We all have our filters and ideas about “what matters” but often don’t stop to think if they’re what we want. In this interview, I invite you on your self-discovery journey to identify your true desires, because life is rewarding when you live it as fully as possible!
- How to go DEEPER to unearth your desires.
- The question to ask yourself to determine your values.
- Simple steps to intimately know yourself.
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When you go on a journey of self-discovery, it will change your life in ways that will surprise you.
– David Wood
To find out more about Aaron J Armstrong and view the full episode, go to https://www.armstrongventuresllc.com/all-episodes
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– TRANSCRIPT –
David Wood: [00:00:00] We can go a little deeper and a little deeper, and then next will be the planning. All right. How are you going to do that? How are you going to create that? What is the strategy? So that’s often where I start. After that, absolutely anything could happen because I never know what’s going to come out of my mouth.
It depends on who’s in front of me and what comes up. I just did a coaching session with a guy, he spaced on that we were having a session. So he hadn’t done his preparation. And what came out of it as we’re talking was he doesn’t feel in the driver’s seat at work or at home and him missing a coaching call is just an example.
That was a symptom of that. So it brought out a beautiful conversation. And now he’s got a couple of exercises that he can do to practice, to get more in the driver’s seat and his own life. Cause I said, if you’re not showing up for your call with me, where else in your life are you not showing up?
And he was like, wow. Well, let’s start with my marriage. So it got deep, really fast.
Aaron J Armstrong: [00:01:04] How do you get to that level of depth? Because sometimes people, like, if you did the magic wand question, they might have some kind of bad goal, for example. Right? Cause I think that there are goals that can be bad or that the timeline’s not right or that it’s not rooted in a good place.
It’s kind of rooted from something different, something not from the heart. How do you get to a good goal setting kind of session?
David Wood: [00:01:28] Well, I’ll make the point that I don’t care. I don’t care so much what the goals are. I care about my client’s relationship to the goals. How do they feel about it? And if the goals are hitting me as boring and dry, then I’ll poke.
And here’s a question someone asked me last year in my men’s group. He said, David, what would have you celebrate your ass off? And that stopped me in my tracks. And I took two weeks to sit with that question because I could think of things I wanted. I want a home entertainment system and I’d like a a partnership and I’d like, it’s different things I wanted, but what would have me do the happy dance and want to call all my friends?
That was a confronting question. So that’s one way I might take someone deeper if I’m not buying that they’re enrolled in their own goals. Another question I’ve just started asking. So. If someone listens to this interview and they decide they want to get on a call with me and see if we’d be a fit there’s some prep to do before we get on the call.
And one of the questions I just added was, if you had six months to live what would you spend that six months doing? That shows me a lot about their values. And what they care about. And then if their goals don’t match, what I’ve read in that answer, I might poke a little bit more and say, well, you mentioned you want to spend more time with your kids.
I don’t see that on your goals list. You mentioned you would travel more or you’d be volunteering or being of service or whatever. I don’t see that here. And so I might get to do a bit more prodding.
Aaron J Armstrong: [00:03:07] Yeah, I think that’s a great question. What would get you to really celebrate and that when I was thinking, as you were speaking, I was kind of thinking of what that is for me.
It is a great question. I think it wouldn’t do it justice to sit with that any less than a couple of days, because there’s a, I think that really puts you in a position. It shows your values too. So like what I was immediately thinking was some type of like award or some kind of. You know, cool like recognition.
Well, it shows a lot about my personality too. Like I want this kind of recognition at some level. Well, that tells me a lot about myself and a lot of other people, somebody else might just be cool with some other kind of happy dancing. Right. So it’s really interesting. It got me as I, as you were discussing that, I’m thinking that in my head, wow, this is teaching you not only what a good goal could be, but a lot about myself and what I value.
David Wood: [00:03:55] Yeah, exactly. And that’s where I get excited. I want to know about the person. I want them to know themself. You think we should know ourselves because we live with ourselves all the time, but it’s a whole journey. So that question, what would have me celebrate my ass off is a big one. And I want to double click on that other one.
If you had six months to live. I’ve addressed this three times in my life. Once when I was 27. I said, what would I do if I had six months to live? If I had six months and could do anything I wanted. And when I was 27, the answer was, I’d like to be a professional entertainer at the ski fields.
I’d like to play guitar and sing for pubs and parties and put on a black Afro wig and sing, blame it on the boogie and put on a blonde Abba wig and sing SOS and entertain the crowd. So I did. I quit my consulting job, went back to Australia and I spent a year and a half as an entertainer. The second time was about 10 years ago and the answer was I’d go to Bali.
I’d spend my time in Bali because it was my favorite place I ever visited. So instead of spending six months there, I just thought I’ll just go for a month or two and see how it feels. Well, you know, it felt so good. That I came back to the states, sold everything I had and just move with two suitcases to Bali and spent two or three years learning Balinese and playing ultimate Frisbee and video games.
And I like, this is what I do with my life for three years out of that question. And then more recently I’ve asked myself the same thing. And I think the answer is I’d like to go and do a really deep in-depth acting training in Los Angeles and live the life of an actor. I want to do that. So this is a great question, listeners, if I had six months to live, what would I do? It doesn’t mean you have to go and do it right now, but it might tell you something about yourself and it might be that you don’t want to wait 2, 5, 10, 20 years to get around to it. Because we never really know how long we have.
