May 15, 2023 • 50 mins
Y’all are in for a treat today! Mike Foster is joining Kat on the podcast, and if you’re an avid listener of You Need Therapy, you have heard him being referenced a time or two… or three or four. Mike is a counselor, a coach, a former podcast host, speaker, author and all-around amazing human. This week he is spoiling us with the knowledge and powerful insight he gained after the over 4 years of research that led him to writing his new book: The Seven Primal Questions.
“The Seven Primal Questions” is described as a simple way of seeing your hidden programming, emotional needs, and supernatural gifts in a transparent way. With it you can stop being controlled by old wounds and patterns that sabotage your story. Think attachment theory mixed with the enneagram topped off with a big warm hug. This interview is going to leave you connecting so many dots and wanting to ask so many questions and we are SO excited to get to share it with you!
Follow Mike on instagram: @Mikefoster2000
Learn more about Mike: Mikefoster.tv
Follow Kat on Instagram: @Kat.Defatta
Follow the podcast Instagram: @YouNeedTherapyPodcast
Have a question, concern, guest idea, something else? Reach Kat at: Kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com
Heard about Three Cords Therapy but don’t know what it is? Click here!
Produced by: @HoustonTilley
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Coming up on you need therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
We're gonna have to make some fundamental changes. I mean
all the way, from how I treat my body, to
how I treat my mind, to the things that I
believe about myself, to moving out of my comfort zone
of I don't know, being a bit more confident in
my strengths and gifts and abilities, to you know, just
(00:23):
making the choice to eat breakfast in the morning. I
started to realize that not being an expert isn't a liability,
it's a real gift. If we don't know something about
ourselves at this point in our life, it's probably because
it's uncomfortable to know. If you can die before you die,
then you can really live. There's a wisdom at death's door.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I thought I was insane.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, and I didn't know what to do because there
was no internet.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel like everything
is hard. Hey, y'all, my name is I'm a human
first and a licensed therapist second. And right now I'm
inviting you into conversations that I hope encourage you to
become more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others, and
(01:12):
the world around you.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Welcome to You Need Therapy.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hi guys, and welcome to another beautiful Monday episode of
You Need Therapy podcast. My name is kat I am
the host, and quick reminder before we get into anything,
although this is a podcast hosted by a therapist, it
does not serve as a replacement or a substitute for
any mental health services. However, we always hope that it
helps you along whatever journey you're on, and I don't
(01:40):
really have to hope with this one. I know that
this episode is going to impact anybody who is actually
listening to it. You are in for a treat today.
Mike Foster is joining us on the podcast. And if
you are an avid listener of You Need Therapy, you
have heard me reference Mike Foster one, two, maybe, three, four,
(02:01):
five times. He is a counselor. He is a former
podcast host. His podcast is Fun Therapy. You can still
go listen to all the episodes. Two of the most
memorable podcast episodes I've ever listened to are of his,
and they are I think they're from twenty seventeen. You
can look them up. One is with John Acuff and
one was with Annie f Downs. They were very important
(02:23):
in my life when I listened to them. So he
is a former podcast host, he is a speaker, he
is an author, and he is an all around from
what I gathered in my experience of being with him,
an amazing human. And I was actually very lucky to
be able to talk to him right after the launch
of his new book, The Seven Primal Questions, and y'all,
(02:47):
like I said, you're in for a treat. This was
such a cool interview for me because Mike has been
somebody I've I feel weird saying this, I feel like
a fan girl, but he's somebody that I've been looking
up to from afar, from instagram land for years, and
I was happily surprised, a little shocked that he agreed
(03:08):
to come on the show and talk with me. And
I did actually text my friend right after our interview,
and I was like, I feel like I was just
a fangirl meeting like Taylor Swift backstage. And the cool
thing is his wisdom and his graciousness and how he
showed up really did live up to the hype of
what I had imagined him to be and what I
(03:29):
hoped for, So I really appreciate that he felt very authentic,
which you guys will pick up on. This interview is
going to leave you connecting so many dots as it
was for me. It's going to leave you wanting to
ask so many more questions to yourself, to the people
in your life, maybe to Mike. And we started chatting
about how he got to be where he is and
(03:49):
what led him to do the work he's doing. Then
we spent some time talking about an Instagram post that
he put up that had a profound impact on me,
and then he blew me away with what is what
he is teaching in his new book, The Seven Primal Questions,
and the book is described as a simple way of
seeing your hidden programming, emotional needs, and supernatural gifts in
(04:13):
a transparent way. And we talk about it for the
bulk of the episode. I already ordered five of them,
so I ordered them. Nobody's giving me these for free,
I am telling you I this conversation left me so
excited that I immediately went and was like, I need
to buy these for myself all the people that work
for me, and I need a couple lecture ones to
lend to a friend. So this is going to be
(04:34):
something that not only impacts my work as a therapist,
but also the work of being a human. And I
am so excited to get to share this with y'all.
I think I've said that about fifteen times already, So
let's get to it. Here is my conversation with Mike Foster.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I'm so so excited to be talking to you today.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah. Thanks, So I'm excited to connect with you too.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
So what's funny is I have podcast, this podcast, and
it's called You Need Therapy, and I'm a therapist. But
I started this podcast after listening to your podcast years
and years ago. Well I guess not years, it feels
forever ago. But the reason I really really wanted to
have you on two things. I didn't know you were
(05:19):
coming out with a new book, which is very exciting
that this is the time I get to talk to you.
But there were two podcasts that you had on Fun Therapy,
two episodes that they're like five years old, but I
still referenced them all the time. One was with John
Acuff and one was with Annie f Downs. I still
reference things that you said and they both said.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
In those episodes.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
And then in January you posted something on Instagram. It's
weird betiming of things. It was so impactful also to
multiple people in my life, like all to It's like
we all needed to read that together. So that was
the initial reason why I wanted to talk to you
and get to meet you. And now we get to
(06:03):
also talk about your book. But I was thinking about
all that and what I wanted to start with, and
I think the best way to start this conversation is
just for my own selfish desire, is to hear a
little bit about how you got to where you are.
So a therapist, counselors, you have a podcast, you're an author,
(06:24):
you're a speaker, you host all of these workshops, But
how did you get to this chair that you're in?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I think, you know, it's so much of what we
do in our life, especially whether it's career. I think
our priorities or the kind of work that we want
to do is so informed by our own story, right,
And most of it's informed by our story of pain.
And so I think for me, I had a lot
of pain in my early childhood that I spent a
(06:53):
lot of years trying to figure out what it meant
and how it was impacting me. And as I began
to slowly heal from that and get understanding and awareness
and new freedom around my own pain. I think that
the natural desire for all of us is then to
(07:13):
invite others into the things that we've experienced. And so
I think for sure kind of where I landed is
because of my story. I would say my mission, my
mission in life is to blow up environments of denial.
And that's really because I grew up in a context
(07:33):
of great denial, of great pretending. And so I think
about the very core of my mission, and when I
say denial, it's like whether really helping people see truth
right and to embrace it and to step into it
and to tell truth because truth is such a powerful
liberating force. I found that to be true in my life.
We say to my client's life, and the denial could be, hey,
(07:56):
it's just the way I think about myself, or the
way that I see certain relationship or the way I
see my past. There might be a lot of like
denial around that. And if we can just come in
and maybe turn up the lights and blow away the
fog a little bit and see truth, like, that's just
such a powerful transformative thing. So I think for me, fundamentally,
(08:17):
it all starts at the beginning of what like those
big imprints of how the pain of those imprints, the
trauma of those imprints, the processing of those imprints, and
then really creating the mission from that to say I
want to help others not be stuck and what I
was stuck in for too many years of my own life.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
You know what is interesting is hearing you say that
and knowing how I the path that led me to
become a therapist is I hear over and over from
either clients, which it's really cool when you have a
client and they come to therapy and then they're like,
I think I want to be a therapist. Is a
really cool experience. But I hear so often through client
(09:00):
and then just through people that I've met through the podcast,
is well, I could never be a therapist or in
these helping professions because of my stuff. And I think
it comes from a place of not knowing all of
the insides of the helper and you seem to have
it all together or you know all of this, you know,
(09:20):
you know the right things to say. I don't know
how why I thought this, just because I didn't know
any better. I thought therapists like had programmed like things
that they said to every client, like it just you.
You were taught what to say. And then I like
got to school and I was like, wait, so we
have to like kind of come up with it ourselves.
(09:43):
But I love hearing you say that, Like this journey
where I am it came from obviously, this place where
I felt pain. Then I found some sort of healing,
and then I realized, oh, I can help people then
come into this place that I know, And I'm curious
this as a human being but also as a male,
is the path from pain to healing?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
What was that?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Was therapy a thing in your life? Did you?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Did you go to therapy? Was it a mentor?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Like?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
How did you get to a place from paying to
this healing process?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah? I think it's a couple of key things that
happened to me on my journey. A lot of the
work that I do with people right now is around
experiential therapy psychodrama, because that again was sort of my
pathway to really understanding myself. I went to a six
day program of group therapy all day and it was
all psychodrama and experiential stuff, and it was incredibly powerful
(10:40):
for me to understand the forces that were happening inside
of me what it meant, got that clarity, and then
really felt incredibly empowered to live a different way from
that experience. I go to two hours of therapy a
month myself. I do that because I believe it's important
(11:01):
to do that type of work. It just benefits every
aspect of my life, whether it be my marriage, or
me personally or me as a dad. It's really important.
And the other thing I do. The thing I say
is that I pay them to listen to me, because
most of my posture in the world is listening to
others and I love getting to do that Monday through Friday.
(11:24):
But I also have to talk. I also have to
like just have somebody hold space for me. So that's
that's incredibly important. So there was like the therapy, the
kind of the intensives, some of those big moments that happen.
But I also think the other part of this for
me was at some point in our lives and at
some point in our journey, we get just get sick
(11:47):
and tired of agreeing with our pain. And I got
to the point where it's like this fundamentally doesn't work
for me, and I understand why I was there, I
had great compassion for my choices and my coping mechanisms
and all those things. It's like it wasn't a sense
of like anger at myself, but it was I had
(12:10):
to have sort of this honest conversation with Mike Foster
and say, do you want to continue to live this
way for the next you know, thirty or forty years.
My answer to that was no. And because my answer
was no, it compelled me to say, Okay, then we're
gonna have to make some fundamental changes. I mean all
(12:32):
the way from how I treat my body, to how
I treat my mind, to the things that I believe
about myself, to moving out of my comfort zone of
I don't know, being a bit more confident in my
strengths and gifts and abilities, to you know, just making
the choice to eat breakfast in the morning. It's like,
I so much of my I think, dysfunctional choices in
(12:56):
my life I was living in my pain was like
very antagonistic relationship towards my physical self, so like want
and eat till two o'clock in the afternoon, didn't exercise,
you know, slept like crap like things like that. So
those are I would say smaller things that we don't
really think about in terms of therapy, or you know,
(13:18):
how do we get through our pain? But they are
really important choices that I made, and say, listen, I
have got the fundamentally change what I'm doing if I
want a different outcome.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I thought you were going to say instead of we
get sick and tired of agreeing with our pain. I
thought you were going to finish that we get sick
and tired of being sick and tired, because I hear
that all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
But hearing you.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Say we get tired of agreeing with our pain feels
so much more like I have a choice in this,
like I can shift something and I'm sitting here. Obviously,
I very much appreciate you saying that you go to
therapy sometimes because you just want to talk and not
listen all the time. And that's one skill that I've
(13:59):
had to develop of being really present and then holding
my stuff for later. So sometimes in these conversations, my
head is, how does this apply to me?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
How's this applying to me?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
And it didn't feel like it was a active choice
to make changes to stop doing those things that at
one time were helpful, but then we're hurting me. But
hearing you say that, I'm like that was an active
choice because I eventually said this benefit that I keep
convincing myself I'm gonna get is never coming and I'm exhausted,
(14:34):
and so I'm gonna go do something about it. And yes,
we have to blow up the denial, and that's terrifying
and scary, but the same time, to not have to
go back into that, well here, let's try it again.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Let's try it again. Let's see if it feels better today.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Let's see if we get that thing today is the
best thing I think that I and I've seen other
people do for themselves in their lives. That's going to
be a note for me and something that I write
is at some point point, you got to get tired
of agreeing with your pain. Okay, So I would like to,
(15:12):
if it's okay with you, I want to read the
post that I thought was so meaningful.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's long.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Do you like people reading your writing to you?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh, I'm totally fascinated, Like what post of the hundreds
of posts of the last few months? Yeah, six months,
I'm really curious.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You can maybe guess it.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
As I preface this, but My motto for the past
like six months has been and I've talked about it
a lot on this podcast and on my friend's podcast
that I co host with her, and it's been trying
as cool, Like that has been my motto.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I think a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Which goes into why I liked this post so much.
A lot of people in my life, even just in
my personal life, they think that I just do well
at the things that I do, But it's just because
they see me doing well at the things.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
That I share with them.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And there are so many things that I've wanted to
do that I've been in the back of my head,
whether it's like silly small things I want to do
on a weekend or a career thing, and so I've
made this motto for myself to say, like trying is cool,
Like that's the point. Are you familiar with the Five
Regrets of the Dying? It's yes, okay, So part of
(16:27):
it came from that, and one of them was I'm
summarizing this, but one of them was I wish that
I lived a life more true to myself versus the
life I thought others wanted me to live. And I
was like, I do not want to get to the
end of my life, and I don't want to say that.
All the other ones wouldn't bother me as much as that,
And so let me read this and then we'll talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
You're like, I'm picking up on it.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Okay, so you wrote some thoughts on those who try.
Yesterday I was forced to cancel my Strongest Couple's workshop.
I had only one sign up, only one, and frankly,
I'm embarrassed. I promoted it, I invited lots of friends,
hundreds of people checked out the web page. My wife
(17:12):
and I had the food special surprises all planned out.
We were pumped, but still no one signed up. I
feel embarrassed, irritated, and frustrated with myself. I'm second guessing
my work and my message a bit. My confidence is rattled.
This is what happens when things like this happen. I
only share this because if you're a person who puts
(17:33):
things out in the world, you probably have experienced this
type of failure too, and when it happened to you,
you wanted to hide it away so you wouldn't look
bad or be embarrassed. For example, the book you published
that didn't sell, the event you hosted that few came
to the dream business that closed two years later. The
poem you wrote that no one understood that sure Thing
(17:55):
investment that collapsed, or your vulnerable Instagram posts that went unnoticed.
We're so good at looking successful but hate having mud
on our face. But failure is a sad cruelty of life,
and honestly we should share more of these moments and
a little less of our highlights. Then we wouldn't feel
so alone in all our failure. If we didn't hide
the things that didn't work, we would feel more connected,
(18:18):
sort of like we joined a family of people who
tried stuff and it just didn't work. The fact that
we tried makes us braver than those who didn't. Not better,
just braver and friends. That's something to be proud of.
So let's keep trying and then trying some more, because
that's what success in life.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Is all about.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I immediately sent this to like fifteen people because I
didn't know you. I just followed you, and I've heard
you on podcasts and all of that. But I am
not lying when I say I assumed that every single
thing you did, you had a waiting list for like
every single thing you did, and It wasn't this gratitude
(19:00):
of like, oh I'm glad that Mike Foster failed, Like
that would never be a thought in my head. But
it was like, oh, my gosh, I need to check
myself because if somebody who I think is successful and
somebody who I think would have no problem doing something
like this, if they have a struggle, then it feels
(19:23):
like it's more okay for me to have a struggle.
And it's something that I feel like I probably have
been preaching anyway or talking about and promoting. But then
it's like, well, I'm not successful enough to then post
those failures. That breaks this whole cycle of what you're
talking about. I love the line that said we would
(19:44):
have this little family and we'd feel more connected, and
then we would try more things, and then I think
we would have more of those successes that we want
to talk about. So I'm just curious, because I'm somebody
who benefited from that post, even like for you to
put that post up, because I think I would be
shaking as I was about to press post to that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I was very very conflicted putting up that post because
in many ways, I'm exposing myself to a different perspective
on who I am and what people I think perceive
of me is he's got waiting lists of people who
want to get into his stuff, and instead of the
(20:28):
reality is some things work, some things don't work. I'm
insecure about certain things, I'm very confident about other things.
And so it's like, again, it just aligns with fundamentally
what I'm trying to do in the world is just
tell the truth. And I think there's so many opportunities
(20:52):
for us to tell partial truth or you know, most
of the truth, and this part of it, like the
post about those who try, was maybe the last ten
percent of the truth, okay, And I want I want
people to see all of it. And I don't do
it to get like people to necessarily think differently about me,
(21:15):
But I do it because I want to release something
in other people. Right, It's always about the work. It's like,
we can have this conversation right now together because I
went first and I told the truth about my own
failures of this workshop and the vulnerability and the embarrassment
of it. And that's why I believe, like fundamentally, like
(21:36):
if we can live in our relationships in that place
of like it's Okay, we're all going to be Okay,
we are all going to experience pain, but we're also
going to experience these really incredible moments of success. And
this is life. And I think so often the stories
that we're telling, or the way that we're positioning ourselves
or our brands or whatever we're trying to do, is
(22:00):
fundamentally moving us away from each other into isolation and performance,
versus bringing us together into connection through vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
So I've had this big struggle of how do I
promote something that I think is helpful without capitalizing on
or doing something that feels icky. It's such a weird place,
and I'm asking this to you because you're in the
same realm of business, where Like I think that there's
this assumption, and I'm part of the assumption that therapists
(22:33):
are just here to help people.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Period.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It's like we shouldn't make enough money to live and
we shouldn't have anything special, like we should just like
we should just be helping people. And so I struggle
with one therapy is also it's my job. It's my work,
It's how I survive. But I've struggled with how do
I because the more people we reach the more people
we can help. How do I balance that with I'm
(22:56):
now kind of it's the whole social media I don't
even know the right word to use, but it feels
sometimes icky where I'm like almost capitalizing on people's insecurities
or traumas or their desire to be helped.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I think it's that's where we have to just be
be very in tune with our own motivations and our
own desires, right, because I think we live in a
world where motivations and desires, there's a lot of corrupted
motivations and desires, right, And to use people, to use
people's pain to manipulate, like, all that kind of stuff
(23:32):
is certainly out there. I mean we see it every day.
And so when somebody with a with just a desire
to help, right, just the desire to add value to people,
we just have to go back there and just have
that gut check, like is this post, like I could say,
is this post about trying? Is that about me getting
people feeling sorry for me? Or is this an opportunity
(23:56):
to possibly go viral with a pose? Like I think
that kind of stuff is where that's not serving people
very well. Yeah, if we can just say like, I'm
saying this because I think it might be helpful. Yeah,
and those other things might happen, but yeah, the reason
why I do it.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah, there's something that was written on your website really
well that it wasn't the same words, but it was
something about like these like posts that we see on
social media are really nice, but they're not long lasting.
And that's I think sometimes that I have to come
back and ask myself, is this am I putting this
because I think people are going to repost it? Or
do I feel like this is something I want to
share that sounds really important. And I think there might
(24:38):
be something in your new book that might tie into this.
But I was thinking about like the unconscious motivation, and well,
I took your test on your website. Let's pull up
my results because I save them. So your new book,
the Seven Primal Questions, I want you to kind of
give people a cliff notes version of that. But one
(24:58):
of the things that came back when I to to
this test on your website, it said that my two
primal questions could be am I loved and am I wanted?
Which I could talk about it forever because am I wanted?
Is a question and be the desire we wanted is
something that I have spent years talking about in therapy,
(25:20):
and so I was like, oh, wow, maybe there's something
to this test toass online because some of those things.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, well, because sometimes I'm like, God, does that feel right?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
But I was like, oh, I hate that answer, and
I think it's because it's right.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But going back to the social media thing, something I
have to.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Check is again, is this about me gaining a following
to have a following? Is this me gaining a following
so then I can reach more people for that? And
I have to continuously check that, and I think it
hits the nail on the head because this idea of
me being wanted and I mean, I like want to
belong and I want to be invited, and I want
(25:58):
people to be excited that I'm there, but I don't
want people to just need me. I want them to
want me there despite what I can do. So it's
like a constant battle. And so that's something that I
have to check. And I say all this because I
sometimes just need to get thoughts out of my head,
but also because I think that's something that a lot
of people might have to come back to because I
(26:20):
hear a lot of people feeling the ick about the
social media mental health realm maybeing one of them. But
if we're coming back and saying, is this about me
trying to heal that wound that might still be a
little bit open, or is this about me trying to
do something that feels like right and good? So tell
(26:46):
us about this book, because it sounds like it was
incredible for the preparation to write it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So I want to hear about that process.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah. So I been working on the past four years
research over six thousand hours of one on one inner views.
I did twenty two group labs all around understanding our
highest emotional needs, trauma, attachment theory, kind of really diving
into all that and trying to summarize it in a
(27:15):
very simple way where people can you know, you don't
have to have a PhD. Or you don't have to
be a therapist. It's just a simple construct for you
to actually get clarity on your inner programming and how
you see the world, see relationships, how you see social media,
like all of it is informed by one of these
(27:38):
seven primal questions that I talk about in the book.
And basically here's how the concept works is the early
childhood or imprinted with a question that when unanswered or
was answered in a negative way in our childhood. That
doesn't necess have to be trauma, but it's something that's
where a child is perhaps a little fuse and perceive
(28:01):
certain experiences or certain things in their family certain way
that creates this question. And so then we carry this
question subconsciously into our adult lives and we keep asking it.
And when the answer to that question, whether it's in
our friendships, at work, with our spouse, with society at large,
(28:23):
when the question is answered with a yes, we feel good.
We're our best selves. But when our primal question is
answered with a no or a maybe, we go into
what I call the scramble. And the scramble is all
the unhelpful things we do and maybe dysfunctional things that
(28:43):
we do, perfectionism, people pleasing, self abandonment, workaholicism, I don't know,
just all that stuff, right, All those things that we
do in the scramble is about forcing the answer back
to a yes. So let's take your primal question of
M M, I want it, and there's seven, but there
(29:05):
will be one question that drives really all of our
So when you feel wanted, when you feel like you belong,
When people are reaching out to you and people are
pursuing you, they're answering your primal question with a yes, okay,
and that feels good. But when perhaps you're ignored or
(29:26):
rejected or I don't know, just uninvited to something, you're
left out of the party, that's a no or a
maybe to your primal question of M might want it?
And then perhaps you go into your scramble and you're like, Okay,
I gotta be nicer to everybody. Now, I got to
razzle dazzle people, so they'll so next time they'll invite
(29:48):
me to the party. What I've found in the research
is it's so pore to who we are. It's so
significant that almost everything we every choice, every view or
message of what we prioritize in terms of what we
want people to know about themselves is centered on the
(30:12):
primal question. And here's the fun thing about this, and
this is what I want to really want to call
out in the book, is that having a primal question
is not a problem. The scramble is the problem. In fact,
your primal question of am I wanted is actually a
gift and here's how this works. Is what we do.
The research shows is what we do is we take
(30:33):
our own primal question and we put it over everybody
else and assume they're asking the same question as we are. Now,
there's six other questions that they could be asking, but
our whole assumption is that they're asking the same question
as we. So your your interactions with everyone, you're seeing
(30:53):
them asking the question, am I wanted? And then you
make every effort to answered that question with a yes, yes,
and to affirm that. So you are a master. You
are an expert at inclusion and people feeling wanted and
creating belonging. This is a relational superpower that you have
(31:16):
because of your primal question, and so it's a really
beautiful thing where we can start leveraging that and start
figuring that out of how to deploy that more into
the world.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
As you just said that, I was like, no, I'm not.
I sometimes think I can get a little bit selfish
because I maybe sometimes think I'm focusing too much on
my question. I don't know this is all coming up
right now, but I'm sitting here being like I'm not
like that. But then recently I had this huge revelation,
and I've had to work through this shame and guilt
(31:50):
of wishing I could go back to high school and
be nicer to people that didn't have friends like that
was such a big deal to me in some of
some of my own work, and that makes so much
sense of Like, the thing that bothers me most about
high school wasn't that I felt left out and or
I felt bad or I felt misunderstood. It was that
there were people that were feeling that. And I didn't
(32:11):
have the lack of ego at that point to go
and say, hey, do you want to sit by me
at lunch? Yes, because I wanted to. I was focused
on wanting to be wanted. And maybe that's because that
was a bigger no back.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Then for me.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
What happens is if we're allowing the scramble to sort
of dictate our lives. It's what I call our primal
gift is when we put it over our question over
somebody else, and then a tomb in answering yes and
affirming that in others. If we get so caught up
in our scramble and answering our own question, the primal
gift part of your superpower of inclusion of making people
(32:48):
feel wanted is going to be diminished because you're just
not able to operate in health in that area. Yeah,
but once you know that you are wanted, okay, that
you don't have to live in the scramble, you actually
have this beautiful way of welcoming people and including people
(33:09):
and making them feel special and belong and feel like
they belong.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah. Can you share with some of the other questions
that are in there?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So I'll give you an example. My primal question is
am I safe? That's question number one? And that is
because of trauma in my early childhood. So that's just
the need for kind of physical and emotional safety. And
so for much of my life, I tune around risk management.
I'm very hyper vigilant with details. You know. COVID nineteen
(33:38):
wasn't a great thing for somebody with an am I
safe question, right because they're like, oh my gosh, we're
all going to die, you know. And so I don't
do anything dangerous. I don't jump out of planes. I
don't you know. I'm so my whole again, my whole
life was making sure that my primal question isn't answered
with a no or I'm trying to avoid it with
(33:58):
a no. But here's also the primal gift part of that.
So I take my am I safe question, and I
put it over everybody I meet. And this is why
people tell me their deepest darket secrets after knowing them
for five minutes. Right, So it makes me a really
good counselor it makes me really good with moving in
Like when there's conflict, perhaps I'm working with a couple
(34:19):
and there's some real conflict and chaos, I can bring
my safety and protection gift into that situation and really
create some space for people to have more healthy dialogue
and actually get to a healthy solution. And so again,
(34:39):
every question has something that we have to manage. I
have to manage this question of am I safe, just
like you have to manage the question of am I wanted?
But the primal gifts part of like, I can't do
what I do as well as I do it without
my primal question. So question two is am I secure?
(35:03):
This has to do with financial security. I have enough
resources to protect myself, enough resources, and this really is
around finances and money for the most part. Question three
is about am I loved the question? And this is
really about am I seeing? Am I known? Am I
(35:23):
listened to? This? Is? These are kind of the core
needs of people with this primal question. By the way,
every primal question has what I call kryptonite, which will
instantly send you into your scramble. So like for me,
my kryptonite is surprises, like negative surprises. Okay, I'm like ah,
(35:44):
and then I'm instantly going and my scramble security. Question
two would be any financial instability or surprises really emotionally
activates them. Question three, am I loved? Is really the kryptonite?
There would be indifference if you're sensing somebody sort of
indifferent to you, take it or leave it? That kind
(36:07):
of thing that sends you into your scramble. Question four,
am I wanted? And that would be rejection. Rejection is
going to send you into your scramble question five? Probably
question five is am I successful? This tends to be
like people who have grown up in competitive homes where
scorekeeping was really a big deal and putting runs on
(36:27):
the board or you know, it's like you came home
with a B plus a mom and dad said, you know,
let's work harder to get that A. You know, it's
like keeping score you know, and so they tend to
grow up with this whole idea of like success is
really important. When they feel successful, they feel great. But
when they experience failure or underperformance or under achievement, they
(36:49):
go into their scramble. Question six is am I good enough?
These are folks who can really struggle with imposter syndrome
or perfectionism, where just they never they never measure up.
It's kind of existential too for these folks, where it's like,
I just do I have a right to even be
here in the world. So that gets expressed in two
(37:11):
different ways. One would be through insecurity. They tend to
be wallflowers or just you know, they don't believe their
opinions are that important, so they don't bring them, you know.
So there's kind of this this lack of confidence. And
the other way that it often expresses itself is through
narcissism and self puffery or this over indexing to prove
(37:33):
your worth or value. And then question seven, by the way,
the kryptonite for question six, am I good enough? Is
criticism and judgment. So if you find anybody being defensive
right really right away, and it's really activated by any
sort of feedback, it's very high possibility. That's a question six,
(37:55):
am I good enough person? And then finally question seven's
do I have purpose? This is really around having impact
significance in your life. These are the vision casters of
the world. These are the big believers that you know
and so impacts really important and for them, their kryptonite
would be doing meaningless work, doing something that is not
(38:19):
doesn't feel very important, and so they feel like they're
because they're not doing anything important, that my life doesn't
have purpose.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Okay, so one, this is so cool.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I can't wait to read this whole thing because I'm
a big fan of the enneagram. But the reason I
liked the enneagram so much and I like it so
much is it feels very similar to the groundings of
and you mentioned this earlier attachment theory.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
And I've always told myself.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
I want to do some kind of study where we
really look at that and how that plays out in anagram.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
But this, I feel like, puts all that I don't have.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
To do the research anymore because you did it, but
because it's probably never going to get around to it.
But this puts that to it. Like this very much
sounds like you're putting language and understanding and a not
easier but a well, I guess maybe simple or more
direct road to getting to these core questions that people
(39:19):
spend years in therapy trying to figure out. And also,
as you were saying that again, I can't help but
think about other people that pop up in my head
as you're saying all of those, and I felt the
sense of, well, if I knew that, if I could know,
because I want people to give me the grace selfishly,
I want people to give me the grace that they
(39:41):
can see when I'm doing my scramble. It's not because
I'm just wanting to be look cuckoo out there. It's
not because I'm self absorbed. It's not just because of
I'm a not inherently good person. It's because this came
from this experience. And I love I love that you
said it's not always this bit traumatic experience. It's just experiences,
(40:03):
and I want people to offer that to me. And
hearing you go through that list, I was like, oh,
if I can look at everybody like, because everybody has one,
if I can look at them as like they have
one of these questions floating on in their head, so
the things that they're doing specifically, when you said that's
when you see the narcissism, I'm like, I have a
(40:23):
weird sweet spot for narcissists in the sense where I'm like,
I know that there's some pain there, I know what's
going on, but at the same time, I'm like, oh,
this is so frustrating.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So that's kind of the thing I'm most excited about
is not so much even just the self awareness and
our own understanding, but how we can then interact and
have relationship with others knowing what their primal question is.
So like, I use this a lot. In couple's counseling.
The reason why relationships fail, especially marriage relationships, is fundamentally
(40:56):
one of the spouse's partners is answering their partner's primal
question with a no or a maybe too often, so
that relationship will not survive if that partner is consistently
at answering their partner's primal question with a no or
a maybe. So in couple's counseling, what we do is
(41:17):
we identify what is each spouse's primal question, and then
we get really practical and say, okay, I sometimes right
about this. In the book, I say, you know, imagine
your spouse is wearing their primal question as a sign
around their neck, like in big bold letters, and all
(41:37):
you I'd tell the other spouse, all you have to
do is answer and affirm that primal question with a yes,
and you will have a successful relationship with that person.
But if you consistently, whether on purpose or you know
you know you're unaware of answering that question with a
no or a maybe, consistently, you will have a lousy
(41:59):
relationship with that person. And this is true of marriage.
This isn't true. This is true of friendships. This is
true of our relationship with our parents. It's true with
our relationship with our boss or co workers. You fundamentally
can't be in a healthy relationship with somebody who doesn't
answer it with a yes. So, if I knew your
(42:20):
primal question was am I wanted, I'm now going to
make sure that as your friend and somebody who cares
about you, I would make sure that I invited you
to all things okay, because I knew that would mean
a lot to you, and I want to be a
good friend to you, and so I want to answer
your primal question with a yes, and I would look
for creative ways to do that. And that's what's so
(42:41):
fun about this. It's not only just our own self
awareness and our primal gift and understanding our own highest
emotional need. It's how do I enter into other people's
highest emotional needs and have this really powerful connection with them.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
This is so timely too, because I just did a
series on Gotman's Four Horsemen and communication and conflict management,
and then I just did last week we talked about
leadership and what makes a good leader. I mean this,
it has to be parts of all of that, because
I'm thinking about relationally with a partner.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
If you didn't plan anything.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
For my birthday or I don't need anything big, I
just want to do something. I want you to think
that that you thought about it, then I would be like, well,
he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
He doesn't really care if I'm here or not.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
He's not like he's not there's no pursuing, there's no
And if he knew that, then he would like, Okay,
I don't really care about my birthday.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I don't really care about doing anything, but I know
that she does.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Those conversations are always the conversations that come up. I
work with just individuals, but they're coming to me saying
I got in this argument or this fighter, he did
this thing to me, and this right here would solve
a lot of those. It's not a lack of love,
it's not a lack of care. It's like a it's
a misunderstanding or unknowing of what's going on, because, like
(44:01):
what you said, we're assuming everybody else is asking our same.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Question, the same question, yes versus there's.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Six other questions. Uh huh, oh my gosh, Okay, I
love this. I'm curious if there's anything that through because
your research what you said four years which you have
some patience that I really value.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
I'm an Enneagram five, so I'm the investigator. So I
love the research part of it. But I know it's
not for everyone.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Well, and I'm a seven, and I'm like, I don't
have time to work through all of this.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
I just want to read the end results. Okay.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
So in all that research, was there anything that either
you learned about yourself that was super surprising or anything
that came up that you were not expecting from just
in general.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
One of the things that I am most excited about,
or was most excited about it just kind of in
the discovery is how it applies to parenting and just
kind of some aha moments with how we structure our
parenting styles around our primal question. So again the concept
of we take our primal question and we're going to
(45:12):
put it over our child and we're going to make
sure that we really answer that with a strong yess
for our child.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
So for me, my primal question was am I safe?
So in my I have two kids, they're older, and
I have a twenty four year old twenty one year old,
But when we were raising them, it was a dad
who is all about their safety, right if they were
going to go spend the night with with somebody. I
was the one calling up making sure I knew all
the details, making sure everything was going to be okay,
(45:42):
who are the people that that's you know, protection of
my kids? Safety of my kids? That was my orientation
to parenting them. And my wife's primal question was and
I loved so she again takes her primal question, puts
it over our kids, and I got to tell you
she did an a plus job at loving our kids.
(46:04):
So what's nice about that is Number one, you have
two people who bring a different angled parenting I'd also
be probably a little bit judgmental about how much love
she was shown there, Like, I mean, they know it.
It's fine. You don't have to, like, you know, buy
two hundred dollars worth of Christmas gifts. One hundred dollars
is fine, right, But sometimes what will happen is will
(46:26):
over index on our primal question with our kiddos, And
so kind of the parenting thing that was an AHA
moment is good parenting is yes, expressing our primal question
and answering informing that for our kids in a healthy way,
not over indexing, but looking to answer all seven of
(46:49):
them in a consistent way with our kids.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah, and as adult, I can look back on my parents,
because you know, it's just natural see what they didn't do.
But I also can see these things like in the
over loving or the over safety, I now can see
some of the things that I'm excited to dig in
more to this. I can see some of the things
(47:13):
that my mom or dad did that I'm like, oh
my gosh, that was their way of giving me everything
that they didn't have, and that was their way of
keeping me safe in their head or loved in their head.
That sometimes pissed me off, but I can now see
that as an abundance of love.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Well, that's fundamentally like, I hope we all, through this
tool and the framework, have more compassion for ourselves why
we do the things that we do, understanding our hidden programming,
but also compassion for others and why they're making certain
choices about their life or the way they parented us,
or why they're getting so upset when this like it's
(47:56):
just a compassionate and kind way to live in the world,
not with a bunch of judgment towards sort of these
behaviors or things that don't make sense to us. It's like, oh,
that's what's going on there, and then we can we
can really approach that with a much more well. Number one,
we can actually work on the right problems right if
(48:17):
there's a problem in a relationship. But we can also
have a lot more understanding than perhaps why our parents
over indexed on a particular thing.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Now I'm having this vision of everybody walking around with
t shirts that have a question on it was.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
So helpful, it would be it's it is helpful. Like
I I think about it, you know, with friends. Now
I think about obviously in my marriage, I think about it,
you know, with my my parents, my relationship with my parents.
It's it is helpful to know.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yeah, for the sake of time here because we could,
I mean we could talk about this forever or I
personally could. The book is out so people can get it.
Where do you want them to get it? And I
did see that you can buy that bundle, which I
want to get for my team at work because I
think that would be really helpful. But where do you
want people to go to find it?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah? So two things. Number one, the web, my website
Mike Foster dot tv as in television, Mike Foster dot
tv has the assessment number one that you talked about,
where you can take the assessment and discover your own
primal question. And then the book is also available there
and you can buy it on the website or you
(49:30):
buy a bundle. And I think it's actually cheaper there
than it is on Amazon right now. But it is
available on Amazon too if you want to use your
Amazon account to purchase it. But yeah, Mike Foster dot
tv or the assessment free assessment, by the way, it
takes maybe five or six minutes, not does it take
a lot of time free assessment. And then the book
(49:52):
is also available at.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
My website, okay, and people can follow you on Instagram
so they can see all the posts that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Mike Foster two thousand, Right.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
That's correct, Mike Foster two thousand.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Okay, amazing. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Thank you for doing all this research for us.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Oh, I appreciate you for having me. I have just
thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with you.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Thanks, And yeah, I hope you enjoyed the book. I
I thanks for buying the bundle for your friends and
net work. And yeah, I just I think, you know,
all of us have this great opportunity just to hopefully
bring things, whether podcasts or books or whatever, just to
bring more help and healing into our lives. And I
(50:36):
think that's you and I are both aligned, and that's
all we want to do is just kind of help
people be the best versions of themselves
Coming up on you need therapy.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
We're gonna have to make some fundamental changes. I mean
all the way, from how I treat my body, to
how I treat my mind, to the things that I
believe about myself, to moving out of my comfort zone
of I don't know, being a bit more confident in
my strengths and gifts and abilities, to you know, just
(00:23):
making the choice to eat breakfast in the morning. I
started to realize that not being an expert isn't a liability,
it's a real gift. If we don't know something about
ourselves at this point in our life, it's probably because
it's uncomfortable to know. If you can die before you die,
then you can really live. There's a wisdom at death's door.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I thought I was insane.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, and I didn't know what to do because there
was no internet.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I don't know, man, I'm like, I feel like everything
is hard. Hey, y'all, my name is I'm a human
first and a licensed therapist second. And right now I'm
inviting you into conversations that I hope encourage you to
become more curious and less judgmental about yourself, others, and
(01:12):
the world around you.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Welcome to You Need Therapy.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Hi guys, and welcome to another beautiful Monday episode of
You Need Therapy podcast. My name is kat I am
the host, and quick reminder before we get into anything,
although this is a podcast hosted by a therapist, it
does not serve as a replacement or a substitute for
any mental health services. However, we always hope that it
helps you along whatever journey you're on, and I don't
(01:40):
really have to hope with this one. I know that
this episode is going to impact anybody who is actually
listening to it. You are in for a treat today.
Mike Foster is joining us on the podcast. And if
you are an avid listener of You Need Therapy, you
have heard me reference Mike Foster one, two, maybe, three, four,
(02:01):
five times. He is a counselor. He is a former
podcast host. His podcast is Fun Therapy. You can still
go listen to all the episodes. Two of the most
memorable podcast episodes I've ever listened to are of his,
and they are I think they're from twenty seventeen. You
can look them up. One is with John Acuff and
one was with Annie f Downs. They were very important
(02:23):
in my life when I listened to them. So he
is a former podcast host, he is a speaker, he
is an author, and he is an all around from
what I gathered in my experience of being with him,
an amazing human. And I was actually very lucky to
be able to talk to him right after the launch
of his new book, The Seven Primal Questions, and y'all,
(02:47):
like I said, you're in for a treat. This was
such a cool interview for me because Mike has been
somebody I've I feel weird saying this, I feel like
a fan girl, but he's somebody that I've been looking
up to from afar, from instagram land for years, and
I was happily surprised, a little shocked that he agreed
(03:08):
to come on the show and talk with me. And
I did actually text my friend right after our interview,
and I was like, I feel like I was just
a fangirl meeting like Taylor Swift backstage. And the cool
thing is his wisdom and his graciousness and how he
showed up really did live up to the hype of
what I had imagined him to be and what I
(03:29):
hoped for, So I really appreciate that he felt very authentic,
which you guys will pick up on. This interview is
going to leave you connecting so many dots as it
was for me. It's going to leave you wanting to
ask so many more questions to yourself, to the people
in your life, maybe to Mike. And we started chatting
about how he got to be where he is and
(03:49):
what led him to do the work he's doing. Then
we spent some time talking about an Instagram post that
he put up that had a profound impact on me,
and then he blew me away with what is what
he is teaching in his new book, The Seven Primal Questions,
and the book is described as a simple way of
seeing your hidden programming, emotional needs, and supernatural gifts in
(04:13):
a transparent way. And we talk about it for the
bulk of the episode. I already ordered five of them,
so I ordered them. Nobody's giving me these for free,
I am telling you I this conversation left me so
excited that I immediately went and was like, I need
to buy these for myself all the people that work
for me, and I need a couple lecture ones to
lend to a friend. So this is going to be
(04:34):
something that not only impacts my work as a therapist,
but also the work of being a human. And I
am so excited to get to share this with y'all.
I think I've said that about fifteen times already, So
let's get to it. Here is my conversation with Mike Foster.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I'm so so excited to be talking to you today.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah. Thanks, So I'm excited to connect with you too.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
So what's funny is I have podcast, this podcast, and
it's called You Need Therapy, and I'm a therapist. But
I started this podcast after listening to your podcast years
and years ago. Well I guess not years, it feels
forever ago. But the reason I really really wanted to
have you on two things. I didn't know you were
(05:19):
coming out with a new book, which is very exciting
that this is the time I get to talk to you.
But there were two podcasts that you had on Fun Therapy,
two episodes that they're like five years old, but I
still referenced them all the time. One was with John
Acuff and one was with Annie f Downs. I still
reference things that you said and they both said.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
In those episodes.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
And then in January you posted something on Instagram. It's
weird betiming of things. It was so impactful also to
multiple people in my life, like all to It's like
we all needed to read that together. So that was
the initial reason why I wanted to talk to you
and get to meet you. And now we get to
(06:03):
also talk about your book. But I was thinking about
all that and what I wanted to start with, and
I think the best way to start this conversation is
just for my own selfish desire, is to hear a
little bit about how you got to where you are.
So a therapist, counselors, you have a podcast, you're an author,
(06:24):
you're a speaker, you host all of these workshops, But
how did you get to this chair that you're in?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
I think, you know, it's so much of what we
do in our life, especially whether it's career. I think
our priorities or the kind of work that we want
to do is so informed by our own story, right,
And most of it's informed by our story of pain.
And so I think for me, I had a lot
of pain in my early childhood that I spent a
(06:53):
lot of years trying to figure out what it meant
and how it was impacting me. And as I began
to slowly heal from that and get understanding and awareness
and new freedom around my own pain. I think that
the natural desire for all of us is then to
(07:13):
invite others into the things that we've experienced. And so
I think for sure kind of where I landed is
because of my story. I would say my mission, my
mission in life is to blow up environments of denial.
And that's really because I grew up in a context
(07:33):
of great denial, of great pretending. And so I think
about the very core of my mission, and when I
say denial, it's like whether really helping people see truth
right and to embrace it and to step into it
and to tell truth because truth is such a powerful
liberating force. I found that to be true in my life.
We say to my client's life, and the denial could be, hey,
(07:56):
it's just the way I think about myself, or the
way that I see certain relationship or the way I
see my past. There might be a lot of like
denial around that. And if we can just come in
and maybe turn up the lights and blow away the
fog a little bit and see truth, like, that's just
such a powerful transformative thing. So I think for me, fundamentally,
(08:17):
it all starts at the beginning of what like those
big imprints of how the pain of those imprints, the
trauma of those imprints, the processing of those imprints, and
then really creating the mission from that to say I
want to help others not be stuck and what I
was stuck in for too many years of my own life.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
You know what is interesting is hearing you say that
and knowing how I the path that led me to
become a therapist is I hear over and over from
either clients, which it's really cool when you have a
client and they come to therapy and then they're like,
I think I want to be a therapist. Is a
really cool experience. But I hear so often through client
(09:00):
and then just through people that I've met through the podcast,
is well, I could never be a therapist or in
these helping professions because of my stuff. And I think
it comes from a place of not knowing all of
the insides of the helper and you seem to have
it all together or you know all of this, you know,
(09:20):
you know the right things to say. I don't know
how why I thought this, just because I didn't know
any better. I thought therapists like had programmed like things
that they said to every client, like it just you.
You were taught what to say. And then I like
got to school and I was like, wait, so we
have to like kind of come up with it ourselves.
(09:43):
But I love hearing you say that, Like this journey
where I am it came from obviously, this place where
I felt pain. Then I found some sort of healing,
and then I realized, oh, I can help people then
come into this place that I know, And I'm curious
this as a human being but also as a male,
is the path from pain to healing?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
What was that?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Like?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Was therapy a thing in your life? Did you?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Did you go to therapy? Was it a mentor?
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Like?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
How did you get to a place from paying to
this healing process?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah? I think it's a couple of key things that
happened to me on my journey. A lot of the
work that I do with people right now is around
experiential therapy psychodrama, because that again was sort of my
pathway to really understanding myself. I went to a six
day program of group therapy all day and it was
all psychodrama and experiential stuff, and it was incredibly powerful
(10:40):
for me to understand the forces that were happening inside
of me what it meant, got that clarity, and then
really felt incredibly empowered to live a different way from
that experience. I go to two hours of therapy a
month myself. I do that because I believe it's important
(11:01):
to do that type of work. It just benefits every
aspect of my life, whether it be my marriage, or
me personally or me as a dad. It's really important.
And the other thing I do. The thing I say
is that I pay them to listen to me, because
most of my posture in the world is listening to
others and I love getting to do that Monday through Friday.
(11:24):
But I also have to talk. I also have to
like just have somebody hold space for me. So that's
that's incredibly important. So there was like the therapy, the
kind of the intensives, some of those big moments that happen.
But I also think the other part of this for
me was at some point in our lives and at
some point in our journey, we get just get sick
(11:47):
and tired of agreeing with our pain. And I got
to the point where it's like this fundamentally doesn't work
for me, and I understand why I was there, I
had great compassion for my choices and my coping mechanisms
and all those things. It's like it wasn't a sense
of like anger at myself, but it was I had
(12:10):
to have sort of this honest conversation with Mike Foster
and say, do you want to continue to live this
way for the next you know, thirty or forty years.
My answer to that was no. And because my answer
was no, it compelled me to say, Okay, then we're
gonna have to make some fundamental changes. I mean all
(12:32):
the way from how I treat my body, to how
I treat my mind, to the things that I believe
about myself, to moving out of my comfort zone of
I don't know, being a bit more confident in my
strengths and gifts and abilities, to you know, just making
the choice to eat breakfast in the morning. It's like,
I so much of my I think, dysfunctional choices in
(12:56):
my life I was living in my pain was like
very antagonistic relationship towards my physical self, so like want
and eat till two o'clock in the afternoon, didn't exercise,
you know, slept like crap like things like that. So
those are I would say smaller things that we don't
really think about in terms of therapy, or you know,
(13:18):
how do we get through our pain? But they are
really important choices that I made, and say, listen, I
have got the fundamentally change what I'm doing if I
want a different outcome.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
I thought you were going to say instead of we
get sick and tired of agreeing with our pain. I
thought you were going to finish that we get sick
and tired of being sick and tired, because I hear
that all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
But hearing you.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Say we get tired of agreeing with our pain feels
so much more like I have a choice in this,
like I can shift something and I'm sitting here. Obviously,
I very much appreciate you saying that you go to
therapy sometimes because you just want to talk and not
listen all the time. And that's one skill that I've
(13:59):
had to develop of being really present and then holding
my stuff for later. So sometimes in these conversations, my
head is, how does this apply to me?
Speaker 1 (14:08):
How's this applying to me?
Speaker 3 (14:09):
And it didn't feel like it was a active choice
to make changes to stop doing those things that at
one time were helpful, but then we're hurting me. But
hearing you say that, I'm like that was an active
choice because I eventually said this benefit that I keep
convincing myself I'm gonna get is never coming and I'm exhausted,
(14:34):
and so I'm gonna go do something about it. And yes,
we have to blow up the denial, and that's terrifying
and scary, but the same time, to not have to
go back into that, well here, let's try it again.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Let's try it again. Let's see if it feels better today.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Let's see if we get that thing today is the
best thing I think that I and I've seen other
people do for themselves in their lives. That's going to
be a note for me and something that I write
is at some point point, you got to get tired
of agreeing with your pain. Okay, So I would like to,
(15:12):
if it's okay with you, I want to read the
post that I thought was so meaningful.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's long.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Do you like people reading your writing to you?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Oh, I'm totally fascinated, Like what post of the hundreds
of posts of the last few months? Yeah, six months,
I'm really curious.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You can maybe guess it.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
As I preface this, but My motto for the past
like six months has been and I've talked about it
a lot on this podcast and on my friend's podcast
that I co host with her, and it's been trying
as cool, Like that has been my motto.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I think a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Which goes into why I liked this post so much.
A lot of people in my life, even just in
my personal life, they think that I just do well
at the things that I do, But it's just because
they see me doing well at the things.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
That I share with them.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And there are so many things that I've wanted to
do that I've been in the back of my head,
whether it's like silly small things I want to do
on a weekend or a career thing, and so I've
made this motto for myself to say, like trying is cool,
Like that's the point. Are you familiar with the Five
Regrets of the Dying? It's yes, okay, So part of
(16:27):
it came from that, and one of them was I'm
summarizing this, but one of them was I wish that
I lived a life more true to myself versus the
life I thought others wanted me to live. And I
was like, I do not want to get to the
end of my life, and I don't want to say that.
All the other ones wouldn't bother me as much as that,
And so let me read this and then we'll talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
You're like, I'm picking up on it.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Okay, so you wrote some thoughts on those who try.
Yesterday I was forced to cancel my Strongest Couple's workshop.
I had only one sign up, only one, and frankly,
I'm embarrassed. I promoted it, I invited lots of friends,
hundreds of people checked out the web page. My wife
(17:12):
and I had the food special surprises all planned out.
We were pumped, but still no one signed up. I
feel embarrassed, irritated, and frustrated with myself. I'm second guessing
my work and my message a bit. My confidence is rattled.
This is what happens when things like this happen. I
only share this because if you're a person who puts
(17:33):
things out in the world, you probably have experienced this
type of failure too, and when it happened to you,
you wanted to hide it away so you wouldn't look
bad or be embarrassed. For example, the book you published
that didn't sell, the event you hosted that few came
to the dream business that closed two years later. The
poem you wrote that no one understood that sure Thing
(17:55):
investment that collapsed, or your vulnerable Instagram posts that went unnoticed.
We're so good at looking successful but hate having mud
on our face. But failure is a sad cruelty of life,
and honestly we should share more of these moments and
a little less of our highlights. Then we wouldn't feel
so alone in all our failure. If we didn't hide
the things that didn't work, we would feel more connected,
(18:18):
sort of like we joined a family of people who
tried stuff and it just didn't work. The fact that
we tried makes us braver than those who didn't. Not better,
just braver and friends. That's something to be proud of.
So let's keep trying and then trying some more, because
that's what success in life.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Is all about.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I immediately sent this to like fifteen people because I
didn't know you. I just followed you, and I've heard
you on podcasts and all of that. But I am
not lying when I say I assumed that every single
thing you did, you had a waiting list for like
every single thing you did, and It wasn't this gratitude
(19:00):
of like, oh I'm glad that Mike Foster failed, Like
that would never be a thought in my head. But
it was like, oh, my gosh, I need to check
myself because if somebody who I think is successful and
somebody who I think would have no problem doing something
like this, if they have a struggle, then it feels
(19:23):
like it's more okay for me to have a struggle.
And it's something that I feel like I probably have
been preaching anyway or talking about and promoting. But then
it's like, well, I'm not successful enough to then post
those failures. That breaks this whole cycle of what you're
talking about. I love the line that said we would
(19:44):
have this little family and we'd feel more connected, and
then we would try more things, and then I think
we would have more of those successes that we want
to talk about. So I'm just curious, because I'm somebody
who benefited from that post, even like for you to
put that post up, because I think I would be
shaking as I was about to press post to that.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I was very very conflicted putting up that post because
in many ways, I'm exposing myself to a different perspective
on who I am and what people I think perceive
of me is he's got waiting lists of people who
want to get into his stuff, and instead of the
(20:28):
reality is some things work, some things don't work. I'm
insecure about certain things, I'm very confident about other things.
And so it's like, again, it just aligns with fundamentally
what I'm trying to do in the world is just
tell the truth. And I think there's so many opportunities
(20:52):
for us to tell partial truth or you know, most
of the truth, and this part of it, like the
post about those who try, was maybe the last ten
percent of the truth, okay, And I want I want
people to see all of it. And I don't do
it to get like people to necessarily think differently about me,
(21:15):
But I do it because I want to release something
in other people. Right, It's always about the work. It's like,
we can have this conversation right now together because I
went first and I told the truth about my own
failures of this workshop and the vulnerability and the embarrassment
of it. And that's why I believe, like fundamentally, like
(21:36):
if we can live in our relationships in that place
of like it's Okay, we're all going to be Okay,
we are all going to experience pain, but we're also
going to experience these really incredible moments of success. And
this is life. And I think so often the stories
that we're telling, or the way that we're positioning ourselves
or our brands or whatever we're trying to do, is
(22:00):
fundamentally moving us away from each other into isolation and performance,
versus bringing us together into connection through vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
So I've had this big struggle of how do I
promote something that I think is helpful without capitalizing on
or doing something that feels icky. It's such a weird place,
and I'm asking this to you because you're in the
same realm of business, where Like I think that there's
this assumption, and I'm part of the assumption that therapists
(22:33):
are just here to help people.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Period.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It's like we shouldn't make enough money to live and
we shouldn't have anything special, like we should just like
we should just be helping people. And so I struggle
with one therapy is also it's my job. It's my work,
It's how I survive. But I've struggled with how do
I because the more people we reach the more people
we can help. How do I balance that with I'm
(22:56):
now kind of it's the whole social media I don't
even know the right word to use, but it feels
sometimes icky where I'm like almost capitalizing on people's insecurities
or traumas or their desire to be helped.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I think it's that's where we have to just be
be very in tune with our own motivations and our
own desires, right, because I think we live in a
world where motivations and desires, there's a lot of corrupted
motivations and desires, right, And to use people, to use
people's pain to manipulate, like, all that kind of stuff
(23:32):
is certainly out there. I mean we see it every day.
And so when somebody with a with just a desire
to help, right, just the desire to add value to people,
we just have to go back there and just have
that gut check, like is this post, like I could say,
is this post about trying? Is that about me getting
people feeling sorry for me? Or is this an opportunity
(23:56):
to possibly go viral with a pose? Like I think
that kind of stuff is where that's not serving people
very well. Yeah, if we can just say like, I'm
saying this because I think it might be helpful. Yeah,
and those other things might happen, but yeah, the reason
why I do it.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Yeah, there's something that was written on your website really
well that it wasn't the same words, but it was
something about like these like posts that we see on
social media are really nice, but they're not long lasting.
And that's I think sometimes that I have to come
back and ask myself, is this am I putting this
because I think people are going to repost it? Or
do I feel like this is something I want to
share that sounds really important. And I think there might
(24:38):
be something in your new book that might tie into this.
But I was thinking about like the unconscious motivation, and well,
I took your test on your website. Let's pull up
my results because I save them. So your new book,
the Seven Primal Questions, I want you to kind of
give people a cliff notes version of that. But one
(24:58):
of the things that came back when I to to
this test on your website, it said that my two
primal questions could be am I loved and am I wanted?
Which I could talk about it forever because am I wanted?
Is a question and be the desire we wanted is
something that I have spent years talking about in therapy,
(25:20):
and so I was like, oh, wow, maybe there's something
to this test toass online because some of those things.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, well, because sometimes I'm like, God, does that feel right?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
But I was like, oh, I hate that answer, and
I think it's because it's right.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But going back to the social media thing, something I
have to.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Check is again, is this about me gaining a following
to have a following? Is this me gaining a following
so then I can reach more people for that? And
I have to continuously check that, and I think it
hits the nail on the head because this idea of
me being wanted and I mean, I like want to
belong and I want to be invited, and I want
(25:58):
people to be excited that I'm there, but I don't
want people to just need me. I want them to
want me there despite what I can do. So it's
like a constant battle. And so that's something that I
have to check. And I say all this because I
sometimes just need to get thoughts out of my head,
but also because I think that's something that a lot
of people might have to come back to because I
(26:20):
hear a lot of people feeling the ick about the
social media mental health realm maybeing one of them. But
if we're coming back and saying, is this about me
trying to heal that wound that might still be a
little bit open, or is this about me trying to
do something that feels like right and good? So tell
(26:46):
us about this book, because it sounds like it was
incredible for the preparation to write it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So I want to hear about that process.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah. So I been working on the past four years
research over six thousand hours of one on one inner views.
I did twenty two group labs all around understanding our
highest emotional needs, trauma, attachment theory, kind of really diving
into all that and trying to summarize it in a
(27:15):
very simple way where people can you know, you don't
have to have a PhD. Or you don't have to
be a therapist. It's just a simple construct for you
to actually get clarity on your inner programming and how
you see the world, see relationships, how you see social media,
like all of it is informed by one of these
(27:38):
seven primal questions that I talk about in the book.
And basically here's how the concept works is the early
childhood or imprinted with a question that when unanswered or
was answered in a negative way in our childhood. That
doesn't necess have to be trauma, but it's something that's
where a child is perhaps a little fuse and perceive
(28:01):
certain experiences or certain things in their family certain way
that creates this question. And so then we carry this
question subconsciously into our adult lives and we keep asking it.
And when the answer to that question, whether it's in
our friendships, at work, with our spouse, with society at large,
(28:23):
when the question is answered with a yes, we feel good.
We're our best selves. But when our primal question is
answered with a no or a maybe, we go into
what I call the scramble. And the scramble is all
the unhelpful things we do and maybe dysfunctional things that
(28:43):
we do, perfectionism, people pleasing, self abandonment, workaholicism, I don't know,
just all that stuff, right, All those things that we
do in the scramble is about forcing the answer back
to a yes. So let's take your primal question of
M M, I want it, and there's seven, but there
(29:05):
will be one question that drives really all of our
So when you feel wanted, when you feel like you belong,
When people are reaching out to you and people are
pursuing you, they're answering your primal question with a yes, okay,
and that feels good. But when perhaps you're ignored or
(29:26):
rejected or I don't know, just uninvited to something, you're
left out of the party, that's a no or a
maybe to your primal question of M might want it?
And then perhaps you go into your scramble and you're like, Okay,
I gotta be nicer to everybody. Now, I got to
razzle dazzle people, so they'll so next time they'll invite
(29:48):
me to the party. What I've found in the research
is it's so pore to who we are. It's so
significant that almost everything we every choice, every view or
message of what we prioritize in terms of what we
want people to know about themselves is centered on the
(30:12):
primal question. And here's the fun thing about this, and
this is what I want to really want to call
out in the book, is that having a primal question
is not a problem. The scramble is the problem. In fact,
your primal question of am I wanted is actually a
gift and here's how this works. Is what we do.
The research shows is what we do is we take
(30:33):
our own primal question and we put it over everybody
else and assume they're asking the same question as we are. Now,
there's six other questions that they could be asking, but
our whole assumption is that they're asking the same question
as we. So your your interactions with everyone, you're seeing
(30:53):
them asking the question, am I wanted? And then you
make every effort to answered that question with a yes, yes,
and to affirm that. So you are a master. You
are an expert at inclusion and people feeling wanted and
creating belonging. This is a relational superpower that you have
(31:16):
because of your primal question, and so it's a really
beautiful thing where we can start leveraging that and start
figuring that out of how to deploy that more into
the world.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
As you just said that, I was like, no, I'm not.
I sometimes think I can get a little bit selfish
because I maybe sometimes think I'm focusing too much on
my question. I don't know this is all coming up
right now, but I'm sitting here being like I'm not
like that. But then recently I had this huge revelation,
and I've had to work through this shame and guilt
(31:50):
of wishing I could go back to high school and
be nicer to people that didn't have friends like that
was such a big deal to me in some of
some of my own work, and that makes so much
sense of Like, the thing that bothers me most about
high school wasn't that I felt left out and or
I felt bad or I felt misunderstood. It was that
there were people that were feeling that. And I didn't
(32:11):
have the lack of ego at that point to go
and say, hey, do you want to sit by me
at lunch? Yes, because I wanted to. I was focused
on wanting to be wanted. And maybe that's because that
was a bigger no back.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Then for me.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
What happens is if we're allowing the scramble to sort
of dictate our lives. It's what I call our primal
gift is when we put it over our question over
somebody else, and then a tomb in answering yes and
affirming that in others. If we get so caught up
in our scramble and answering our own question, the primal
gift part of your superpower of inclusion of making people
(32:48):
feel wanted is going to be diminished because you're just
not able to operate in health in that area. Yeah,
but once you know that you are wanted, okay, that
you don't have to live in the scramble, you actually
have this beautiful way of welcoming people and including people
(33:09):
and making them feel special and belong and feel like
they belong.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah. Can you share with some of the other questions
that are in there?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So I'll give you an example. My primal question is
am I safe? That's question number one? And that is
because of trauma in my early childhood. So that's just
the need for kind of physical and emotional safety. And
so for much of my life, I tune around risk management.
I'm very hyper vigilant with details. You know. COVID nineteen
(33:38):
wasn't a great thing for somebody with an am I
safe question, right because they're like, oh my gosh, we're
all going to die, you know. And so I don't
do anything dangerous. I don't jump out of planes. I
don't you know. I'm so my whole again, my whole
life was making sure that my primal question isn't answered
with a no or I'm trying to avoid it with
(33:58):
a no. But here's also the primal gift part of that.
So I take my am I safe question, and I
put it over everybody I meet. And this is why
people tell me their deepest darket secrets after knowing them
for five minutes. Right, So it makes me a really
good counselor it makes me really good with moving in
Like when there's conflict, perhaps I'm working with a couple
(34:19):
and there's some real conflict and chaos, I can bring
my safety and protection gift into that situation and really
create some space for people to have more healthy dialogue
and actually get to a healthy solution. And so again,
(34:39):
every question has something that we have to manage. I
have to manage this question of am I safe, just
like you have to manage the question of am I wanted?
But the primal gifts part of like, I can't do
what I do as well as I do it without
my primal question. So question two is am I secure?
(35:03):
This has to do with financial security. I have enough
resources to protect myself, enough resources, and this really is
around finances and money for the most part. Question three
is about am I loved the question? And this is
really about am I seeing? Am I known? Am I
(35:23):
listened to? This? Is? These are kind of the core
needs of people with this primal question. By the way,
every primal question has what I call kryptonite, which will
instantly send you into your scramble. So like for me,
my kryptonite is surprises, like negative surprises. Okay, I'm like ah,
(35:44):
and then I'm instantly going and my scramble security. Question
two would be any financial instability or surprises really emotionally
activates them. Question three, am I loved? Is really the kryptonite?
There would be indifference if you're sensing somebody sort of
indifferent to you, take it or leave it? That kind
(36:07):
of thing that sends you into your scramble. Question four,
am I wanted? And that would be rejection. Rejection is
going to send you into your scramble question five? Probably
question five is am I successful? This tends to be
like people who have grown up in competitive homes where
scorekeeping was really a big deal and putting runs on
(36:27):
the board or you know, it's like you came home
with a B plus a mom and dad said, you know,
let's work harder to get that A. You know, it's
like keeping score you know, and so they tend to
grow up with this whole idea of like success is
really important. When they feel successful, they feel great. But
when they experience failure or underperformance or under achievement, they
(36:49):
go into their scramble. Question six is am I good enough?
These are folks who can really struggle with imposter syndrome
or perfectionism, where just they never they never measure up.
It's kind of existential too for these folks, where it's like,
I just do I have a right to even be
here in the world. So that gets expressed in two
(37:11):
different ways. One would be through insecurity. They tend to
be wallflowers or just you know, they don't believe their
opinions are that important, so they don't bring them, you know.
So there's kind of this this lack of confidence. And
the other way that it often expresses itself is through
narcissism and self puffery or this over indexing to prove
(37:33):
your worth or value. And then question seven, by the way,
the kryptonite for question six, am I good enough? Is
criticism and judgment. So if you find anybody being defensive
right really right away, and it's really activated by any
sort of feedback, it's very high possibility. That's a question six,
(37:55):
am I good enough person? And then finally question seven's
do I have purpose? This is really around having impact
significance in your life. These are the vision casters of
the world. These are the big believers that you know
and so impacts really important and for them, their kryptonite
would be doing meaningless work, doing something that is not
(38:19):
doesn't feel very important, and so they feel like they're
because they're not doing anything important, that my life doesn't
have purpose.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Okay, so one, this is so cool.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I can't wait to read this whole thing because I'm
a big fan of the enneagram. But the reason I
liked the enneagram so much and I like it so
much is it feels very similar to the groundings of
and you mentioned this earlier attachment theory.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
And I've always told myself.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
I want to do some kind of study where we
really look at that and how that plays out in anagram.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
But this, I feel like, puts all that I don't have.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
To do the research anymore because you did it, but
because it's probably never going to get around to it.
But this puts that to it. Like this very much
sounds like you're putting language and understanding and a not
easier but a well, I guess maybe simple or more
direct road to getting to these core questions that people
(39:19):
spend years in therapy trying to figure out. And also,
as you were saying that again, I can't help but
think about other people that pop up in my head
as you're saying all of those, and I felt the
sense of, well, if I knew that, if I could know,
because I want people to give me the grace selfishly,
I want people to give me the grace that they
(39:41):
can see when I'm doing my scramble. It's not because
I'm just wanting to be look cuckoo out there. It's
not because I'm self absorbed. It's not just because of
I'm a not inherently good person. It's because this came
from this experience. And I love I love that you
said it's not always this bit traumatic experience. It's just experiences,
(40:03):
and I want people to offer that to me. And
hearing you go through that list, I was like, oh,
if I can look at everybody like, because everybody has one,
if I can look at them as like they have
one of these questions floating on in their head, so
the things that they're doing specifically, when you said that's
when you see the narcissism, I'm like, I have a
(40:23):
weird sweet spot for narcissists in the sense where I'm like,
I know that there's some pain there, I know what's
going on, but at the same time, I'm like, oh,
this is so frustrating.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
So that's kind of the thing I'm most excited about
is not so much even just the self awareness and
our own understanding, but how we can then interact and
have relationship with others knowing what their primal question is.
So like, I use this a lot. In couple's counseling.
The reason why relationships fail, especially marriage relationships, is fundamentally
(40:56):
one of the spouse's partners is answering their partner's primal
question with a no or a maybe too often, so
that relationship will not survive if that partner is consistently
at answering their partner's primal question with a no or
a maybe. So in couple's counseling, what we do is
(41:17):
we identify what is each spouse's primal question, and then
we get really practical and say, okay, I sometimes right
about this. In the book, I say, you know, imagine
your spouse is wearing their primal question as a sign
around their neck, like in big bold letters, and all
(41:37):
you I'd tell the other spouse, all you have to
do is answer and affirm that primal question with a yes,
and you will have a successful relationship with that person.
But if you consistently, whether on purpose or you know
you know you're unaware of answering that question with a
no or a maybe, consistently, you will have a lousy
(41:59):
relationship with that person. And this is true of marriage.
This isn't true. This is true of friendships. This is
true of our relationship with our parents. It's true with
our relationship with our boss or co workers. You fundamentally
can't be in a healthy relationship with somebody who doesn't
answer it with a yes. So, if I knew your
(42:20):
primal question was am I wanted, I'm now going to
make sure that as your friend and somebody who cares
about you, I would make sure that I invited you
to all things okay, because I knew that would mean
a lot to you, and I want to be a
good friend to you, and so I want to answer
your primal question with a yes, and I would look
for creative ways to do that. And that's what's so
(42:41):
fun about this. It's not only just our own self
awareness and our primal gift and understanding our own highest
emotional need. It's how do I enter into other people's
highest emotional needs and have this really powerful connection with them.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
This is so timely too, because I just did a
series on Gotman's Four Horsemen and communication and conflict management,
and then I just did last week we talked about
leadership and what makes a good leader. I mean this,
it has to be parts of all of that, because
I'm thinking about relationally with a partner.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
If you didn't plan anything.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
For my birthday or I don't need anything big, I
just want to do something. I want you to think
that that you thought about it, then I would be like, well,
he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
He doesn't really care if I'm here or not.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
He's not like he's not there's no pursuing, there's no
And if he knew that, then he would like, Okay,
I don't really care about my birthday.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
I don't really care about doing anything, but I know
that she does.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Those conversations are always the conversations that come up. I
work with just individuals, but they're coming to me saying
I got in this argument or this fighter, he did
this thing to me, and this right here would solve
a lot of those. It's not a lack of love,
it's not a lack of care. It's like a it's
a misunderstanding or unknowing of what's going on, because, like
(44:01):
what you said, we're assuming everybody else is asking our same.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Question, the same question, yes versus there's.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Six other questions. Uh huh, oh my gosh, Okay, I
love this. I'm curious if there's anything that through because
your research what you said four years which you have
some patience that I really value.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
I'm an Enneagram five, so I'm the investigator. So I
love the research part of it. But I know it's
not for everyone.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Well, and I'm a seven, and I'm like, I don't
have time to work through all of this.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
I just want to read the end results. Okay.
Speaker 3 (44:37):
So in all that research, was there anything that either
you learned about yourself that was super surprising or anything
that came up that you were not expecting from just
in general.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
One of the things that I am most excited about,
or was most excited about it just kind of in
the discovery is how it applies to parenting and just
kind of some aha moments with how we structure our
parenting styles around our primal question. So again the concept
of we take our primal question and we're going to
(45:12):
put it over our child and we're going to make
sure that we really answer that with a strong yess
for our child.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
So for me, my primal question was am I safe?
So in my I have two kids, they're older, and
I have a twenty four year old twenty one year old,
But when we were raising them, it was a dad
who is all about their safety, right if they were
going to go spend the night with with somebody. I
was the one calling up making sure I knew all
the details, making sure everything was going to be okay,
(45:42):
who are the people that that's you know, protection of
my kids? Safety of my kids? That was my orientation
to parenting them. And my wife's primal question was and
I loved so she again takes her primal question, puts
it over our kids, and I got to tell you
she did an a plus job at loving our kids.
(46:04):
So what's nice about that is Number one, you have
two people who bring a different angled parenting I'd also
be probably a little bit judgmental about how much love
she was shown there, Like, I mean, they know it.
It's fine. You don't have to, like, you know, buy
two hundred dollars worth of Christmas gifts. One hundred dollars
is fine, right, But sometimes what will happen is will
(46:26):
over index on our primal question with our kiddos, And
so kind of the parenting thing that was an AHA
moment is good parenting is yes, expressing our primal question
and answering informing that for our kids in a healthy way,
not over indexing, but looking to answer all seven of
(46:49):
them in a consistent way with our kids.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah, and as adult, I can look back on my parents,
because you know, it's just natural see what they didn't do.
But I also can see these things like in the
over loving or the over safety, I now can see
some of the things that I'm excited to dig in
more to this. I can see some of the things
(47:13):
that my mom or dad did that I'm like, oh
my gosh, that was their way of giving me everything
that they didn't have, and that was their way of
keeping me safe in their head or loved in their head.
That sometimes pissed me off, but I can now see
that as an abundance of love.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Well, that's fundamentally like, I hope we all, through this
tool and the framework, have more compassion for ourselves why
we do the things that we do, understanding our hidden programming,
but also compassion for others and why they're making certain
choices about their life or the way they parented us,
or why they're getting so upset when this like it's
(47:56):
just a compassionate and kind way to live in the world,
not with a bunch of judgment towards sort of these
behaviors or things that don't make sense to us. It's like, oh,
that's what's going on there, and then we can we
can really approach that with a much more well. Number one,
we can actually work on the right problems right if
(48:17):
there's a problem in a relationship. But we can also
have a lot more understanding than perhaps why our parents
over indexed on a particular thing.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Now I'm having this vision of everybody walking around with
t shirts that have a question on it was.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
So helpful, it would be it's it is helpful. Like
I I think about it, you know, with friends. Now
I think about obviously in my marriage, I think about it,
you know, with my my parents, my relationship with my parents.
It's it is helpful to know.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yeah, for the sake of time here because we could,
I mean we could talk about this forever or I
personally could. The book is out so people can get it.
Where do you want them to get it? And I
did see that you can buy that bundle, which I
want to get for my team at work because I
think that would be really helpful. But where do you
want people to go to find it?
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah? So two things. Number one, the web, my website
Mike Foster dot tv as in television, Mike Foster dot
tv has the assessment number one that you talked about,
where you can take the assessment and discover your own
primal question. And then the book is also available there
and you can buy it on the website or you
(49:30):
buy a bundle. And I think it's actually cheaper there
than it is on Amazon right now. But it is
available on Amazon too if you want to use your
Amazon account to purchase it. But yeah, Mike Foster dot
tv or the assessment free assessment, by the way, it
takes maybe five or six minutes, not does it take
a lot of time free assessment. And then the book
(49:52):
is also available at.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
My website, okay, and people can follow you on Instagram
so they can see all the posts that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Mike Foster two thousand, Right.
Speaker 2 (50:02):
That's correct, Mike Foster two thousand.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Okay, amazing. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Thank you for doing all this research for us.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
Oh, I appreciate you for having me. I have just
thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with you.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Thanks, And yeah, I hope you enjoyed the book. I
I thanks for buying the bundle for your friends and
net work. And yeah, I just I think, you know,
all of us have this great opportunity just to hopefully
bring things, whether podcasts or books or whatever, just to
bring more help and healing into our lives. And I
(50:36):
think that's you and I are both aligned, and that's
all we want to do is just kind of help
people be the best versions of themselves
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