real feeling and emotion behind why that’s important to me. Rather than searching for all the answers, just being in the answer. Being in the service rather than searching for what that service could mean or what that could lead to, it’s being in it.

That feels true for me because for so long I’ve been trying to create this overarching mission statement that sounds amazing and it’s going to impress everybody. When you ask me what my purpose is, I’m going to have this perfectly crafted mission or vision statement and then you’re going to be impressed and you’re going to think I’m smart and all this stuff, rather than doing the thing and figuring it out on the way. Collecting the breadcrumbs, seeing where that leads, pulling the piece of yarn to get back to why we’re doing the things that we’re doing and who we’re being in that moment. Get out of the doing and into the being is the overarching theme of this show. There are so many questions that we ask ourselves and those are the three questions that I pulled out. “What do you want? Who are you really and why am I here?” If we can look at that and extract it, pull it out and examine it from all different angles, maybe we can find that the answers that we want are there within us. We just haven’t been asking the right questions.

As Tony Robbins says, and the way that I opened the show, “The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you’re asking yourself.” If you’ve been feeling stuck, feeling stifled or unsure of who you are, what you want or why you’re here, I hope that this episode helped you understand or inspired you to create alternative questions to get better answers. Thank you so much for being here. If this episode resonated with you, please share this show. You can share it on Instagram or Facebook. You can even text message your friends. I do it all the time. I’m like, “Susie, I know that we were having these conversations at dinner the other night and I heard this episode. It made me think of you. Skip to minute 34 or listen to the whole thing, whatever.” The way that we create a deeper connection with the people that we care about is through day-to-day engagement. If this episode resonates with you, I’m sure it will resonate with your friends too. Hopefully, it will bring a new layer of depth to the conversations and the connections that you have. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. I can’t wait to see you on another episode. Thank you so much.

Important Links:

• Podcast Movement
• Girl, Wash Your Face
• Girl, Stop Apologizing
• www.UnbecomingPodcast.com/itunes
• www.Instagram.com/phoebemroczek