Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #196| How Discovering Your Primal Question Helps You Go From Overwhelmed to Empowered
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When someone is overwhelmed, it's often because internal needs like safety or worth or purpose are unanswered.
- 0:08Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:19Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:24Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
- 0:29Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:36Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: One of the things that I do a lot in my job is recommend self-help books to people, both to just friends if they're telling me about a problem or something that's really bothering them, or oftentimes to my clients.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: And I actually really love to read them myself.
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: It's like a double win for me because I can always improve and apply things to my own life, and then I can also roll it into my coaching.
- 1:02Michelle Gauthier: So I thought since I have this library in my office and in my head, that I would do a series of Thursday episodes, not necessarily all in a row, but that on some of these shorter Thursday podcasts, that I would give you a summary of a self-help book that I love and have recommended and usually that clients have also used and told me this was a big game changer for me.
- 1:26Michelle Gauthier: So welcome to the first part of that series.
- 1:30Michelle Gauthier: And the book that we're going to be reviewing today is called The Seven Primal Questions by Mike Foster.
- 1:36Michelle Gauthier: Today, when you listen, you'll learn what the book is about.
- 1:39Michelle Gauthier: So I'll give you a high-level summary.
- 1:42Michelle Gauthier: I'll give you some of the key points and what I think is most influential to my particular audience of listeners, all of you, which are overwhelmed working women.
- 1:53Michelle Gauthier: So if we look at this book, and I just find this like a funny and cool thing that seems to happen to me, I will often hear about a book just when I need that exact book.
- 2:04Michelle Gauthier: So maybe someone has said it to me before, but it just didn't stick.
- 2:07Michelle Gauthier: And I can't even remember who recommended this book to be, but I remember reading it cover to cover.
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: It's not a very long book.
- 2:14Michelle Gauthier: Let me see.
- 2:14Michelle Gauthier: I have it in my hand, so I'm gonna look and see how many pages it is.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: It's 200 pages, but this has pretty big print.
- 2:20Michelle Gauthier: It was a pretty quick read, and also it has like drawings and stuff in it.
- 2:24Michelle Gauthier: So anyway, it was a quick read, and I read through the whole thing, and I immediately was like, oh my gosh, I want to talk to every single client I have about this.
- 2:31Michelle Gauthier: It was that good to me.
- 2:33Michelle Gauthier: The book introduces this framework of seven primal questions.
- 2:37Michelle Gauthier: And the idea is that one of these questions, so I'm gonna read you the list of questions, and all of them will be questions that you ask yourself at some point.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: But one of these is probably a question that you're asking yourself.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: That is your primal question that you're asking over and over.
- 2:54Michelle Gauthier: And when you find out what your primal question is, it's usually something that has been triggered early in life and continues to drive you.
- 3:03Michelle Gauthier: So I'm gonna give you the example of what the questions are and then tell you how you can find out what your primal question is, and then what he suggests that we do once we know what our primal question is.
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: So number one is am I safe?
- 3:16Michelle Gauthier: Am I secure?
- 3:18Michelle Gauthier: Am I loved?
- 3:20Michelle Gauthier: Am I wanted?
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: Am I successful?
- 3:23Michelle Gauthier: Am I good enough?
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: And do I have purpose?
- 3:27Michelle Gauthier: Is number seven.
- 3:28Michelle Gauthier: So the author suggests that again, like I've definitely asked myself all those questions at different points in life, but there's usually one core question that really seems to drive us.
- 3:40Michelle Gauthier: And when the answer to that question is yes, we feel very aligned and peaceful and empowered.
- 3:46Michelle Gauthier: When it's no or even a maybe, we enter what the author calls the scramble.
- 3:51Michelle Gauthier: So patterns of stress and people pleasing and overgiving and self-doubt and chaos.
- 3:55Michelle Gauthier: So this really relates to what I talk about, because if your question, your primal question is, am I safe?
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: And that doesn't necessarily have to mean physically safe, emotionally safe.
- 4:06Michelle Gauthier: So if you're in a situation where you're constantly asking yourself, am I safe?
- 4:10Michelle Gauthier: And the answer that's coming back is no, in order to make yourself safe, what you might do is overperform, people please, overgive, have a lot of self-doubt, and just create chaos in your life without even meaning to.
- 4:26Michelle Gauthier: So I'm going to give you an example of someone who I worked with, and her main question was number three, am I loved?
- 4:33Michelle Gauthier: And remember, this is a question that you're constantly asking yourself.
- 4:36Michelle Gauthier: So maybe you're asking about your spouse or your kids or your family or even at work, am I loved?
- 4:42Michelle Gauthier: And if you feel like the answer is no, because someone at work has given you feedback you didn't like or criticism, the kind of scramble, the kind of unhealthy behaviors that that will drive are like perfectionism and people pleasing and doing all these things, bending over backwards so that the answer to that question of am I loved can be yes.
- 5:01Michelle Gauthier: So it's an attempt to make the answer to that question as yes.
- 5:04Michelle Gauthier: So, what to do about this?
- 5:06Michelle Gauthier: What the author really encourages us to do is find out which primal question is yours, and then understand the triggers and patterns tied to that question.
- 5:16Michelle Gauthier: So, what happens when you ask your primal question?
- 5:19Michelle Gauthier: Let's say yours is, am I successful?
- 5:21Michelle Gauthier: And you feel like the answer is no.
- 5:22Michelle Gauthier: What happens?
- 5:23Michelle Gauthier: What do you do when that happens?
- 5:26Michelle Gauthier: And then taking your primal question and turning it from a question into an affirmation.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: So for example, Am I loved?
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: turns into I am loved.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: I am wanted, I am successful, I am good enough, I have purpose in my life, whatever your question is, to turn it into instead of a question, a mantra.
- 5:50Michelle Gauthier: The other thing that the author notes, which I think is really good because this isn't a book that's just like, hey, here's your question and here's the problem that you have because of it.
- 5:57Michelle Gauthier: He also helps us recognize the primal gift that often emerges from that core question.
- 6:03Michelle Gauthier: So for example, if your core question is, Am I loved?
- 6:07Michelle Gauthier: You probably have a gift to make other people feel very loved and secure.
- 6:11Michelle Gauthier: Am I safe?
- 6:12Michelle Gauthier: You're probably a person who can make other people feel very safe.
- 6:16Michelle Gauthier: So he gives us both the ups and the downs of what our core question is, and then how to turn it around and use it to your advantage.
- 6:26Michelle Gauthier: Imagine if your core question was, Am I loved?
- 6:28Michelle Gauthier: and you were able to do the work to believe that you are loved, that you're always loved, how much time that would save you, and how much less stress you would have if you just walked around the world knowing that you were securely loved.
- 6:42Michelle Gauthier: So, why does this matter for my overwhelmed working woman audience?
- 6:46Michelle Gauthier: I think that when someone is overwhelmed, it's often because multiple internal needs like safety or worth or purpose are unanswered.
- 6:55Michelle Gauthier: So they're constantly reacting and trying to do things, say yes to things in order to solve that problem.
- 7:01Michelle Gauthier: So if you can get to the root of what your primal question is and then start using it as a mantra and seeing the positives of that primal question, then you can really use it to your advantage and reduce the stress and overwhelm in your own life.
- 7:17Michelle Gauthier: This is a great book.
- 7:19Michelle Gauthier: I definitely recommend it.
- 7:20Michelle Gauthier: I will put a link in the show notes to a quiz that you can take that the author has put out where you can figure out what your primal question is and then a link to the book.
- 7:29Michelle Gauthier: I put a post out on social media that includes all of the books that I'm going to review so far.
- 7:36Michelle Gauthier: And I have asked people to give me their suggestions for books that really change their lives or books that you're just curious and would like to hear a summary about.
- 7:45Michelle Gauthier: I've gotten some great feedback and added a couple to my list.
- 7:48Michelle Gauthier: So I would love if you sent me a message to tell me what book you would love to see on the list, or if you just go to that post, it's on Instagram and LinkedIn.
- 7:57Michelle Gauthier: If you go to that post on my social media and let me know what books you'd like to hear about, I would love to summarize those for you too.
- 8:04Michelle Gauthier: All right, I hope you are successful in finding your primal question and turning it around to be your primal gift.
- 8:11Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 8:17Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 8:20Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
- 8:26Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.