How to Live a Better Life Simply by Asking Better Questions | with Marc Champagne

About Episode

It doesn’t matter who we are, where we are. We’re all one question away from a completely different life.
– Marc Champagne

Marc Champagne is a speaker, mental fitness strategist and author of the book Personal Socrates: Better Questions, Better Life. Marc studies the questions and practices shaping the lives of legends and world-class performers and is joining us today to share those findings along with simple ways you can apply them to make changes to your professional and personal life.

In our conversation, Marc breaks down what makes a “high value question” (it’s far more simple than you think). We discuss simple questions you can start with to begin changing your life, as well as how a simple practice of journaling can support this process. You’ll learn all about the value of asking better questions, as well as how you can build your “creativity muscle” in order to create drastic change through seeking deeper answers.

Whether you’re looking to enhance your personal life or are seeking ways to take your career to the next level, learning the art of asking better questions to both yourself and others is a crucial piece of the process. Not only will Marc be sharing those skills with you here today, you’ll hear personal examples as we take turns in the hot seat discussing the game changing questions that completely changed our entire lives.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I'm here today with Marc Champagne who is an author, a speaker. And interestingly, which we're going to talk a lot more about a mental fitness strategist, you're also the host of the top 50 ranked podcast Behind the Human. And you study the questions and practices that shaped the lives of legends and world class performers. Questions, as you say, that have the power to change your life and work. And you are also the author of a book we will be talking a lot about today, Personal Socrates: Better Questions Better Life, or for those of you that are late Gen Z, and these annual generation and grew up on Bill and Ted, Personal So-crates. So Mr. Marc Champagne, welcome to the show.

Marc Champagne: Thank you, brother. It's an honor and a privilege and just so excited to be here with you.

Zack Arnold: I have to be honest, every time I read the title, and I'm going to talk about it to other people, I always have to stop myself. It's not personal so-crates it's not personal so-crates it's, Socrates, because I just grew up on that being the name and that just kind of being the colloquial version of it. But I want to make sure we clarify for everybody. It's Socrates. Indeed. And we're going to talk about the Socratic method, we're going to talk about how to ask better questions, and you're going to help me verify what has been instinctually a belief of mine that through your reading and reading others has since been verified that in my own words, and your words are very similar. I believe that the quality of our life is dictated by the quality of our questions. And without without realizing it as a coach and as a podcaster. For years, I've driven my students and my guests crazy, because whenever they asked me a question, I never give them an answer. I just asked him a question in return. And it wasn't for years. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of sort of the Socratic method, isn't it? So the purpose of our conversation today is ultimately for the guest to walk away understanding not only the importance of asking good questions, but how to ask themselves the right questions to improve the quality of their life. Before we get into the weeds, though, I think they need to understand a little bit more about you and your journey and how you ended up in a place writing about asking better questions. Because it's not like you were a scholar, and you're a researcher, and you're digging through all the books and you're going through stoic literature, you took a very different path to get here. So what is your version of your origin story? Where do we begin?

Marc Champagne: Well, Zack, I was born natural philosopher. I couldn't be. I couldn't be any further from that. Even when you you know, you talk about the Socratic method and Socrates and whatnot, I always get a little bit feels a bit weird as he's talking about my book, because I still don't really resonate with the idea of, of being deep into philosophy in this method, and so forth. It just happens to be that, like many of us, and I think you kind of alluded to this, we're all following the Socratic method in in one way, we just, normally don't even realize we're doing that. Right. So that's kind of how I entered into this this world. But before all of that, yeah, like you, like you mentioned, I mean, I, my backstory is, is quite far from the path that I'm on right now, even in the podcasting world, like, it didn't even exist, right. Like when we were in school, it's, it's crazy that we get to do this. So when I was in school, and when, you know, I was entering into the workforce and whatnot, I was studying business and communications, and, you know, landed in a sales function, and then eventually into product and brand management, which is something that I really enjoyed. And as a strategist, and this continues to kind of play into my world. Now, just a little bit more around mental fitness. I just enjoyed, you know, working with teams and solving these these complicated product problems with all these inputs and so forth, right, and you've got a strategy, you have to come up with some sort of clear direction, and so forth. And well, I did that, you know, it was in that corporate world for about a decade, I, I always had a mental fitness practice in the early morning, I didn't call it that. And it all came up. Because when I started in sales, we were all being at that time, you know, you'd be hired in these big batches of people, essentially, then everyone would be trained up essentially, in the same way. And I just remember thinking, How possibly am I going to excel in the sales function and, and be at the top and when these trips that they keep talking about if being trained the exact same way? And for whatever reason, at that time, my solution was, well, I'm just gonna get up a bit earlier in the morning, 1015 minutes early and just read positive content. And I still don't know kind of where that came from. But I'm forever thankful for making that decision. Because it's really, if I really look back, you know, 1213 years now, that decision has has really been the catalyst to everything that I'm doing now. Because it just it exposed me really quickly to journaling and the questions that these people that I was reading about we're asking themselves that kind of no one was really talking about it was just they were literate or in, in the, you know, in the blog posts or in like Success magazine at the time and, and then when podcasts kind of came on the circuit, same thing in the interviews, these these questions that were pivotal in their journey, journey and completely shaped their work in their lives. So I would, I would write those down and start journaling on them in relation to where I was at. And that's what brought me into this space. And I'll stop there. Because I've said a lot, there's obviously, some big events later on that take place, they kind of got me to where I'm at right now. But that's how it all started.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and there's a lot of pieces in here that I want to dig into. And we're gonna just keep going with this story. But the one flag that I want to plan to just re emphasize what you're talking about is the concept of journaling. This is one of those things that I've been aware of, for most of my adult life, and was very hesitant about really wasn't my thing. I'm definitely one of those people that I'm sure you've heard about many, many times where I own 10 different journals, and I have five pages of them that are used, and 178 pages that are totally blank, like, Oh, give it a trial start. It's not for me. And it was one of those things fairly recently, and I've talked about this on previous episodes of the podcast, where every person I talked to, and just the universe was conspiring to not give me any choice, but to focus on intentionally creating a journaling practice over and over and I'm like, Okay, fine, I get the point, I'm going to focus on journaling, and I've gone very deep down this rabbit hole. And because of that, all of a sudden seeing you show up in my life, I don't think that's really an accident, right? But you showed up in my life completely by accident, for lack of a better word, because I was learning a lot more about the process of creativity, and went down a rabbit hole and found Jovica phone. Yeah, and was getting ready to prepare for him. And I'm just going through some of his products. I'm like, personal Socrates, what is this? I'm like, Oh, my God, this is all about asking better questions for a better life being done, done by it brought in like, Oh, my God, this came to my life at the perfect time. So I want to make sure to emphasize to everybody, just the importance of the journaling process specifically for creative minds, but for anybody in general. And I want to bring that up now. Because I know that me listening five years ago, it'd be like, God really a podcast about journaling. And maybe I'll maybe I'll flip to the next one in the rotation. Do not slip through rotation. Do not go to the next episode. If you're scared of the word journaling. I was too. And I want to talk about the benefits of it with who's now become one of the world's experts on the reflection process. That hasn't been said, I'm not ready to go there yet. Because your story is so fascinating. And a part that's so fascinating.

Marc Champagne: Because I have to ask you, what was the what was the? What was the unlock for you that like what shifted your perspective for from? Journaling is not for me, it's not it doesn't work to like, now it seems like you're pretty deep into it.

Zack Arnold: I would say that there were two things, the first of which was not what unlocked it, it was what what was stopping me from unlocking it. And that was the idea that number one, I have to do it perfectly. I have to do it every day. And it has beautiful prose. And it has to be multiple pages. And as my deepest, darkest thoughts. And this is my personal diary. That was the first thing is this image of what perfection or completion looks like. Okay, and one of the things that flipped that switch more than anything, and I wish I talked about this was Joey and I didn't was the concept of when he sent me his book, it had the slash through the first page. I'm like, why would somebody put a mark on the first page of his book, and he talks about that in his book where as soon as he opens a journal, he ruins the first page. Because thematically it's like, this just means that I've already messed it up in this book isn't going to be perfect. So I might as well just use it anyways, that unlocked something in my brain. And the other one was realizing that if you just have very, very simple prompts or a very simple organizational system, it doesn't have to be everything in your head. It doesn't have to be all these pages and pages of prose it can literally be one sentence a day, one line, one stat so kind of reframing to me what it meant to have a journal because I was doing a reflection or a review process and it's even something I've taught my students but I was doing it digitally via Evernote, it was very structured, it had checklists, so it was more felt like here our to do items rather than creative journaling process. It was once once I discovered the simplicity of it and also how the simplicity can lead to such profound changes in your perspective and the results you want to get and like I'm totally in so I'm down deep down the journaling rabbit hole now.

Marc Champagne: Okay, well, well, well, we'll park it, we'll come back but I got some things that probably can help unlock others and I think just set a different perspective on the definition of journaling that will help.

Zack Arnold: Well then let's just do it now. The what I want to make sure we get back to eventually is the major career transition that you made because an area that We very much focus on the show is the messy middle of career transitions and people that have decided maybe not midlife. But at some point, I've gone down, quote, unquote, the wrong path. And I wasted all this time. And now I want to make a change of direction. And I'm starting over, and I help them understand they're not starting over. And I know that you have a very similar story. So we can either go down that rabbit hole, or we can talk more about journaling. This is going to take like seven hours, I'm already so jazzed up and we barely gotten started.

Marc Champagne: Yeah, well let's, let's let's, let's stick on the journaling. And then that'll that'll dovetail nicely into the, you know, the big kind of career change, because that leads, obviously, directly into journaling. But first, just on just on the definition of journey, and I've just, I've kind of just learned this, as I, as I've been going in my own journaling practice has evolved quite a bit over the last, I guess, 12-15 years now, because of this. And it's just, if you think of journaling, because we often to your point, like think of it, we have some sort of preconceived notion of what journaling is, right? And often that has something to do with pen to paper and some sort of notebooks. I used to get this all the time, people would say, Oh, you're talking about like the 12 year old girl writing about the boy at schools in the crush or something like that, right? Which, there's nothing wrong with that. But no, not necessarily. I'm talking about anyone I'm reading about and studying, they're essentially journaling in some capacity. And they are asking really good questions along along the journey, which led to journaling, like that practice behind it is just reflection. So if you think of it, you know, how can I reflect? Now all of a sudden, you take the whole equation of the tools out of there, and it's, you know, sure can be pen to paper. And I mean, you know, since you've brought up Joey and Baronfig, like, I am definitely a Baronfig product snob at this point. And if I, if I'm writing in a notebook, it has to be one of those because I just I've grown accustomed to the quality of the paper, but you can journal digitally, obviously, which we'll get into in the backstory, you can take audio notes, you can take a walk, you know, 10 minute walk after lunch, and just have a question on the mind. And just let your mind breathe and sit with that question. All journaling because it's just a reflection, right, which now opens up this whole other ecosystem of opportunity to leverage the practice and the benefits of the practice, which tend to be more self awareness, clearer mind, more intentionality, more focus, and just feeling you know, more in control of kind of where you're going and clearing out a lot of that mental clutter and so forth. So that in combination with just not being so rigid, with the practice itself, like oh, I have to journal in the morning or I have to journal in the evening. And actually kind of like what you're doing with this conversation, just letting it flow. You know, something happens in the middle of the day, well, instead of letting that thing that email, that message that comment hijacked my mind for the next hour, just take a pause, take a breath and pull up the journal and process that let it go release it re channel it, you know, reset the mind, whatever whatever's required. But now like with literally within minutes, I can be back on track instead of having hours of just stewing in that mental torture. Right? Or I started writing as things were happening in the day like like just things that were putting a smile on my face this to the simplest stuff like just wow, this is a great cup of coffee too. You know, I've got a film studio that wants to produce a series that I'm working on right now mental fitness like wow, that's that's I write down that point on my desk. Mind you have a glass top so I'm using erasable markers. I don't want people ruining their their beautiful wood desk. But just there's again something Zack about doing the you know, having the process just integrated into the day seamlessly and letting that flow in specially with the gratitude prompts, like just seen as the day continues to unfold all of this good stuff that's happening that then you get to the end of the day and you're like, wow, it's a pretty damn good day. Like I would have forgot half of these things, but it just makes it easier. So anyway, I hope that's I hope that's helpful. I like for me it's at least been it's just really opened up so many more avenues to to tap into this practice that has been around literally since the beginning of time.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And what's so helpful about this, I hope for everybody else, but just to crystallize it for me. If we were talking about the colloquial definition of journaling, of I've got this notebook it's this nice moleskin or for anybody listening, it's now Baronfig because I do I'm the total Baronfig snob best product I've ever had as far as journaling. But if we define it as you have this nice high quality notebook and a pen and you're sitting down in journaling. If you said, Zack, how long have you been journaling? I'd say I don't know. I think it's been like a few months. But the realization I had, I've been journaling for a decade, because I've had a weekly email newsletter, I have a podcast, I write articles. And what I didn't realize is that that is my creative process to crystallize all the noise in my brain to work through all the problems and the challenges and force myself to ask better questions. I was just adding a layer of accountability on it. But if somebody is wondering, what were you struggling with eight years ago, and what were the questions you were asking in your life, I say, go to Episode 14 of my original fitness and post podcast. That's my journal. But I didn't see it that way. So this conversation and the other conversations I've had recently, especially the one I had with Mike Vardy, it's like, Oh, my God, I've been journaling for a decade. But because I defined it as very nice, high quality notebook and a pen and I'm writing down my innermost thoughts. Well, I'm not a journaler. Yeah, that clicked in I was like, Oh, my God, this is a totally different perspective, because I've been I've literally been obsessed with the journaling process for 10 years, just in different formats. And I call journaling,

Marc Champagne: For sure, for sure. And I mean, so I mean, nice segue to that, like another format and how, how I really got invested in this space was, as I mentioned, I spent about a decade in the corporate world. And I had this journaling practice. At that time, I was traveling quite heavily. So for me, I was journaling digitally. And, you know, back in those days, there just wasn't a nice seamless solution for like, in terms of apps to do it, like there was, when I first started, I was using, like a word processor, essentially, then eventually, Apple notes had come out. So I was using Apple notes. And I was transferring stuff and copying, pasting into the, into the, the bigger database of it was just messy. And I'm like, There's got to be a better way to do this. Because at the same time, right around that, that that era, is when the meditation apps were really kicking off headspace and calm and so forth. And, you know, for me, it was like, well, so people are clearly open to being guided digitally, in a particular space, in this case, meditation. But there's nothing that exist. Right now, for journaling that is like that, where you can guide people into a practice is leveraging prompts to start it up. And just again, like kind of what we've been talking about, but just blow blow out the the definitions we've had, and just try something a little bit different and let the practice you know, do the magic can speak for itself. So that's where the idea for the app Kyo, KY Oh, which was the Japanese word for today. And at the time, I was working for a Japanese based company. And so I was really kind of ingrained in the culture and seeing kind of what was happening over there. And I really enjoyed what I was learning about, and so forth. So that's where where the name came from, and just set out to create the first at that time guided journaling app. And I did it for a while, where I where I still had my regular day job, and I was heavily into brand and product strategy. So I was taking those skills to create, you know, essentially a pretty solid plan for this journaling app. Flip my brother in law and email, who has been a lifelong entrepreneur, and had some like Tech experience with his company, we, I say something kind of like tongue in cheek because we laugh about it now, by far not a developer and neither. Neither am I. So we probably would have looked for a technical co founder if we were to do that again. But anyway, it was enough to get started. And we set out to create this app. And you know, it took took a bit of time to sort out the development and so forth. In the meantime, that's when I started reaching out to different people in where the podcast started. And like I just like to get get your questions like what questions have really made a huge difference in your life and integrate that into the app so that when it launched, we were loaded full of content and brand collaborations and people that have influenced that you would recognize their name and say, Oh, well, what are they talking about? And then you can interact with their questions, and so forth. And long story short, we did that we within the first couple years without any kind of paid advertising just because of those collaborations. And of course, Apple featuring the product around the world. We amassed a ridiculous amount of App Store impressions. 86 point 9 million people saw the app at one point. You know, that's that's not downloads, obviously. But you know, we had a pretty healthy amount of of users that were coming through the app as well. And, you know, it was just, it was an insane ride because neither one of us had ever been in In that space, and this was really the the first kind of journey down that road, but what it showed me at least that clearly there's an interest. And in this in a product like this, and clearly the market, you know, has some sort of, of appetite to be guided and then go down this, this this space and so forth. So, so yeah, that was, that was the entry point into all of this work. And it's it's morphed around, you know, into the book. And obviously, the podcast has grown quite a bit. And I just alluded to, that wasn't a fictitious example, I am in right in the middle of trying to talk to you because this is your background, trying to figure out how this whole film world TV series works, because I'm pretty deep and conversations of bringing a series to life around mental fitness and the mental fitness guiding, you know, people that we would all recognize and like going deep on the practices and helping people apply this stuff, because it's so accessible.

Zack Arnold: Well, given that for several years, I focused on building an entire training program that I called cognitive fitness, having never heard of you, I have a feeling we might have a lot more that we could talk about beyond just your leg, I think you and I have a lot of interests in common. And I will throw it out there right now, if you're looking for a resource to understand the entertainment industry, TV series, storytelling structure, the business, that invitation is open, and I'm very excited to have that conversation. This could vary, we could completely monopolize just this call for four hours doing that. However, I'm not going to but that invitation is open. We will talk about that afterwards. But I want to continue with the story because the assumption is Oh my god 86 point 9 million impressions. All right, you're a successful Abdullaev developer, you made some money. And now it's time to talk about how we got to the book, right, I didn't miss anything important in the middle did I?

Marc Champagne: No just the the one step when I was looking at that number and staring at that Apple dashboard that the next step was to hit Delete from App Store. And that's when my life blew up. And my mind started to self destruct. And I never had to rely on mental fitness as much as I had to do in those moments. So I mean, the short story of of, you know, kind of gasp, like what happened there? How can you, you know, mess that up at such a colossal level, which were questions that were were coming to my mind often and kind of sending me down a really dark path, because how do you reach that many people and still have to delete an app, and the short story was, you know, we weren't making money, clearly, we, we needed a lot more work in the flow of the app to retain the people that were coming in, you know, they're coming in and leaving just as fast as they were arriving. And, you know, there were some things like, all of these media, impressions and features and write ups and PR, and all that stuff was almost, you know, kind of masking the fundamental, like, business problem, like we had to sort out, you know, the conversions and things like that? Because they would, they would give, you know, they'd give a little little zest of life of, okay, well, we'll surely you know, if LinkedIn is going to write about this, or Legos interested in this whole center and apples feature, and again, like, surely, surely, we're on the right track, you know, and it just it kind of prolong that journey, where realistically, you know, we just had some fundamental problems that we had to had to address around the financials, we needed more money, and also more mental capacity. You know, this was the point where this was, for me personally, was really the was really the the key decision makers. In shutting it down. I started to feel like a hypocrite, you know, I here I am interviewing all these people about mental fitness and talking about this app and being interviewed and so forth about these practices. But at the same time, in that moment, my mind was just full to capacity with so much financial stress and the stress of, you know, having a team on board and, and really not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, you know, you can you can have a lot of, you know, ambition and motivation and hope and know that it will work out, but you need, you need some level of certainty. And that at the very end was we were actually given that because we, for the first time did some pretty extensive user research. And we we the results of that were so clear in terms of what we had to do next with the product. But at the same time, we had enough clarity within ourselves that we knew we wouldn't know that within the next iteration that it would take multiple and how many were not sure, and that we knew would cost a lot of money and and money we didn't have, as well as I, like I said, you know, mental capacity. So. So yeah, we made the decision, you know what we're going to, we're going to pull this from the market, which That in itself was was incredibly challenged because we're not You're not talking about a parking meter app like people had their lives in here I had, I remember I had, there was a mom that reached out after we sent the email that we were shutting it down. And that we're essentially giving users about a about a month to download their data, which we didn't even have an export feature. At that time, like we were scrambling to put something together it was in, it was in the roadmap for down the road, so that at least people could get something out of it. And I remember this one mother emailed me and said, you know, she was super nice, she just said, I'm really sad to see that this app is disappearing. Thank you for putting, you know, creating this export feature. I've documented the first, you know, seven months of my child's life in this app, and right, as a dad, myself and a see you as well, the background, I mean that, like straight to the heart there, right. So it was it was, it was tough, because it was it felt like it's letting people down on the other side. It felt like, I let my own family down. You know, I as much as I was, you know, as much as you're out there marketing a product and selling, you know, a vision and a dream. And even bringing in some of the people that we had in the app, there was a you know, here's, here's the plan, I had to do that with myself and my family. And like, here's, here's because they're all involved, right, like B, I left a really good career we left. We sold our condo in Montreal, we move cities at that point, we're in a, we're in Toronto, the most expensive city in these Canada. And it was all supposed to be temporary. And here like things are just blowing up. Right. So it was it was really challenging, but it was one of those pivotable pivotal moments that unlocked the path that I'm on right now that I never even knew existed, and never even knew that. That was the role it was, is the role I'm supposed to be doing. Because now it feels all very aligned and very right. Because before like, I didn't leave a job in a situation where I was unhappy. I just left because I knew I would regret not trying this venture. That was that was the big kind of aha moment for me, so.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's that's obviously, that's a big question for anybody like, and this is something you touched upon in the book, this idea of that at the end of your life, and you even have some statistics around this. It's a very high percentage of people that are not asking, what regrets do I have about the things that I did do? What do I regret that I didn't do? That's a big question. Right? Yeah. So what what I want to use this experience as as kind of like a testing ground to dig deeper into developing the skill to ask better questions. So one question that I know you had to ask at some point, and we're gonna reverse engineer our way to this. Do we delete the app or not? That's a big question. You had to ask yourself that question had to talk about your team, like eventually you got to the point. All right, do we delete it or not? But if we were to reverse engineer injure that, what are some of the other questions you were asking along the way before you even asked that one? Because there are plenty people that are thinking, Should I quit my current job or not? Should I quit my current relationship or not? But there are a series of other questions and part of the Socratic method, whether it's conversing with others or yourself, excuse me, this is a skill I believe that people can develop, they just have to know how. So what are the questions that you asked that led to the big question?

Marc Champagne: Well, the one that that comes to mind immediately is a question that I was left by a gentleman by the name of Scott Belsky who, for anyone who doesn't know who Scott is other it is yes, the messy Middle Of course. I mean, of course.

Zack Arnold: I thought this five minutes after reading about it in your book. So yeah, I'm Scott Belsky.

Marc Champagne: So Scott Belsky. So now he's, as far as I know, now, maybe he's changed roles, but he's a VP over at Adobe. And before that was running Behance, which was acquired by Adobe. And I remember when I interviewed Scott, you know, he left me with that question, and I'll paraphrase it just basically around, like, do you have the same level of conviction for, in this case, the business you're running or the product you're developing, but you can use this for anything the relationship you're in the job that you're in? Do you have the same level of conviction for that thing? Now, then, what you had when you first entered into that, you know, business or relationship? And if the answer is no, then that should lead to some other questions of wall you know, like, why, like, what is it? Is there something like can you regain that? Is there something that you can do and so forth? Or is it just an in my case, something changed along the way of that journey that This avenue of this app just no longer felt right anymore. You know, because I was trying, it's hard to make clear decisions when you're under financial pressure and the fear of, you know, just not being able to cover your expenses for the for the month, right. So you, you have to find something, you have to find something to just pause that. And you'll be able to think clearly, and usually, like some of these questions, were helpful, because when I'm answering those questions, I'm not thinking about the other stuff, least in that brief moment of time. So it was that that question from Scott, that as soon as he left that, you know, it's, it was hard, because I was a bit of punch a bit of a punch in the face, it's like, Well, what happened? Like how, like, why, what, like, where did I lose the you know, that that sense of conviction, there's thinking a multiple, multiple answers to that, that that all led to the same thing that you know what this, I don't know what the path is, I know, I'm on the right journey. But this path that I'm on within the journey is for whatever reason has to end. And, of course, I didn't know about the book that was going to come up, you know, probably six, seven months later, which is directly linked to Joey, not just not, not just that they published it, but he had a huge thing, and that actually creating this book, or, you know, the work that I'm doing with teams around training them on how to be mentally fit, and so forth. So I think, at the end of the day, we just need to give our self the opportunity for to let our minds brief and ask these questions. And in this case, the question from Scott was of tremendous quality, because it was very relevant and applicable to what I needed at that time. And that, to me, is the definition of a high quality question, right? Because you can ask the same question at a different in a different period of time. And it'd be, you know, helpful, but not as relevant. Just like when my mind was in self destruction mode, and I was heading into that kind of deep depression, when Chip Conley sent me the question, well, what do you want for your life? And that, you know, that led to the whole just thought that it doesn't matter who we are, where we're at what's going on? We're all one question away from a different life. And and the less grandiose terms, one question way from a completely different mood at any point.

Zack Arnold: So given that, a major part of your story, and also something you emphasize very heavily, both in your journey, but your book, is this meta question of all questions, this idea that we are all one question away from a completely different life. Clearly, you're on this podcast, because I believe in the power of the questions that we ask ourselves and others. But I'm going to come at it from an opposite perspective for a second to play the devil's advocate. It seems really simple, really one question. I mean, come on. Is it really that simple?

Marc Champagne: Absolutely. So let's, let's roleplay this one a little bit, let's say, imagine a time when you feel like you don't have control of your mind and you feel stressed or fearful. Has anyone ever felt?

Zack Arnold: I can't imagine ever feeling that way in the last seven minutes? Maybe by the you know, maybe before but yes, I think we can all relate to this.

Marc Champagne: Exactly. Right. So in that same moment, then you just you close your eyes, and you ask the question, who's someone within my in my life that I can celebrate right now? Bring them to you bring them to your to your mind, see them? See, you know, what they look like, what they're wearing, what they're saying to you, and then just send them a little love virtual love this one gratitude question that immediately flips you into a positive state because you can't be thinking about that question and also still be dwelling on the fear or the anxiety, whatever is coming up, chemically doesn't work. And when we pop into gratitude practices, we're firing up. We're giving herself a neurochemical cocktail, serotonin and dopamine, dopamine, which are all the feel good emotions. So that's like the easiest way to to really trigger things. The other thing is, it's, you know, often something I hear all the time, it's something I use all the time is, you know, we get into this mode of, of thinking in our mindset of lack, like, we want to start a new project, like I don't have the money to do that I don't have the resources or like this, this won't work, this will happen, blah, blah, blah, there's a million excuses that we that we can form within seconds. Versus instead of going down that route, if you are to just take a minute pause, the pause is key. We've got to stop the narrative. And just ask the question, well, what if everything went right? Right, that scenario, not to say that everything's gonna go right? But it's, you're definitely starting from a place of abundance and possibility than a place of lack and I'm willing to guarantee or bet that you'll come up with come up with some pretty innovative ideas to make something happen that probably will wouldn't have surfaced if you started from that place of lack. So thank you for the Challenge Challenge accepted. But yes, I do believe we're all one question away at at any point.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And what I love about that is the way that you compartmentalize it and make it you simplified it because I think most people in a general definition would read the phrase, we are all one question away from a completely different life. And they're thinking, my life in the future, I've got a different job, I've got a different car, I have more money, I have a different spouse has a totally different life. They are saying, No, literally, your life can be totally different in 30 seconds, because the life that we are experiencing is all a perception in our minds.

Marc Champagne: Yes, but the other thing too, like if here's the thing, I mean, and you I'll borrow some stuff from, from our mutual guests, we've had James Clear, and, you know, probably one of the most successful nonfiction authors out there. In terms of the books he sold. You know, I often think of his questions, you know, just Who am I right now? And who am I striving to become? So you know, that gets back to that, that, you know, that bigger grandiose life question. And it's not, like we put this pressure on ourselves of like, wow, that's a huge question, Who am I striving to become? It doesn't have to be a huge question. Just Just think, Whoa, who do you want to be? You know, what would be what would be great life? Like? What characteristics do you want to show up? As are with and what energy do you want to put out there? And and how do you want to be like, just let your mind visualize that, and design, start designing the neural pathways to get there? Because the next step then is, and again, it's not about having any self judgment. It's just data. It's no different like, we do this day in day out with business's brand plan. Where are we at here in January? Where do we want to be end of December, here are the financial targets that are associated to those things, do that rinse and repeat every year all the time with brands, and I used to do that on these 100 million dollar brands? It's not very complicated. They're just two questions. But we don't typically do this with our life, the kind of the most important business of the mall, essentially. So when we look at these questions, then, and then this is where James comes in, you know, then it's just about well, my habits and my systems and do my like practices and rituals. They're either supporting that destination, or they're pushing us farther away. And, again, doesn't have to be this huge blow up of your life, but just start making some micro adjustments. Like, okay, I'll just, I'll switch this up here. Maybe it's five minute adjustment in the morning of, well, this because you've really set the path the intention, I want to be here. Right. Okay. Well, how do I, what's one step I can take to get there? And that's what Chip did for me. Well, what, what do you want for your life? Marc? Well, I want you know, the ideal day would be something like this. Well, I'm nowhere near that right now, because I'm fearing making rent right now. But if I want to be here, well, who do I need to speak with to get closer to that place? What what's one, like? What are some projects I can fire up? And what are some steps I can take? And slowly but surely, you can start getting closer and closer and closer, right? And it gives you gives you the hope and inspiration to keep going because then you start to feel the progress. And I think it's Tony Robbins that says like, the key to happiness is, is the sense of making progress. Whether that's, you know, professionally or personally. And I really do believe that and because if you think about it, like feels good when you're when you're you're you see some momentum or you're, you're making some sort of progress. So yeah, so at the end of the day, like, we make this stuff so, so complicated, or we try to complexify these things and make them bigger than what they have to be and we get scared of that. And then then it freezes us into not taking any action, what if we can just simplify it make some subtle little adjustments? Like that's where the magic happens?

Zack Arnold: Yeah and clearly, this is front and center. And all the James Clear's work. And I'm so glad we're using that as a vocabulary, like a mutual connection. And I'll make sure to put it in our show notes. My interview with James Clear, because to this day is still one of the most popular that I have in the library. It's one of my favorites. so fortunate to have caught him at exactly the right time where he's like, sure I'll do a podcast. I was like, no, because he's possible. Did you get him in that that window of 17 minutes where he'll say yes, and you know, got him. But this is, would be another really great case study in the the difference in outcomes when you just change the question. And I think that for so many people, the question is, what am I trying to achieve? Whereas with James clear, who am I optimizing to become? And clearly a big part of what I'm doing is asking that question, and I had this conversation recently. I don't know if you're familiar with wills store. He's the author of a book called The Science of storytelling, which is fascinating. And we talked all about this idea of when either if you're a writer of fiction, novels, screenplays, or even the writer of your own life, you can either focus with a character driven story and the plot follows the character or you decide the plot and the character follows the plot, right? And what we're talking about is a character driven story where I working towards an identity as opposed to an example would be a question that I would have been asking myself incessantly over and over for years is how do I win my first Oscar? Right. And that led to a lot of decisions that brought me a certain amount of external success, but a lot of internal misery and being misalignment with my identity of, for example, a present dad and present husband. So if you ask the question instead, who am I optimizing to become? Well, I'm wanting to become a more present father and husband? This is the manifestation of that becoming the answer to a different question. And going a totally different direction with my life, as opposed to how much money do I want to make? How do I how can I get a raise? How can I get a promotion? How can I get this award? Who am I optimizing to become to me is one of the core questions in my programming to change the other questions that I ask after it?

Marc Champagne: Yeah, I love it. Love it. It's powerful. Right? Right.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. It's It's amazing stuff. And I'll give you another example. I don't want to hijack this, because you're the guest. But I think that what I want to take you through is my process of a few huge questions that I learned to ask myself and I want to get your take on them. I went through a pretty major, kind of like, Oh, my God, what have I done with my life moment, where similar to you, on the outside, people would say, you've got 87 million people seeing your app, and you're getting ready to ask if you should hit the delete button. At the time I was editing, the number one show on network television that had broken decades of writing records, it was the first season of empire. And I was saying to myself, I don't want to do this anymore. I've reached the top. And this is not what I thought it was. And I'm working all the time. And I'm completely and totally burned out. And I'm exhausted. I don't know how to get out of this. And in the process of learning more about journaling and asking questions and personal development, I came up with one question, and there were a million that led to it. But there was one foundational question that changed my entire life that seems so simple. The question was, how can I make a living, knowing that I can be available to help my kids with their homework at 3pm? That was it. And I built all of my other questions around that which meant, well, I can't work for, you know, Hollywood TV shows, although I've now found a way to do that remotely with kind of being creative with my schedule. But it meant that, well, I have to primarily be home, and what are other services or other value I can provide to people that allow me to make a living, that aren't editing. Because if I'm even editing from home 60 7080 hours a week, I'm never available to help my kids with their homework. So that was a fundamental question that I was problem solving for years. And then here's where the problem comes in. I answered the question. And for a long time, I was like, what question am I supposed to be asking? No, because I never thought I would make this my reality. And I didn't know how to ask the next one. And it took me a long time to figure it out. So let's go back to that moment, if I were talking to you, let's probably four years ago, all of a sudden, I'm making a living, largely working from home, got the coaching program got the podcast till editing, for making money a certain period of time, but allowed me to work from home because that was a non negotiable based on the identity that I wanted to assume. All of a sudden, I've answered the question, how can I make a living and also be home at 3pm? To help my kids with their homework? How do I figure out the next question?

Marc Champagne: You let the next question surface intuitively, and that's, that's the piece that really brings in the consistency of these these practices, right? Because the more the more you're journaling, and doesn't just have to be journaling. Like it's just like physical fitness, you've got to find the exercises that that work for you. Right, if you if you don't like to run that doesn't rule out all of exercise, there's a million things you can do. So same thing with mental fitness. The key though, is to find things that either steal your mind, calm your mind, or make your mind feel happy and good. And that's the question like, Okay, well, what can I do? That I know for sure will make me feel great. And for me, I know journaling helps breathwork helps walks, exercise, time snowboarding, I live in a ski town. So you know, I tried to, again, like we're conditioned, though of like, don't take time like that, to to that in the middle of the day. That's not productive. And I feel that programming to it happened this week, but I still went and stuff surface like it clears out your mind. So the more you do these things, and the more the they're in your routines in part of your rituals, the more self aware you become. And then when you sit down and ask a question like, well, what am I really hearing here? Like, What am I hearing in the whispers? Then you get the then it's, oh, well, it's this path here. Right? It's it's this direction. And that was it. That's the presence piece and And that actually was my goal when, when we were launching the book, of course, I wanted to hit lists and all that stuff and whatnot. But I didn't. And I asked you, it was around the time, I was just finishing the book when I interviewed James clear and, and he spent a good 20 minutes after the interview, just giving advice, which was priceless. And I just remember thinking, You know what, with the app, we were doing everything possible to hit all these lists and get all this PR and blah, blah, blah, and, and leverage it as much as possible. With the book, I just want to be 100% present in every podcast interview I do for the promo of this book. And anything that is surrounds the launch of this book to go in present so I can see the actual path or opportunity that is lingering around there that I would miss if I was, okay, we got it. We know we've got to get this, this and this to hit the Amazon list or this list or whatever. And, you know, that's just has never left me. It's the questions I asked them most. Friday night, we're recording this essentially, it's probably what I'm going to reflect on my own journaling, like, what, what really happened this week, a lot of things happened. But what really happened that was meaningful, and that feels like I should dedicate more energy towards, we have those answers. We just need to we just need the blow of the mind and cleared all the cobwebs and the relationships and the motions that are clogging up those answers that come out right or the question, the next question you're seeking.

Zack Arnold: And, for me, the key here and all of this, and you've already said it, I just want to emphasize it again, because it's so important, is the presence. If you then this is one of the positive side effects that I've seen in establishing a journaling practice, which I thought I established a few months ago. And I've now discovered I established a decade ago. But it's the immense amount of presence that I have for the thoughts that are consuming my mind. And the things that I either do want to achieve don't want to achieve what's standing in the way, and probably eight times out of 10 what I end up writing about, and a weekly newsletter or a guest that I seek out is just me selfishly trying to workshop my own problems, knowing that the people in my audience have the exact same problems that they're trying to workshop. So therefore me being open and vulnerable about it, it creates value for them. But frankly, I know what I was struggling with at any given point in the last 10 years of my life, because that's why I'm seeking out to do a podcast with you, or that's what I'm writing about. Right?

Marc Champagne: So that when our secrets, we are right.

Zack Arnold: But the presence is just so key to the process. And what I've discovered and again, it's one of those things where you can't just say, well, here are the five question prompts, and you're going to come to the biggest question in your life after doing this exercise. There's a there's a good amount of intuition and patience that comes with it. But essentially one of if not the most foundational question that I now ask myself that I apply everything else through as a filter, and maybe another one will come at another time. But in this stage of my life, the question that I asked that goes underneath all the rest of them, Am I at peace with how I spend my time. And when I was trying to figure out the next question to ask from well, I don't need to figure out how to work from home and make sure I can help my kids with their homework at 3pm. What am I figuring out next? Well, am I peace with my time? In general? Yes. But one of the discoveries that I found is, I don't really like running a business. I love doing the creative work. I love doing the podcasting love writing the newsletter, I love creating course content and new videos and workshops. I kind of hate running a business, being a CEO was not my thing. I'm good ish added, I'm not great. So I thought, Well, I'm not at peace with how I spend my time when I'm in my business. I'm at peace when I'm working on my business. So what needs to change? So the question that it evolved into, is how can I make a living, only running my business for 15 hours a week or less? Which is a challenging question to answer. But it begs me to answer much more complicated questions and solve problems that I might think had, I'm never going to be able to figure that out. But if this is the goal, what needs to change? And there was a conversation that you brought up in the book. I think it was a Tim Ferriss prompt that you mentioned this idea of what do I want to achieve in a year? Great. Now you're going to do it in six months?

Marc Champagne: Yeah, well, it just challenges because there's always there's all at least other paths or other, you know, routes that that we can take if we just push our minds a little bit right? Or like even in your example, I mean, eventually you would get to the realization that you don't like running you know, you don't like being the CEO of the business. It just probably would have looked like a big blow up of some sort of be like well, what the hell happened here? Well, yeah, as I don't like doing this so the certain things fell through the cracks or didn't, didn't, didn't operate properly. Whatever. Right. So, for me, like any of these questions, or journaling, and reflective practices, it's just how can we, how can we prevent some of these massive explosions? If left, you know, kind of undealt with in way, bad language there as a, as a writer, that's why I had good editors. You know, but it's these check ins, because the clues the breadcrumbs are there, right? So it's these check ins, and you're asking those questions like, okay, and being real with yourself. So then, how do we, how do we micro just right back to James's prompt like, well, this is where I'm trying to go? Well, let's set up let's adjust the course. So I can I can head to that direction, versus being on autopilot, and not realizing that we're on autopilot and just kind of flowing through and the next thing, you know, you're like, how did I get here? Okay, what, what, and this happens all the time, right? Or worse yet? I'm on someone else's autopilot, you know, not even on my own. You know, and it's, that's, that's scary to me. I mean, that's, that's where you get to these regrets and whatnot. So you don't for the for the time and effort that it takes just to ask a damn question. I mean, that's why I'm so passionate about this, just take some time. I mean, I think we all deserve that in your mind deserves that you feel better, you feel more clear. And, you know, you just just be more aligned with where you're, where you're, where you're heading in the life and the work that you want to live and experience.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I hadn't even thought about the fact that haven't gone through this journaling process. And having the realization in a very calm, focused manner of Hmm, not sure I want to be a CEO anymore, or at least I want to do it full time and be in the business. So maybe it's time to reflect on questions to restructure my systems change my habits. That was a very cognitive process of introspection, writing it down, coming into my team and saying, Alright, so here's what I'm thinking, this is the direction we should go, versus not being present with it. And all of a sudden be like, I hate my life. I always happen, right? Because that's kind of the moment that I had when I was at the top of the game as an editor realizing, how did I get here? How did this all of a sudden happen, that I'm in this position? And everything about myself and my life? And my habits and everything? I just hate? This isn't who I am. I had these tools. When I was younger, I think I would of course, correct that a heck of a lot sooner.

Marc Champagne: Yeah, for sure. And there's so accessible, right and accessible.

Zack Arnold: One of the things that you mentioned, is how a question can very much serve as either a disrupter or a wake up moment. And I know that I whether inadvertently or subconsciously intended on this, I had posited a question, which I always do in my newsletter, every week, there's some very simple prompt or question like, you know, what's one simple habit you can adopt today to get more activity or focus, some things that are bigger and more introspective, but I had a few people reach out there were like, you know, damn you for questioning my entire life and my existence? Because the question that I posited to a bunch of craftspeople and creative professionals in the entertainment industry, I asked them, are you currently the cog on the assembly line of somebody else's dreams? Oh, I had multiple people that were just like, oh, like, I had one of my, my private clients. Got on a call the next day, he's like, I can't stop thinking about your newsletter. That's the power of the right question.

Marc Champagne: Yeah. Yeah. And it can't like in a situation like that. What I often hear with questions like that, it's, it's like, how, how do you? How do you handle that discomfort? Because a lot of people don't want to ask those kinds of questions, because it's uncomfortable to answer them. Right? And typically, kind of my line around that one is, again, eventually you're going to have to answer that question. It's just Would You Rather answer the question a little bit more on your own terms, in in a safer environment, a little bit more of a controlled environment, or a scattered fearful, the world's exploding environment, which is, again, very challenging to come up with a clear answer to the question or I shouldn't say clear answer A, you know, some direction and a path forward and to make sense of what's next. When you're when you're when your mind is in a survival state of or for survival frame of mind. Right? So that's why like, I think we just you know, the questions that scares most are probably the ones you should lean into right now. And just make it make it fun. You know, like sort of set up the external and internal environment to to make the question Okay, yeah. This is a big prompt, probably going to surface some stuff that's that I'm not going to, you know, like, or it's not going to feel great. But let's look at this from a different perspective. I mean, where could this lead me, you know, think of all the, the unknown opportunity that's on the other side, versus typically where we default to, like, this is the worst case, like all the worst case scenarios are gonna happen. Like, we're like the Best New York Times, sellers and storytellers. In our minds. It's crazy. The stuff that we come up with, right? But there's a flip side to that, right. Like, there's unimaginable things that that can come up. So and you can, you can go back and journal like you've experienced those, like, just just think about some of the key relationships in your life, or some of the projects and things that have come into your world that really light you up, how did those things actually come to be? A lot of those things are not within your original master plan. Again, I think of everything like frankly, the book, the podcast, this this film series, like none of that stuff was in any kind of plan when I was graduating university, and thinking I'm going to be a business professional of some sort in marketing and, and product management, I kind of went down that road. But now I'm on this whole other path that was not even a blip of imagination. In my mind.

Zack Arnold: It's funny that you bring that up, because I feel that one of the worst questions that we are conditioned to both ask and answer that has led to, I think so many people feeling unfulfilled being in a path that isn't for them. You can tell me if you disagree or if you agree, who do you want to be when you grow up? What a horrible question.

Marc Champagne: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, of course.

Zack Arnold: I mean, why is that such a horrible question? And why do we all ask it? And why is it just a part of our language?

Marc Champagne: I don't know. I mean, I guess intuitively what comes up is, I don't know what the history of that question is. But I mean, I look at it as probably a more of a positive slant. And like, imagine what you would you know, what your what your life could be like, what, what, what inspires you now in terms of what you want to do and so forth. But we're, we're, we're breaks down is when you have to make these huge life decisions on your education and the path to go down to you know, okay, I want to be this or, or x. And then you get there in your view. And you sometimes you even get there, you get halfway through and you're like, This is not at all for me, versus I think just being curious and trying a lot of different things that that satisfy your curiosity. That's the big one, right? That, at least that I'm learning with, with all of this. I mean, I'm similar to you, like the guests that come on the show, or I have a question like, I'm trying to figure this out, there's people start seeing there's a lot of, there's a lot of interviews in kind of the entertainment world, and what is that I'm trying to figure that space out and see how they how, you know, these people are thinking and whatnot. And then also, just with a book, like, like, what, what's that process? Like? Like? I mean, how do people do it? Like, what is? I mean, ask James at the end, like, what was what recipe did you fall? Follow? I know, you know, it's not the sign of work for everyone. But what what did you do? And pin seems to be working, I'll try some of these things and and do my best to ask some other questions and try others and other, you know, strategies and whatnot as well. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's probably, you know, some sort of strategy to get a little bit of direction, so that we're not aimlessly wandering around. But I think if we were to ask the question, what feels right to me, or who do I want to be, like, in terms of values and characteristics, that probably will lead to a little bit more of an accurate, you know, job or, you know, mission in life, or whatever it is, and just be open to the fact that that will evolve as it should evolve? And because if it's not evolving, you're probably not asking questions and not, you know, pushing yourself and growing and so forth, then you get to me, not evolving equals autopilot. And autopilot is the place that I never want to be.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, yeah. No, I never want to be there again, either. And I think you identified what I think is a great alternative to this question that we've had we've were forced to answer this from basically the time we're verbal, like three or four years old. Oh, what do you want to do when you grow up? Do you want to be an astronaut? Do you want to be a firefighter or baseball player and we keep asking it, or if it's even phrased as, you know, who do you want to be next? We assume that means well, who I want to be is a firefighter or an astronaut or brand manager or CEO, as well. Let's do, who do you want to become? What are those values? Well, I want to be somebody that's present with the people around me. And I want to be reliable and I want to be loyal. Those are things that can stick around for a lifetime. I believe the way that we fix this problem very, very easily, is asking the same question, but you add a word. So what do you want to do next? Like who's who's going to be doing the same thing in the 21st century from the time they graduate from college until they retire, and they get their gold washed in their pension? Like, we do not live in that world anymore. But people feel like I have to choose who I'm going to be in that sticks. I'm like, Well, who do I want to be next? What do I want to do next? And I can define next as a week as a year is seven years. But to me, it makes it a much simpler question that takes so much pressure off of me. Huge. Yeah, like, I love that, you know, and then on top of it, it's also making the assumption that who we are at the moment will clearly isn't enough, so I must strive for more. And again, I think that inherent in our questions need to be the understanding that it's not that I'm bad, and how do I become better? It's, this is who I am. Now, maybe that's already great. And I accept that. But I want to become something different go a different direction, not out of judgment. But just like you said, I think a big word is curiosity.

Marc Champagne: Yeah, yeah. Love it. You're going deep.

Zack Arnold: Yes, going deep. And I'm gonna throw I'm gonna throw a wrench into all of this. I have no idea where this part of the conversation is gonna go. But I'm going to assume and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to assume you're probably familiar with the work of Gretchen Rubin. And the four tendencies.

Marc Champagne: I'm familiar with Gretchen Rubin, I haven't read the four tendencies are studied.

Zack Arnold: Well I'll break it down. I'm sure I've heard of them. You've probably heard of them. I'm going to break it down at very, very, in very simplistic terms, and I have an entire episode that we will link to for anybody that's curious as well. But I found this to be a foundational portion of the work that I teach with my clients. And essentially, it's not a personality test where it's like you are this you are that it doesn't put people in buckets. I hate that stuff. Yeah. So what it does is it gives you a framework for better understanding yourself and one specific context, which is how do I respond to expectations that are put upon me either externally or internally. And there are four basic buckets or general tendencies, not traits but tendencies? There are the upholder, the obliger, the questioner in the rebel. The upholder is somebody that very simply and very rigidly will meet both an external expectation and an internal one. The obliger will blindly to the point of being a martyr and self sacrificing will meet external expectations at the expense of their own internal expectations. The rebel they struggle with meeting any of them right, you're not going to tell me what to do, and neither am I. Yeah. And then the questioner is always asking the questions and understanding why something works. Is it the best option? Is this justified? Does this make sense? And I know for a fact that I'm a questioner on steroids is one of the reasons I enjoy podcasting. Something tells me based on your work and your work, you're probably a questioner,

Marc Champagne: it seems to resonate, for sure.

Zack Arnold: So given that background, let's assume that somebody wants to approach this process of asking better questions and journaling and more introspection. But they don't have the default tool set that you and I have wired in our brains if we naturally see the world through the framework of questions. Where do they start? Because I think that you and I are almost in a way cheating, because I'm asking questions all day, every day, but a lot of people don't see the world through that framework. So I'm assuming you've dealt with a lot of different people, different personalities, some creative, some analytical, how do you help people that say, I don't understand how to ask questions. I don't usually do that by default.

Marc Champagne: I don't think that was my default mode, either. Probably, you know, 1215 years ago, until I started studying the questions or I started ask, I should say, I started asking more questions myself as a practice. And again, just like, just like physical fitness, it's, it's the training, it's the reps that you know, you can do, I do believe you can train your curiosity muscles, if you're using them and strengthen them on on a daily basis. And one of the ways one of the easy ways to do that is to just check in with yourself each morning, how do I feel one word, right? And just start the day understanding you know, what's going on emotionally so that you can a typically, you know, if you ask, How do I feel? And if you if you say I feel feel overwhelmed or stressful Where do you feel that or where do I feel that in my body typically just by putting some energy towards understanding the location releases it, but then leads you to the next question naturally, well, why, like what like what's fueling that stress or that overwhelm, and you can cut the fuel. So this is kind of a, you know, a double prong approach because As a, if you continually train your mind to ask that question, you're gonna start boosting your self awareness, you're gonna start boosting creativity, or sorry, curiosity and probably creativity. But also you're starting the day without emotions that will for sure, hijack you throughout the day, how'd you not identify them? That's the thing, whether we asked those questions or not, those emotions are coming in with us throughout the day, and they affect everything. Right. So that's one way to do it. And then I would just say, again, just, I mean, I'm biased with journaling, of course, because that's, that's a natural way to fire up these questions. And you know, how to train these these curiosity muscles. But if you know, if you're in a meeting, at work, or in conversation with someone, go into go into those conversations and meetings with the goal of being present, and listening and asking questions, and just go in with an objective of curiosity and understanding it coming back and Chip Conley, you know, he, he, I keep mentioning his name. At one point when he was an advisor at Airbnb, that's what he he was the old guy, essentially, in a team of a bunch of young kind of tech, individuals and employees and whatnot. So he had to go in and just be extremely curious and ask a bunch of questions, even though he had just spent 25 years running one of the most successful boutique hotel chains and just sold it. Right. So it's like you check your ego at the door, and just be curious and ask questions. And the more you ask questions, the more you'll just start to do that naturally. And, and like you and I, I think it's, I love it. Because I mean, even when I read a book, for whatever reason, if I, if I land on a point or a paragraph, that's interesting, that I would highlight for me, then I see a sequence of questions immediately, you know, here's the big question. And here are some other follow up prompts that can help us go a little deeper in that topic, or myself first, usually, right? And that, so that just starts to naturally happen. Right? It's just again, like, if you got up every morning, and the first morning, you know, you took a 10 minute brisk walk, then the next morning, you're gonna do five minute run with five minutes of walking, and kept building up and building up. Eventually, naturally, if you're asked to, you know, run somewhere, for whatever reason, you can do it because your body is trained to do it. Same thing, if you're in a work setting, or personal setting, and you're faced with, oh, I need to, I need to ask a big question here. Well, your your mind is trained to do that already. And you're gonna, you're naturally already, since you put in the effort going to be asking much higher quality questions that go way past the surface level. And it's just again, it's just, it's the training piece of it.

Zack Arnold: And what you've tapped into that I think is so paramount to the work that I've done is so paramount to the work that you're doing. you've tapped into the idea that this is a skill you develop. This is not I'm either genetically wired to ask questions, or I'm not. It's basically my default tendency. And I've never any question asker and I have been since I was verbal, and probably even before where I was randomly pointing at things my parents would always say, even when I was a toddler, he's obsessed with how things work, how they're put together, I was taking stuff apart. And now I've just reached the point where instead of doing it with stories, or with movies, I'm just doing it with human beings, tearing all the pieces apart, understanding how they work, how they're wired. But this is a skill not something that I'm good at, and others aren't because I was blessed with it the same that I believe creativity is a skill, focus is a skill, this idea of what I call cognitive fitness, and you call mental fitness, which I think we'll be talking a lot more about offline. Yeah. So given that this is a skill that can be developed. Now I want to leave people with a few habits or systems to help them develop the skill. So the first one would be if we're laying out the routines and the habits how often do you feel we could break this down an example would be that for me, I would say that there's there are different questions and versions of a daily route, journaling practice or a daily review, versus a weekly review versus a monthly review versus bi weekly or quarterly or every six months or a year like we could very deeply go down the rabbit hole of what this looks like but if I want to start developing the skill What should my habits look like to do it well?

Marc Champagne: First and foremost, it's the the habit is dedicating the time and prioritizing a small chunk of time to start right like for me and I imagine for you as well like my my flow in my morning and evening and everything in between has evolved over you know many years for example. So you know I have a pretty dialed in, or block of time in the morning, an hour an hour and a have every single or at least five days a week dedicated to mental and physical fitness. And it really takes a lot like if there's an event or something in the evening that's going to run late, it really has to be valuable in order to to knock back my morning routine, because that time literally dictates the next 24 hours of, of how I'm showing up and so forth. But that's, that's a years of, of evolving and personalizing stuff that I know works for me, what's most important is that it I'm not stringent on I have to journal in that time, or I have to do breath work in that time, or I have to take a walk or do a spin class or lift weights or read a book that I know will be positive, or I'll learn something. And the key is I know that those things, put my mind in a healthy state. And that will train my mind. So that is step one is to answer the question, what are five to 10, rituals, activities, practices that I know for me, will put me in a good mental state, and have that list around and make sure that you're doing some of those things every day, and figure out I mean, just the mornings statistically just works. I'm sure you've seen this in your interviews, I'd say at least 80 plus percent, at least the people I've studied, have some sort of morning routine, we're not all hardwired to wake up naturally like that. But the reality of the situation, the longer you wait, the longer the probability that these things will not happen, because life happens, right? It's like when you're like, oh, yeah, I'm not I didn't sleep, well, I'm gonna skip the workout, I'll do it at two o'clock, because I have an opening. That never happens. It rarely happens, right? Because life happens things and whatnot. And same thing for, you know, any of the parents out there as as you know, those little mini humans typically rocked our schedules, if they're not sleeping well, depending on the age of your kids, and so forth. So sometimes, because I have a six year old and a 15 month old, and the new little guy is really testing us on the sleep, the my hour and a half goes down to five minutes. But the five minutes, and in this case, I'll do five minutes guided breathwork is is the micro when of starting the day, you know, versus not doing anything at all, then I feel behind already. Right? So just to answer your question directly identify the practices and the rituals and whatnot that work well for you and stack them into things that you're already doing. Right when the cut for me when the coffee is brewing, that's when I'm doing the check in question. Beside the coffee machine. I've got typically one of Ryan Holidays books leaning on there, the daily stoic was there for probably at least five years, and it just kept going through it. And one page, I'm reading literally one page, as the coffee is brewing, I do a quick check in if I just did that. And that's less than five minutes. I'm already starting the day feeling like I'm, you know, on the top of the world, I've probably had a little perspective shift by reading whatever he's writing about in stoic philosophy, I've checked in on the emotions, I've checked in on how I want to show up and I'm about to have a great cup of coffee. I mean, doesn't have to be more complicated than that. But you will evolve it and it'll get longer because you'd be like, Shit, I feel a lot better. And I'm thinking more clearly, and things seem to be working a lot better. I want to do more of this.

Zack Arnold: It doesn't surprise me given the story is just a minimum of five minutes, I want to prime my brain to read about something interesting, that could change my perspective, as opposed to endlessly scrolling what's on Instagram, what's on Facebook, and you took the daily stoic. And it's not something where you have to read chapter by chapter and take copious notes, you can just pull it off the shelf, read a page or two at a time, I'm guessing that it's not just a coincidence that the way your book is structured, is such that you can open it to any given chapter out of order, and get the same value because it's giving you these prompts to think differently.

Marc Champagne: Your assumption is correct. And the the other part of that is the suggestion and people can can consume or read the book in any way they want, of course, but the suggestion is to just open the table of contents in any given day and and scan it and look at or stop on a prompt or person that attracts your attention. Because for whatever reason, you know, for whatever the reason that you've stopped there, there's something behind that, that you'll most likely get more relatable value by going into that chapter and yes, the the the chapters are written to be, you know, four to five or six pages intentionally so that if that's your mental fitness, then at least you've got I can least guarantee that I'll get you to think and ask some questions. And or leave you thinking with something that ideally is positive for your mind or will help you progress. And, and Ryan Holiday actually, I mean, we ended up having to call with him when we were joking when we were setting up the structure of the book, which was completely different. It was it was a long form chapters, and it was, you know, it was all about journaling. But it was it was it was not what you see today. And it was spending some time with Ryan think he said like, are you familiar with the daily stoic, I'm like, Well, my copy is almost the yellow from being like suntan from just the sun beating down on it for years and years. And that's essentially how we arrived at the structure of the book.

Zack Arnold: I think it's hilarious that I assumed you had gotten to the structure because you were reading his book, not just it sitting by your coffeemaker, but it being a part of your daily routine. But it's no Ryan actually told me to do that I didn't see that part of the story coming, but I love it. That's hilarious. And the value that I got out of the way that it's structured. And first is I'm sharing this gratitude with you, but I think it's valuable to others, is that I talk a lot about on the show and with my students about how I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. And as a recovering perfectionist and a completionist. My assumption is, I can only successfully say that I've read a book, if I've read all the pages, and I've read them in order, and what you did to us, but you specifically write about this at the beginning of your book, you're like, read it out order, I don't care read two pages a day. And I'm like, Okay, I'll give it a try. This isn't how I would usually do it. I'm usually very thorough, but what it really exemplified, and this is something I already intuitively knew, but it really hits the point home, is that the way that I teach my material, I teach James Clear, I teach Cal Newport I teach David Allen, I teach Gretchen Rubin, I will now be teaching Marc Champagne, right? Like teach these things. And what I've learned is that somebody can have the right book or the right questions at the wrong time, and they get no value out of them. But if somebody reads the right book, or the right questions at the right time, can completely change their life. And had I read your book chronologically in order? There were certain days that would have been like, nope, Chapter Seven is next. Or I have to read chapter eight. And instead I open the table of contents. What do I feel like reading and I would read something I'm like, Oh, my God, that's exactly what I needed to hear today. So the construction of the book is facilitating insights that it might not have with just a different table of contents.

Marc Champagne: Well this I mean, music to my ears. Thank you.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, you're more than welcome. So I've had a thought here, and you can tell me how you feel about this. This is the portion of the program in which I would usually tell you I want to be very irrespective of your time, I want to make sure that everybody can find your work in your book. And we'll have all that in the show notes. But I want to get your thoughts on this idea. When I talked to in did my interview with Joey Cofone. We ended with workshopping the big question that he was asking, and he might still be asking it. But his question at the time was, how can Baron fg become the Nike for thinkers. And we spent like 20 or 30 minutes just talking about it. And he had a couple of pretty cool insights. And we've gone back and forth via email quite a bit, and it's helped him get closer to the solution. So we can close it, we can consider this like the formal closing of the program. And we can give people the URL. But what I really want to know is what's the question you're asking right now? And is there some way that I can help support getting you closer to the answer.

Marc Champagne: I feel like you might have that I mean, it because this is top of mind and what I'm working on, but it's how can I reach a more of a younger and mainstream audience to make these practices more accessible and relatable. And one of the paths that I'm taking is, this is how this film series has come up, I have no desire to just have a TV show like that's that's not, that's not the motivation, the motivation is the the audience behind it, and especially a younger audience, because this is very much related to musicians that have influence and that are followed, that can make a real difference. And provide tools that I see are just not there when I speak to high school students or college or university students. And I see these minds just so full of stress and tension and anxiety and all of that and it's just, there's so much unnecessary mental struggling out of suffering out there. That is not that these are the end all be all tools, but they definitely can help. So, so that's the question that I'm always leaning back to, including, as you know, in this film world where there's a lot of people that get involved and so forth. I mean, I'm just my stance is listen. Every day there's 131 People that Take their life in the US. The more time we've been talking about this, you're either in or you're not. If you want to, if you want to help me develop it, let's go. If not, then I'm moving on because people are dying. And we're even even even more scary. I mean, there's a quarter, if not half of the population that are just struggling daily, nonstop, and students 75%. So let's come together. Let's help people, we can do this. It's their practices are there. And let's move from talking about various struggles in this space and actually bringing some tools and it makes them change.

Zack Arnold: Alright, so then the question at the moment, is, how can I reach a younger, wider swath of the population to share with them the skills and tools to help them ask better questions, help them alleviate anxiety, or even go as deep as to avoid suicide? Yeah. So I'm going to annoy you. And I'm going to use the Socratic method, and I'm not going to give you the answer. I'm going to keep asking questions. Why is this really important to you? What's the deepest layer of the why? Because you're, you're pointing out something that's really important in the world, that we know, through studies and through research, that because of technology and social media, and everything that's going on, the younger population has a much higher level of anxiety, and there's a higher suicide rate. I agree. That's important. But I'm not deeply emotionally connected to that. What's your deep, real emotional connection to wanting to affect this change?

Marc Champagne: Well, I mean, I think we all deserve no matter what our circumstances, I think we all deserve to feel great. And live a life that we feel happy more days than not, and we're statistically speaking, just not there. And I think that's a shame, you know, that that is the default track. And that kind of the precon. coming right back to like, what do I want to do when I grew up kind of thing. It's like we've been conditioned to, if we fall under autopilot, and don't make any changes, we're destined to be in that track. There's, you know, we just stepped, like, you were like, you and I are in this container right now, where we were lit up or energize, we get into these flow states. And we're going to leave here feeling great. And we know that but soon as you step outside, in the outside world, throw up the news or look at anything else. If you don't have the training, or if you don't have the tools, you're you're automatically on that track to not feeling great, right, including our health and our nutrition, all of that stuff. So the underlying motivation is to pause the autopilot for people and help them do so with with questions that are relatable for them. All right.

Zack Arnold: I'm gonna throw one more question in because I know that you, you've got a very tight schedule, and I want to make sure to, to respect that. Something tells me this is going to be a much, much longer conversation very, very soon that by the way, again, putting myself out there, I'm now a resource. But having a little bit better idea of the inner workings of the entertainment industry and everything that's going on out there. What if you were to investigate the question right now, rather than how do I get in front of a wider younger audience? Am I using the right medium to get in front of this audience? Because when you said a TV series, my first thought is, I'm not sure that's the right medium to get in front of the people that you want to affect in that you want to teach. or so are you confident right now you have the right medium? And I don't know enough about the specific pitch or the structure? Or maybe it is, but I'd be really focused on what medium gets me in front of the audience. Before I'm thinking about what is the actual story? Or the tools? Or how do I do that? Because the medium is really the the way to get in front of the right people?

Marc Champagne: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I've thought about that. I mean, you know, is it it's sort of a series like that, is it? Is it a series on you know, TikTok, or YouTube shorts or something like that. And I'm open, I'm open, I mean, it's still very much in the development phase of things. I'm open to it, as long as again, the impact potential is there. I mean, that's what's that's what's driving me. And also so that, you know, maybe this is kind of what you're alluding out as well, that it doesn't take forever to get something like this out because you know, there's, there's real consequences. And I feel, I in a way feel like I have a moral responsibility, having gone through my journey and kind of rock bottom moment. And having studied so many minds and realizing that this stuff is so accessible, practical, as you're seeing with the book, like you don't have to be Picasso to resonate with the stuff in his chapter. It's the questions and the practices that make it relatable, right. So same thing with the with the concept with the series. You know, you don't have to be the the The world famous musician to resonate with the stuff that the story and the narrative help help us understand or bring us in the stride or attract us like Kobe Bryant have to say or whatnot. And then we're into the work. Right? So,

Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, I'm gonna just add you to the same folder in which I have this ongoing conversation with Joey, about how to return Baronfig into the Nike for thinkers. And how do we get your ideas and skills and all these things that you're talking about in front of a wider and younger audience, to give them lower anxiety and higher quality of life that's going in the same collection. So unfortunately, I'm going to be in your inbox. And I'm going to be in your inbox soon. And I'm very excited to continue this conversation. But alas, Time is not on our sides. And I know that you've got to run. So at least for now, we're going to put a pin in this conversation. And very quickly, go ahead, shameless self promotion moment.

Marc Champagne: Oh, it's I mean, it's simple, just behindthehuman.com. I'm there, if the shows there, the book, everything about me, you can find over there. But more importantly, I'm accessible. So shoot me a message wherever, wherever you're hanging out. And I'd love to know the questions that have made big changes in your life or that you think about on a frequent basis. So we can share those out because there's guarantee there's someone on the other side that will find some value with that prompt and that need it, you know, really, really severely in the moment, so please share. I'll reshare and let's keep the conversation going. Zack, it was it was a real pleasure to be on the show with you. This is a conversation to continue.

Zack Arnold: It was beyond a pleasure for me as well. And I look forward to the conversation continuing and at some point earning the right to even be a guest of the Becoming Human podcast. So I love it. On that note, thanks so much.

Marc Champagne: Thank you

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How to Live a Better Life Simply by Asking Better Questions | with Marc Champagne

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