Simon Sinek: How To Find Your 'Why?' In 15 Minutes

I have a lot of things running through my head, the biggest one being this fear of not being sure I can

find

my why because I'm 44 years old and I've lived quite a bit. Kind of a transient life, so I lived in the countryside, I screwed up my exams at school and went straight into working in television, so I was just young, so I was just trying to make a decision and I thought why, I guess I would. . What I said at the time was just being great in television, then I ended up in television working in children's television and again it was about going all in with everything in that period because it was quite intense and then I was only in my twenties when I had the opportunity to presenting Formula 1 for the BBC in the UK, something that doesn't normally happen to people of that age, so everything was in that world like the children's TV World was immediately left behind and that was all I did and Then I quite like taking risks so I left that after four years and got a job as a football presenter and I stopped after 10 years and I like it when you say, ask

your

best friend like me.

I don't think I have one, which is strange to admit when you're 44, but the life I've lived means I've gone from hard work to hard work and I love what I've done, but now I'm wondering why I've done well so, did you have a childhood? Yeah, okay, so you got a why we're good there, okay, so let's do it a little bit, let's have a little fun, right? okay tell me a specific story it's something you've done at some point in

your

career it could have been F1 it could have been football it doesn't matter as a TV presenter for children's television I don't care tell me a specific story about something you were a part of or something that you did and that you loved it and if every day was like this day or if every project was like this project, you would be the happiest person in the world, so can I come in here and ask why is that an important question to ask now siren , let's talk about it at the end, okay, oh, that's a good one, I think it would probably encourage me to stand in the pit lane for my first Formula 1 grand prix, okay, and it meant a lot to me because I was working on Telly for children and on At that time the BBC Children's people didn't have the opportunity to go to work on sports broadcasting and I had only had one meeting maybe a year before, where I told the story. the head of talent for BBC Sport M.

I had a meeting with her because I wanted to be a sports presenter and she said, well, what are your qualifications? And I jokingly said: Well, I have e andu for my A levels, hahaha, to Stern. response from her and then she said what about the sport you played at a professional level and again I said well, I played a game for the school soccer team, ha, and she told me these are the exact words. BBC Sport doesn't employ people like So I thought, "Well, okay and it felt like a closed door, so it was about

find

ing a different way, which meant I spoke to a friend who worked in the football department and said gave me a chance and I used to go and Travel to 3rd and 4th division football matches with an icdn team for about 1 match per match and it felt difficult because when you are in Telly for kids you have a false sense of your position in the media because you go out and you like kids, excited because you're there or you do an event and it's like hundreds of kids screaming, you're like wow, this is amazing and then all of a sudden you're just doing little reports and I remember feeling this hit on my back and I remember hitting myself.

I turned around and these 17-year-old kids had thrown me around like a meatloaf, hit me on the back and turned into idiotic TV kids and I thought, "This is really going to lead to something," so when I finally had the opportunity to do Formula 1 work and they offered me a one-year contract with a very, very small increase in what I earned, which would have been a lot less than the person who did it before, but they knew that I wasn't going to say No and then they said that the public will decide in 10 seconds if you are worthy of this job or not.

I remember standing in the pit lane and I felt alive. I thought now, now you'll see how I. I'll show you and I'll get goosebumps. I understand it now and I think about that moment. You know and you are very isolated. You are using headphones as hearing protectors because cars make noise. Maybe you're two kilometers from the production team, you're listening to them with all your ears, you're working with 13-time Formula 1 winner David Kard, a multi-millionaire team boss in the form of Edie Jordan, and you're a 28-year-old kid from Norwich who he ruined his exams that for me is a moment where I say wow, that was great, tell me, so let me ask you a quick question first, which is that you have been in pit lane many, many times since then, yeah, what do you know? deal?

That I like is the reason you want to tell me about it now, I think because it felt like the ultimate test and I knew it was going to be all or nothing based on what happened. Well, you know, maybe the first 10

minutes

, the first 15

minutes

, and you know it's easy to mess up your words at that moment, sure, tell me, a happy childhood memory, specific and early, not like we were with my grandparents every weekend, something specific that I can relive with you like it was a Filma, I woke up in the back of the car with the sun coming through the window, we didn't have much money, we only went camping when we were kids and that feeling that your mom, your dad and I had taken you to the car. but tell me a specific time, um, I was about 8 years old, we were heading towards France and I opened my eyes and my mom was there and I remember her leaning over and scratching the back of my dad's neck to keep him awake. because he was tired and she handed me an apple and I ate it and I looked at my brother and sister in the car and all the magical things you did when you were a kid, all the nice memories, what was it about this one that you are choosing to tell me now. um, it's a total scam, like it's just the five of us, like a real connection to my parents, my brother and my sister.

You had connections with your parents every time you went car camping and you know I want one that stands out one of those types of CH happy man CH you can continue down this path that's fine but I want to know that you had that experience of sitting in the back of the car your mom probably trying to keep your dad awake you know there was something in particular about this one or is it just one that you found to try to capture the general memory um I think it was because my parents were very busy so my dad used my dad as a charity worker but he was also doing a career while we When we were kids, my mom was a full-time teacher, MH, so there weren't a lot of things like we weren't a family that did a lot of things, in reality mom and dad basically worked and then on the weekends it was a list of jobs on Saturdays and Sundays and they are still like that even now they are 70 years old they just make you come into the house they have a list of jobs all the time and I think it was like that disappeared and we were just together in those moments, that's why that stands out so much more than being at home, really like I didn't notice anything, so it's the joy of going to the adventure with family, yes, or maybe with two people who are older than you, yes.

Yeah, kind of like the Formula 1 example, yeah, right, so those stories are very, very similar, and you weren't standing alone in the pit lane, right? You said it was these two people you were with. car driver and owner of a multi-million dollar team, you know, kind of like mom and dad, you meet a charity worker and a teacher who are highly qualified people, but at that moment you are just a family and you are part of that family and you can You may be the youngest and least qualified person, but you're still part of the family, yes, and those two are exactly the same story, that incredible feeling of, oh my God, that's right.

I love this. I'm in the car. with them, yeah, you know, this is it, this is it and everyone's relaxed and we're having fun and I'm part of it, you know? and they see me as equal, yeah, yeah, you know they didn't look down on me. and you said I feel like I've arrived, you feel like I'm here but it was also that you were treated that way, yeah, you know, so your why is largely your why is largely about um um feeling part of the family. you feel part of the team um and I would dare say that you are happiest when you work with people in a common cause to do something together and where you have difficulties is when you are asked to do things alone, yeah.

I absolutely mean you know moving away from being a football presenter and focusing on high performance is exactly what you're describing basically yeah you know when you're a football presenter you're working with a lot of former footballers and a lot of. from VT producers and editors and everything, but you're kind of a very lonely thing you're the only presenter, right, what I love about high performance is this sense of all of us, whether it's Damen or me production team anyone this is like What can we all do together to have these types of conversations to help the person on the other end of this podcast or watching this somewhere and it wasn't about the destination, it was about the journey, which is me.

I don't even know where you were camping when you said it was about what you mentioned being in the car, yeah, and I would say it's being in the studio or being in the pit lane, like being somewhere with the family in quotes. . and your family is now a variable, people that you love and who love you and they are going to do this together and even if you don't know them very well, they will treat you like it's okay, we're all in. This together we all go to the same place how do we work together instead of against each other? you know very often the teams the players of the teams will work against each other because I want them to realize I want the producer to do it Look at me, yes I want to I don't care about you in fact I'm going to put you down to get the promotion or getting top billing, you know, that goes against everything.

I think exactly everything, exactly and we're, we're here, it's just a group of people with different common points of view because basically we go back to that analogy now we can go back to our dating history with Brian when someone says what do you do well? I have a podcast called high performance I'm a co-host blah okay that's what you do unless someone wants to be on your podcast or produces a podcast it's not that interesting but now you have a love story and you can talk about either of the two. talk about the history of formula one or you can talk about the story of your childhood, it doesn't matter, so when someone says what do you do, you say it's a funny story when I was a kid, maybe eight years old.

I remember we went on a trip and my mother was always busy she was a teacher my dad was always busy he was a charity worker and here we were as a family going somewhere together and I just remember that intense magical feeling of being part of the family because when We were in the car going camping it was just work, it was just to-do lists, it was just getting a job and here we were now, this is the moment I felt like a family and if I look back at all the times I've been happiest throughout my entire career and I can, I can, I can point to all those moments where there was always a feeling of a group of people in a proverbial, you know, in a metaphorical car in a team where I felt like a family that it's going in a common direction trying to achieve something together and I love being a part of that and the amazing thing now is that I love what I do now because now I'm in the Pod of this podcast and I'm not the host I'm a co-host and now I could be sitting in the front seat.

It could be mom and dad and we have all these little kids coming with us and we're going on this journey together and we're going to try and learn things together and it's the same magical feeling I had as a kid in that car. I love it. Thank you so much. It turns out you have a y. So it looks like we can explore what you just did. that's incredibly powerful just to witness it. I'm interested to know why you chose to go to a childhood memory and then a professional memory. Just explain that to anyone who's listening and wants to ask those questions, so it's all about pattern recognition.

Human beings are a why it is something deeply rooted within us that drives us and which means there is some coherence. You don't remember all the experiences you had as a child. You remember the ones that matter to you. You remember the ones that are important. In other words, your brain saves them because for some reason they're connected to you, so for example, you know on our website, um uh, like we have a YC Discovery product and what it's going to do is it's going to walk you through your entire process. life He will ask you tons of questions about your childhood.

I'll ask you about your early career, your midcareer, because if you're doing it with someone or for yourself, you're going to want tons of data points so you can find those patterns. I have a lot of practice. I've been doing it for a while, soI can do it with fewer examples. I know what I'm looking for, but that's basically what I'm looking for. common examples um, I'm looking for connections and patterns and I'm listening to the language and I'm finding the analogies and as soon as I see a thread, what I started doing when I was thinking out loud.

Now I'm trying to describe the thread and I'm actually paying attention to how you feel, so when you said oh, I'm getting goosebumps now that I'm talking about the story. Okay, this matters to him, right, he's having an emotional response, um, and I'm just looking at him while I'm talking about it and he's nodding or he's going to beat me to it, okay, I'm out of line because I don't. I actually care what you think. I wonder how you feel as I try to describe and reflect back to you what I think I heard. So it's just pattern recognition.

That's all. Alright. It is incredibly powerful. And and and the reason. it takes a stranger to do it I couldn't do it myself yes, of course, it's because you don't have objectivity objectivity in yourself, right, and you will see patterns that don't exist, you need someone who doesn't have them, that's why that other The example says don't do it with family because they know you very well, yeah right, um, and they'll start filling in the gaps for you instead of being as objective as possible, so it's a lot easier when you do it for a friend, hey .

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