#63 The Power Of Why

We unpack how instant answers train us to rush toward fixing and judging, and why that habit quietly erodes connection. We practice using one simple word, why, to replace assumptions with curiosity so our relationships feel safer and more understood. 

• the hidden cost of information overload on reflection and attention 
• how quick conclusions turn into assumptions about motives and character 
• why understanding deepens relationships more than fixing 
• why questions that uncover fear, pain, unmet needs, and deeper desires 
• how to ask “why” with the right tone so it invites connection 
• seeking to understand without confusing it with agreement 
• using curiosity in parenting beyond behavior correction 
• pausing when triggered to build self-awareness and align with truth 

I would love it if you would share your why. And that is why are you finding this podcast valuable? Why have you tuned in? What is the why that brings you back here? Just go ahead and leave a comment in whatever platform that you listen to. 
If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at SharonKCoaching.com. That’s Sharon the letter k coaching.com. 
If you’ve enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you’ve heard. 

Click the link below to set up a free discovery call to begin your transformation today.  Or email me @ smurph923.sm@gmail.com to find out more about how I can help.  

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Transcript

Welcome And The Big Idea

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Hello and welcome to my podcast. My name is Sharon Murphy and I'm a certified life and mindset coach and I help women who seek to be happy and holy. Each week I'll bring you tools and insights to help you on your journey to the heights. I'm so glad you're here.

Instant Answers And Lost Reflection

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We're living in a world where answers are instant. Need directions for somewhere? They're immediate. Need to look up a recipe? Immediate. Need a statistic? A diagnosis, advice, validation, or someone on the internet to confirm your opinion? You can find it in seconds. And while technology has made life easier in so many ways, I think it's also quietly changing the way we relate to one another. Because when we become conditioned to immediately search for answers, we stop learning how to seek understanding. And that matters deeply in our relationships. So today I want to talk about the power of why. Because one of the most transformative things that I believe we can do in our marriages, in parenting, in our friendships, and even within ourselves, is to stop rushing to solve and to just start getting curious. So we all know the amount of information that we have at our fingertips is, I mean, it's just readily available. We know that's not one of the problems we face. It's actually the opposite. We have endless access to information, not just information, but opinions, strategies, solutions. We can solve just about anything within minutes, which is great for a lot of things. I mean, I love it. I'm one of those people that I'm looking up things all the time. But because of that, our ability to think critically, to slow down, to reflect, to explore, to truly explore something deeply, it's just becoming

The Cost Of Constant Stimulation

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more rare. And I'm noticing this in my own life. I've noticed this just, you know, like I said, I'm one of the people that I love, you know, as soon as we're having a conversation within our family and somebody starts to bring something up, it's like I want to know the answer. And so I just start looking. I Google it, I look on chat, I do whatever, wherever all the different avenues that I can go, and I get the answer. And it it satisfies the need within me to know some curiosity that in days gone by, you know, we didn't have access to all that. So you just wondered. And you know you didn't have the answer. And the crazy thing is my life really wasn't any, it's not anymore better for it in this time because I'm able to get the answers with the snap of a finger. Now, like I said, I don't want to necessarily give it away because I do enjoy it as well. But there's something I'm noticing in my own life, and I'm sure you can you can sense this as well, is that we are we don't have the time to really take things in deeply and to ponder things and to really question things. And we know how this can affect us in the spiritual life for sure. That's absolutely essential for us to be able to grow an understanding of what God is calling us to, but to also learn about Him, to help Him draw us in deeper. So those that's super important. But even in our day-to-day lives, it just becomes such a major issue. And so there was a time I'm thinking about in my own life, years ago, where we just had more space in our days. I mean, as much as 30 years ago, 40 years ago, when I was growing up, we had so many moments of just boredom. We would just, I mean, I could sit with my thoughts. I think about the times where I was just be sitting in another room. We had one television in our house. So if my dad was watching something, you were in the other room, you just read a book, or you know, there was nothing, no screen to look at. And so I would sit sometimes and just think. I remember just looking out the window and noticing things. And of course, I was a kid, so I'm not sure this necessarily affected me, but I'm sure for the adults in my world and in the in that time, there was a lot more reflection. You could work through through things internally instead of just immediately grabbing our phones. Even reading books was different. I think it just required a different type of attention span or patience. Now, for those of you out there who are younger, you're gonna know exactly what I'm talking about. And for those of you who are parents, you're also gonna know what I'm talking about. Our young people today don't typically just sit in the quiet and read a book. At the bare minimum, they have music on in the background or a TV is playing. But even if they're doing homework, that's typically they have their phone next to them, they might be listening to some music. There's usually two or three things happening while they're trying to take information in. We know this. What does that mean? Well, for us right now, any moment that we start to feel discomfort or confusion or uncertainty or tension, what do we do? We go searching for the fastest possible answer. We we look for some sort of solution. We look to solve for that problem. Whether that's the discomfort of just sitting there quietly, but even if we have any sort of question or uncertainty, we're gonna we're gonna search for an answer immediately. And like I said, that I just talked about that. That's exactly what I do. As soon as somebody brings something up that I don't know the answer to, I know I can find it immediately. Listen, I'm talking to you, you all here today, but I do this as well. Like I said, I can look up any statistic or piece of information within seconds, and

Why Fixing Hurts Connection

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that's all fine. But what I want to talk about today and what I'm most interested in is not just how this affects our lives and how we acquire knowledge, but the most important thing is how it affects our relationships. Because our brains are wired to seek a solution or resolution, rather, both, we want to solve. Our minds want to solve. We want to fix, we want to slap a label on something, we want to come to a conclusion, we want to determine who's right, we want to figure out the answer. But in our relationships, this doesn't work so well. Solving, fixing, labeling, concluding, determining who's right, figuring out answers. Our relationships are really transformed by quick conclusions. They are transformed, they are deepened by understanding. That's how those relationships grow. That's how we have deeper connection. And in order to understand, this requires curiosity. Now I touched on this on a few episodes that I've done already, but one in particular, I think it was episode number 37. It was titled Ask, Don't Assume. And that just talked about entering our conversations with curiosity before we make assumptions and how often our brain just immediately goes to an assumption or it comes to a conclusion. This is kind of the same along the same lines. And so here's the problem with assumptions. What happens is that in relationships, someone will say something, or they might do something, or they might believe something. And instead of us becoming curious, we become reactive. We start to assume motives, we interpret behaviors, and we create stories. And that looks like she doesn't care, or he's selfish, or they're disrespectful, she's controlling, he's avoiding me. But what if instead of rushing to interpretation, we pause? We pause long enough to ask this question, and this question is why? Why would they do that? Why is this bothering me so much? Why am I reacting this strongly? Why does this feel threatening to me? Why do they see this differently than I do? Why is this so important to them? These are the kind of questions that can change things. And now you notice some of those questions were that were they could be asking ourselves about either other people, but also of ourselves. Now, I also want to say that

The Why Questions That Shift Everything

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we can do this to other people. So when I are asking the question of why is this important to them, when we're in a relationship and somebody is doing something, especially if it's someone close to us, we can ask them those questions ourselves. We can actually pose that to them and say, why is this so important to you? I'm curious. Now, when I say this, I want to be careful that we understand the tone because it's not a matter of like, why are they doing this? That's not really seeking an answer or to understand. That's more of an annoyance, and you're basically just saying they shouldn't be doing this, right? And we can we do that as well. But I'm referring to the fact of when we really are curious, that's our posture behind these questions is why? Why would they do that? So that's really the important part is to make sure we're coming at it from the white, the right mental and emotional state. But these kind of questions, when we ask why, they interrupt the automatic loop of assumption. And it slows down our nervous system, it opens up space, it forces deeper thinking. And often what we discover underneath behavior is some sort of pain or fear or insecurity, some sort of longing, some deeper desire. It could be exhaustion, it could be confusion, it could be unmet needs. There's so much more underneath. And that's why we want to ask these questions, because otherwise we stay at the surface and we just make judgments, we form opinions, we make decisions, we come to conclusions based on their actions. And again, we know their actions, the choices they're making, the things they're saying, the beliefs they hold, are because of emotions or feelings that they have, which are created by thoughts they're having. So we want to get to the deeper, the deeper issue underneath. We want to understand the why. And we can only do that by asking those questions. And so, curiosity, when we ask those questions, like I said, we uh the ones I just mentioned, they were like self-reflective. Like, why would they do that? Even if it was about another person, I there was questions that we were posing to ourselves to go deeper, to try and have a better understanding. But again, we can take these to our conversations, like I had just said. So imagine how differently our conversations would be if we stopped trying to immediately defend ourselves or prove our point. What if instead we said, Why do you think this affects you so deeply? Or help me understand why this matters to you? Or why does this feel like such a problem for you? But you can also say, why am I nervous about this? Why do I need this person to agree with me? These are some questions to ask ourselves when we're in conversations. Why am I nervous about bringing this up? And why do I need this person to agree with me? That's a really good one. And so these are questions that move conversations from being combative or controlling, and it moves to a place of connection. And honestly, many people never even actually have been asked thoughtful questions before. Think about this. When was the last time that somebody asked you a really thoughtful deep question? Like a question, I've had this, and I have this with coaching. This way, when I, you know, that's one of the beautiful things about coaching is that it re requires personal reflection. It requires you to take the time to reflect on some of these things. But we can bring these to our conversations. We don't need to coach the people we love, but it's so important because it does allow you to take that time. So when you ask somebody and you're in a conversation and you just ask something like that, and they go to the point of, boy, I'm not sure. That's a great question. That's when you know it's forced them to stop and think. That's something that we want to be able to create for others, but it's also important to do in your own life. And I said, when was the last time somebody did that to you? And maybe you do recall that it just happened to you, or that you know of a time where somebody asked you a question, you said, That's a that's a really great question. I don't know. I gotta think about that. The truth is, is like I said, it doesn't happen very often. And what happens more often is that when we're in conversations, either ourselves or the people we're conversing with, they're interrupted. Or you're corrected, or you're debated, or you're advised, or you're doing the one doing the debating, or you're the one advising, or there's a fixing going on. Either you're the one trying to fix somebody else, or you're feeling like someone's trying to fix you. That is essentially what happens in so many of our conversations. And what happens is people walk away and they feel deeply understood. And the truth is, and I would argue that very few people feel deeply understood. So that's my next point. Saint Francis of Assisi is he's got a famous prayer, which is the prayer for peace, and it says, seek

Asking Why Without Sounding Judgmental

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first to understand rather than to be understood. That's just one line of it. Seek first to understand rather than to be understood. So that's the key there. When we approach our relationships from a perspective of seeking to understand, it changes everything. That's a powerful posture for our relationships. Because most of our conflict comes from when two people are desperately trying to explain themselves without ever slowing down enough to truly understand the other. Now, when I say seeking to understand, let me be very clear. That immediately can register to some people as seek to agree. That doesn't mean we need to agree with what they're stating. And that's the that's crucial, is because somehow we've lost that in our in our relationships today. Is that we seem to think that we need to either, if we don't agree, we either agree or we're at odds. And yet it's lost that we actually should just be seeking to understand. We can understand without having to agree. And this applies, it applies everywhere, truly. First and foremost with our spouse, with our children, especially with our adult children, with our friendships, even with our relationship with ourselves. Now, I talked about these why questions in our relationships, but even I want to speak to you out there who have younger children. When our children behave or do something and they're younger, immediately we try and correct the action, right? That's that's the discipline tactic that most of us have adopted, whether it's whether we're conscious of it or not. And maybe some of you are aware of it and you've you're not doing that, but for a lot of us, that is the the way we handled it with our children or are handling it with our children. We try and do br behavior correction. And it's it's necessary, but I think there's a it can be really, really powerful is to ask our children, and like I said, this can be any age if they're able to communicate why they did that. I think we could be shocked as to what they're thinking and feeling instead of just judging what their actions are. Asking them what they're thinking because, you know, taking just looking at what type of behavior they're they're they're taking on without understanding the reasons for it, that's so powerful. And again, it helps our children to feel understood. So anyway, for those of you out here there who have younger children, I think that can be really, really powerful. I wish I had done that with my own kids. I know I I did not. It was more of behavior modification, behavior correction. But again, asking

Understand Without Needing Agreement

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the most important question of why is this? Is why am I responding this way? As we talk about here, self-awareness changes everything and it changes our relationships as well. You find yourself in a situation where you're triggered. It's super important to be like, why am I responding like this? Why am I reacting this way? Because that's something that will really force you to stop, to pause, and to examine what's happening, and then to align what you're believing or thinking with truth. So, practically speaking, this week, I want you to slow things down, and I want you to pause and I want you to ponder things just a little deeper. I want you to take some time and contemplate why it is that you're feeling and thinking the what you are, why it is that those people around you, the ones that you love the most, are acting or behaving as they are, or thinking or believing. Before reacting, just pause and ask yourself this. Why am I upset? Why does this feel so threatening? Why do I feel anxious right now? Why do I need to control this outcome? Why is this so important to me? Why might they see this differently than I do? Why might they be behaving this way? Why might they be choosing this path? Again, those the last three questions of contemplating and just going deeper as to why somebody might be doing what they're doing. It's the reason why makes more of a difference than the what. What they're doing is the outcome. The why behind it makes all the difference. And that's where you start to connect with them, and that's where we seek to understand. And when it's appropriate, ask your loved ones those deeper questions too. And again, this is not to interrogate them. It's not to corner them, but to understand them. The whole point of asking these questions why is because, like I said, our brains are going to want to offer us, we want the quick, the quick answer. We want to understand, we want to be the one that has the solution, has the answer. We want to get to the outcome. But the important thing again is just to understand them and then to ask these kind of questions. Like again, if you come at it from curiosity, is like, why is this important to you? And then listen. Why is this something that you want to avoid? Or why is this hard for you? Whatever the

Parenting Triggers Practice And Closing

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situation might be, asking those questions why it is super important. Because what happens is even if you're in disagreement about something that's happening in somebody else's life or you're making a judgment about it, whether it's a friend or a spouse or a child or a parent, when you can ask those questions and then just let them answer, that's the other part, is just sitting in silence and letting them answer, letting them formulate the answer without us filling filling in the gaps for them. Let their mind go to work and just ask those questions because what will happen is they're gonna start to soften. And they're also gonna feel seen. And even if they can't formulate a great response, they're gonna, they're gonna start to feel understood. Maybe they do know, maybe they have the answer right there for you, but they're gonna know that you're seeking to understand them. And that is where relationships become safer. And that that only can happen when we replace assumptions and forced outcomes and things like that with curiosity. The world is gonna continue to offer us faster answers, you guys. That's just the truth. We're gonna have more things available at our fingertips, and it's great for certain things in our lives. We just need to make sure that we remember in our relationships that it's really important that we slow things down. Wisdom is slower, connection is slower, understanding is slower. It takes time. Those are things we need to ponder. And that's the things that we just our brain might offer us immediate assumptions. It might start to give us immediate feedback, immediate answers, assumptions, judgments, conclusions. That's where we need to pause and just remember that, yep, I I hear you, but I actually want to, you can tell we can talk to our brains and tell our brains, I actually want to take some time and think through think through this. Because maybe one of the greatest gifts that we can offer another person, it's not our advice, it's not our wisdom, even though we might have it, but our curiosity. They don't really need our conclusions, but rather our willingness to understand. So this week, instead of rushing to solve, even to defend, which can seem very noble, or to fix or to assume, just pause long enough to ask both yourself and of others why. Because sometimes that single question is what opens the door to deeper connection, greater peace in your own life as well as in your relationships, and more compassionate, connected relationships. I want to thank each and every one of you for tuning in and listening, sticking with me till the end here. And in the spirit of this episode, I would love it if you would share your why. And that is why are you finding this podcast valuable? Why have you tuned in? What is the why that brings you back here? I really would love to know why you find it helpful, why you find it valuable, why you might share it with others. Just go ahead and leave a comment in whatever platform that you listen to. I would really love to hear. That's my question of why for you. And until next time, onward and upward, my friends, to the heights. Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any questions or would like to go deeper into this topic or how it affects you in your own life, you can find me at Sharon K Coaching.com. That's Sharon the Letterk Coaching.com. If you've enjoyed listening, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite platform. And feel free to share with anyone you think might benefit from what you've heard.