Reimagining Fulfillment During Midlife And Beyond

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Transcript

Host 0:06

good afternoon, everybody. welcome. I'm resisting the temptation to, jump from row to row and give, hugs across the rows because I'm seeing, people here that I haven't had an opportunity to see for a number of years, as well as our current fellows, as well as some prospective fellows. And it's truly wonderful. in case anybody here doesn't know me, but we also have a broadcast audience. I am Tom Schreier. I've had the privilege, literally the privilege, since the very beginning of this project to be the founding director of the Inspired Leadership Initiative here at the University of Notre Dame. And I will tell, those of you that are past, fellows or alumni of our program that, the essence of our program hasn't changed. It's really to continue to hopefully help to facilitate the discovery. the discernment and the design, of the direction that people want to take when they emerge from the program. And, it's really and truly a pleasure to be here with all of you today. and this is a first installment this year in our Inspiring Conversations. It's not something that we did during the first couple of cohorts. It's something that we launched, during, the pandemic as a way to stay in touch, with our, various audiences. and this year's theme As we pick a theme for each year is leadership in public conversation. And our intent is to really tap into leaders from across various industries and at various ages, to talk a little bit about what it means to Exhibit leadership in public conversation. Something which can be very complicated, I think, in the world that we live in today, but something that, I can tell you, from having witnessed, the cohorts and inspired leadership initiative program, you all became masters at, despite the fact that you came in with a wide variety of different backgrounds from a wide variety of different geographies. You all, Really, facilitated amazingly powerful conversation, both privately and publicly, which was really powerful. This program is, thankfully, put on, and, facilitated by ThinkND, which I want to thank the people in the Alumni Association that really helped to facilitate that. And today I have the great pleasure of welcoming our guest, Bernie Borges. and we're going to discuss re imagining fulfillment at midlife and beyond. Bernie, who I've had the great pleasure of getting to know, and a few of you have also had a chance to get to know, is the host of the Midlife Fulfilled podcast. like many of you here in the audience, Bernie hasn't spent his entire life focusing on, midlife fulfillment. In fact, he spent most of his core career time, and continues to spend part of that time, in software and technical services, the business to business space. yeah, et cetera. 15 year entrepreneurial span. He's been in corporate leadership, roles. He's authored a book, spoke at industry conferences, and now, has done something, has really focused his life on podcasting. He's done over 500 podcasts broadly. And, the most current and the one he's focused on today and when he's quite passionate about is the Midlife Fulfilled podcast. And that's really channeling his passion. to enable men and women over 40 to thrive at this stage in life. And I'm particularly excited to flip the script on Bernie, because Bernie normally is the person who's doing the interviewing. So now I have the great opportunity to interview Bernie, and to make the interview easier. Err into the interviewee. So I really do look and look forward to that. And Bernie, I just really wanna thank you for coming here and for joining us today.

Bernie Borges, 3:25

Tom, thank you. And I'm honored to be here.

Host 3:28

Yeah, it's truly a pleasure and it's been fun spending some time in person together over the course of the past couple days. So just, starting at the very beginning, what caused you to think this is a space? I want to dive deeply into the focus on, the midlife in this podcast that you do.

Bernie Borges, 3:43

How much time do we have as Tom, I've been podcasting for 10 years. I fell in love with podcasting once I got behind the microphone and started conducting interviews. And, most of my podcast shows, this being the fourth one, as you mentioned, have been interview style. And I had this period after I retired the Modern Marketing Engine podcast in 2021 at episode 300, I had this period of not quite a year where I was in between So I knew I wanted to do another podcast. And at this stage in my life, I was thinking about this concept of midlife very broadly. And after doing some research on what podcasts are out there on this topic of midlife, I discovered that the vast majority of the podcasts about midlife were hosted by women for women. And there's nothing wrong with that. But those podcasts were focused on women only topics. Not very many podcasts were broadly speaking to both men and women in this midlife phase. And then I started doing some more research and discovered that no one's talking about my, one of my favorite F words, and that's fulfillment. And so I just decided, because I think we all seek fulfillment, I think universally we can broadly agree that we all seek fulfillment, especially in these stages, these seasons of life. And so that's how I decided to settle on the Midlife Fulfilled Podcast.

Host 5:06

So I think it probably makes sense for the benefit of our audience to talk about how you define midlife, right? Because it can be broadly defined. how do you define midlife?

Bernie Borges, 5:15

Tom, I'll begin by saying how, what midlife is not. Okay, because I find that the most common perception of midlife by most people is that they think that midlife is their midpoint in life. And I can very easily refute that concept, because does anybody know what their date of death is? And that's not a morbid concept, because the death rate is 100%. If you don't believe me, Google it. But nobody knows their death date, which means you can't define your midpoint. I define midlife, and by the way, I've done some anecdotal research on this, and there really isn't a universally accepted, scientifically, definition of midlife. Broadly speaking, what I've read is that, between age 35 and 75 is this big span of age. But I define midlife as basically three stages. Early midlife, mid midlife, and late midlife. And in general terms, it's 40s and 50s for early midlife. 50s and 60s for mid midlife, and then beyond 60s, 70s and beyond for late midlife. And the only thing that comes after midlife, Tom, is end of life. And I don't mean your death date. a season of life which happens for many people, where you just begin a decline that does end in your end. So that's how I broadly define midlife.

Host 6:32

I was recently at a reunion, and at that reunion, they defined midlife, or this stage in life, as having three different components. go, which is the early part, slow go, which is the middle part, and no go, which is the latter part. I don't know if you'd categorize it that way, but I, I thought, wow, that's pretty good. I just, don't want you to attach an age to when they move into those different zones. so let's talk, and fulfillment's a big part. you've already mentioned the word. It's something that's, really central. It's something that attracted us, I think, to the way that you talk to this space. Do you have this framework around before fulfillment and after fulfillment? And I think at some level that gets to the ethos of what we're trying to do with the Inspired Leadership Initiative. So talk a little bit about that and how you would define it and how meaningful it is.

7:15

Yeah, I call it BF to AF, right? Before Fulfillment to After Fulfillment. And we're all familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I've defined, the five pillars of midlife. And they are health, fitness, and I make a distinction between health and fitness. Career, which is where we spend the most amount of our time. Relationships. and legacy is about the impact you want to have on the world. So I really look at fulfillment as trying to touch, attempting to touch each one of those pillars. And at the end of every podcast episode, with no exception, I say, I have a closing line at the end of every episode. I say, if you're 80 percent fulfilled, you're doing great. And if you think about those five pillars, I think very few of us can say that we are a hundred percent fulfilled across all five of those pillars. Okay, again, health, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy. those pillars are not as prevalent early in life, because as you pointed out, early in life we're focused on building careers, families, that sort of thing. It's as we mature and we go through these midlife seasons that we can really begin about the importance of our health. The importance of being fit. The importance of having a meaningful and purposeful career. The importance of all the relationships in our life. And then the importance of having an impact

Host 8:35

in this world. And, if you think about, those five different pillars, are there any kind of, or even any of the other work that you've seen and done through the pocket, are there any kind of common threads or different kind of arcs that you see? at certain ages, there's a different level of fulfillment on, the health or the fitness side or on the relationship side, or is it different by individual? Okay.

9:00

So it's yes and yes, meaning it certainly is unique to each one of us, right? Because, we all have our unique circumstances and struggles. And I think the common thing is the struggle part. I think all of us, to some extent, have had some struggle in our midlife seasons, whether it's health related or career related. A very common one is career. And a very common one is I went to school for X, I did that career for 20, 30, 40 years, And I woke up one day and said, okay, I've done this for 30 years. Now what? and that's a very common one, Tom, where people are struggling with, I've had accomplishments, I've had success, but I'm not fulfilled. I'm looking for something else. And it's not always limited to career. A lot of times it's just this, the legacy part, even though they may not use the word legacy. They're thinking about. What can I do to just have a bigger impact on my family, my community, whatever it may be, beyond just the 30 years of being whatever they were in their vocation?

Host 10:09

So I think that's a really nice bridge because as you know given the time you spent with us That's a big part of what we try to You know really zero in on and focus on the context of the inspired leadership initiative here at Notre Dame So you've had the opportunity to interview five of our fellows in depth. So just give me a, give us all some perspective on what you've heard there. what some of the thoughts are that you've seen emerge from

10:38

those interviews? I'd be happy to. First of all, I've had the privilege of interviewing five ILI alum, the fifth one being this morning with Dr. Juliana. A couple of common threats. One is this struggle. concept that I mentioned where, everyone was struggling with being at a certain point in their current midlife season, and they were struggling with something looking for that next thing. The other was, or is, a willingness to have what you call a broad aperture. I love that metaphor that you use when you and I, by the way, if you haven't listened to my interview with Tom, episode 64, I encourage you to listen to that episode. And you, in that conversation that we had, Tom, you used the word aperture. And I think the, another common theme is the ILI alum that I spoke to were willing to have this open aperture, this broad aperture and willing to come into the program. To explore. And then the third one is that they were willing to explore life transformation. That was another common theme. They didn't come into the program necessarily thinking for a career transformation, but what's next for them in life? To really rediscover who they are. this concept of self discovery at this point in life because it's not uncommon for us to be in this season of life and wake up one day and say, Who am I? And for some people, the answer was, I'm an accountant. I'm an attorney. I'm a, I'm an educator. But that's not necessarily answering the question, Who am I? And a common thread was people wanting to discover that.

Host 12:19

I'm very happy to hear you say that because that is a big part of what we talk about as it relates to this program is that it isn't as much about what an individual does, but it's who they are, right? It is how they identify themselves and not only who they are, but also, who they want to be and how they want to identify themselves at the next stage. And I think You know, to your comment on stages before, and some of you have probably heard me say that, this, I think a lot of us think of ourselves, as a kid, and then as a parent, and then, and our identity gets very wrapped around those things, or as a doctor, or as a lawyer, or as a business person. But, at a certain stage in life, and I think it's sometime in that mid life span, that a lot of those identities don't work anymore, right? And you go, What's my identity going to be, right? And you've interviewed over 200 people, in the context of, your work. Talk a little bit about that identity question, and maybe about some of the answers people have come up with that could be beneficial to our audience.

13:17

So I'll give you an example. one of the podcast episodes that I did on the Midlife Fulfill podcast was, an accomplished woman who owns her own business, specifically in sales training. And when she opened her business, she was really focused on evangelizing and being an advocate for women in sales. She is a woman of color, so she especially wanted to advocate for women of color in sales. She has built a very successful business, Tom. She's extremely well known. She gets invited to speak often in many places, and she's quite accomplished. And when we came onto the podcast for the conversation on a BF to AF episode, asking her to speak to the before fulfillment to after fulfillment, I was expecting to, for her to speak about her career journey, her success in her business. She didn't mention it. What she spoke about was that while she was busy in her career, she didn't have time to start a family. And she had always envisioned as a young lady that she would one day be a mom. And have a family. And she woke up one day in her fifties and realized that's not going to happen. not long ago, she got married and she's happily married, but she's beyond the stage of life of having a family. But what she realized, Tom, is that her sister who has a daughter who is obviously her niece, she gets great fulfillment by being an aunt to her niece. And that level of fulfillment. Is so much more than her accomplishments, her business accolades, all, anything and everything associated with her career accomplishments. is secondary to her being an aunt to her

Host 15:02

niece. So do you find that your guests, when you do the before fulfillment and after fulfillment, have clarity around, like it's not that she has clarity around what triggered that sense of fulfillment in their life. Do you feel like most have a clarity around what triggered fulfillment or are many in search of a trigger for fulfillment?

15:23

More are in search of than have the clarity. Okay. And that's very, that's more common than uncommon is being in search of that clarity because it's not something that most of us can find on our own.

Host 15:37

and if you think about, I mean that, that's a great story. I'd love to hear another, are there other stories that just really stand out from the 200 episodes that you've done that, are something that just really helps to, because that, that to me is a very powerful story about how somebody, In a very kind of surprising way, and I think for a lot of our fellows that have been in the program, it's been the same thing. Despite meaningful accomplishments, that didn't necessarily get them to the point of fulfillment or, flourishing as we use actually in the context of the class that we have. That didn't get them there. It's something else that needs to get there. are there other stories you can think of that, of people that have defined what brings them fulfillment in ways that may not be? I'm full

16:18

of those stories, Tom, with 125 episodes under my belt. So one other that comes to mind is a fellow named Kurt, out in California, a successful Silicon Valley sales executive, grew up through the sales ranks, worked in technology companies, made his money, became an entrepreneur, a solo entrepreneur. Did that for about a dozen years. Had modest success with that. But then reached a point where he just felt like, Huh? I've done this. I've done this. at some point, what he realized, through a friend who works for the local tourism bureau, this is in Sonoma County, California, yeah. His local friend in the Tourism Bureau said, Kurt, why don't you come to work for us in the Tourism Bureau? By the way, no stock options in the Tourism Bureau, right? and just be a business development representative advocating for our area for tourism. what he said, Tom, was he said, I had to put my ego aside because he had 30 years of technology sales, accolades, success, money, all that. That's He said, I had to put my ego aside and accept that. He says, it's the best thing that I've done in recent memory. He said, I'm having a ball, I love what I do, and I'm totally

Host 17:38

fulfilled. So before we move to questions, I'm going to ask a question I didn't tell you I was going to ask, but I think this might be fun, so I'm going to ask it anyway. where are you on the BF to AF, spectrum? And talk a little bit about, how the podcast has fit,

Question 17:53

for

17:53

you. Sure. Sure. as David Tank said on, I think it was episode, 112, and I know David's not with us, here in the room that is. so David is one of them. We're not making an announcement. he said that, he is a work in progress. And I said I'm a member of that same club. I'm a work in progress. And I, and actually I was just having a similar conversation before outside in the hall. I realized how much I thoroughly enjoy conducting interviews. I love it. I really do. I feel like, that is almost a calling of mine. So I get tremendous fulfillment from that. And so I'm going to continue to do that, and then see where this journey takes me.

Host 18:30

And, so your work in progress, has it advanced you, though, along that spectrum, do you think? you're, because you in some ways, I think, aren't dissimilar from Kurt or others. Your traditional career, been successful, been in technology, been in, B2B, if, if I were you and if I'm you and I'm interviewing you, is there a kind of a breakthrough that you feel like doing this podcasting has provided you that's getting you on this road to fulfillment?

18:54

Yeah. I think it's given me clarity on an aspiration that I have. I would like to put on events where a room that's three times this size, maybe five times this size with a thousand people in the room across the span of two days across topics with speakers. On those five pillars, Tom. and where those events are providing meaningful, useful, purposeful information and education and inspiration to the people who come and attend those events, that would give me tremendous fulfillment.

Host 19:25

Good,

19:26

wonderful.

Host 19:27

why don't we open it up for questions?

Question 19:29

Hi, everyone. My name is Conal Fagan. I'm a Class of 2021 grad. I wanted to ask you a question about like your foundation. So you talk about the pillars and kind of Those different aspects of your life, but what happens when things don't go to plan, when things don't go the right way? What are the foundations that you have that kind of root you and keep you grounded and continue to give you that perseverance when times are tough?

Bernie Borges, 19:55

Thank you for the question. It starts with my faith, so I lean on my faith and I just prayerfully consider the situation. And, and then just, leave it in God's hands. and then I go hit my fist into the wall to remind myself that I'm a human. Meaning I'm going to balance things out with, human things like talking to a friend, but I will start with prayer first and just try to get some guidance, some spiritual guidance on, some direction that I need to be considering and remind myself that, life is this journey that's a rollercoaster that has ups and downs. And that's, that would be, my approach. That is my approach.

Question 20:34

Hello, my name's Beth Weber and I'm in cohort number five. thank you so much for coming to speak. I've always wanted to be a podcaster, but I will talk to you about that afterwards. But I'm interested in your pillars cause I'm sure Teresa has the same question. What is the difference between fitness and health briefly? Because they seem one in the same. So I'm asking that for myself and Teresa back there.

20:56

Sure. Thank you, Beth. That's a great question. And thank you for asking that. most of us, when we're asked about our health, we immediately think and respond to that question about our physical health. When, in fact, our health is comprised of both physical and mental. And then mental is part emotional as well. it's such a big bucket that I distinguish between the two. One reason that I distinguish between health and fitness is that, unfortunately, in the U. S., and I can only speak to the U. S. in terms of this data point, in the U. S., 60 percent of Americans In adult years, don't exercise. 60%. And that can have a significant impact on both physical health, mental health, and even just the ability to function. if you get on an airplane and you have, you struggle putting that, your luggage up above the rack, right? Or if, you go to the grocery store and you struggle with groceries. Or if, like I recently helped my son move, and fortunately I was able to help him without any problem. So just being functional is tied to fitness, And health is both physical and mental. And we live in an age now where we're finally able to talk about the importance of mental health. And it is vitally important to focus on having good mental health. That's why I break out the two.

Question 22:09

Paul Moorlach from, Cohort 4, and I want to stay on the, what you were talking about regarding pillars, because, I was curious with this gentleman's question back here about when he said, What do you do when things don't go wrong? And your first response was to say, I pray. So there's a spiritual aspect there, which did not come out in your pillars. And so I'm wondering if you, if there was some thought given to that, or how does that fit? Cause obviously it does fit for you. So have you found that with others, over the course of the podcast? Spiritual

22:41

is in the relationship pillar, because when I pray, I'm in relation to God.

Host 22:47

So maybe while he's bringing it down, so do you view that as an explicit subset of, so there are subsets Exactly. These are,

22:55

exactly. These are big topics, right? So relationship is certainly relationship with God. Now, for anyone who's an atheist, their relationship is with atheism, right? So whatever their theism is, that's a relationship. Yeah. But then there's all the other relationships with, family, co workers, community, etc. There's many subdivisions of relationship, but specific to your question, Paul, that's where I put faith is under relationship.

Question 23:22

I wanted to bring in another study, which is the study of the Harvard class of, I don't remember what it was John Kennedy's class, Terry Vote, Cohort 1, I guess for 2019 is what we're called. so this particular study followed Harvard students through their whole lifetime at five year intervals. And they really wanted to track What were the factors that led to a fulfilling life? And, they came up with, and by the way, I think that study is still going on. they had to pick another class or something. And they, they're on their third director and he came up, the first guy came up with three things that made sense, that made a difference. And the first was health. but not bifurcated the way you do it. The second interesting left was spirituality. And the third was something about on the lines with your last one, but he called it generativity, which has to do with giving back to younger people and mentoring. So for one of my high school reunions, I put together a cafe chat where I divided people into tables of three and Out of that we'd actually did a formal Study to try to figure out what? In our group, at that point, we were probably 70 year olds. What made people more happy? We came up with something completely different. Having a short commute and having a daughter.

25:07

I'm, I'm moderately familiar with that study. I've read something about it. And there's a couple thoughts that I have on it, Terry. One is, I'm really fascinated by the distinction between being happy and being fulfilled. When Notre Dame football wins, I'm happy. But it's a fleeting moment. The next day, which is in most cases Sunday, I'm on to that day and I may or may not still feel happy. I'm happy that they won the day before, but the point is that happiness is something that oftentimes can be not terribly deep within us. Where I believe fulfillment is within our soul. It is something you can't take away from me, even if I'm in pain, physical pain, emotional pain, or at the, in the moment, unhappy. You can't take away that fulfillment. There's another study, and by the way, one criticism that I've heard about that study from Harvard, is because of the socio economic Class of Harvard students is that it's limiting to a universe of people that were Harvard graduates, right? There's another study that was conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research. You may have heard about it called the U happiness curve, right? Published in 2020, roughly four years ago. That study studied 132 countries, people in 132 countries, And the reason it's called the Happiness U Curve, and the U is the letter U, not the word U, is because it determined that across 132 countries, we are generally happiest. We, meaning humans, in 132 countries, are generally happiest at age 18 at the top of the U Curve. We are, we become then moderate, or not moderate, consistently less happy, until age 47. 2. That's what the study says. Then we begin climbing up the other side of the U curve and get happier and happier and peak at around age 70, give or take, right? But again, I still come back to the difference between happiness and fulfillment. I believe that fulfillment is so deep And that's why I'm focused on it, because I think it's just something that, universally, every human being wants fulfillment.

Host 27:26

So I would just add a little something there, because as many of in addition to the class that Steve and I did designing an inspired life, Steve, myself, and a few others, including Joe, instrumentally do this class now called Life Design, the Art and Science of Human Flourishing. And, so we spend a lot of time around these kinds of topics. And one thing that emerged yesterday in the context of class, which came from the Book of Joy, which is the book, Lama got together and had the, this phenomenal, joy filled discussion. was that the way, and this gets to your generativity point, but it's just, I think, framed differently. The way out of suffering and pain is to show compassion, not to be shown compassion. But it was fascinating, right? When we stepped back in the context of the class and said, wow, and here are two people who have every reason, to understand pain and suffering, given what they've gone through with the Tibetan people and in South Africa. And they said their way out of, so I think, what you begin to see in this whole space, whether it's an Arthur Brooks or it's Desmond Tutu or Dalai Lama or the studies out of Harvard or all these different things is that there are there that a lot of it has to do with conscious acts, right? Acts that actually, individuals choose to take. To get them into a place of, and it is true, happiness, the problem with words like happiness, joy, and fulfillment and stuff. That you almost have to self define'em. I think your definition of fulfillment is probably, fulfillment's a great word, right?'cause I think people will get the depth there, but a lot of people use happiness for that or joy for that. But that, I found that to be really powerful. And it's something we spend a lot of time in. And now, for the benefit of our current fellows and future fellows, we'll translate it for them. For the others. you'll, you've probably figured it out all by yourselves because, that's just the way you always have been. Lou, wait one second for the mic, because there will be people, yeah. no, we've got people on, yeah.

Question 29:24

What you've been talking about, is fulfillment. And fulfillment, as in your definition, or the way you were looking at it, it seems as though it's an, it's a, something that you're trying to create yourself and putting all your energy into being fulfilled. Where, Tom, when you mentioned joy, I was actually going to, Talk a little bit about joy because with joy happens to you because you're trying to do something. Your energy is placed in trying to do something for other people, someone else. And for all intents and purposes, that creates joy. A sense of joy in you. So one is directed, by us for us. And the other one is directed by us for other people.

30:21

Yeah. I'll just mention that, Eric Weikarter just joined us. So I had the privilege of interviewing Eric on episode one 20 and, Eric, I'm sure you don't mind me saying this cause you shared it on the podcast for the world to hear. And that is Eric came out of this program realizing that. His purpose and what he desires most is to create joy. That's what he's about is creating joy. And that is, if I may put words in your mouth, Eric, that fulfills him, right? So if creating joy is something that you're intent on as Eric is, and I'm sure many others, that gives us a sense of fulfillment because remember fulfillment is soul level deep. You can't take that away from someone. so create the act of creating joy. Creates that fulfillment. So they're synonymous for sure.

Host 31:11

Yeah, I, I would just add, I'm like so steeped in this other stuff, I just can't help myself. And, I think it's, it plays off so much because you said it's the act of creating joy. And there's another concept that we talk about a lot in the context, which is flow and the act, you can never force yourself into joy, right? You can't do it. You have to do acts which may lead to joy with others and then bring joy back to you. It's no different than in the fellows that have been in the program know we talk about flow in the context of the program. It's the same there, right? That's the beauty of concepts like this. You can do things that create the conditions for flow, but you don't know what it's going to be that's going to trigger you into it. So you end up needing to do a lot of different things in order to find it.

31:51

And what I find both through just people on my podcast as well as the alum that I've spoken to here through ILI is that people want to give themselves the opportunity to discover where they can find that flow, where they can find their joy, where they can find their fulfillment, their purpose.

Host 32:08

And it isn't a one shot deal, right? I think that is, it's certainly what we've discovered, right? And I think all of those of you that have been a part of the program, we talk about, just try it and do it, try different hypotheses, right? And I'm sure you've seen with the people that have been in your podcast, they haven't just said, okay, this didn't bring me fulfillment. Now I'm going to do this and, oh, good. I'm batting a thousand. I'm guessing most people don't bat a thousand.

Question 32:29

That's right. That's

Host 32:30

right. Hi,

Question 32:35

I'm Anna Lawton from Cohort 3. I retired in 2020 in the midst of COVID and I've done a lot of introspection since then, which led me to the ILI, which has created even more introspection into my life. What I have found in trying to decipher what I've done in my life, is I find that I have had moments of false fulfillment. Where I told myself or lied to myself, or just talked myself into believing that I was fulfilled. And then as I analyze each part of my life, I realize I was happy, but I wasn't fulfilled. I was looking for fulfillment, maybe found five minutes of it, and then it was gone. And COVID did something in my brain where it made me realize you have to have time to find fulfillment. I can't find fulfillment if I'm dedicating 40 or more hours of my week working for somebody else who doesn't care if I'm fulfilled or not. So how many people have you spoken to that have had that realization? That in order to find fulfillment or chase fulfillment, you have to dedicate time to it and you have to put aside what you've done in your past and look for something in your future even if you don't know what that might be.

34:15

Yeah, I know that's a very insightful question and, what I think it comes down to on my experience even interviewing people on the podcast is one thing, and that is taking the time and putting the energy into asking yourself the following question. What are my values? What are my values at this point in life? And I don't mean the kind of values that are instilled in you as a young child that are with you forever. the values that are most, the things that are most important to you now at this point in my life. And a lot of people don't go through that exercise. And if, when people go through that exercise, the two examples that I shared, Cynthia, the successful businesswoman, and Kurt, the successful sales executive, asked themselves, what's important to me right now? And then they were able to answer that question by giving it a lot of thought, a lot of introspection. And then, as a result of that, make decisions that would fulfill them, because they had clarity on their values. They had clarity on what's important to them now. And the old Simon Sinek, if you're familiar with Simon Sinek, start with why. Once you define that why, that gives you the clarity to be able to self discover what it is that you're looking for.

Host 35:40

We'll take two more, these two questions, and then I think we need to wrap up.

Question 35:43

Good afternoon. Bob Lease from Cohort 5. maybe tacking on to what you just said. How durable do you find, fulfillment is for people who have found it? Or have you seen people need to go through the process several times as they go through life's arc?

35:58

So in my experience, and, I'm not a clinical psychologist, so I have to preface my response with that. But in my experience, just anecdotally, because that's what it is. It's anecdotes, right? I'm interviewing people on my podcast. They're anecdotes. They're stories. My experience that it's pretty durable because they come to a realization at this stage in life. They're not coming to this realization at age 30. They're coming to this realization usually over 50. In some cases, over 60. And when they come to some realization, like the two examples that I gave you, it is a light bulb. And that light bulb stays on. That's been my experience.

Question 36:39

Thank you for your talk today. I wanted to see if you could dovetail a little bit more on your response to, and I'm sorry, I forgot your name. Anna. Anna. you had mentioned earlier that when you, chose this new career to podcast, that you felt a sense of purpose, that you had always, it was almost a vocation in a way. And that led me to think of discernment and how discernment plays a role. And then you mentioned about your faith and how you pray. And I thought that, It. it also reminded me of your earlier comment about the woman who was very successful, that she found her fulfillment as an aunt and her relationship with her niece. And so I just wonder if you could just maybe expand on that response in terms of how discernment your gifts, discerning your gifts and your talents and what you were made for. Could help someone determine what their next chapter might be.

37:42

Yeah. So if I reflect on the aspect of my faith, sometimes God puts neon signs in front of you. You just don't see them. And oftentimes there are people in our life who are those neon signs, who say something to you that just like Teflon, it bounces off you. You're, you don't hear it. And then one day you realize, I've heard that before, and I've heard it more than once. There must be something to that. And so it's not uncommon for us to have that experience where we realize that, maybe I've known for a while that I have this calling, but I just wasn't paying attention to it. This person mentioned it, this person mentioned it, this other circumstance called attention to it, And for some reason, either I ignored it or it just didn't get on my radar, but it's now on my radar. Once it's on your radar, it is there. It's not going anywhere. And your choice is either ignore it or act on it. And that's where I've, the realization that I've come to is it's on my radar. I'm not ignoring it. I'm acting.

Host 39:00

when I think of public, when we think of public conversation, right? And you think of a topic that five or ten years ago people really didn't zero in on. It is this topic of whether you call it joy, you call it fulfillment, or you call it happiness. If you look at major universities across the United States, In almost every case, the single most popular class is around this topic. even at, and I was at my reunion, so at the Harvard Business School. The single most popular class is Arthur Brook's class on the art and science of happiness. These are a bunch of super driven people who you would think it would be some finance class or something else. He only can serve 180 students a year. He has, there are 1, 600 people at the school, 900 of them. Sign up for that class each year and we, what's been beautiful and thank you Bernie, for doing this today and coming about what Bernie does and what we loved about him is he just takes a really great way of looking at a topic, which is a topic that people are talking about, today and, and brings it to a broad, a really wonderfully broad audience and brings it in a way that's, that's relevant for people across gender, across all different dimensions, right? As you stated at the beginning. And that's, other people might, and we will, you'll find some maybe more traditional definitions of public conversation at different times. We have another wonderful definition of public conversation tomorrow, in the context of the discussion that we'll have, relating, to purpose. But these are things that people are really looking for and that really do get to the heart of public conversation. So I want to thank you for the great work that you do. I want to thank you for joining us. And I want to thank you for tolerating me as the interviewer when I know you are really a great interviewer at your heart. So very

40:50

much. Tom.