Embark on a profound journey of self-discovery with Mike Foster and Kimberly Beam Holmes as they explore emotional needs and primal questions.
Discover the transformative power of understanding your emotional needs through Foster's primal question framework. Uncover how childhood messages shape adult behaviors and gain insights into navigating personal primal questions for success and fulfillment.
Explore the essence of self-understanding and the purpose of life, unlocking authenticity and fulfillment by embracing your primal truth. Dive deep into building meaningful relationships rooted in meeting primal needs and charting your path to living your purpose with the Primal Map tool.
Join us in navigating personal growth and relationships with empathy and insight, recognizing the intrinsic connection between behavior, success, and the pursuit of purpose.
Experience emotional attraction and personal growth through Mike Foster's book, "The Primal Question," and take the first step towards embracing your unique gifts with our free assessment and certification program.
Join us on this transformative journey towards self-discovery and purposeful living. Watch now and unlock the key to a life filled with authenticity, fulfillment, and purpose.
Today's Guest: Mike Foster
Mike Foster is the creator of the Primal Question Framework which is a revolutionary new way to understand human psychology and core drivers of our lives. Mike has a unique ability to take the complexities of our traumatic experiences and simplify them in way that fast-tracks healing.
He is a widely respected thought leader on emotional health, inner intelligence and how to maximize our primal gifts in the workplace. Mike’s projects have been featured in The NY Times, Good Morning America, and on FOX News.
He also trains coaches and counselors in the Primal Question model in his 3-month certification program.
Mike is the author of six books, including his newest best-seller, "The Seven Primal Questions: Take Control of the Hidden Forces That Drive You." (Published 2023)
He lives in San Diego with his wife of 28 years.
Get Mike's Book Here!
Take The Primal Question Quiz!
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com
Thanks for listening!
Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and leave a review!
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
Embark on a profound journey of self-discovery with Mike Foster and Kimberly Beam Holmes as they explore emotional needs and primal questions.
Discover the transformative power of understanding your emotional needs through Foster's primal question framework. Uncover how childhood messages shape adult behaviors and gain insights into navigating personal primal questions for success and fulfillment.
Explore the essence of self-understanding and the purpose of life, unlocking authenticity and fulfillment by embracing your primal truth. Dive deep into building meaningful relationships rooted in meeting primal needs and charting your path to living your purpose with the Primal Map tool.
Join us in navigating personal growth and relationships with empathy and insight, recognizing the intrinsic connection between behavior, success, and the pursuit of purpose.
Experience emotional attraction and personal growth through Mike Foster's book, "The Primal Question," and take the first step towards embracing your unique gifts with our free assessment and certification program.
Join us on this transformative journey towards self-discovery and purposeful living. Watch now and unlock the key to a life filled with authenticity, fulfillment, and purpose.
Today's Guest: Mike Foster
Mike Foster is the creator of the Primal Question Framework which is a revolutionary new way to understand human psychology and core drivers of our lives. Mike has a unique ability to take the complexities of our traumatic experiences and simplify them in way that fast-tracks healing.
He is a widely respected thought leader on emotional health, inner intelligence and how to maximize our primal gifts in the workplace. Mike’s projects have been featured in The NY Times, Good Morning America, and on FOX News.
He also trains coaches and counselors in the Primal Question model in his 3-month certification program.
Mike is the author of six books, including his newest best-seller, "The Seven Primal Questions: Take Control of the Hidden Forces That Drive You." (Published 2023)
He lives in San Diego with his wife of 28 years.
Get Mike's Book Here!
Take The Primal Question Quiz!
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com
Thanks for listening!
Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and leave a review!
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
Do you ever wonder if you are loved or wanted, safe, secure, have purpose, are successful or any other things that just deepen your core, really make you question if you're good enough? If you have ever asked yourself any of those things, this episode today is absolutely for you. I'm speaking with Mike Foster. Mike is the creator of the Primal Question Framework, which is a revolutionary new way to understand human psychology and the core drivers of our lives. Really, it gets down to what are our emotional needs, how can we understand them and how can we work to turn them into something greater. I'm not going to give it all away, because there were some great aha moments that we had or at least that I had in today's episode, but Mike Foster is a widely respected thought leader on emotional health, inner intelligence and how to maximize our primal gifts in the workplace and at home. His projects have been featured on New York Times, good Morning America and Fox News. Mike is also the author of the new best-selling book, the Seven Primal Questions Take Control of the Hidden Forces that Drive you. He lives in San Diego with his wife of 28 years.
Speaker 1:Let's dive into today's conversation with Mike Foster. I'm really excited to be joined by Mike Foster today. Mike, thank you so much for joining me. A lot of people are going to know who you are through your book. That's out there. The Primal Questions, this framework that maybe they've heard of, maybe they haven't, but I believe it's going to be really insightful. One of the ways I would like for us to start this you and I just talked about this before we started is actually to start by assuming that I was someone who came to you and said you know what I need coaching? What is the framework? How would you start that conversation with me and help me understand, ultimately, what my emotional needs are? I think that's a lot of what the seven framework, the Primal Questions, the seven questions of it are. How would you start doing that with someone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you're spot on in terms of to me, in terms of all work that I do with people and how I understand people's behaviors or choices or thinking patterns, is through this whole concept of understanding their highest emotional need that drives their life. That is represented in this different seven Primal Questions. There's one question of those seven that drives our life and really is what I call the emotional commands center, the reason why we make decisions around relationships, jobs. It expresses our giftedness and our strengths. All of it is flowing from this place. Whenever I'm working with a client, it's always I want to understand, first and foremost, what is that need? Because once we can understand what that need is, everything starts to make sense, not only for the client, but also for anybody working with the client. When I mean working with the client, it could be a spouse, a friend, a team leader. All of a sudden, I understand so much more about this person.
Speaker 2:What I would do in terms of identifying the Primal Questions or the Primal Question that drives your life? We look at a few different things. The thing that I always like to start with is what we call the Primal Gift. It's really this idea of what is your relational superpower. What do you do really really well in your relationships, kimberly? I'd say, hey, when you're in a relationship, what do people say about you? You're a kind person. Are you a generous person? Do people just feel safe around you? Do you help make everything better? Are you a person of vision? These are clues to understanding what's happening deep inside of you. I'd start there For you. What do you think people say about you, kimberly?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. I actually, a couple of months ago, I sent out an email to 30 of my peers friends, family members. A mentor had encouraged me to do this and asked what are two to three words you think of when you think of me, which isn't quite the same question, but the number one answer that I got back was you're driven, you're encouraging, you make things happen. I resonate with that. Yeah, so I think that in relationships, people would say I make things better by encouraging, but also by seeing a way through things and helping people get to the other side of it.
Speaker 2:Great. So just on that answer alone and there's some other areas we'll explore about you I am starting to orient around a few key questions which would represent your highest emotional need, but I want to keep going further. Yeah, because the second thing I would ask you in our assessment, as we're talking about identifying your primal question is I'd ask you what is your message to the world, what is the thing that you would want people to know about themselves? If you could only say one thing, not a whole paragraph, but this one thing. I just want people to know this about themselves, about themselves.
Speaker 2:What would that message be?
Speaker 1:That they are strong and they are capable and they can do great things.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So, by the way, you can see, both of those things about what people say about you and then also your message to the world are very much in alignment there. So we're starting to again orient around a particular thing. So third part and this is the less, I would just say, positive question that I ask clients what's really important to reveal in your primal question is talk to me about your triggers, the things that send you into an emotional scramble, that gets you emotionally dysregulated, really just like fire you up. What do I have to do to make that happen? Like what's happening that sends you into this triggered state?
Speaker 1:Oh, Mike.
Speaker 2:I know see you thought this would be easy. It's not easy. We gotta talk about the real stuff here.
Speaker 1:Oh, opening a can of worms. Yeah, there's at least two main ones that come to mind. First, when people don't do what they say they're gonna do, or they're not doing their job not getting done the thing that they said they would get done is one. But then another one is when I feel like people have stabbed me in the back, or when they have lied to me, when they didn't tell me the truth about something and then just went and did something else. Both of those scenarios really get me, as well as losing, like not hitting the mark.
Speaker 1:Not doing what I even just like. What makes me mad at myself? Like if I go to the gym and I love the programming that I do at the gym, I have but if I see someone lifting a heavier weight than me, you better believe I'm gonna be adding stuff on. And there's a feeling inside of me, as I'm doing it, of like I have to win. I have to do this.
Speaker 2:Okay, great. So I'm gonna summarize some of that and feel free to correct me in anything here. So when you lose, when people let you down, when people underperform, the betrayal to me is, just like you said, you were this and you did that, kind of this whole misrepresentation of who you are. So there's a lot of, just again, performance type stuff here that if people aren't living up to what they claim to be, or underperforming or not trying hard or do lazy people bother you. Like laziness in general, like is idea, like just kind of good enough is like me, is that?
Speaker 1:Like a lack of a drive to get something done.
Speaker 2:Yes, lack of a drive Does bother me. Yep, Okay, good, all right, let's go to the. Probably the last area that I'd explore and this is a little bit even harder, but part of the primal question is in our early childhood is where the primal question is imprinted. That question we learn about the world in our families, okay, we learn about the world from our caretakers, and so basically what happens is this primal question gets, or this emotional need gets, imprinted, and then we carry that into our adult lives. Okay, so talk to me about some of the themes or the messages that you got as a child from your caretakers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I. There are two very clear messages that come to mind. One of them is from as young as I can remember. I remember both my mom and dad saying that they were proud of me and that I was gonna do great things, and that message was reverberated to this day. And the other thing I remember is I was a straight A student and when I would bring my report card home and it would say A plus, my dad jokingly would say do better next time. But I never took it as a joke and so I always felt like I had to like outperform the best that I did before, and I still feel like so, even though it was a joke and I had a great and have a great dad. I definitely like internalized that comment as your best was not good enough, do better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So again, we're getting messages and themes from our caretakers. And, by the way, none of the primal question or any of this framework is about blaming parents for this emotional need or this primal question. It's just a way of understanding how it got there. Okay, so again, for you, performance, success being the best. These are themes that you were wrestling with in your childhood and that you remember clearly. Now, of course, there are other discussions, other themes, other needs that were certainly brought up in your family, but this particular one seemed to be the most hot theme, the one that you remember most clearly. So here's where I would now let's get to seeing what resonates best with you in terms of your primal question. So there's three that are in this category, and really it's what I just call the performance category.
Speaker 2:And again, the way the model works is when we get our a guess to our primal question, we feel good for our best selves, but when we get a no to our primal question, we go into what I call the scramble, which is all the unhealthy things or ways that we try to force the answer back to a yes so that life can be good again. Okay, so I'm gonna give you three options and you tell me what resonates with you. And again, all we're looking for is some language that helps you understand your drivers, understand your perspective on relationships and life, on work on yourself. So question five, which is, am I successful? Which has to do with really your kryptonite, or the thing that would instantly send you into your scramble, would be failure, okay, failing, underperforming, underachieving. Question six, which is the question am I good enough? This is really about your value and worth and sometimes with this question, people will struggle with perfectionism.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they struggle with insecurity about themselves or like imposter syndrome, because they never feel like they're good enough to do something and so they tend to be overachievers because they're always trying to get that primal question answered with a yes. Or the third option would be question seven do I have a purpose? And these people are really about the need, the compelling need, to have an impact in the world, to have significance in what they're doing. And again, if they feel like that's not happening, they get a no to that question, then they're gonna go into their scramble and work really, really hard to get that question back to a yes. So out of those three, is there any one that resonates with you more strongly than the others.
Speaker 1:They all resonated with me. Now here's the thing I did take the assessment, so I know what the with the results of the assessment that I took said. But I didn't look at the other, the two after. So what? My results were successful, am I successful? And for sure that's there. But then when I hear, am I good enough?
Speaker 1:That resonates with me. But I would not say I'm a perfectionist and I don't know that I struggle with imposter syndrome, but maybe, like it may be a blind spot of mine, but the purpose one, because I like the, as I said before, the thing that I was told and have been told my whole life is you are going to do great things for people like you have a purpose. So in that way I feel like that is a huge one for me because it's the expectation I've had of myself, because of that and other reasons, for, you know, 30 plus years, yes, so probably what I again in our little coaching session here, what I would say every question I would ask you is it does feel like success.
Speaker 2:The am I successful? Question very much resonates and kind of hits down the center of the plate. Not that the good enough for the value, because one of the ways, one of the things that we all have is what I call a satellite question, which is the question next to your question. But one of the things I'd ask you about purpose is is part of having a purpose or an impact, doing something big or great like your parents talked about? If that were to happen, do you then feel successful?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So this is where we start tapping into actually the core question that you're trying to get answered with a yes. See, it's not necessarily that it's purpose that you're trying to get answered with a yes, that I have a purpose and that in itself is your emotional need. It's that you see, having impact, doing important work, making a difference in the world, is tied to your success and it answers your am I successful? Question with a yes. It affirms that that 100% resonates.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:You hit the nail on the head.
Speaker 2:Okay, so here's what we would say. Kimberly, your primal question is am I successful? And when you get a yes to that question, you are your best self. The other thing that flows from that primal and when you get a no or a maybe, then we go into the scramble.
Speaker 2:And basically what happens and it may look. It looks different for everybody, but it's basically us taking our kid logic, all of these ways that we learned how to be successful or look successful to the world or to our parents early on in our lives. We bring out all of those tools and we start deploying those sometimes unhealthy, inefficient, kid-like tools to make us seem successful. So we get back to that, yes, so that life can be good again. But here's the thing for you, there's two things that I would say.
Speaker 2:Number one the medicine that I would subscribe for your question of am I successful, is what we call the primal truth and living in our primal truth. It's taking the question and moving it to a statement I am successful. See, as long as we are throwing this question out to the world, asking them to answer it for us, or throwing it out to situations or an external answer, we then live at the mercy of those answers. So when we live from our primal truth, that statement, we're no longer asking the question because, kimberly, you know you're successful, you know you're talented and gifted, you know you have these strengths and abilities. That is not in question and shouldn't be in question, and you can look at other areas of your life your work, family, perhaps, or friends or all these different areas and go of course I'm successful. I mean, come on right, and so when you live from that place, you're then able to give what I call the primal gift.
Speaker 2:And the primal gift is what the research shows that we take our primal question and we put it over everybody else and we assume they're asking the exact same question, and then we are experts in answering yes to that primal question for them, even though they may have a very different question. So what that means is you have a PhD in how to make other people successful. Okay, you know the pathway to make people great and to challenge them, to help lead them, to show them opportunities, because this is all in your wiring, because of your own primal questions. This is a gift that you have and you should be deploying it and looking for ways to deploy it. But if you're, in your scramble, still wondering if you're successful, that gift gets truncated, that gift gets minimized, because you're spending all this energy trying to figure out whether you're successful instead of having that success cup already overflowing and you can just give it away to others.
Speaker 1:Mike, I love this. So I don't just love this because of me, like I don't just love it because of what you're saying about the successful question and how it applies to my life. I love this because and I wanna get into what all of the seven questions are but I love it because, no matter what someone has answered, there is a hope on the other side of it of like this is something for you to give back to others or to do for others, the gift that you call it. This is your gift for others and I love it. And I don't wanna like shoot down the Enneagram although it's not my favorite thing in the world, but I love it more than the Enneagram type stuff because I feel like a lot of times people will use things like that to just get stuck in what they're currently doing or the pain or whatever. And this they're such a clear like there is goodness in you and how God made you and how you're wired, and this is it and this is how it can look in your life. I love it.
Speaker 2:It's love this. Well, that's a big thing for me because, I agree, I like the Enneagram, I like a lot of assessments, but so often it tends to be self-focused and sort of an explanation for my bad behavior, right, and I'm like no, no, no, this is an opportunity to understand ourselves so we can operate in wholeness, so that we can get to the real business of bringing blessing, the blessing of us, to the world. Okay, helping others. My primal question and we can talk about the different questions my primal question is am I safe? Okay, that's primal question number one, and that I got imprinted with that question because of abuse early on in my story, and so everything I think about is around the idea of protecting myself, safety, risk management.
Speaker 2:My scramble looks like hypervigilance, hypercontrol, trying to figure out everything that could possibly go wrong on something. Okay, so this is the way that I see and those are the things about me that I have to manage. Now, that doesn't make me broken, that doesn't make me bad, it just means that's the core emotional need driving my life. Okay, and I have to manage that in a healthy way. But here's the gift of it. Again, I take my primal question. I put it over Kimberly. Right now I put it over everybody that I meet every client that I have. I assume they're asking the same question am I safe? Okay, so guess what happens? Kimberly People tell me their deepest, darkest secrets after knowing them for about two or three minutes. I actually have to warn people because I do group work and I'll speak and write.
Speaker 2:I have to warn people about the gift Part of that safety thing because they will open up so big in front of an audience that sometimes they regret saying things, and so that's a gift that I wanna look to deploy to help people feel protected and safe, so that it can be vulnerable in their conversations and open up about painful things, remind them that they're okay. A lot of times I come in to help with conflict resolution because people feel I'm fair, I'm unbiased, I'm a safe place for us to have these dangerous conversations. And so, again, brokenness, yes, but this incredible gift that's come from it and if I'm living in my scramble, you know, wondering if I'm safe, you know, oh, I'm not going to engage there. I'm not going to say that I'm going to step back. No primal gift going out on that one. Okay, just then, about me and my own hurt to my own Feeling lack of safety when living. My primal truth I am safe.
Speaker 1:That allows me to to engage in the world in a really positive way so, as you said there are seven, there are seven of these and you just I believe the first one. Look at my notes. I believe the first one is am I safe? Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's my yeah, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1:And so your Kryptonite is what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really, my kryptonite is unpredictability, surprises. So I tell my wife every year is I don't throw me a surprise party.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't want surprises.
Speaker 2:I I don't want to be physically hurt, I don't want to be Emotionally hurt and it's all about hurt like managing hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I have to protect myself. I again, this is. This is kidlike thinking, right, how a kid thinks. And so part of the book and in the whole framework is about Inviting us to live in what I call self leadership, and this is really our healthy adult living, where I can let my kid off the hook and say hey, listen, little Mike, thank you for everything that you did to help us get here and, using all those coping mechanisms like hyper vigilance, hyper control, catastrophic thinking, it's been helpful to a point. But now the adults here adult Mike's here and he's gonna take it from this point on and.
Speaker 2:Lead our lead, our life from the adult leading, because we don't want little kids solving adult problems. All right, and a lot of us do that. Yeah we have the little kid solve adult problems instead of the adult part of ourselves solve our adult problems.
Speaker 1:What is the second question on the framework?
Speaker 2:am I secure? And this has to do with the difference between safety and security. Is really the financial security part of it.
Speaker 1:Okay these.
Speaker 2:These people tend to be imprinted with this question because there was a lack of resource in their families build collectors. Maybe Money was really tight, the money conversation was very present in your childhood and so you never knew if you had enough resource to secure yourself. Okay. So these people grow up and they tend to think about money a lot. My favorite story on this one is I have a client flies in on his $30 million jet. His primal question is am I secure? Because he grew up in a home that Lacked resource. He's now a multi, multi, multi millionaire and he still doesn't feel like he has enough. That's the power of these imprints that that the that he made his bank accounts may look really great to you and me, but to him he's not sure if he has enough, and that's because his primal question is in play. He keeps am I secure? Am I secure? Am I secure? In his way to get security is more money, more work, more. You know he's working 60 hour weeks, driving really hard still.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because security is driving his life, that emotional need for security right.
Speaker 1:What about the third question?
Speaker 2:Am I loved? And this is about the need to feel seen, known and heard. And the kryptonite for these folks is just Indifference. People just like, yeah, take it, take you or leave you doesn't matter to me. It's kind of so and these are.
Speaker 2:The primal gift here is these are empathy experts, these are our people. People are, are people who are just like excellent with people like they. They get it. Yeah, they tend to be very like lots of friends, great in relationship, because they figured out how to get a yes to the their, their emotional need of being loved. Okay, question for is am I wanted? This is the difference between love and wanted. The wanted is really the need to feel pursued, okay, to be included. It's not necessarily about being loved or known, but just to be part of something is really important to these folks. So the primal gift here is they tend to Be great conveners. They you know there are the guys throwing the block parties and let's get together as a neighborhood. Or if you want to start something I don't know, maybe you're doing a church plans or you're starting this new initiative you want a Q4? Am I wanted? Person there? Because they know how to attract crowds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll make everyone feel wanted.
Speaker 2:They make everyone feel wanted. It's like they got again the PhD in belonging.
Speaker 2:That's what they have Q5 am I successful? Which is Kimberly's question. Q6 is am I good enough?
Speaker 2:Again, these 10, these people tend to grow up in a very sort of judgmental or critical home when nothing that they ever did was quite enough. They were always judged mom didn't like to close you, or dad didn't like the friends you hung out with, and there was just this Constant criticism happening, yeah. And so you grew up thinking you're flawed. You grew up thinking that there's something wrong with you and then again your kind of coping mechanism for that is perfectionism, overachievement or In this massive insecurity about who you are. So you're a wallflower in life. You'd never put yourself out there because if you put yourself out there, your primal question event might good enough. Baby answered with a no and that's too painful, so you just play small. And then question seven is do I have a purpose? It's really the importance of significance in our lives and typically the research shows that these people grew up in religious homes where Faith and doing big things for God was a big part of the narrative of their childhood.
Speaker 2:So they feel this pressure to have a great calling and to do something Significant, and when that feels like it's falling short, then they struggle. In the scramble, their primal gift. These are our visionaries, these are our world changers. These are the people that think about just all the possibilities, but they also struggle with, sometimes, the action. They get stuck in the vision so much that they forget to that the action part is also very important.
Speaker 1:So those are the seven is there a reason that they're numbered one to seven? So do people? From what I hear, it's not like people move through them necessarily, but is there a sequential order to them purposefully, or is that just how it's organized?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I started with this, again, five, five years of research, 6,000 hours of one-on-one interviews. We've had over 30,000 people take the, the assessment, the free assessment online now. And we ordered them in such a way because the question next to your primal question is also very relevant to you, so it tends to play a role. I'll give you an example. With my Question am I safe? One of the ways that I feel safe is through financial security, which is question two am I secure? Mm-hmm, you know. To look at question three, am I loved? Well, being wanted and being pursued is gonna feel like love to you. That's gonna feel good. So it's not that we have.
Speaker 2:We do have one primal question, but the questions around our question are also relevant and and our hotter emotional needs that we have. Now here's what. Also what we know is that I Don't care about having a purpose in my life. Okay, that's, I'm question one. Question sevens about purpose I don't care. I actually don't have that need. I don't worry about that need because it's so far away from my primal question. Also, find that in relationships like marriages, the closer your number is to your spouse's number, the more healthy that relationship is gonna be, because you're both able to to attune to each other's needs Because they're closer to each other, whereas if the numbers are farther apart, like a one in a seven, that's gonna be harder For for the couple to attune to each other's needs, because they don't understand it interesting.
Speaker 2:See like you understand purpose because it's close to five right success right.
Speaker 1:What about if both couples are? Both people in the couple are in the scramble. Then is it harder for them to attune to each other because they're not getting their needs met? I guess no matter where they are, whether they're close together or far apart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in terms of relationships, is a really powerful tool for relationships, because what I Write about in the book is that relationships don't fail because of all the things that we think Relationships fail for because of. You know, we didn't go enough dates or spend enough time together, right kids, or stress right. Relationships fail because your primal question was consistently answered with a no or a maybe by your spouse. Okay, a relationship is not sustainable. I Cannot be in a sustainable relationship with my wife if she continues to answer my primal question of am I safe with a no or a maybe.
Speaker 2:And so when I'm working with couples, one of the things that we do is say, hey, listen, how, how do how does your spouse, how can they answer your primal question with a yes? What does that look like? What do they need to do? And then I also say what are they doing? Currently? That is answering your primal question as a no or a maybe, and let's stop doing those things. Again we get to the core. The core is the emotional need In that person, and so if the spouse can answer that and meet that emotional need, that and it's just one, we're not like talking like all seven or it's not a laundry list of things a spouse has to do. It's one thing like figure out how to answer that with a yes, and you'll have a successful relationship with that person. If you inadvertently keep answering it with a no or a maybe you, that relationship will not work.
Speaker 1:So how? I do wanna ask about that with question five, because being loved, being wanted, being safe, like I can understand what the behaviors from another person would need to be to help soothe that or help people see that, that's a yes. But what about for success? Because success, or even purpose, like those two are so there's like an external thing that someone's wanting to see happen. From my, my learning of this right now. So how do you help someone meet one of those two?
Speaker 2:Well, again, I'm not your spouse, but here's what I would say, like I shouldn't be doing with you, I shouldn't be pointing out things that are going wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I should not be showing you and talking about how you're underperforming. Okay, again, you could see a spouse talking about those things and kind of just generally in discussion. If I was your spouse, I'd be talking about how you're winning, like look how amazing you did at this podcast with Mike. I don't know whatever it is that your spouse can affirm you and encourage you and highlight the wins that you're having, versus focusing in dialogue, focusing on the problem okay, where you messed up. That's a no to your primal question of am I successful? Or even this whole thing. You're just not having a lot of impact. You see your fault. I don't know. I'm just making stuff up. I have no idea. It's like look at how many people listen to that Mike Foster podcast with you. It's, the numbers are down, they're way down. What's going on here? That's gonna not create connection for you and your spouse. You're gonna feel separate. You're gonna move away from that. That feels like a no or a maybe to your primal question of am I successful?
Speaker 1:Now, that's really interesting. My husband doesn't do any of those things, which is great, but, as you were saying, those things I feel like that is my go to. Not necessarily that I always do it, but that's where my mind tends to go as I'm looking at other people Of like, oh, like, you're enough, probably, because it's the way I feel. I'm guessing, and so is it also, that a person's primal question may also be the way that they can kind of push other people away in how they interact with other people around them.
Speaker 2:Yes. So what happens is with our really our primal gift, this question that we put over our question, that we put over other people and assume that they're asking that can be over indexed. It can be over driven to a point where, kimberly, this is not helpful. This is not helping me be successful at all. I'm actually feeling quite judged by you right now.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Or with me, my overextended and my safe it's well, I just tell people what they wanna hear, because that just keeps them happy and good, versus telling them the truth.
Speaker 1:Okay, Right right.
Speaker 2:So yes, we do have to be aware of again our expertise in the subject matter. You know how to be very successful. Other people have other needs, other questions, primal questions, so you've gotta make sure that you meet people where they're at, because this whole idea of success they're not PhDs in that- how do you begin to understand or identify what another person's primal question is?
Speaker 1:So especially? I'm thinking about coworkers, I'm thinking about spouses, friends, but even kids, like at what age are they old enough that you can begin to see this as a parent?
Speaker 2:Yes. So one of the nice things is the model is very simple. A lot of horsepower behind it, but it is, once you kind of get the general profiles of each of the questions, you start seeing it everywhere. Like I watch the news or I read interviews and I go, oh yeah, they're a Q3, oh yeah, that's a do I have purpose person Like Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He's definitely a Q2. Based on some podcasts that I listened to about money and security. He doesn't do it for fame and success. I can promise you that. It's not because he doesn't feel good enough. It's because he's trying to pay his bills.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:It's also why he calls this production company seven bucks productions because he talked. The defining story of his life is being down to his last seven bucks. His imprint was growing up in a home that never had enough money. That's what drives Dwayne the Rock Johnson.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know Dwayne the Rock Johnson, I've never done the assessment with him but you begin to see it. You're gonna see it in people's triggers, how they talk. You see it in their primal gift and then you can have an understanding of why they are, why they are who they are, how they might use their primal gift in a team or in a family or in a community. And then with our kids, listen. I always just encourage parents listen. One of the things we do, by the way, with parenting is we put our primal question over our kids and we tend to parent to that question. You're going to be amazing. You're going to be successful. You're going to look at what you've done here with this A Look at how many points you scored, like that's going to be your tendency to parent to the success question that you've put over your child. But good parenting is answering all seven questions for our kids.
Speaker 1:Well and.
Speaker 2:And diligent with that.
Speaker 1:One of the things you said, too, was where we fall also kind of can come from a situation or a theme that we were taught or something that happened when we were kids. So this might be a strange question. If you're wanting to like form your kids, is there like a best question that we could seek to like place over their life? Is that a weird question? Do you understand what I'm trying to say?
Speaker 2:It's actually a question I get a lot and it kind of get in a different way. Like, well, if I don't want my kid to have a primal question, like I don't want them to like feel this confusion or this pain or this, have this question right. And I always look at parents and I say, why not? Because that question is going to create an expertise in your child that will make them unparalleled to anybody else in that particular area. Yes, I would not want to relive the trauma of my early childhood, but that gave me a superpower. So we do our best in our parenting. Yes, we want to be well rounded in the messaging, but it's not about stopping a primal question. It's just about, when you see the primal question, affirm it. Don't allow it to be any more confusing. Keep talking about it with them. Talk about them with what love looks like or purpose looks like or success looks like. Lean in there. But we don't want to stop it because on the other side of a primal question is a credible primal gift.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's the part I love about this whole framework so much. Now, when people coach with you or you have a network of coaches that you've certified, what does that look like? Like, how do you move someone from where they are when they meet with you to working in their gift and not living in the scramble?
Speaker 2:Yes, so one of the things that I talk about in the book is in a diagram that I have in the book, for each question is a primal map. The primal map is really kind of a 50,000 foot look at all the different pieces of how our primal question influences us all the way from our scramble Like let's define our scramble, but let's also define what our primal truth looks like. And what is that? What are you doing when you're living in your primal truth? We want to look at your primal gift. How does that express? And the primal map will also help you identify one of the things we call primal avoidance, where it's a protection mechanism against your primal question being answered with a no. And so in the book is this map and it's all these different layers to give you a better understanding of your green lights and your red lights, your opportunities, but also things you need to be aware of in terms of your vulnerabilities, and it just gives you this really nice picture. And so when I'm coaching somebody, we're basically unpacking those different elements and the nice thing about coaching and you bring up certification.
Speaker 2:When I'm training people in this model, it gives a coach or a counselor or a therapist or even a leader. It gives them the foundational point, the anchor to do whatever the work is with that person, Because it's always going to come back to that point. So you're never lost in a coaching session. I always will know what's going on in Kimberly's mind. She may bring different expressions, different stories, different things, different challenges, different problems. That may be going on, but I know, as a coach or counselor, it's at her. Am I successful? Question is what's driving all of this? And so what? We then bring clarity to that, we bring action items to that. We invite Kimberly to live in her primal truth. I am successful and then hopefully that provides a lot of value to Kimberly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mike, I love it, Even as you earlier. As you were talking about the gift that people have on the other side of their primal question and even just relating it to success. It brought a lot of clarity to me in just different thoughts and conversations I've been having recently and there's kind of there's a freedom in it, right, because there's this freedom of like you know what it is. It's a great thing that I want to help empower others and how can I do more of that, instead of feeling like I shouldn't or I should, you know, it kind of helps to see where our focus should be, because it's part of the giftedness that we have and I love so much about this. I love that aspect of it too a lot.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the great things of activating ourselves out of this awareness. It's not just awareness. Okay, great, I've got this safety issue, I got this success need, or you know, I need to feel loved. That's only, that's the revelation part, Like, okay, something's been revealed, Now it's the application part. Now what? I'm so much more interested in the application because that's where the real benefits to you having that understanding come in, and also the benefits to others.
Speaker 1:I love it, mike. Thank you so much. This has been one of my favorite conversations I've had on the podcast. I know that the listeners are absolutely going to love it. I know that they're gonna wanna know more about you, what you're up to, what you're doing. Where can they find you and see what you're up to?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So probably the thing I'd encourage everybody to do is go take the assessment, find out what your primal question is, and you can do that at primalquestioncom. It's totally free, just takes a few minutes. There's about 20 questions or so that you answer and then it'll produce a result for you plus a little coaching video from me about kind of helping understand your results. But that'd be the first thing to go to primalquestioncom, take the free assessment. Secondly, the book dives deeper into the concept, the seven primal questions, and that's available on Amazon. And yeah, just if you wanna go deeper into understanding this. And then I guess the final thing I'd say is, if you are a coach or a therapist or a counselor or you work with people, work with couples, teenagers, whoever you're working with, I train and certify people on this model and it's a 90-day certification program, and then you just really become the expert in how to do this and really becomes a great tool for you to help other people. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1:I will say that everyone in the office this morning was taking the assessment. It was the talk of the office Super easy to do, definitely brought a lot of conversation and insightfulness. So I highly recommend going to take it. Just like Mike said, it's easy, it's free, a lot of great insight, and the book, of course, is just going to be even more in-depth to the same things that we've been talking about here today. So we'll put the links to all of those things in the show notes so that you can go and find those, take the assessment and go see more of what Mike Foster is doing. Mike, thank you so much for your time. Thanks.
Speaker 2:Kimberly, it was awesome talking with you today.
Speaker 1:Here is my biggest takeaway from today's episode with Mike Foster. When we look at the pies, the way that I talk about attraction physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually what we talked about in today's discussion had so much to do with emotional attraction and not even just with other people, although I believe that's important, but even the emotional attraction that we have towards ourselves, evoking positive emotions within us, because that's an important part of this. And listen, when I took the assessment this morning and it told me that my primal question was am I successful? I didn't like it. I thought this sounds so shallow, it sounds so vain. I wish my primal question was something else.
Speaker 1:But here is the truth of the matter. It's not really about what your primal question is and what it necessarily says about you. It's about, as Mike said, the gift that this question gives you Wherever you are. Whether you were listening to that and you thought, man, I really resonate with feeling loved or wanting to feel wanted or wanting to have purpose, or maybe you're like me and you want to feel successful and you feel like you're stuck there. If you feel like you're stuck there, here is the great news and the number one key takeaway from today's episode it is your gift to the world. You wanting to feel more loved means that you are amazing at helping other people feel loved. If you're wanting to feel more wanted, then you are the kind of person that makes sure that everyone is included.
Speaker 1:If you don't feel like you are good enough, if that's something you've struggled with, then you have the ability to really speak, encouragement and hope into other people's lives, and on and on and on. There is a purpose for your pain. There is a reason for the things that you have gone through, and it doesn't just have to be to keep within yourself. You have a way, a special, god-appointed. However you want to look at it, you have a reason to be here. Your life has a purpose and these things that we can look at and feel like they're what keep us bogged down are actually. They actually have the opportunity to be the breakthroughs that we have in our life, to help more people and do more good than we ever thought possible. That's my key takeaway. I encourage you to go take the free assessment, go check out Mike's book, share this episode with a friend, leave a review and, until next week, stay strong.