It's so easy. And I think in a busy life, if you're moving too fast, it's incredibly easy to ask other people's questions and accept other people's answers to pause in those moments and say like, okay, so like this is what I'm being told. But like, what is my question about this moment I'm inside of and, and how

might I want to navigate it differently?

I'm Jocelyn K. Gly, and this is Hurry Slowly, a podcast about pacing yourself, where I explore

how you can find more calm, comfort, and clarity through the simple act of slowing down.

My guest today is the journalist Courtney E. Martin, who's the author of the wonderful book, The New Better Off,

which investigates the ways in which we are reinventing the American dream through new approaches to work, community, rituals, and spirituality.

She is also the writer behind one of my favorite weekly newsletters.

Courtney is an ardent believer that the unexamined life is not worth living, and as such,

is relentlessly inquisitive. And this obsession of hers with asking new questions and reframing old ones was the impetus

for this conversation.

At the turn of the year, she shared a series of 20 questions to help folks reflect on the

past year and uncover the unexpected moments of meaning and surprise and even resentment that we experienced

in order to get at what really drives us and what really lights us up, so that we might use that

as an internal compass to guide us into 2020. In this wide-ranging conversation, we take a deep

dive into the power of asking yourself new and unexpected questions.

Examining what a successful adult life looks like.

And how to uncover what Courtney calls your first question, the core curiosity that carries you through life.

We also swap some of our own answers to our 20

questions ritual so you can see just how surprising some of the answers are. So let's go

ahead and get started with one of my favorite topics. Questions. Hi, Courtney. Welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks so much for having me. So a few years back, you wrote an interesting piece about first questions, and you told a story about the activist and journalist Dorothy Day.

Could you talk about her story and this idea of first questions?

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