Reader,

Do you know someone who never fails at anything? The kind of person that always seems to excel, no matter what they're doing?

I was deep sea fishing with a guy like that once. We'd chartered a boat and were enjoying a good day out on the ocean. In the course of our day, this guy – who never fails at anything – managed to tangle his fishing line around the motor of our boat.

I thought the turn of events was hilarious. The captain was down on his knees, cussing as he cut the line from the propeller. I whipped out my phone and started filming the scene. "What a moment!" I thought. "This guy's not perfect after all!"

Well, the fun ended in a big hurry. I'd never seen him behave like that before. All of the sudden, this grown man was like a five-year-old little boy. He started unraveling. He felt disoriented. He got angry. "Stop filming this!" he shouted. He became somebody I'd never experienced him being before, all because he was so afraid of being seen as being incompetent or like he had failed.

Over the past few weeks, I've been introducing you to Mike Foster's Seven Primal Questions framework – a tool that can help us identify what our deepest emotional need is. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that this guy was a PQ5. Which means the question he carries in his chest at all times is: Am I successful?

If you're a PQ5, you walk around wondering if other people think you're competent. This is especially true when it comes to your colleagues. You're always subconsciously trying to read them and figure out if they think you've got what it takes to lead them to the next level.

If your brain tells you that the answer is "Yes," you feel great! You feel grounded. You feel good about life.

But if your brain says the answer is "No" or even "Maybe," it results in a scramble – erratic behavior – as you try to turn that answer to "Yes."

The deepest emotional need of a PQ5 is being appreciated for their contributions. Their core fear is being seen by others as incompetent or underachieving in some way. Their kryptonite, their biggest fear, is failure.

On the flip side, the superpower of PQ5's is that they make every thing and every person they touch better. They lead themselves and lead others to produce the most positive outcomes imaginable. You want these people on your team. You want them in your life.

If you're a PQ5, here's a primal practice for you: define what real success looks like. Get clear about the success that really matters.

Keep that in the forefront of your mind. Look for opportunities to engage and advance good things that aren't flashy. The kind of things where there's no trophy or public recognition: where you just do it because it's good to do.

You're loved.

I'm for you.

You've got this.

Jake