Playing It Safe Holds You Back | Elizabeth Weingarten

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by using code charm at checkout get stuff done and start enjoying your to-do list again download stuff from the app store today If you're speeding through your life, if you're just trying to get to the next thing, you're completely filtering out what's around you, you're missing a lot of inspiration. You're missing a lot of what gives texture to your creative work. So I realized that. patience was actually really connected to who I wanted to be the person that I wanted to become in the world.

All right, let's kick off today's show. Today, we're talking with Elizabeth Weingarten, the author of How to Fall in Love with Questions, A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty. She's exploring how we navigate life's biggest uncertainties, from career changes... to relationship crossroads. And she shares why we feel stuck when facing life's biggest challenges.

And she shares why we feel stuck when facing life's biggest decisions, how binary questions trap you in impossible choices, the real reason embrace uncertainty makes everything worse, and why patience without courage keeps you frozen forever. Thank you for joining us, Elizabeth. Great to have you. Thank you. It's great to be here. A lot of us are taught by common wisdom, friends, family, even influencers to embrace uncertainty. But what does it actually mean to fall in love with the questions?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked. So my book, How to Fall in Love with Questions, A New Way to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty is all about how to get unstuck from that experience of uncertainty. And let me back up for a moment and just kind of define what is uncertainty? What do we mean when we talk about uncertainty? One of my favorite definitions of uncertainty is a sense of doubt that stops or delays progress.

And I think that really gets at what makes uncertainty such a terrible experience for a lot of people, right? It's like, you feel like you want to move forward. You can't move forward. You feel like you're stopped in your tracks. As you mentioned, in those moments, a lot of us get this advice, just embrace uncertainty.

You know, maybe there are some contexts in life when that works, right? I'm just going to embrace uncertainty. I don't know what my family's planning for my birthday. Like, cool, that's a fun thing to embrace uncertainty. But when it comes to the really hard, painful...

questions of life like say you're waiting on the results of a biopsy say you are trying to you know navigate like a post layoff you know you don't know what you're doing next there are all sorts of times in life when that advice to embrace uncertainty feels really tone deaf. And I experienced that myself. And we can get into this when I was going through some big questions in my life about my marriage, about my career.

And it was at that time that I found this different advice to love the questions. It came from this old book by a poet, Rainier Maria Rilke. We can get into that too. But the core idea here is that loving the questions.

is a totally different way of approaching uncertainty in your life. It's about changing the relationship that we have with the big questions in our lives. And fundamentally, loving the questions means that we can actually have a whole different range of emotions when it comes to uncertainty than, you know, embracing uncertainty. It's almost like this kind of like positive toxic positivity, right? But loving the questions and we can get into this a little more allows you to actually feel.

the whole range of emotions that you might feel like when you love another person, right? You love another person. Some days you feel totally in love with that person. You're so excited to be with them. On other days, you might feel like, you know what?

I can't stand this person. This person is driving me nuts. And the same thing goes with those big questions in your life. Some days you might be really excited about them. Some days you might really want to throw them out the window and that's all okay. But we can dive into all of that. And that's why I think embracing uncertainty is so frustrating because that definition of being stuck, wanting to move forward. Well, why would I want to embrace being stuck? I want to be moving forward.

Exactly. Exactly. And so the key is, and this is a big part of the book, how do you move forward when you don't have all the answers, right? What does it mean to use your questions as engines, as kind of fuel to move you forward rather than staying stuck?

Let's talk about your own journey in embracing uncertainty and then falling in love with the questions because I think it's relatable for a lot of our audience members. This journey for me really emerged during a time in my life when I was buckling under these.

heavy questions about my marriage and my career. And candidly, the question about my marriage was, should I get a divorce? I was kind of... somewhat newly married it was you know a few months into my marriage i go through this in the book but i had had it been a period of several years with my partner where i had been um

going back and forth between feeling really certain and secure that this was the right person for me, and then feeling some lingering doubts. And I had this sense that, oh, if I get married, those doubts are going to go away, right? And I think a lot of people feel that.

way, right? That, okay, I just make this decision. If I just do this thing, I'll have that certainty. And of course, it didn't make the doubts go away because they were based on kind of deeper questions that I hadn't yet acknowledged and resolved. And so I had kind of this relationship question on the one hand, this very scary, painful question of should I get a divorce?

I was dealing with a career question and I had recently left my job to pursue a creative project and the creative project was failing. I had devoted all these months to it and I was at this. crossroads where I was wondering, okay, well, this isn't working, this thing that I thought I really wanted to do. So what am I doing with my life? You know what? I can't get this, you know, I do, I need to find another job. Like, what does this mean for this kind of path that I wanted to go on?

And so I'm holding these two big questions. And as you mentioned earlier, every pop psychology book I was reading was just, well, just embrace uncertainty, right? It's exciting. And that just felt totally tone deaf to me. And so luckily, it was around that time that I came across what for me was a much more challenging, but also much more kind of resonant piece of advice. And it came from this book called Letters to a Young Poet.

And for folks who aren't familiar with this book, it's a book of correspondence between the Austrian poet Rainier Maria Rilke and a 19-year-old aspiring poet. His name was Franz Kappas, and it's from the early 20th century. The whole book is beautiful, so I really recommend that anybody check it out. But I was struck by this one part of it.

Kappas in this part, this aspiring poet, he's asking Rilke for all kinds of advice, not only about how to become a poet, but how to live his life. And Rilke very famously responds not with an answer. per se, but by telling him how important it is to, quote, love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language.

And he also advises Kappas to not search for the answers now and talks about the importance of living the questions. Of course, Rilke never explains what does he mean by... living the questions or how to love the questions. And he also wasn't thinking about how do we do this in a time of AI or Google or smartphones and social media influencers. So the book is really kind of an exploration of

How do you fall in love with the questions of your lives? And particularly, like I was mentioning, the ones that can be really painful. The ones about relationships, about identity, careers, love, loss, meaning, purpose. And so those are the types of questions that the book really dives into.

I can't help but laugh that a 19-year-old is asking these questions, hoping that as he gets older, he'll gain some wisdom to figure it out. Because at 51 and as an entrepreneur, in fact, none of that... those questions have been answered in fact there's only more questions to be had and and uh and i wake up every day not knowing what's going on so

I couldn't agree more. I think there's this illusion when you're young that you, it's kind of the arrival fallacy in a way, right? That like. oh, I'm just going to reach this point in my life and all my questions are going to be answered and I'm going to have this sense of certainty and security. But I think there are kind of two parts of that. One is, yes, as you're saying, I think we only...

tend to have more questions or maybe become even more aware of some of the questions. But there's also a really positive side. And some of the research that I uncovered for the book, too, was there's this idea that we get less curious as we get older, right? There's this myth that, okay, it's just like three-year-old children, they're so curious. And then after that, it's all downhill and none of us ask questions and, you know, and...

And there's a part of that that's maybe slightly true that, yes, kids... constantly asking why. Maybe we're not quite at that level when we get older. But there's actually really good research to suggest that people can grow more curious over time and that curiosity is kind of your companion, your lifelong companion.

one hand it's yeah the questions never go away but that's also a really wonderful thing in a way I think the urge that comes with that curiosity is to answer the question And you write about how there are these charlatans now that have cropped up to answer these heavy questions for us with finality and simple solutions that...

oftentimes lead us further astray. And what's going on with this, obviously embracing the question, but then seeking such a fast answer and how does it turn us around? The first thing to understand and get grounded in is why do we seek certainty? as humans? What is that about? And I know you all have talked previously about our tendency to want to avoid uncertainty, but it's really rooted in our biology, right? We're kind of wired to want to seek certainty.

what we need to be able to love the question and to be able to sustain a relationship with it for longer rather than jumping to those fast, easy answers. Well, unfortunately, certainty gets likes, clicks, views, and engagement. And in this world where we're constantly online and measuring ourselves based on what other people in our life are posting, most people are not posting their uncertainty. So it can feel very isolating.

When you look around and it seems like everyone has a perfect relationship and everyone's living their dream life and everyone has found work-life balance and they're enjoying everything. And you're sitting in this uncertainty, but you're staring at this fun house mirror of social media and you're... When you're making good money, it's easy to get complacent. You don't track every dollar. Then the holidays hit and you realize you have no idea where it all went.

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I'm sure of sharing that uncertainty. And that is the breaking of the authenticity and the connection that we need most in those moments instead of the answers. I think that's absolutely right. That's why, as part of the book, I really wanted to find... communities and spaces that were designed to help people to kind of live in uncertainty and to kind of break down that facade that is present in so many of the spaces that we're in online.

You know, I think, you know, I'm curious for both of you, how you've thought about that in, you know, the way that you show up, whether kind of it's online or in person, because I would imagine that when you're a coach and when you're leading workshops, there's a lot of pressure to...

know all the answers, right? So I'm really curious, actually, how does it show up for both of you in that role as kind of expert? And what is it like share with people authentically when maybe you don't know or when you're uncertain? For me personally, step one is finding that community. I've shared on the show before, men's work has been one of those areas that I've explored, talking about those difficult emotions, talking about those deeper questions.

not necessarily pursuing answers, but looking for commonality in what other people around me are pursuing. And now as I moved into fatherhood, I'm looking specifically for that advice from other fathers because it's a whole new...

world and new chapter in my life. And then on top of it, I think a lot of times when you're in a coaching role, you're put on a pedestal, it's very easy to not share the messy parts and to not. showcase what's going on. But I think both of us, Johnny and I are very open with our clients on the areas we're working on, where we're seeking coaching, and where we're looking to be pushed to help us get more out of ourselves. I think that's a big...

part of what we share in the lessons that we do. And of course, in our coaching community is a big part of it. And I think that's one of the great parts that when members join, they recognize, okay, I'm not alone in having these social skills, confidence issues, or I'm not alone in...

lacking the relationships in my life that I really want, or I'm not alone in feeling that I've gotten ahead in my career, but I don't actually feel internally that I've found the success that everyone sees in me. Absolutely. And Johnny, I'm curious to hear for you too.

If I understood the question correctly, when I get asked questions that I don't have the answer to, I'm very honest about it. I don't have the answers to that. And when people ask me how do I deal with that, it's the same advice, which is... I turn to my values and I begin producing. Production through my values is either the escape that I don't have to deal with the uncertainty or...

There's just comfort in being able to create in the moment through things that I love. And those things that I love, I'm also a philosophy junkie. massively. So Schopenhauer is one of my favorites and it just continues to get deeper. Once you open those books, there's no stopping. But all of those books, at least the... philosophers that I enjoy who give me the most out of it is that those values and being able to create sort of put everything else together.

If you want to find purpose, start creating, start doing things that other people can consume. Those creations create answers for other people. You taking action creates answers for other people. I can sit here and allow those questions to gnaw at me all day long, but that doesn't help me at all.

So it's production. I'm just going to get up and I'm going to start doing stuff. I'm either going to start creating content or I'm going to start playing my guitar and writing songs. I got albums, multiple albums worth of material that I love. that i would love to see come to fruition the songwriting part is the part that i have access to that's the buttons that i could push getting into a studio and all of that other stuff

that's a learning process that takes a little, a lot of time. And right now that's not the season for me to do that. What both of you said resonates so much. As a writer, I have the same kind of instinct, right? That if I'm uncertain about something, I'm going to start writing. And it's often through the process of writing and through creativity that I figure out.

what I even think. And there's a lot in the book actually about the practice of journaling and kind of regular writing or regular kind of creativity to help you kind of thrive in those moments of uncertainty. So I think that's really backed by the science. But AJ, what you were talking about as far as kind of being a new father, I'm a new mom too. So I very much relate to that experience of, you know.

There are lots of uncertain times in our life, but I think being a new parent is just one of the most uncertain experiences I've ever had. You just feel like you're in an ocean of uncertainty every day. Everything from the really small questions like, What type of diapers should I be buying?

Who am I now that I'm this new parent? And how do I co-parent with somebody? And how's my relationship changing, right? There are just so many kind of small and big questions there. Well, think about that. Isn't creating a child the ultimate?

in creation and the only thing better than that is creating a nation right so it's then it's a multiple society but that's the one thing that button that you can press when you find a well hopefully a willing participant that enjoys your time and what you've created together for the rest of your lives. One of the forces that I feel is often a struggle in these moments with that rise in anxiety and pressure wanting to solve this is the patience that's necessary to actually guide you through it.

And I feel, especially now with an always online society where we're constantly seeking these answers, that patience becomes even more challenging for us to cultivate. You write in the book that patience is... a really important part of this journey. What have you personally done to create the space for that patient?

What I learned, I kind of reported in the book about the history of patience as a virtue and found that patience, and this is not going to be a surprise to most people, has been kind of out of style for really kind of centuries at this point. It was... briefly, you know, really upheld as a virtue, like we, you know, we all need to be patient. But then patients started being associated with kind of a failure of technology.

as kind of our technology began to progress, you know, from the industrial revolution on, the idea that you would have to patiently wait something for something was... started to become more of a bug than a feature of life. And I think part of it too was patients started being connected with being passive. Like, oh, if you're a patient, you're just a doormat, right? You're not actually taking action.

Big part of the book is my own journey to really change my own relationship to uncertainty, which, as you alluded, part of it was patience for me and cultivating patience. So a big part of it was understanding. well, what does patience mean to me? Why did I actually want to be more patient? And this was a really big part of, you know, I think it's easy to just see something like that or hear about something like that and think, oh, yeah, I should be more patient. And maybe...

You take a few steps to do it, but you don't stick to it because you don't really have that sense of like, why is this meaningful to me? Why should I really be doing this? And, or why do I want to do this? And for me, what I realized was being. patient, you know, slowing down in my life, being more present was absolutely key to how I wanted to show up in my relationships with the people who I love the most. I'm realizing that.

Being impatient is a pretty surefire way to make people feel like they're not cared about and also to miss out on the joy of relationships and on being with other people. and another big part of it i think is as a writer as a creator right like You know, if you're speeding through your life, if you're just trying to get to the next thing, you're completely filtering out what's around you, you're missing a lot of inspiration. You're missing a lot of what gives texture to your creative work.

So I realized that patience was actually really connected to who I wanted to be, the person that I wanted to. kind of become in the world, far from being this like really lame, old sounding virtue, right? Which I think can be easy for people to say. But I will say, you know, I think the other part of the research that's really important is that patience is counterbalanced with courage. So it's not enough when we're facing uncertainty to just say, well, I'm just going to be patient.

I'm just going to wait this out. And Johnny, I think you were kind of getting at that, right? Like you're not just going to let these questions not. You also, at a certain point, have to have the courage to do something, to kind of go forward. And so understanding when to be patient and when to be.

courageous and having that discernment is so fundamental but for me you know what does this look like in practice it's been really kind of simple things and i will say this is still it's still a work in progress but i think sometimes it's

simply, you know, I walk a lot during the day and now I walk a lot with my son and it's just reflecting on like, what's one thing today that I could do a little more slowly where I could be a little more patient because my tendency, and I think a lot of people is to just be like. speeding through the day like what's on my to-do list i gotta i gotta do it all quickly but just asking myself that question and bringing a little bit of conscious awareness it doesn't it's not like oh i'm trying to be

so patient all the time, obviously, that's a great ideal end state. But just bringing a little bit more awareness to those kind of moments where, you know, I'm kind of speeding up right now, like, all right, what would it look like to just slow down? a little bit and be a little bit more patient. So it can be as simple as that. That's why I enjoy philosophy so much because certainly a lot of the stuff that I read is written at the turn of the century.

just after or just after the Industrial Revolution and everyone and all of those philosophers saw what was going on and they had great concerns for what that all. Right. And a lot of the questions that they answer, or at least that allow me to feel good.

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Because they were more attached to how they lived for thousands of years before everything started to pick up and speed up. Of course, patience is one of those things because you had nothing but all day to sit around and think about things or go off and put yourself in a cave for a few months and wander and journal.

This is something that I still do to this day that always revitalizes my creative spirit, which is I want to put myself in things that are awe-inspiring, that are astonishing, that I don't see very often. And then just start journaling. I have a notes page on my phone that has been open for years that is only for stream of consciousness. And to me...

that connects me to how those guys wrote. And of course they did a lot of editing and they took the best from that. But you know, in my, in that, in that stream of consciousness of years of notes.

those lessons go into our workshops. Those lessons end up as content. Those lessons end up as song ideas. And I'm sure when I hit the season of my life where I'm... writing more or looking to at least accomplish a book, those ideas are going to be in there too, if not the central idea coming from that tab. I love that. And I think it gets that experience too. Like I hear the energy in your voice, right? Like it's so invigorating and going back to that feeling of like...

It's like the opposite of feeling stuck, right? It's like all of a sudden you have this momentum and this sense of I'm going places. Like I have, things are flowing through me. With our emotions, we have our primary and secondary emotions. And for people who don't experience art in the way that I do or think of it in the terms that I do.

they're missing out on exploring emotions that they've never felt before. And one day, maybe those emotions will strike up being put in the right circumstance for that to happen. But unless you're actively... exploring those emotions through art you will never experience some of those and for me my favorite philosophy I love having paradigm shifts when I read a line that blows the doors

wide open to the rest of my whole world in an instant. That's amazing. That's addictive. That's like being what I would call a modern literature psychonaut. But music... is my main driver for that is my main instrument and certainly i've played some wild stuff for aj that might check this out he's like holy cow like what's even going on in this room at this moment And I love searching those things out. But again, those emotions that you feel during some of those explorations.

you might never experience that again in your life. And there's this other idea that, and certainly I felt the same emotions maybe on a mushroom trip, right? You're inducing that in yourself. Now the way I think about it is if you can induce those emotions through a psychedelic experience,

Wouldn't that stop you from seeking that out through art? And if so, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. What I think about too, and this was part of what you were maybe getting at in the beginning is like. This question that you get from people who are clients or folks that you interact with, how do you start, right? Like, you know, say you're not a musician, say you're not somebody who even...

thinks of yourself as a creative person and what does this look like? And so part of the reason that in the book, I give people the idea of developing a questions practice. And so this is a way I think to start to really be the creator or the author of these big questions in your life, which actually leads to, I think, Johnny, some of that reflection and some of the kind of.

taking lots of notes and ideas flowing that you were describing. But a big part of it is, okay, if we're going to change the relationship that we have to our questions, to this uncertainty in our life, Well, we need to spend time with those questions. We need to get to know them just the way that you would need to get to know a person. And so what I have in the book is really a set of guided reflections and like a questions map to kind of help lead.

you through the darkness, so to speak, right? Of like that uncertainty that you might be experiencing, not necessarily guiding you to answers, but to, but to clarity and kind of. you know, to your point, being able to access and feel your emotions in a clearer way. And also fundamentally, and like part of what I hear you talking about too, is

you know getting curious about what you're experiencing versus it feeling just like this you know sense of anxiety or like lead you know like holding you back but how do you really maybe it's using an experience of awe right like using that to kind of start the flow. But I think, you know, maybe even if you're not in some kind of awe-inspiring environment, there's a way to start to get curious about... the questions that you're asking and to fundamentally exercise your creativity in figuring out

are these the right questions? And how do I know that they're the right questions? And if they're not, how do I change them so that I'm actually opening myself up to more possibilities in my life? I think in that impatience, it's hard to then tune into our intuition.

And that's why I love to walk through the questions map and help guide our audience a bit because it oftentimes feels like, well, which of these questions should I be holding on to and serve me and which ones are gnawing at me, but actually are keeping me stuck. The first step is, and this is kind of all laid out on the map, it's like once you kind of identify, all right, like what type of question am I asking? It's to look at this question. And you know what?

let's even back up a step further than that. You might not know what question you're asking, right? Like all you know is that you feel kind of anxious and you're nervous about something or you have some type of feeling. Usually, you know, for a lot of people, it's anxiety, but it. could be just like fear and you it's like kind of you're maybe not even fully aware.

of the question that's behind it. But I think the first part is starting with that emotion, starting with that experience that you're having and trying to get curious about like, okay, what is, what is the question? that's behind this. And I think a lot of times the questions that we're asking are like, you know, what if this happens? Or, you know, it's like a fear about maybe something happening in the future and you're not sure, you know, what that's going to be.

Or maybe it's a question, you know, the question that I was asking at the beginning of the book was, should I get a divorce? So a lot of times we're asking binary questions. And the first step of the questions practice is, you know, A, figuring out. What is the question that you're asking? But then B, is this the right question? And what I mean by that is if you're asking a binary question or you're asking a should question, you're asking a question that maybe is less about.

you and more about the expectations that other people have of you, that's probably not going to be the right question for you. Because what I've learned about what makes something the right or the wrong question is... A, the right question is one that's going to open you up to lots of different possible futures, possible experiences in your life. That's not a binary question. That's a question like for me, the question that I was asking changed from should I get a divorce to

how would I stay in relationship with this person? How might we both have to change in order to stay in this marriage? What would that look like? And this is just an example, but you know, you can see how changing the frame of that question. the frame of a question about your career or your identity, all of a sudden you go from having the possible answers be yes or no to kind of an infinite array of possibilities.

So that's kind of step one. Step two is thinking about, as I mentioned, this question of, is your question one that is what I would call like almost an internal GPS, right? who you really are, what you really want and what you really need, or is it a question? Is it somebody else's question, right? Like I think a lot of times we internalize particular questions and then we realize, you know what?

That's my mom's question. That's my dad's question. That's my partner's question. It's not my question. What is my question? What's actually leading me back to what I really want and need? And then the last part of it is... is this a dead leaf question, right? Like, is this a question that is keeping me stuck? Or is it a question that's moving me forward and helping me think about possibilities in the future? And I think fundamentally too, something to understand.

when you're discerning this question, whether it's the right question for you at the beginning of your practice, a lot of what makes us anxious about uncertainty is not necessarily... not knowing the answer. Sometimes it's thinking that we do know the answer, right? Sometimes it's thinking or being certain that, well, this really bad thing is going to happen, right? And so it's kind of maybe counterintuitive, but...

This experience of getting comfortable with the questions and getting comfortable with uncertainty can sometimes mean accepting that, hey, maybe a good thing will happen. Maybe something positive is in store for me in the future versus I'm just looking at a future of kind of doom and that's why I'm feeling really uncomfortable in the moment. So that's a big part of the start of the practice.

obviously go into some of the other steps too. In often these really uncertain moments, there's an identity piece that is holding on. We feel a lot of comfort in that identity, but it might require us shifting or looking at ourselves differently to actually deal with the uncertainty and move forward. Did that come up for you? And how do we manage and navigate those moments where maybe our identity...

is not really serving us or it's not who we truly want to be. Because I know for a lot of our audience members, you know, they're in that phase of life where their identity... Peacemakers. Risk takers. For the optimists. Pessimists. For long distance love. For introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers. For old friends and new. Coca-Cola. For everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you. Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of rum chata.

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It was often shaped by their family's expectations, society's expectations, and now that maybe they've graduated or they've made a career choice and they're recognizing this isn't who I want to be or what I feel I need to be.

But they hold on to that identity because it creates certainty and safety based on past experiences. So you hit on one of the central themes of the book and something that I heard from so many stories of people. I'll tell you one story that really sticks out because it. completely changed the way that I think about these moments of identity transition. And this was a woman who I talked to, her name was Barbara Schoen.

When we meet her, she is in her early 30s. She's a woman who grew up in a working class family in the Midwest. Both of her parents worked and she... had the experience of growing up in a home with a lot of love but not necessarily a lot of feeling like she had a lot of opportunity. And she went to school, graduated high school, and was really lucky enough to land a job where they paid for her to go to college.

And so she went to college and was super aware the whole time of how lucky she was, how she didn't expect to have these opportunities in her life, and how she kind of wanted to kind of pay it back someday, but she wasn't sure how. So she's entering her career and she's in this in this role where she has tons of ambition. She's kind of thrust into this kind of like.

consultant type role. She's traveling across the country, doing things she never thought she was going to be able to do. She's kind of moving up and up. She's super active. She's cycling a lot. So anyway, she has this whole career in front of her. But again, she has this nagging feeling as she's moving up on the corporate ladder that maybe there's something missing. Maybe I need to tap into that, but she doesn't have time, right? She's just, she needs to keep moving forward.

When she's in her early 30s, she's driving back with her brothers and sisters from a funeral. And it's very snowy. They're in the Midwest in the winter. And suddenly the car kind of skids. It flips. And Barbara is ejected from the car. She ends up being paralyzed from the waist down. She, in the weeks after this experience, describes...

Obviously, when you're in that situation, it is in one of those uncertain situations that we can possibly be in, right? You have no idea not only whether you're going to walk again, what type of movement you're going to regain, whether you're going to be independent. But one of the things that she talks about that was so fascinating to me and inspiring was the fact that in that moment, she realized that her identity was going to have to fundamentally change all of these things that had.

made her who she was, had shifted. You know, she couldn't ride her bike anymore. She couldn't pursue the same type of career that she thought she was going to pursue. In that shift of identity, what she said was that she actually counterintuitively found freedom because all of the sudden...

She didn't have to do this thing that she thought she had to do anymore to prove herself, to be successful. All of a sudden, there were more options open to her. And she realized, oh, this is actually my chance to give back. in the way that I wanted to try to help people who, like me, didn't have all of the options for education, help them get the resources that they need, which indeed

is now what she's doing. She went back and she got her PhD and she's helping people who have disabilities get access to the resources that they need to live empowered lives. And so what she talked about was this experience of extreme uncertainty, giving her the power to like kind of stretch into a new identity to kind of find a different kind of freedom.

And so I think about that when I think about that, that experience, I think of a feeling like you you're locked into this identity, but how might that shift for you?

It can feel really scary. Is there a mindset shift around like, what could it look like for that to actually be a sense of freedom and possibility, which again, easier said than done, but I think. that's where it also can get to what are the types of questions that you can ask that maybe unlock that so that you are also thinking about in that shift, in that identity shift, not only what am I losing, but what am I gaining?

Right. Like, what am I gaining as part of this shift in identity of part of this change? Because I think it is so easy, AJ, as you're saying, to really focus on I'm losing this part of myself. Right. But. maybe you're gaining something that's gonna be even more kind of empowering to you. And oftentimes in those moments, our community is tied to that identity. Family relationships are tied to that identity.

So it can feel very scary to leave that identity that has created safety and security for you to then move into what might be a better identity for this chapter or season in your life that will help you through those questions that you're feeling. This is where finding communities of people who are maybe experiencing something similar can be so helpful. I know I talked to several people in the book who were dealing with addiction.

And I think that's, you know, a really big example of often groups of people who have... had one part of their identity really kind of strongly tied to a behavior, to a group, to, you know, even friends, you know, associating, oh, this is the person that I can always count on.

to be this type of way in this type of environment and to go from, you know, taking that attribute or that behavior and saying, I'm not going to do this anymore. That's really, really hard. And so, you know, I think there's a big reason why folks who I talked to, you know. again and again mentioned, you know, like whether it's like 12 step groups or other groups of people who are kind of sharing in that identity shift being so meaningful.

And I think, you know, in a different example, for me being parts of groups of new parents, right, has been tremendously helpful because so many of us are going through that identity shift together. And so it's not necessarily like. okay, you know, I think a lot of it is feeling a little bit like going back to patience, right? Like, we don't have to do it all at once, right? Maybe you're feeling that sense of, okay, my identity is changing, or I want my identity to change. But

we, it's not something that can happen overnight. And so how do you kind of use community and surround yourself with people that are experiencing that too, but to kind of let go of that sense of urgency, right? I need to change right now and instead kind of find a little patience with it and know that that will come and that.

you know, if you surround yourself with community, it's going to be maybe not any less, you know, it's always going to be challenging, but maybe a little bit less lonely and a little bit less painful. Looking from the map and now.

recognizing the questions, how do we move to falling in love with the questions and falling out of love with some of these questions that maybe we need to break up with that are holding us back, that aren't serving us? The fundamental thing to understand about loving the questions is getting back to

what it means to have a loving relationship with anyone. So this is something where, you know, as you read more Rilke, that poet that I mentioned earlier that wrote letters to a young poet, Rilke, when he writes about love... He writes about it as the most difficult thing that we do in our lives, most difficult, but also the most rewarding. And so I think when it comes to loving the questions, it's really about.

commitment. It's about coming back to your questions practice, about continuing to go through and try to uncover, okay, what is the question I'm asking? Is this the right one? How do I know? There are other questions in the guided reflection that I share with people about how do you find the right community to support you? Kind of what do you need to learn? So there's...

know, more there to help you kind of acquaint yourself and find clarity that you need. But I think the love part really comes from the commitment and comes from choosing. to stay curious and to stay in that place of kind of being with your question when it's the right question for you, kind of through those seasons versus trying to seize on an answer when that's maybe premature.

but you know, it doesn't mean snapping your fingers and saying, okay, I love you. You know, it's like, it's not, it may not be a love at first sight thing, right? With your question. And that's. totally okay. I think it's more of a slow burn and more of an acknowledgement as you develop a practice and you really form a relationship of knowing with your questions that A, you start to become more aware of, oh,

there's a question behind this anxiety, right? Like I think the fundamental thing to impart to people too is that the relationship that we have with uncertainty with the questions is really a reflection of our relationship with ourselves, right? And so... I think loving the questions is another way to talk about loving yourself, frankly, and self-compassion, which when I started writing the book, I...

cue the eye roll, right? I was always like, whatever self compassion, you know, is for the week, which is totally not true. There's so much research about how it's actually, you know, something that really strong, hardworking people have learned the skill of self-compassion and it leads to all sorts of benefits in your life. But, you know, being able to discern what are these questions that we're asking? What is my relationship with those questions? How do I...

form a different one that's intimately connected with just you know how you relate to yourself right and so i think those two are totally intertwined but it starts with just that basic awareness and coming back to it again and again and not ignoring

the questions, right? I think we have this tendency to either, I, okay, I'm just going to get an answer really fast, or I'm not going to think about this. I'm going to suppress this. And that's, you know, like in any relationship, right? Like imagine you're, you're talking to your your partner and they're trying to talk to you and you're like, I don't have time for you.

all right, the hundredth time you do that, they're going to be pretty frustrated. So it is that kind of, Johnny, do what you're talking about. It's like that, taking that time to reflect, to write, to listen to yourself, to the questions that you're asking, that's ultimately.

going to lead to that love growing. A big part of it is once you recognize the questions, wrestle them yourself and love yourself more because of those questions, you can create the authenticity that leads to better relationships. With others, you can actually level and connect on these deeper parts of you with other people that enriches the relationships in your life, whether they're romantic or social, even career.

These questions are present for all of us, and that's why the map is so helpful to recognize. And in closing, for those who are sitting in that uncertainty now, what is one part of the practice that you would love for them to take with them in action? First of all, you are not alone. As you just said, so many of us are often in these periods of transition and uncertainty, and it's really hard and it's okay for it to be hard. It's hard for...

all of us. And again, loving the questions means, you know, there's room for that. There's room for the challenge and the difficult part of uncertainty. And I think the first step is really to understand what is the question that you're asking right now. And is it a question that's making you feel hopeful and full of kind of possibilities about your future? Or is it a question that's really narrowing?

your possibilities. That's making you feel small, a question that's somebody else's question. So I think the first step is really getting clear on what is my question and is it the right question for me? Thank you for joining us and sharing your love of the questions with our audience. Where can they find out more about the book and your work?

Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. It was such a fun conversation. And you can find more about the book on my website, elizabethweingarten.com. And would love for folks to follow me on Substack, too. Time Travel for Beginners is my Substack. And Johnny, you'll appreciate there's a lot of philosophy in there. So I'm also a fan. Thank you again for joining us. This is a pleasure. Thank you.

And now comes the part of the show where we showcase one of our X-Factor accelerator members. Take it away, Sean. Hey, my name is Sean Patrick and I work in sales. Before joining the X Factor Accelerator, my life was pretty much calling one lead after another. Cold call, cold call, cold call. Thinking... Beyond a shadow of a doubt that just my results and my activity and my coming in early, leaving late, going above and beyond would be the thing that got me to the next level.

I decided to join the X Factor Accelerator because it just wasn't the case. Leading the region month in, month out didn't matter as much as trying to get to know the end group. trying to find out who those people were. My favorite part about working with Art of Charm has been helping me understand that I can quickly relay my values and find other people's values very quickly as well.

Get to know them on a deep level in a very limited amount of time. It's really helped me greatly. People I thought were my sworn enemies have become some of my best friends and supporters. People that I thought didn't care about me at all. have been people that talk about me in rooms of influence that i am not in i'm looking forward to where the next step takes me with this newfound perspective honestly

And if you're debating about joining, especially if you're considering it for, you know, things are working okay. Things are working fine. I'm all right. Sure, you are. But are you really focused on the right things? Just okay is... Fine. And I'd rather be more than fine. And I bet you would too. Thank you, Sean. It was an honor and a pleasure working with you too. And good luck to you and all of your future endeavors. You threw your love away like it was just a toy.