Why Do You Do What You Do?

In this episode of the Soulfully You Podcast, Coach Chris Rodriguez explores the concept of 'finding your why' inspired by Simon Sinek's Golden Circle. 

Chris discusses the importance of understanding the purpose behind our actions to achieve fulfillment. 

Chris shares his journey and practical exercises to help listeners lead a more soulful and intentional life.

Listen to Simon Sinek's full talk here.

For all episodes and info about my coaching program, visit me at www.coachchrisrodriguez.com.

Connect on Instagram at @coach_chrisrodriguez and on TikTok at @coach_chrisrodriguez.

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• 00:00 Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast
• 00:44 Coach Chris Rodriguez's Journey
• 01:02 The Power of Finding Your Why
• 01:30 Simon Sinek's Golden Circle
• 04:35 Applying the Golden Circle to Life
• 05:31 Exploring Your Needs, Desires, Passions, and Pleasures
• 11:01 Crafting Your Why Statement
• 11:27 Living Soulfully in Every Aspect
• 12:45 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

0:05

Hey friend. Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. I'm a movement and mindset coach, and I believe in a deeper way of living, a more soulful way of being. Join me each week for conversations about how to put a little more soul. Into our work, our relationships in our everyday lives.

Samson Q2U Microphone: 0:44

Throughout my life, I've worked in a bunch of industries from restaurant management to banking to wellness. I've been a pastor at churches. And in the more recent years, a coach. I'm an artist. And being an artist can be frustrating. Because you end up working a lot of jobs that you don't always enjoy. For a long time, I was frustrated until I was introduced to this concept by one of my coaches. About finding your why. I did not come up with it, but it's been incredibly formative for me in the way I coach and in my satisfaction in life, because it doesn't matter what industry I'm in, what season I'm in in my life. If I know the why behind everything I do, and I live out that why. Then I'm living according to my purpose. So here's Simon Sinek. He wrote the book, Start With Why, and this is him talking about the concept he calls the golden circle. Check it out.

1:38

/I call it the golden circle. Why, how, what? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others aren't. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do 100%. Some know how they do it. Whether you call it your differentiating value proposition, or your proprietary process, or your USP. But very, very few people or organizations Know why they do what they do. And by why, I don't mean to make a profit. That's a result. It's always a result. By why, I mean, what's your purpose? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? Well, as a result, the way we think, the way we act, the way we communicate is from the outside in. It's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspire, inspired organizations, regardless of their size, regardless of their industry, all think, act, and communicate from the inside out. We have, you know, we always perform for our clients, do business with us. Here's our new car. It gets great gas mileage. It has, you know, leather seats. Buy our car. But it's uninspiring. Here's how Apple communicates. Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one? Totally different, right? You're ready to buy a computer from me. All I did was reverse the order of the information. What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do, people buy why you do it. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. When we communicate from the outside in, yes, people can understand vast amounts of complicated information like features and benefits and facts and figures, it just doesn't drive behavior. When we communicate from the inside out, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, and then we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. This is where gut decisions come from. You know, sometimes you can give somebody all the facts and your figures and they say, I know what all the facts and details say, but it just doesn't feel right. Why would we use that verb? It doesn't feel right. Because the part of the brain that controls decision making doesn't control language. And the best we can muster up is, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. Or sometimes you say you're leading with your heart, or you're leading with your soul. Well, I hate to break it to you, those aren't other body parts controlling your behavior. It's all happening here in your limbic brain. The part of the brain that controls decision making and not language. But if you don't know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then how will anybody How will you ever get people to, to, to vote for you or buy something from you, or more importantly, be loyal?/

Samson Q2U Microphone-1: 4:35

One of the reasons why this talk was so helpful for me is because I feel like I've had to spend so much of my professional life proving that I am competent and capable to do the things I do. But what I've found is that my skills and competence can take me but so far. There is A level of trust that people feel when they know your heart. So I've tried to lead by that and Do the soul searching to find my personal why and that why is the concepts behind this podcast. To help others live from their soul in every area of their life. You might think that you're not running a big organization or you're not the owner of some company so this might not apply to you, but I Believe it's more important that individuals discover their why then go into the work and the relationships and Live it out For myself, one thing that I work with my clients on when we're going through this process of finding their why is helping them craft a why statement based off of four components.

Samson Q2U Microphone-2: 5:41

Oftentimes these four areas have a lot of shame attached to them. I'm going to break them down one by one from the ones with the least shame to the ones with the most shame. Number one, focus on your needs. Number two, focus on your desires. Number three, focus on your passions. And number four, focus on your pleasure. Let's break those down. Your needs. If you're listening to my voice, you probably have your basic needs met. Food shelter, a sense of safety. Some sort of community to support you. These are our survival needs. And I'm also going to call them our external needs. But a lot of times we don't get all of our internal and intrinsic needs met. One of the reasons why is because there's a lot of shame around asking people for help. There's a level of vulnerability to say, I can't do all this on my own. Another source of shame around asking for the things we need is that we don't want to rock the boat to tell somebody in our lives that we love, or maybe somebody in our lives professionally. That you actually aren't holding up your end of the bargain in this relationship, in this collaboration. And I need more from you. I need you to pull more of your weight. So we sit back. We don't say anything. As a way of a different kind of survival. Here's some helpful questions to ask yourself. To discover. Your needs beyond surviving, ask yourself, what do I intrinsically need? Ask yourself, what needs can I meet on my own? And what are the needs where I need to ask others for help?

7:20

Your desires, the things you want. Wants are not necessities. And because something is not a necessity, sometimes we look at it as if it's not useful or it's not fulfilling. But it's okay to want things. It's okay to have desires for things that you do not have right now. I think there's a lot of shame associated with desires because people don't want to seem ungrateful for the things they have. It's okay to want more. It's okay to want more from people. It's okay to want more from your work. It's okay to want more out of life. When our desires become a problem, it's because what we want is at the expense of somebody else, or it harms somebody else, or it harms ourself. Sometimes we want things down the road, and sometimes we want little things right now. One practice that's helpful is to, Split a piece of paper into two columns, write needs on one side, write desires on the other side and just brain dump all of the needs and then brain dump all of the desires and then remind yourself that it's okay to have the things that you need and the things that you want. Sometimes you won't get it right away. But what are some ways that you can make a plan to have the things that you desire? Our passions. A lot of times the things that we're passionate about comes out in the form of anger. And anger is something that is so socially unacceptable. But there's a place for anger. In wisdom traditions, they call it anger. a, righteous or a holy anger, passion and anger can push you to advocate for somebody who doesn't have what they need. It can help you defend people who are being harmed. When your passion, when your anger is in the right place, it can be inspiring and motivating. As we're thinking about, This idea of passion or holy anger, I'll even say righteous rage in the context of finding your why. I think of the motivation of the civil rights leaders. I think of the motivations of people who protested the Vietnam War. The motivation of the mothers who came together after the Sandy Hook shooting. The mothers that came together for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. This loss, this rage, this desire that I don't want this harm to happen to anybody else made movements that have changed society for the better. Some helpful questions to ask yourself. What are the problems in the world or in my community that keep me up at night? Another question to ask yourself is if I can put one thing on a billboard for everybody in the world to see, what would I write? And lastly, what are some ways that I can exercise my holy anger or my righteous rage without harming other people? Your pleasure. We need to heal our relationship with pleasure. When we talking about something that we want, that we feel like we shouldn't have. What do we call it? We call it a guilty pleasure. Those two words shouldn't be in the same sentence. If your needs aren't met, your desires aren't met. And your passions aren't fulfilled and all you have is pleasure. That's addiction. But most of us aren't there. A lot of us get the things we need. We get the little things that we want, and we can explore our passions to some degree. But there's so much shame around pleasure. We deny ourselves the things that feel good. Pleasure is good. A little dopamine. That's good. It's good to experience the things you like in your relationships. Platonic, romantic, sexual pleasure is a good thing. One powerful question we can ask ourselves is what feels good in my body? Another question you can ask yourself is, what is something that I've denied myself out of shame? And lastly, a powerful question you can ask yourself to heal your relationship with pleasure is, what are the pleasures that I enjoy that I don't talk about? Out of guilt, shame, or judgment. Once you've explored your needs, your desires, your passions, and your pleasures, now you have all the ingredients to really explore your why and craft a why statement. Some helpful starter lines are to be, to do, to help, to live. How do you want to live and show up in the world? What do you want to do? In the world. How do you want to live for yourself? How do you want to be with yourself? I shared with you my why to help others live from their soul. The podcast is one way that I do that. Offering meditations and coaching is another way I do that. Introducing a team of engineers to dance in the middle of their work day. That's another way that I do that. I practice creativity. I sit down at my piano. That's vocationally with my family. I try to show up in soulful ways for my son. I try to model the way that I want him to live his life. Through play, and joy, and curiosity. And movement and sharing and being with other people and loving and caring for the earth. I try to speak from my soul to my wife. I try to be honest. I try to love from my soul. You might be doing things in your career right now that you absolutely hate, but that's what you got to do. Finding your why. Will help you find a level of contentment and peace. It will also give you some language for you to know when it's time for you to move on from this role. Or from these relationships. Or from these practices or beliefs that no longer serve you. You're skilled, you're capable, you can do a lot of things. But why do you do the things you do? Thank you for listening to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. If you like the show, help others find me by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at Coach underscore Chris Rodriguez. For more episodes along with all of my coaching programs, visit me@www.coach chris rodriguez.com. Special thanks to my team behind the scenes music by Dan Smith. And remember, whatever you do, wherever you find yourself today, make sure you put some soul in it.