Design a Life You Love: How to Use Your Life Score to Guide the Way

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has been brought to you with passion and pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks tuning again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologists, management consultant, loco, therapist, speaker and author. And my team and I at gustin Now help companies to enliven their and fortify their operations by building high performance teams, inspirational leaders and nurturing managers. And did you know that inspired employees outperform their satisfied peers by a factor of two point twenty five to one. In other words, inspiration is good for the bottom line. You can more about us and how we can work together at gustodashnow dot com or my personal site, Police Cortes dot com.

1:49 Getting into today's program we have with us today Build Juzuski he's the founder and CEO of Good Life, a company dedicated to helping individuals design balance, fulfilling life through the Zen score system mobile app and his book, What's Your Life Score. He's also the CEO of Mymentex, a next generation social networking app for live events, which he launched in twenty twenty four. We'll be talking about his work and the components of his system to help you move from mistaking motion for progress and learning to learning. Excuse me, so he judges to day from Boston. I'm delighted to have you on, Bill, Welcome to Working on Purpose.

2:30 Thank you, Elise. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited as well. Finally I get to talk about this. I loved your book. This is so beautiful what you did. I absolutely loved it was easy to read. And I also loved the app. Bill, it was so cool to navigate your Good Life app. And so listeners and viewers, as we're talking, when you look for his work Good Life, the app et cetera, it has two eyes in it. And we'll get to that a little bit later, but I want to just start by talking a little bit about you know, you've dedicated your self to something very specific. Bill. You're all about helping people achieve balance, purpose, and happiness. So usually that kind of dedication and focus usually comes from somewhere.

3:11 What's the story. Where does this come from? Sure? Sure so? And yeah, that's my kind of I come from the software world, and Good Life is kind of a creative company of software with the purpose. My purpose most of my life has been my wife, my four kids, who are all in their twenties now get and helping my family and friends. I've been pretty lucky to do well in life. So I've always had this philosophy in life of living a holistic life but starting with the father, husband, son.

3:53 And working in that hierarchy. And I've been lucky enough to also maintain that balance but also succeed in the business world, in the software world, which happened to be again a fortunate place to be the last twenty five years. Right, software eats the world. Sounds good to me. Well, let's hear a little about this. Let's talk a little bit about what you're doing at good life and also momenttis what are these entities about? Yeah, well, probably folks, let's focus on good life today. It's because it's more aligned with you know, working with purpose. So let me go back to this little tool that I created for myself twenty plus years ago. I know a lot of people out there, probably at the end of the year do their New Year's kind of resolutions, right, and I as an engineer. I started as an engineer, I had this little spreadsheet where I would look at like eleven rows. In this little spreadsheet, I created how am I doing with my career, How am I doing with my wife? How am I doing with my family?

4:58 How am I doing with my fitness, my weight, my net app, my net worth? Right? And I would score myself with zero to ten. It'd be just like companies have corporate dashboards. Right. I created this little life dashboard and it worked well for me. It just forced me to kind of self reflect on all the areas in life and not overfocus on one or the other. And I did it for years, and then I started seeing when my kids started hitting their twenties, I started seeing them starting to lose balance, not showing up for family gatherings or being stressed at work. So I started sharing my little tool with them and they kind of liked it, and we started using language like hey, your leisure scores like a five this this month?

5:45 You know, fix that? So then I started thinking, maybe there's something to this. So most of my career has been in heading marketing for large software companies, and in my fifties I started getting into entreprene newership and that's where I am with good life now. I started this a year ago. I'm the solopreneur. I've hired contracts to build this little personal scorecard, and I'm seeing if it could be useful to whether it's people, coaches or heads of people of companies. Here's a tool to give individuals to help lead a balanced, purposeful life. I want to applaud that bill. But one of the things that I was just thinking about is that I was on my run this morning, is how much of my life satisfaction and fulfillment and direction has come from being able to hear that little voice inside me that said, put your next foot on that loopad right over there.

6:40 And every time I've done that, every single time, it's led me to something bigger and more fulfilling. So I really want to applaud that you listen to this little whisper and that you've actually done something about it. I think that's just delightful and it's inspiring. Yeah, I really do now. I at first, like I said, I had twenty, I'm not a life coach, but I am in a way raising four young professionals now that are in their twenties. So I'm coaching coaching them and now I'm helping their friends, So all of a sudden now and I find amazing gratification and helping that younger generation avoid the mistakes that we all made when we were in our twenties and thirties and going through the process.

7:30 So I'm not sure there's. A huge business here, and you know, but I do find it super rewarding and so far, so. Good, awesome. Well we'll die a little bit into what you've learned along the way. I thought it was fascinating and completely aligned you. You do talk about in your book you say finding purpose living your best life has been one of your greatest challenges. In rewards and over the years you've said you've learned that requires constant reflection, adaptation, and change. It's not something you figure out once. It's an ongoing journey. I completely agree with that. And so you then situate four a's to which are the keys to good life. Let's talk about those four a's.

8:12 Yeah, so I can't remember where I stole it from, so you know, I think it was either Harvard or Stanford, so I had a science behind it. But add adaptation, awareness, acceptance, and action. So adaptation. Clearly, the world is changing so fast, like right now, I'm doing Instagram posts about AI, Like, if you're not serious about learning how to use AI in your life and in your career, you're going to fall behind. You have to adapt, right. So as for adapting, awareness is where my tool comes in, which is, you know, go through those eleven questions I have for how you feel about those eleven areas of your life, and you become more aware of that, right.

8:57 And then acceptance is the A is seeing that score and realizing, oh my gosh, you know I have a three out of ten here, I need to do something about that, right, and accepting that. And then the last part of my tool is the A for action. I actually have documented a playbook for life. Now, some people are cynical and say there's no. Playbook for life, right. But what I've done is, yeah, there's things that people who are successful in their financial you know, part of their life. There's best practices. They pay off their credit card, they save ten percent every week, they have a four to one K, they have a budget.

9:38 Right. So I've tried to relationships. People you know are good listeners. They they're proactive and reaching out to friends, right, And there's so there's these things that people who are successful in these areas do And that's that's the action part, which is I've shared kind of these practices that become habits that eventually lead to higher scores in those areas of your life. So those are the four a's. I think it's tremendously helpful, tremendously helpful to have that kind of set of guidelines like that. And then on the other side of that, which I thought was really interesting, you do talk about the idea of regrets in life, and of course Dan Pink has written the book about regrets and how they service when we instead of you can think about regrets as being a way to navigate or respond to what you actually do want in life.

10:29 But you do go on to say, and I think this is really interesting, is that and you are referencing Bronnie Waars the Five Regrets of the Dying talking about some of the biggest regrets come from neglecting relationships, passion, and purpose. Yeah. No, for sure. So again I'm going to reference another book coincidentally with the same title as my company, but with one Eye Good Life, that these Harvard professors recently wrote that did a study. I don't know if you've seen the study at least. Around three thousand families over eighty years and what l what attributes of their lives led to a happier, healthier, longer life, And by.

11:13 Far it was relationships. The people around you in those last ten twenty thirty years of your life were the biggest factor by far, Like they added ten years to your life having that right partner people around you versus money and home and all those other factors that you strive for. So, I mean, one regret people have is not having that circle of relationships as as they get older. So one of the you know, I have this mnemonic help grow for the eight categories health, environment, leisure, purpose, growth, R for relationship, O for occupation, W for wealth. Our is probably the most important category of that wheel of life that you need to invest in to have a happy, fulfilling life.

12:05 For sure. I'm a big believer in that. Well, and you're a beautiful walking example of that. I mean, there, I'm a divorced person. I've been divorced for nine years, and I do find myself envious that you have this, your wife, your four children. I'm very connected to my one daughter, but I appreciate that. So that is definitely something that's missing for me, the relationship part on the passions in the purpose front. One thing that's been fascinating for me, Bill is as when I'm out speaking, I very often will ask people what are you passionate about? And in that moment they realize they do not have an answer to the question, which is when I now, I realize that's when they need me. I know you need me.

12:45 Yeah, no, it's right when I rolled out the tool and I was doing study groups. My first study group was my four kids last year at Thanksgiving, and I forced them to sit down and take the Zen score and they're all almost all of them had like a zero one or two out of ten for purpose, Like they haven't even thought about that. I mean, so when you're young, I said, there's nothing wrong with having a short term purpose around a career because it's going to feed your wealth that you will use to support a family and your partner, and and then and and give and have other purpose of course of helping others and giving back, and and your purpose will change over various stages of your life depending on what you need and what you can give back. So again, p purpose is one of its own categories in the in the scores, right, It's it's that important.

13:45 Yeah, And I like how you do talk about, you know, what is your life plan? You know, and you say your advice is to start sketching out your your dreams for the future and then break them down into into steps that you can take today. And I think that's really important. Another thing that I find when I'm speaking to audiences, Bill, is when I ask people to what's your purpose, and many people will say I don't know, or then they say even worse, they kind of shirk back and say, well, that's too big for me. I you know, in other words, I don't feel like I'm capable of that or whatever it is. But and the person have to be huge curing you know, world hunger or anything like that. It can be right in your own backyard. But I love your your advice to make a plan for your dreams. You could speak of it to that.

14:32 Yeah, No, And it's worked for me. There's so many books been written about the secret you are what you think? Call it Nightingale, right, And so that you can if I encourage my kids, my friends and family to have a vision in all these eight areas, like what is at home? Are they in the suburbs, are in the city, Are they close to restaurants? Are they on a farm? Right? Like, where do you want to be in the next ten twenty years? Do you have kids? No kids? Are they playing sports? Are they right your career? Are you an executive or are your sorepreneur? Or like start to like map it out right. Some people call it a vision board, right, But you'd be surprised how many little decisions you make day to day, week to week are kind of self manifested because they're aligned with this bigger vision of where you want to go over the next ten twenty thirty years. So they just kind of help you align rather than react day to day, you know. Like one example I give all the time because I try to talk people out of making big moves to parts of the world where they have to start from scratch with no friends, no family, is be careful, like you're leaving behind more important things.

15:51 Just for. A paycheck. And if you had a vision of your life in New England within the suburbs with the circle of fly, you know, then why are you going to La you know and moving there? Right? So that's just one example, how sometimes our life becomes reactive to one situation and misaligned with maybe some grander plan. What a great thing to let our listeners and viewers reflect on as we take our first break. Let's do that. I'm your host, Doctor release Cortez. We've been on are with Bill Zujwski. He's the founder and CEO of Good Life, a company dedicated to helping individuals design balance, fulfilling lives through the Zen score system mobile app and also his book.

16:32 He's also the CEO of Momentex. We've been talking a bit about where this idea of working on a lifescore came from, why it's important. After the break, we're going to get into greater detail the actual categories of the life score. We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A.

17:42 L Se at. Elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose. Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I'm dedicated to helping create a world. Organizations thrive because they're people thrive. They're led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that better is the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. One of my latest came out. It's called a Great Revitalization, How activating meaning and purpose can radically en liven your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand today's diverse and demanding and discerning workforce what they want and need to give their best and stay.

18:24 And then I provide twenty two best practices to equip you to provide that for them and your leadership and your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or my personal site at least quoretest dot com. If you are just joining us. My guest is Bill Sujuski. He's the author of What's Your Life Score, a playbook for designing your best life? Such a great title. By the way, Bill, that is just so crispin compelling. Who doesn't want that? Thank you? Thank you all that work over the last thirty I've been in marketing for thirty years. I'm finally starting to use it up for my own neither helping corporations. Yes, right, nice, nice, well I would. I want to just dig into these different categories and really bring into life for people and listeners and viewers. As we do this, we want you to really be thinking about where are you strong in these categories? Where do you realize ooh, now that I hear it that way, I have, that's definitely an area that can I could work on. So let's just take it step by step. The first category is health.

19:22 Yeah, so let's start with health. Okay, so let me just for the for the people who haven't, which is most people not downloaded the app yet or read the book. There's two scores. It's not too confusing. The Zen score. The word zen is it is so you could probably guess it's how you feel about your life and it takes you like really one minute. It's eleven questions. So for health, the Zen score is I am very happy with my body, mind, health, and fitness right zero to ten, So how do you feel about your health? Right? And then the life score is almost like a credit rating or for life, so it gets into actually what you're doing. So it asks you questions around your diet, whether you drink alcohol or smoke, whether you're getting the right amount of sleep, whether you're doing cardio exercise, whether you hydrate. Like so I've tried to like for that life score, you have taken those and that's the physical health score. There's also a mind you know, mental score around how you deal with fear, self doubt, procrastination, Like I think total in health there's like twenty twenty questions of practices that like I said, the score has almost a playbook. Like if you score low, you know why it is because you're not you score on hydration, it's because you're not drinking enough water. Right, So the two

20:53 kind of work hand in hand. See how you feel about that area. If you feel great about health and your health, then then you could almost not spend as much time in the life score and understand exactly how you can get your health score from you know, not being fit, from like a two or three, two and eight. But that's that's kind of how the two scores work least. Okay, awesome, Yeah, I think it's very useful and really sobering, you know, when you look at these different things and you start to recognize where am I out of balance? And I think that word is important because I think we long ago gave up on the idea of work life balance and now it's really I think but most people go for is were quite harmony, integration, some kind of flow, et cetera. But balance in your overall system is really really critical.

21:41 So I appreciate you, yeah, real real quick on that is because most people think of balance as two buckets work and non work, and I'm talking about more of an integrated mat yes, across all eight categories which you called out. Thank you. Yeah, I love that. I think it's just essential. Okay, I just want to talk through each of them. So let's talk about environment next. I thought that was really interesting and I can tell you as you share my environment. I work from home, unless of course i'm with a client and where I work from my home makes a big difference to my well being, my sense of focus, my creativity, my mood, huge environment.

22:25 Yeah, and so people underestimate the impact of this on their life. But you spend so much time at home. So the zen score of how you feel about that aspect is pretty simple. I like where I live and have a place I call home where I feel safe, can rest, relax. And enjoy company. Right, So do you have that in your life? Zero to ten. That's how you feel about your home right, But then what you want to want to look at? What can you do to get that home environment score up? I think I'm looking at my little questionnaire here, there's ten. There's ten questions. Right. Home comfort like I have a safe, comfortable place. Cleanliness, I maintain a clean, clutter free you know, home environment, safety, natural elements. I surround myself with access to natural light and fresh air, noise, Location like I am in a place that's you know, I like where I live.

23:23 Access to services is another one. My workspace, my commute, the weather, and then job opportunities. Right, So those actually there's eleven. Those eleven things are factors and objectives you should consider in finding the perfect home environment. So much in that right. I mean, I've chosen I live in Dallas, as I told you I would. I have chosen to stay near white Rock Lake. And it's a while and now for me, I can run to white Rock Lake, run around it. What's nine point three miles around the whole entire thing, But I can run two the lakes and sometime running there and come back and I get that beautiful, vital connection to nature. It's essential for me. So just as one example. And then the other thing that I thought was really interesting about your book that I wanted you to speak to a bit further. When you're talking about leisure, you do talk about how, oh sorry, that's what we're going to do next, and Brian talk about it won't let you do that next.

24:17 There's a couple of things in specific that I really wanted to zero in on with it with the leisure stuff. And what's interesting is I think people do sometimes connect leisure to environment, but you have a very You're you're treating them separately, which I think is very useful. So let's talk about leisure next. Yeah, so let's let's go to the next Zen question here, and thank you for going in order. This is making a very easy good good And by. The way, that's why it's the engineer and me, not a system or Framework's not for everybody, but it really does help anchor your thinking and how. You organize your life. So on leisure, the question is I plan experiences and vacations, I take time for hobbies and interests and have fun and leisure in my life.

25:06 Right. So it is different from home, Right, It's about experiences and hobbies and interest and those aspects. And some of the things that go into the playbook for leisure is exactly that. What hobbies do you have with outdoor activities? How much reading do you do, do you do any mindfulness or restfulness. Type of activities? Do you socialize, do you do digital detox, do you go on vacations, do you do aspire some kind of self care activity? And do you have play and fun in your life? Right? So those are kind of the best practices for having leisure. In your life. And it's so important to stay refreshed and have joy in your life, Like why are we even here if there's no joy in experiencing life?

25:55 Right, It's so important. I've got to believe that across the board that one gets pretty low scores for a lot of people. I got to believe people aren't taking their vocations. They're worried about you know, what happens if they do take vacations, et cetera. But but when you look at all these different things that benefits reducing stress, improving mental health, enhancing creativity. And I know, you know when I ask people what what lights you up? And people like I don't remember the last of my fault, light up? Lit up? You know. But then you go on to something interesting about the brainway functions when we're in these different states, which I think is really really really interesting. And so you talk about how there's four different states that you talk about. So and when we're when we're in better way, but that's when we're active and focused at start working mindset.

26:40 Can you say a bit more about is that like our like this is our daily sort of place to be or is that our life? Yeah? Yeah, so, And I'm know neuroscientists for sure, but I've read enough that that I'm interested as an engineer, interested in this notion that are that you can actually track when where like your frequency of your your brain waves are different depending on the state you're in. When you're actively in focused, there's this you're at this beta wave level, and when you're when you're relax and unwinding, it's kind of you slow, your whole body slows down, and the alpha waves are slower, and then and then theta waves get even deeper where you're you're starting to almost like day dream and do light meditation. And then finally the slowest you know is these the you know, deep sleep delta what's called delta waves where you're you're in a deep sleep and your your your body is able to restore energy and restore itself because you're not burning energy at these higher levels when you're like beta focused and totally all out doing something that's burning calories burning energy. Right, So there's this cycle that you're, you're, you're and your body go through and the waves that the scientists measure show those cycles.

28:06 I think it's fascinating. I'm really fascinated with how the brain works and such. Being able to take time to be able to get yourself into those places where you can meditate and daydream and be creative and of course rest well, so so important. Okay, so now next we've got to talk about purpose. You know, you can't leave me without talking about purpose. Yeah, so of course. And by the way, I am a big believer of purpose in the in the corporate environment because I know you advocate for that too. I mean, you said it in the beginning in your intro. Right, A happy, healthy employee is a more productive employee. So it's kind of strange, but for my companies, most companies I work for for twenty something years were customer first.

28:53 I'm one hundred. Percent employees first, Like, my company exists to create jobs for people and let them fulfill their lives, and then we figure out how to serve the customer next. So I think for purpose, let's go to the Zen score question. So the Zen score the Zen score question is I feel guided by purpose spiritually, spiritually and personally, and I've committed to serving others and making the world a better place. Right, pretty straightforward. So so rate yourself on whether you feel like you have that right and then and then the practices you want to get into are things like, uh, philanthropy. Obviously, I support you know, do you support local community and charities through some kind of involvement? Right? Then there's the planet, right, do you take action to protect the world that we all the scarce resources that we all share. Right. Mentoring, Right, there's super great purpose in coaching, tutoring, mentoring other other people.

30:05 Are you personal integrity? Are you spiritual? Uh? Do you want to leave a legacy for your family? Do you do you have creative expression? Is that your purpose to bring joy and art into the world? And do you feel yourself connected to some greater purpose? Right? So these are all dimensions or objectives of having a purposeful life, whether it's the planets, other people, your family, you know, greater cause you can find purpose in so many things. So so true. And I just want to go through this briefly, Bill, because I know when I'm out speaking and I ask people, you know, do you tell many of you know your purpose? And it usually is, you know, maybe three percent of the crowd, maybe maybe five percent.

30:53 And then people feel bad that they don't know their purpose. And I'm I know, you know, there's not about feeling bad, but they don't know where to start and they don't know how to how to access it. So let's just talk briefly. You you you offer five steps to really discovering and embracing your purpose. Let's talk about those, starting with reflecting on your values and passions. That's a first, That's a great place to start. Yeah, I mean. Most people have something they've become good at or naturally good at and and and are excellent at, and they can share with others, whether it's a talent or knowledge you know, so so, so come up with a purpose that's aligned with kind of who you are and what your talents talents are. I mean that that is the one of the first steps.

31:47 Now, interesting that. You know there's one expression around follow your your passion for careers, which is a little tricky because you know, if your passion is music, and it's hard to create a life and career. Not all of us could be musicians, right, are professional athletes. So you have to kind of balance, you know, your passions that may that you may be able to address outside of work, and then passions that you could actually create and work. So I'll give you an example of how you can create a passion. I was never passionate around marketing.

32:31 I never knew I was going to go into marketing, right, But what ended up happened over happening over time was I actually became pretty good at it and then better and better, and then I started realizing, oh my gosh, I'm helping this company, you know, grow revenue, and now we're hiring two hundred more people, and now we're going public like all of a sudden, Now, my excellence, my purpose has become to help you know, this company and all the people around me have a place to work and create this large working community. That's amazing, right, So so you can you can become excellent at something and making and being able to use that for a bigger cause.

33:15 You know, that will give you some purpose beyond kind of the purpose you were born with. That's a beautiful way is situated. Bill, Thank you. That's rubber. Our last break here. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortes. We were on the air with Bill Zajewski. He's the founder and CEO of Good Life, a company dedicated to helping individuals design balanced, fulfilling lives through the Zen score system mobile app, and also his book, Sorry your name of the book is called once. Again, What's What's your Life Score? What's your Life Score? Yes, we've been talking a bit about several of the categories from the life Score. After break we will continue so that we finished all the rest of them. We'll be right back.

34:08 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A Lise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

35:00 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, Doctor Ely's Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. If you want to learn more about how we can work together and more about the Gusto Now Academy for leaders and individuals on various journeys alike. Make your way to gustodeshnow dot com and then navigate to the training tab and you'll find more information about the academy if you are just joining us today. My guest is Bill Zujuski. He's the author of What's Your Life Score, a playbook for designing your best life. So where we are in terms of where I see the wheel is we're on growth. Yes, one of my favorite things to talk about by it at all needs.

35:40 G for growth, and so I don't know who said it, but there's a great quote. If you're not growing, you're dying, right, So I'd rather be growing than doting. So anyways, the Zen score question about how you feel about this area is pretty straightforward. I enjoy learning and constantly invest in becoming better at all aspects of my life, right, So I'm a lifelong learner. I've instilled that in my kids. We're passionate. If we don't know a answer to a question, we're finding that answer in the moment because we're just curious by nature. So the habits of the Growth score is a little different, right, So it's around a commitment, an approach to each day of investing in personal development. Right, it's goal setting, right, having having goals that you have from month to month, year to year's it's having a plan for career development. It's getting feedback from your partner, your family. It's challenging yourself, right, don't coast in life, You're just going to be unhappy. And you know, it's about self awareness of what you have or habits and

37:12 then just starting to be resilient and reflect on and how you're growing. So those are those are various like kind of practices of having having growth. In your life. But one, uh, it's not a secret, but it's a principle of mind or a philosophy I should say that I really believe in is the secret to happiness, which is having goals and making progress like progress. Like think about just in a day when I when a day goes by and at the end of the day, I didn't make progress, Like I wasted the whole day, didn't get anything done in my in my work or my home or my relationship. I'm like, oh, I feel like down, like you know, But when I have those days or weeks where oh my gosh, I got this done. I've planned the vacation I had, I met with you know these three I didn't you know, waste the day gaining or doing something else or right, you just feel better, You're happier, right, So I think the key one of the keys to happiness progress right, which is part of the growth category.

38:24 Yeah, no question, And I really want to encourage you listeners and viewers, even though your organization maybe doesn't invest in ways for you to learn and grow. They don't provide programs I would encourage you to do on your own. So a couple of things to that is. One is I have many people that I work with that hire us directly out of their own pocket for coaching. They don't wait for their employeers to do that. I've seen their careers soar and grow. It's amazing in them as individuals. And then two, back to Bill's earlier point about you know, passions, et cetera, and interest in hobbies, I mean I encourage you to go and develop those. I mean I know for me right now, Bill, I take improv lessons, I take storytelling lessons, I take tango dancing lessons and singing lessons, and they all delight me. They're definitely growing me. So really want to just celebrate the idea of growth. And we also know that a lot of people leave their jobs because they don't feel like they're growing. And there are additional ways you can cultivate that growth in yourself.

39:23 So really important to keep growing and progressing. Okay. So the R is the R for relationships or for romance. Okay, So in the Zen score, I thought it was so important. It's the biggest factor that I actually broke relationships the big R into two questions. So in the Zen score it is romance and friendships. I think those are two separate things. Okay. So right, so when you go to uh, let's see, let's go to the next question. My partner and I have an amazing relationship.

40:05 And I am happy with the romance in my life. Right, So, so like this is definitely different for every single person. Every person is so unique happy with the romance. Maybe you're at a stage where it's not as important as it used to be when you were younger, right, or maybe it's super important because you're looking for you know, that that that close intimate relationship you know, in the middle of your life or early in your life. So it all depends on where you are here. But it's having that one person that that's kind of close to you that you call kind of your your life life partner. Now, around relationships, there's also a friendship you have you know, family and friends around you that that support you, you can go to and all that the habits are. You know, what do you need to have relationships? Now? This is people And I learned this the hard way. I wish someone told me this, Like, relationships don't just happen naturally, you actually have to invest in them, like people reciprocate.

41:14 Like to get love, you have to give love, right, to get support, you have to give support right, and and to be one sided and just be a taker and not a giver. You know you're gonna have poor relationships. And I just look back. I have good friendships. I wish I had more like blood brothers right where I you know, where I gave more. Some people are lucky and have that, and I wish I get invested in more in those those super close relationships. And I have a great one with my kids and my family and have good friends. But even even here though, right, you need to spend quality time. So some of the habits here right, effective communication, quality time with these people empathy, right, encouraging them, helping them resolve conflict, expressing love, right forgiveness, gratitude, knowing how to apologize, having a social circle, right shared interest in your relationships. There's a lot of Again there's no playbook or manual, but there's definitely things you should try and do that could kind of improve the quality and the number of your relationships.

42:31 And if you just ignore it, it's not just going to happen. You know, to your point earlier about that study that you talked about, I do know that study, and that is it's such a powerful set of results. You just can't ignore how important relationships are. And then when you look at the isolation and depression epidemics that we're in today, it's an indication that we aren't spending we're not in maybe investing in the quality of those relationships to be able to have the benefit of this good, balanced, healthy life that you're really helping a steward. So I think that's really important that we emphasize this idea of relationships. Yeah, no, it's funny. I had I will talk about momentics about my other companies.

43:12 So I got two going right now. I don't know how each is going to do. But I was struggling at first. I met these two gentlemen friends of my daughters in their twenties, and they had this cool ideal around saving their ticket stuffs from concerts and you know games they went to. Right, you put them in the fridge or in the shoe box. And they're kind of nostalgic, and they're like, oh, there's no there's they're digital tickets. There's no now, there's no version of that to save save that. So we started. We created this momentics app to save your memories and tickets from events, and it did okay. But what we realized people really liked was knowing what their friends, what events they were going to ahead of time. So then we started sharing what events they're planning on going to, are interested in going, and all of a sudden it flipped from a nostalgic event to a social event. And I only bring this up because I found the purpose in now our company is really to help people get in real life.

44:14 It's called the IRL. I don't know if you've heard IRL. Right, to get these twenty year olds, these young people out of the virtual world, out of the gaming world, and back in bars and clubs and DJs and restaurant and concerts and Fenway Park and get them out of the house. And connecting with people in real life. Right, So that ends up being kind of the purpose and mission for Momentics. That now gives me a reason to work hard. For that company beyond just trying to create a revenue stream around the killer app. Right. I love it when you start dancing with something like that, when you fall into and recognize, Oh, that's what people need and want. I didn't see that, but now I can respond to that. And that's, by the way, the and another important part of purpose is being present to what is going on in the world and what do people need and want that you can actually help with.

45:07 So I love how you shared that. And speaking of the idea of the world of work, the next area is occupation, and I see so many people disconnected on this build. So many people are struggling with, you know, really what they want their work to be, or how it's going for them, or who it's going well for or not going well for. Yeah. No, this one is complicated because we talk a little bit. About balancing your passion with the reality of having some fiscal responsibility in the world to pay bills and raise a family and all that. So the zen score part of this how you feel about is I am happy with my occupation, choice and direction and enjoy my work. Right.

45:56 So I've I give the kind of the advice that when you start becoming good at what you do, when you strive for excellence and start feeling the impact of your work, that that can become your your your passion. So I think, I think, and it's not it's not rocket science. I think there's a study that you know, you got to put in ten thousand hours to become a master at something, right, So there's no shortcuts here. You still have to have strong work ethic and get that stuff done. But then the habits. Let's get to the what you have to you have to do for for having the right occupation right. Education is important some meaning of what you do that that adds value to the world, whether it's your company, your peers, your family.

46:53 Right, So some meaning in your job mastery. You know, like I said, striving for excellence, compensation is important. You you need to be able to have a job that gives you the funds to do the things you want to do. In life. So sometimes, yeah, you have to sacrifice working hard. I believe me when I say balance across those all eight areas. When I'm working, I'm working hard, smarter and so so that I'm focused and I'm getting And if i have to, I'll get up at six am and just start earlier so that I have time at night. But there there's no there's no shortcuts here. And having you know, paying attention to all those eight categories, you still got to put in the time and effort, right, So the other aspects are you know, how stressed are you in your job and you know that gets into your your manager the culture is it the right culture? Like if if you are in a position where every Monday morning you like can't even get out of bed because you hate your job so much, you really need to pause and realize how that could be overflowing into all the other aspects of your life and how much harm it could be doing.

48:15 And people are afraid of change. Career is a big change, but that's one of the biggest changes you can make that could have the biggest impact on those other areas of relationships, leisure, relationship with your wife, all those other things. So it's not the most important thing, right. I try to say it's all balanced, you know, but it's it's one of the eight occupation. Really important to get it right and get it well. Well, we're run a time to talk about any of the additional ones here, but let me give you a chance to close the conversation, bill and how you'd like to you know, the show's listenvite people around the world. What would you like to leave them with? Yeah, sure, it's so funny. The last one and not look for that. We're going to skip is wealth because it's probably the least. So that's great at least it's like almost symbolic, right, people are assessed that like the the best, the only.

49:07 Metric out there. And I was frustrated with this that people have for their lives is their their wealth, right, their homes, their cars, their assets, And it's not. A great metric. So I hope, I hope you you heard here that I'm trying to create a metric that's not just about money, that it's a way to assess yourself and score your life in these other eight areas. So I don't know if everyone has the engineering loves the like the you know, the accountability of a number. Maybe the younger. Kids, you know, but we live in a gamified word, maybe they'll appreciate kind of being like at a seventeen trying to get to ninety or whatever. But yeah, that's what I'll leave with people with. Check out my website good life dot com. You could download the app there, go to Amazon search for Bills of Juice Ski or What's your Life Score? Find my book and you know, see see what you think of the system and the concept.

50:00 Yes, well, I appreciate so much of coming on Working in Purpose. Phil has been great to get to know you, read your book, download your app you It was awakening for me and I know it will be for our listeners and viewers. Thank you so much for being Working on Purpose. Thanks, Elise. Was great. We will see you next week for yet another nourishing and inspiring conversation on this program where we bring on thought leaders to advance the conversation on creating destination workplaces, inspirational leaders and people that can be fulfilled in their work. We'll see you there. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host doctor Elise Cortes each week on W four C. Why Together, We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on purpose.