I’m still working through Schuster’s Glow in the F*cking Dark and I was compelled to discuss a tool she uses—I will call it The Four Whys.  Schuster uses this in terms of identifying rituals that serve us on our road to self-realization/improvement etc.  One of her steps is about finding the why behind the action but I love her steps of taking four whys to really get to the core of it.  We all know the why is what keeps us going but I loved the concept of digging deeper to really identify the root. It was similar to her emotion wheel and learning to find what was really underneath the initial feeling.  I find the psychology behind it fascinating because we are so reactive and so trained that a certain action requires a certain response that the idea of taking the time to identify what we really feel, what we really want and why changes the game.  There are certain emotions you may not really be feeling—something you thought bothered you really doesn’t or something you thought DIDN’T bother you does.  It changes the game when we know what’s really happening.

Regardless, the process of the four whys is simple: ask yourself why as you get a response to the question at least four times.  Schuster’s example is this, “The reason I started journaling was because other people told me it would be beneficial for me.  Why? Because they were worried about me.  Why? Because I was out of control.  Why?  Because I hated myself,” Tara Schuster, Glow in the F*cking Dark.  This technique can be applied to anything: why we do something, why we want something, why we feel something, why we stick with something, why we can’t finish something.  By the time you dig down to four whys, the truth is solid.  And if we want to move forward, we need the truth.  When we know our truth, we know which way to go.  We know the direction and it’s much harder to be deterred.  There is something to be said for that internal guidance system.    

After our discussion on gaslighting, I think building a tool box of ways to strengthen our inner knowing and our ability to trust ourselves is so important.  We are in a society that simultaneously tells us we are wrong for feeling what we do and that we are never wrong for feeling how we do and it has created mass confusion.  It has created a society that points blame rather than seeks the truth or the source of the issue.  The more in touch we are with our whys, the less likely that is to happen.  Our whys not only give us direction they give us foundation.  It’s important to get to that root, it’s important to ask those questions, it’s important to probe, it’s important to have perspective, and it’s important to work together to arrive at a mutual conclusion.  It isn’t about right or wrong, it’s about what’s right for us as individuals and how that contributes to the collective.