275. Introspection and Intentionality: A Deep Dive with Bill Zujewski

Are you living or just existing? This powerful question anchors our conversation with Bill Zujewski, former tech executive and founder of Good Life. What began as a simple year-end spreadsheet became a transformative tool for intentional living. Bill introduces the HELP GROW framework: Health, Environment, Leisure, Purpose, Growth, Relationships, Occupation, and Wealth as a personal scorecard that helps us evaluate how aligned we are with what truly matters.

In a world where we often race through life on autopilot, this framework offers a mirror rather than a rigid formula, helping us recognize both where we're thriving and where we're off track. The conversation also challenges conventional success metrics. Drawing from an 80-year Harvard study, Bill emphasizes that strong relationships, not wealth or geography, are the greatest predictors of health, happiness, and longevity, sometimes equating to an extra decade of healthy life.

As host Mick Spiers walks through his own self-assessment, we see the power of small shifts in creating meaningful change. Whether you're a leader hoping to foster well-being in your team or someone seeking more purpose in your personal life, this episode delivers both inspiration and practical steps. Start by reflecting on your own life score. You might just find the clarity and motivation to take that next step toward the life you truly want.

🌐 Connect with Bill:
• Website: https://www.goodliife.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billzujewski/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zujewskibill/

📚 You can purchase Bill's book on Amazon:
• What’s Your Life Score: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DT6DXXMC/

Chapters

• 0:27 Living vs Existing: Introduction
• 3:15 The Origins of Life Score
• 9:15 Why Intentionality Matters
• 15:15 The HELP GROW Framework Explained
• 29:25 Balancing Wealth and Well-Being
• 48:40 Taking Action and Final Thoughts
• 53:29 Episode Wrap-Up

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Let me ask you this, are you living or just existing? If you're like most people, especially leaders, your days are full, full of meetings, decisions, responsibilities and goals. But how often do you stop and ask, is this actually the life I want to be living in today's episode of The Leadership Project. We're joined by Bill Zujewski, former tech exec and founder of good life and the author of watch your life. Score. What started as a simple spreadsheet scoring himself at the end of each year turned into a personal transformation and now a powerful tool and framework to help others step out of autopilot and into an intentional life. Together, we explore the eight dimensions of life that bill believes we all should measure, not to judge ourselves, but to reflect, to take stock and to choose what matters most. This is not your typical leadership conversation, it's personal, it's vulnerable, and it might just change the way you think about success. So get ready to look in the mirror and maybe, just maybe, to reclaim the steering wheel of your own life. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. We've got a special treat for you today. We're joined by Bill Zujewski. Bill is the founder and CEO of an organization called good life, and he's the author of a book called What's your life score, and it's accompanied with an app that can help you measure your life and look for where you might improve. So it's going to be a very practical discussion. We're going to look in the mirror today. We're going to look at your life. Going to think about where you're at and take some time to reflect and where you might focus so you can go on a pursuit of happiness. If you're not happy as a leader, you're not going to be creating the environment that is great for the rest of your team. So it is important for us to stop and reflect and look at ourselves in the mirror and take action around our life. So this is going to be a deep introspection today, and I'm really looking forward to hearing from Bill and going on this journey with you. I'm going to be listening to Bill. I'll be doing the actions myself, the things that we come out of today's discussion I'll be personally doing as well. So without any further ado, I want to give bill the stage here. Bill tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to write this book and develop this app and to help people to measure their life and take action.

Bill Zujewski: 2:41

Yeah, no. Thanks for having me, Mick, I'd love to tell the story. You know, I spent most of my life actually in corporate marketing, managing marketing departments for software companies, but always had an inkling to do my own thing, and had this concept in the back of my mind that this might be an interesting concept to actually help people and build a company around. So it goes way back, 20 years ago, the engineer and me, at the end of each year would do a little Google spreadsheet and just assess, you know, before New Year's resolutions, how I did last year in my my health and fitness. How do I do my net assets, my finances, my job, and I'd score myself zero to 10, and it was a very useful exercise for me. I started using it with my kids, and then I'm like, I think there's something here. I think there's something around a personal scorecard, just like a company has a dashboard. And so I, about a year ago, launched a mobile app to do it and then to compliment it. I thought it would be great to help me kind of get my word out and brand out there to write this book about the concept of there's two scores in there, a Zen score and a life score. And it's, it's pretty simple. And the my tagline for the company is, get good at life. And it's, you know, we know life is hard, it's complex. A lot of people don't know what to do, and I, hopefully, I've given them here, you know, almost like a playbook to design a life.

Mick Spiers: 4:21

Yeah, really good, Bill. I hope that we're all out there trying to get good at life. However, sometimes we do find ourselves in almost like an autopilot mode, where we're just we're not a human being anymore, where we're just a human going and wandering and meandering. So why do you think it's important for people to intentionally stop and take a closer look?

Bill Zujewski: 4:47

Yeah, it's interesting. And then, you know, I've been studying this topic since my, you know, early days of my career, I went and when I say topic, I'm just happiness, fulfillment, and those concepts. Because there's, it's such a struggle to get there. And what I realized was that it makes you pause if you start self reflecting on your life, like most of our lives are reactive. We're just like, Okay, I get, got to get up, go to work, get the paycheck. But I'm a huge believer. I learned these concepts early on that you can kind of manifest things. If you have a vision of where you want to go and what you want to do, the things you do, day to day, week to week, month to month, start to kind of help you kind of create that vision you have for yourself. So I am a huge believer that you can kind of pause, look at what you're doing in these eight areas, which we'll get to, and design a life, and then make decisions that create the life that you really want to have in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

Mick Spiers: 5:55

So the key word that's ringing my head when I hear this is the word intentionality, is to actually take control of your life and make intentional decisions instead of the the autopilot, like I was saying. The curious thing for me, Bill, going through the book, it sounds like you had been doing this for a while in like you said in a spreadsheet before, but when you wrote this book and start doing yourself, what did you learn about yourself, Bill?

Bill Zujewski: 6:21

Yeah, well, I definitely, I definitely learned that I'm an engineer, because everything I was doing I was organizing around, like frameworks and, you know, mind maps and things like that. And then I started to think about what I would do different if I had to give advice to people, and I think, I think I would have spent more time, probably my some of the friendships early on. So that was, that was actually enlightening. And then the other epiphany I'm starting to have is starting a company is really hard, and I'm like questioning, can I actually maintain this notion of a balanced life and all the things I am advocating for, and still, you know, put in the work that's required to start a company from scratch, right? So that's another thing I'm starting to think about.

Mick Spiers: 7:21

Yeah, really good. I'm hearing a few things there, Bill, one is the realization of being an engineer, and engineers like to make sense of the world so I can, I can see that in you, also a recognition of what you good at, and maybe things that maybe I'm not as good at, and that's that's fine as well. And then taking a deeper look at yourself that when you, and we're going to go into some of the content soon, and starting to realize that personal relationships are a huge part of having a good life, and then actually, really go, hang on a second. How many personal relationships do I have? And am I investing, intentionally, investing in those relationships? So what I'm trying to reflect back to you, Bill, is I'm glad that you are when you're doing the work, you're also looking in the mirror yourself and going, Hey, hang on a second. Do I do that? Is that what I'm hearing yeah?

Bill Zujewski: 8:15

Right. No, for sure. The other thing that I struggle with, and I know the buzzword is imposter syndrome, but what I mean by that is like, I'm not Bill Gates or some you know, famous person. Who am I to tell others or suggest what a good life actually is? So I, at first, I had some doubts, and maybe, not the confidence to do this. But then I started thinking about, well, wait a second, you know, I've got four kids now who love me, who are in their 20s. Have I've launched them into the world, and they're, they're so far so good. I have a couple homes. I have an amazing partner and wife, and I'm very happy. So maybe I do have some formula or wisdom here to share. So that was another thing that that actually turned out to be fine, but at first it was a little bit of a struggle.

Mick Spiers: 9:14

Yeah, there's, there's a couple of elements there as well, Bill, yeah, so you're not Bill Gates, but that's completely fine. You're, Bill zajuski And you're the best Bill sajewski, you can be the best one out there, right? But also, there's a little bit I'm picking up there about the comparison syndrome is you don't have to compare yourself to Bill Gates. You don't have to compare yourself to anyone. You look at yourself and go, compare yourself to you, compare yourself to the you that you would be proud to be. And can I share something from my life that would be meaningful to others? And that's what I see that you've done here. So what did what did you learn about happiness? You did a lot of research in this book. What did you learn about, I'm going to say, some of the misconceptions about what makes us happy?

Bill Zujewski: 9:57

Yeah, no, obviously. And this differs around the world and but in the United States, there's no doubt of that. You know, wealth is the only real metric and indicator that people think of when they think of is this person successful or not? Amazingly, I had dinner a couple years ago with a head of people from Ireland, and she was new to the United States, and she's like, she's shocked at how centric we are around that wealth and career and that in Ireland, a better indicator is how great of a father and family man, what you've done to raise your kids and family. That's a better measure of success. But one thing I've learned about happiness, though, and it's backed by science. In fact, there's a book, coincidentally called good life, by two Harvard professors who studied 3000 families over 80 years, looking at what attributes of a person's life led to the most happiness, fulfillment and longevity and how long they lived, and it wasn't even close, Mick, it was relationships in the end, in the last 1020, 30 years, it was like Who was your partner, who was the family around you, who were the friends around you, and that easily mapped to maybe 10 more years of living healthy than wealth and where you lived and diet. So to me, in fact, I have the two eyes in good life. When this company makes it to the next level, I'm going to make new logo where those two eyes are actually two people, because I think relationships is probably the most important indicator and driver of happiness.

Mick Spiers: 11:42

You're really good, Bill. So what you're picking up here is around societal expectations, and how do we measure success? Do we measure success by the way society measures success? Or are we measuring success by what really makes us happy? And I do encourage people listening to the show. If you research some of these happiness studies, whether you know Harvard, Yale Martin Seligman, does incredible work in this space, if you research it, you'll be surprised that the indicator that we look at someone and go, Oh, wow, look at them. They're so successful. That's not the indicators that end up in these studies to show that what really drives happiness, and in fact, it can be counterintuitive. So let's, let's pick the wealth one. And you and I were talking about this before we started the show the wealth one. There's never enough. There's never enough. Like if beyond getting to the point where you can cover your basic needs, you can pay your bills and put food on the table and shelter over your head, wealth actually becomes addictive, and you're always striving for more, and you're never happy with what you've got, and it drives comparison syndrome, and comparison is the thief of joy. So you start going, well, you know, I'm earning this much, but the person next to me is earning 10k more than me. Now, if you had to pull the person aside and say, Oh, wow, you know you're earning$100,000 are you happy with that? They might have said yes, until I found out the person next to them is getting 110,000 all of a sudden they're unhappy. So it's not money that's making us happy. It's not money. Isn't right?

Bill Zujewski: 13:17

No, no, no, there's and there's a lot of reading I've done, and this is a big actually trend around the world, I think, trying to become more mindful of yourself, right, and conscious of your thoughts and everything. But there's this primitive mind. There's this million years of evolution that where we're wired for some of these things, right to to want more. No matter what we have, we want more. We want to be the best in the group, the biggest in the group, the strongest, right? And we're all and then we have this whole ego that we've evolved, and sometimes that ego is our biggest nemesis, you know, telling us that, you know, same thing, you know, we have to have the what our neighbor has, and it compares what we have to what you know others have. And you've got to almost pause and think about, you know, is that your ego talking, or your your true self, you really have to try to capture all the emotional, primitive mind stuff, try to move to a kind of a higher mind that's more Kinder, giving back to society, giving back to people and things like that. So that's what I've tried to do now, and been able to do a little bit.

Mick Spiers: 14:36

All right, really good. So we've covered that wealth is not the answer and material pursuits, because there's always a bigger car, a bigger house, there's always a bigger paycheck, and if we just keep on pursuing that, we'll never reach in fact, the target gets even further away as we try to pursue those things. Okay, so let's get into what the indicators are. So I do encourage everyone to. Get a copy of the book and to get a copy of the app, and start following some of these. I've done the Zen score myself. Haven't yet done the life score, but to follow these things, and you'll start seeing the indicators of where you could actually start to get good at life. But over to you, Bill, you've got a really great acronym here that can help us to look at where we should look yeah.

Bill Zujewski: 15:24

Yeah. So, I mean, I should tell everyone, if I haven't already, I've been in marketing most of my career, so you have to try to create either a concept or some way, you know, a mental anchor to remember things. And I came up with help grow. Now, when I started my little personal scorecard, the spreadsheet that I used, you know, it didn't spell help grow, but I saw the letters were close, but actually let me go through them, help grow, H, the H in help for health, E for environment, L for leisure, P for purpose. So that's the help part. And then grow is around growth, the G, R relationships, O, occupation and W is wealth. And those are really the eight major things that I try to pay attention to and make sure they're all aligned, that I'm not overly consumed in one area and jeopardizing the the other areas, right? So those are, those are the eight categories.

Mick Spiers: 16:31

Yeah, really good Bill, and we're going to unpack it one at a time in a moment. But you used the word company scorecard before and I and in the book, you talk about a personal balance scorecard. And what I'm hearing from you here, it's not about wow, I scored 100 in health, but my my leisure is zero, or I scored, you know, 20 on purpose. But it's okay, because everything else is 100 to me, it's the balance that we're that we're looking for here. So by looking through then we can identify, Okay, well, okay, I'm a little bit lacking in the following categories. And if I want to be good at life, I need to be more balanced in those things. Is what I'm taking away there.

Bill Zujewski: 17:12

Yeah. And just to be clear with the listeners, because a lot of people now, when I talk about this notion of balance, they jump right to the simpler model of work and non work, like there's two worlds, and that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking actually about balance and alignment across all the most important aspects of a life, right? Your Health, spending time on that, your home, making sure you have a home you enjoy, taking time leisure, right? Taking time to have fun in life. What would life be without having some pleasure in it, right? And then having purpose? You know, there's a, there's a spiritual part of life as well. And then the relationships part is so important. If you had, you know, all this wealth, but no one to share it with, what's the point? You know, if you don't have the relationships, and then you know your career obviously pays the bills, so that's still important and gives you some fulfillment. And you do need some money around wrong well, so when I talk about balance, I'm talking about across all those eight categories, and what happens is, if you ignore one or two or three, it starts to spill over into causing issues and stress and anxiety in, you know, in other parts of your life. So it's all interconnected.

Mick Spiers: 18:31

Yeah. Really good bill, okay, so let's go through them relatively quickly on each one and give some indicators of what good would look like and what not so good would look like, and what people could do, you know, maybe some actions, if, if they look at this and they listening to the show, and they look in the mirror and go, yeah, right, that's that's not me, what they could do about it. So, what does good health look like to you, Bill?

Bill Zujewski: 18:56

Sure, sure. And the scores, actually, there's two scores, the Zen score, it takes a minute, and it tells you, how do you feel about your health, right? And that's one question, and you score yourself zero to 10. But then in the life score, it scores you about your actions and what you're doing. So it will go ahead and ask you a question, you know, do you have a nutrient rich diet with whole foods and lean proteins, you know. So what's your diet? Do you smoke? You know, how much alcohol do you consume? Do you get the you know, at least seven hours of sleep. Do you do cardio exercise at least three times a week? Do you hydrate regularly? You know? Do you do some strength training, right? So those are the physical aspects, and then on mental aspects, it talks about, do you set boundaries? Do you do some mindfulness and self reflection? Right? So what I, what I've, what I've tried to do, is I'm not telling people how to live their lives. But there's, there's science and research that says you do these things best practices, you'll have a healthier life, you'll have more energy. You. Live longer. You won't have, you know, some of the chronic diseases that start with kind of your your habits around what you eat and what you do. So people can debate that everyone's different, but I would debate that there is kind of a foundational playbook for having a healthy life.

Mick Spiers: 20:17

All right, really, really good Bill, so I'm going to share a few things as as we go, all right, but I'm going to interject here with an important thing of the way I looked, and I picked this up from the book, and I hope I've done it the right way, by the way, but I picked this up as a thread through the book. When I was giving myself the scores, I was also coming from a place of gratitude, right? So I wasn't just focusing on what I don't have. I was focusing on being happy with what I do. Have been no, not happy, grateful, being grateful for what I do have, instead of just focusing on what I don't have. So I'm going to give you my scores as we, as we go through this and reflect on what I was thinking. So health was not great for me. I put myself as a seven. I could have easily put it as a six, a five or a four, but I am grateful that I'm not in hospital. I don't have a chronic illness. Am I happy with my level of fitness and my overall health? No, I've got a few problems, and I've been at the doctor recently and had a few things that I've had to, had to check up. So am I in, you know, physical fitness? No, but am I grateful that I am not chronically ill? Yes, so I gave myself a seven. How does that like? I'm trying to do this in real time with you. How does that sit with you in terms of the way I did it?

Bill Zujewski: 21:36

Yeah, no, that's perfect, right? So a seven is acceptable. You know, it's funny when people that can't help but go to the grading system, right? I mean, that's what we're taught. So at least in the US, your, you know, your scores in the 70s, and you're giving yourself a C, so that's a indicator to, you know, in this, in the app and in the book, that you're doing okay, but there's room for improvement. If you were three or four, like, then you'd be saying yourself, oh my gosh, like you're you're scared you might die or have a heart attack, or you don't have the energy or capability to do things you want in life. So you know that would probably have come across like a two or three, a seven says there's no reason to panic, but, you know, I think I gave myself a six, and I'm pretty healthy, but I know it's such an important part of life that I need to lose, you know, the 1015, pounds, and not be huffing and puffing when I'm walking upstairs. So I'm not happy, even though I'm grateful. I'm pretty healthy guy in person. I have room to work with there.

Mick Spiers: 22:45

Yeah, good. And this is where I'm going to go with this is this is going to be one of the indicators I'm going to work on after having done this exercise bill. But it's the same kind of thing. I want to be healthy so I can do the things that I enjoy, with my kids, with my wife, with my friends, etc. If you're not healthy, it impacts your ability to do some of the other categories that we're going to talk about. Yeah, really good.

Bill Zujewski: 23:08

It's a coincidence, but it's H is the first letter it all starts. You can't do anything else unless you're up and out of bed and healthy and, you know, living.

Mick Spiers: 23:19

All right, okay, so E is environment. What does a good environment look like to you, Bill?

Bill Zujewski: 23:25

Yeah, and to me, that's the home, and I take pride in my home, but what I talk about here is having somewhere you can relax, you can recharge, you can entertain friends to come over like you spend a big chunk of your life at home, right? And so I know for my wife and I, we just built the house because we wanted we were the sun was on the wrong side. Our house was so dark we were in the middle of the woods. We just needed a new location where we had more light in our life and a view. So one of my our goals, and, you know, I'm a big believer you can design the life you want. We've been looking for 20 years and saving towards, you know, finding the lot and building the house that would give us a place we would, you know, call home for the rest of our lives, because it's such an important part of life, and then where it's located, the weather, the commute, access to health. Can you go out for a walk and, you know, parks, you know, so your home is a critical aspect of whether you're going to be happy or not.

Mick Spiers: 24:35

Yeah, really good. Bill. All right, so here we go again. I'm going to show you. I scored myself an eight here. I'm grateful for what I have, but then I'm also aware of when environment impacts me. So let me give some examples here, and I'm going to give some workplace and some home examples. Really silly one, I'd say nine times out of 10 I love my home and my family and everything that we've got around here. And then there's the occasional. Time where I'll walk into the living room and realize I didn't fold the laundry. The laundry is still sitting there, kind of thing. And it's kind of what could have been a I'm going to, you know, relax now, etc, etc. It's kind of, no, I can't relax because I didn't fold the laundry, kind of situation. But I'm still grateful that I've got a nice house with roof over my head, and I've got a comfortable life when it comes to the commute. I found that one really interesting when I was reading the book. I can tell you when I drive my car to work and where I live and where I go to work. The traffic the car traffic is horrendous. It can take me up to two hours, and it is extremely stressful. So what do I do? I take an intentional action. When I catch the train. I love the commute. I look out the window and watch the world go past, or if I ride my bike, even better, because then I'm working on my health as well. I enjoy the commute. And then the same thing in the workplace. And this is a big one for leaders. We want to create an environment where people want to come to work, right? So it's an and now I'm talking the physical environment, but also the mental environment, that it's not a toxic place, that it's a place where people treat each other well and treat each other with respect. So the environment one I did give myself an aid, I think I've got it in good stead, but you can still see there where I can take some intentional actions to avoid the things that would make it worse. Does that make sense?

Bill Zujewski: 26:28

Right, yeah, 100% and so let me tell you what, how this would have played out in my app. So you would have gave yourself an eight in your zen score, how you feel about, you know, your environment. But if you went in and then try to did the life score assessment, there's 10 questions around the home environment, and one of the questions is, you know, Rate yourself zero to 10 in this question, I maintain a clean, clutter free and organized home environment, right? And if you didn't, it'd be a wake up call that some of that is, yeah, creating some overhead of thinking about, you know, all the things you have to do around the house before you can relax. And then the other one, the other question, one of the other two of the 10 questions was my commute or work setup supports balance and minimizes stress, right? So you probably would have scored yourself low there and again, that would have been telling you maybe, maybe you got to think about changing my commute or doing something on it, but that it was a, you know, an indicator that you weren't, you know, doing the best in that area.

Mick Spiers: 27:36

Yeah, really. Good, Bill. Okay, excellent. So L is leisure, or leisure for you. And pronunciations are interesting. So leisure or leisure? So, yeah, tell us. What do you think are the key things here of where people get it right and here where, where people just get it wrong when it comes to leisure?

Bill Zujewski: 27:55

Yeah. So I think people think of leisure as maybe simplify, oversimplified as I take vacation, right? There's actually, there's 10 areas in your life. Score for leisure that I've I've identified. It starts with your having some kind of hobby or interest, whether it's painting or gardening or playing an instrument, and then having outdoor activities, having some mindfulness and rest, socializing with friends, doing some digital detox, listening to music, maybe doing some self care or spa, and then having fun and playing and doing some socialization like Those are the 10 questions around leisure and people who do those kinds of things help seem to be fresher, happier, right, more optimistic and really having some pleasure in the life to balance the times where they're working hard. It's the fruit for the labor, right?

Mick Spiers: 28:59

Yeah, really good. So I'm going to be open here and say I gave myself a nine. Now the word is, now I can look at parts of my life where this would have been a one or two Bill seriously workaholic tendencies. And, you know, I would have scored like, come back to the word balance. I would have scored big scores in other areas. And this would have been really low at different parts of my life, but, but now I do intentionally carve out time i I've now, you know, I play golf, I play tennis, I spend quality time with my family and and when I do when I'm spending time with my son, I put my my phone away, and I am completely present with him, and get completely mindful and in the moment, and that's when the richness of that experience comes, instead of being distracted, etc, and that's going to impact some of the others.

Bill Zujewski: 29:49

Yeah, I could tell you a quick, quick story, and believe me, I count my blessings, and I'm so grateful I was able to do this. But you know, a couple of my companies have been a COVID. Fired once, twice by Oracle, actually in 2016 PTC acquired exceeda, and I was cmo there, and I actually took a whole year and a half off. Mick, I took a sabbatical, and my kids were middle school, two in high school, I coached a basketball, baseball it was like a retirement in the middle of my career. And my rationale, it was, geez, I still have all this energy and my kids at home. You know, when I'm retired, it's just going to be me. I could work hard then. So I did end up going back, because I was kind of warned that, because I always intended to go back, but that if I stayed too far, you know, into my sabbatical, that people would not hire me because they think there'd be a stigma that I lost the fire to, you know, work, so I ended up, you know, ending that, but it was a fun time.

Mick Spiers: 30:56

Yeah, really good. Okay, all right. So very good on leisure. Let's make sure that we are carving out time, and we're, we're doing that, alright, gotta hit all the letters Yes, yeah, exactly. Alright. Let's get to purpose. Tell us about we've, we've discussed this on the show a lot, but I want to hear from you, Bill, tell us about the power of purpose.

Bill Zujewski: 31:16

Yeah, and purpose, purpose will change at through your life, cycle of your life, right? And your your your 20s. There's nothing wrong with actually career being your purpose. You've got to build a foundation to build a life around and get money home. I think as you become a leader the company you're creating, it's fine for that to to become, you know your your purpose again, you're creating jobs for people so so that that becomes an interesting purpose for me. One of the biggest joys and proud points for me is that time where I was building my family and raising four kids that got me out of bed when, you know, at 6am knowing that I was I wanted to pay for college for all of them. I wanted to take them on vacations every year. And my family gave me amazing purpose. And now I'm in a position where I think my purpose is, you know, grander like, Boy, I've learned so much. How could I life is so hard. How could I help more and more people with dealing with the complexity and difficulties of life and trying to trying to do it that way? So there's a lot of elements, but I'm a big believer in, you know, having some purpose that drives you a super healthy and super motivating.

Mick Spiers: 32:43

Yeah, really good, Bill. And I'm going to say here I scored myself a 10. Here, I'm a very purpose driven person. I did the work. I did the work to work out. Well, one of my purposes, I have three. One of my purposes dawned on me through a realization 2005 so quite almost 20 years ago, it was a very distinct activity that led to that. And then the rest I've done the work to go, Okay, what does bring me joy? Like, what are the things that I enjoy? But how is it impactful on the world and impactful for other human beings? And and purpose is generally at the bottom of the service of other human beings, but the intersection of something that you're good at, something that you enjoy doing, but it means something, it means something to others and helping others. So I did give myself a 10 here for the audience. We have covered this on the show before, but I encourage you, if you're still struggling with purpose, there are exercises that you can do. You can look at the work of Zach Mercuri, hours, examples to go and find your purpose. There is ways, if you're feeling lost, this is one that you can invest in. All right, tell me about growth.

Bill Zujewski: 33:49

So growth is, I think again, it's a ingrained in being a human right. If we're not growing, we're dying and and some of the happiest and most successful people are lifelong learners. And I've tried to instill that in my kids. I've been pretty lucky. It's just natural. We just love learning, consuming knowledge. And I think another part of human nature is just being better, being the best self person we could so I'm always trying to extend myself, challenge myself, learn as much as I can, and then I have a little secret. So a little hack, not a hack, but a little guiding principle in my life that I think is one of the simplest definitions of happiness for me is if I set goals and are making progress. To me, progress equals happiness. I feel the best when a day goes by and I've done something, you know, when I, when I, when I get to bed and I look back and I wasted a day, I feel like nauseous and miserable, like. Oh, my God. I mean, no progress on anything. So I think progress is super important part of life.

Mick Spiers: 35:07

Yeah, like this, and I can see how progress and growth going hand in hand. Absolutely, on this one, I scored myself a 10 as well. I study every day. I study psychology. I'm an engineer as well. Bill and why? Why I now study psychology I certainly didn't when I was younger, is I try to make rational sense of an sometimes irrational world. So I study psychology every day. And the other little gift I have is that I get to do this podcast, and by the time this episode goes to air, we'll be up to episode 270, something. I get to sit down in front of people like Bill zajewski and and learn wonderful things. So I feel very blessed when it comes to growth interesting around the progress. I don't know that I've taken that into account when I've given myself a high score. So yeah, the progress is one for me to maybe take a look at for the audience. Ask yourself that, when was the last time? And some of you probably do do this all the time, but ask yourself the hard question, look yourself in the mirror and go, when was the last time you invested in your own growth? When was the last time you learned something new intentionally? And how are you measuring your progress? So I think this is one for all of us to look at the growth. All right. R for relationships, Bill, tell us what this looks like, and why is it important?

Bill Zujewski: 36:25

Yeah, I talked a little bit about all the studies that how it's one of this best correlations your relationships to whether you're going to be happy and healthy. But people don't. People think they just happen happenstance, and you actually have to understand what a good relationship takes and invest in building those relationships. And I think I mentioned this to you, like, if you didn't have other people to share everything in your life, your joy, your assets, your home, your vacations with, like, what would be the purpose of life alone on an island, right? So I think, I think relationships is naturally important, but in my life, score, the questions are, you know, there's like 15 of them. I mean, there's around effective communication. I communicate honestly and openly, right? Empathy, I show empathy and understand when to put others needs first, right? I spend quality time with my family and friends, with important, important people, right? I express love regularly, right? I have a social circle of friends I can relax with. I I'm very grateful and celebrate, you know, with other people. And so, I mean there, there's like, I said, that's just off the top of my head, some of them, but there's a nice list of like, I guess, best practices to improve the relationships you have in your life around you.

Mick Spiers: 37:55

So yeah, you're right. The studies keep on showing this one time and time again, the the richness of our relationships is actually what is the bigger indicator of of happiness than anything else, and if we're we're not investing that time, it's going to be at our detriment. For sure, the gratitude for other human beings, the service of other human beings, the connection with other human beings is where all this lives now. Here is one that I'm going to have to rescore this bill, to be honest. So when I did it, I first gave myself a 10, and that was purely based on the relationship with my wife, which is an amazing one, one that I'm grateful for every single day Mart. When I look deeper and I listen to you today, I've let slip the personal relationships of long standing friends that I haven't spoken to in a long time, and those friendships are strong enough that I know that if I rang them today, that we would reconnect in an instant. But the truth is, I've unintentionally let those slip. So I need to take an intentional action to reach out to those people and say hello and check in how you doing, and show them that I that I care for them. And so this will be an action that I'll take as a result of today's conversation so.

Bill Zujewski: 39:15

I'm glad I had a little bit of impact on you. Mick, right? That's awesome. A lot of times people, when they're they feel like stuck or, you know, disconnected, you know, revisiting some of the friendships they have can kind of remind them of the important things of life and get them out of that rut that they're in. So there's also an expression you are, who your friends are, right? So it's, it really, it really is true. I look closely at my four kids circles and make sure they're in the right circle, because that circle of people will have a huge influence in defining who they are.

Mick Spiers: 39:55

Yeah. Really good. Okay, all right, very good. So let's go on to always about. Occupation. Where does occupation come in, Bill?

Bill Zujewski: 40:03

Well, first of all, I I found my ambition, you know, manageable and sometimes very fulfilling. You know, when you're marketing and you hit your numbers, or when I was in sales and I closed a new customer. I mean, maybe it's the human nature competing and winning. You know, I play team sports, and that spilled over into, you know, the career choices I made. But it's also where you meet people. It's also where you spend so much time of your life. You want to be around people you like, you get along with who are who are kind. So you have to pay attention to, you know, the job you choose, are you being paid fairly? Have you found an occupation that that pays the bills and allows you what you allows you to do what you want to do in life, in terms of work life balance? So occupation may not be the most important, but it's pretty high up there, and it's a pretty important aspect of life that you need to self reflect around. Are you at the right company? Are you in the right career, you know, and do you have, you know, the right manager, all those things you've got to do a checkpoint.

Mick Spiers: 41:12

Yeah, really good, Bill, so I gave myself an aid on this one. I feel very lucky. I get to do work where I feel seen, I feel valued. I feel respected. It's meaningful work to me. So I gave myself an eight, but I didn't give myself a 10, and I'll explain why every job has its frustrations, first of all, but that's not what it was. What I gave myself less than 10 was because of purpose alignment, to make sure that what we do is aligned to our purpose, and where I find why I didn't give myself a 10 is where you end up in elements of bureaucracy, that there are elements of churn in your job that aren't connected to your purpose. And I think if we can get rid of some of those inefficiencies, you'd go home feeling more proud that what you did today was towards achieving those that purpose and towards those goals. So I didn't give myself a perfect score, but I feel very lucky in in occupation I always have.

Bill Zujewski: 42:13

Yeah, and these scores, these scores, how you feel about these areas, do change. You know, year to year, even month to month, or even day to day. Sometimes, like, I have times where, oh my god, I'm so lucky to be have the freedom to be running my own company, and but then I have days or weeks where, like, oh my gosh, I have no income coming in for almost a year now, trying to build this company. And then what if I fail? I've done so much good. And then one of my legacy is actually a company that doesn't make it. So there's challenges even to, you know, you know, in a in the occupation, that never goes away, for sure.

Mick Spiers: 42:51

Yeah, yeah. Really good. Okay, so once again, people, you can reflect on this, have a think about in your occupation. If you don't give yourself a high score here, what would you do differently? And that doesn't mean leave the job. It means start with where you're at and think about, well, what little changes could you make, where your occupation could be, something that has a high score, all right? And the final one is wealth, and you put it last. On purpose, I know this, but it is important that we at least have enough money to meet needs, right? To put food on the table and put roof over the head. So tell us more about wealth.

Bill Zujewski: 43:25

Right, right? So, clearly, clearly, like you said, you want to have some sort of income that allows you to live the life you you know, have a vacation, pay the bills, have a home you're comfortable in, but a lot of the strife and tension and divorces are fights over money, and a lot of that has to do with this materialistic world and overspending or the ego. I think one of my questions is I refrain from impulse buying, practice mindful spending and avoid expensive brand purchases driven by my ego, right? So that would be like buying the $3,000 you know, Gucci or Prada bag or something or, right? There's some, there's some stuff or or trying to keep up with the Joneses, and spending, you know, half your paycheck on your monthly mortgage to pay for your home. Oh my gosh, you've just created a stressful life for yourself where you could have downsized and been just as happy in a smaller home and not created all all this tension. So in the wealth score, you know, I've documented you'll pay your credit card off every month. You know, save 10% make sure your mortgage is less than 25% of your monthly pay. You know, have a balanced portfolio. Start saving for retirement. Have a budget. Spend. You know, be frugal. You know, all the best practices that people who have. Financial house in order go through and do you.

Mick Spiers: 45:03

Really good, Bill. So I gave myself a seven here, and the reason why it's not a 10 is I don't always make smart decisions with my money. I can stick my hand up on that one, so that's where I need to do a bit of work make smarter decisions. But the reason why the score is so high now to go the other way is I'm grateful for what I have instead of being worried about what I don't have. Yeah, and I I feel lucky. I feel lucky that I don't have to go live paycheck to paycheck. I have a balanced view on the finances, but I still don't always make the smartest decisions.

Bill Zujewski: 45:38

I have a story that I love telling and it's, you know, I've lost my parents now both, but you know, they came over. I was the first born, and they came over in the 60s from Poland, and my father was mechanic, and my mom raised five kids, and I didn't know it at the time. I mean, we had a happy household every weekend, Sunday dinner, friends over, we were living paycheck to paycheck, like my father was scrambling, taking on extra jobs to just make sure he hit the mortgage payment. None of that was evident to me until I was like 20, 3040, years old, paying my own mortgage so you can, you can be happy with without wealth, and I just saw it in my household, and to me, it just was a proof point that belief.

Mick Spiers: 46:28

Yeah, really good, Bill, all right, so I'm going to bring us to towards a close now and head towards our Rapid Round. So I'm going to reflect again to everyone and hold up for those who are watching on the video, hold up the book again. Watch what's your life score? And this is about getting your own life in order so you can be a better leader, right? And you can help others then as well. If you, if you get some of these categories in control, then you're in a position to help your team and your loved ones, etc, to work on it as well. So the help grow, health, environment, leisure, purpose, growth, relationships, occupation, wealth. Have you got these things in balance? And do the score? Do the score in the app, and it will tell you from the scores you give you go, Oh, here we go. I need to work a little bit more on health, or I need to carve out time for more leisure, or I need to reach out and connect with more people. You know, my my friends. I haven't connected with them for a while. It's going to give you some steers on where you could act.

Bill Zujewski: 47:26

And by the way, by the way, Mick, by the way, the happy employees for the leaders and executives out there are more productive, less likely to leave their job. All you know, you know. So all these things, I hate to bring it up, but they actually have strong benefits for your company culture.

Mick Spiers: 47:45

Absolutely, there's no doubt about that whatsoever, all right. And then if you want to take it a bit further, you can do the life score element as well, not not just the Zen score, and it'll help you with some more targeted questions on where you might focus your energy to bring more balance in your life. And yeah, it's happiness. Is is not the pursuit of happiness. It's not the pursuit of wealth. It's the happiness of the pursuit. It's about growing every day. So you'll do, you won't do these scores. Just once you would, you'd go back and see how you progress as you go along.

Bill Zujewski: 48:17

Progress. There you go. You said it the key to happiness.

Mick Spiers: 48:22

All right, brilliant, Bill, I've loved this. I'm going to personally put these things in action, and I'm encouraging the audience to do so as well. Let's go to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. Bill, so firstly, what's the one thing you know now? Bill Zujewski that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Bill Zujewski: 48:40

Yeah. And again, I'm grateful for my relationships with my kids, my wife and I have good friends, but, you know, I sometimes am jealous, and I shouldn't be of some of these best friends that people have, and I look back, I probably didn't invest enough, you know, building those super, super close relationships with people earlier in life. You know, it's one of those things that no one ever actually taught me. You don't learn in school. You actually have to invest to be a good friend.

Mick Spiers: 49:17

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well said, sir. All right, now, always a curious question for authors, what's your favorite book?

Bill Zujewski: 49:25

Oh, you know, I don't I. I'm sad to say, I read a lot of non fiction. I'll give you two. I'll give you one fiction. Jeffrey Archer wrote this book called Cain and Abel, and just talked about the dichotomy of a overly ambitious, greedy son versus a more empathetic son, and how their life's life's played out. And then I do like the tipping point of Malcolm Gladwell, some a lot of Malcolm Gladwell stuff is very, very well done.

Mick Spiers: 49:58

Yeah, all right. Very good. And good suggestions. Now I feel guilty asking you this question, because the book is full of impactful quotes. What's your favorite quote?

Bill Zujewski: 50:08

Yeah, and I'm going to give you one that wasn't in the book, so it's a bonus. Yeah, it's a bonus. And it was, and it's one I picked up a couple of years ago and from Warren Buffett. So someone asked him about what he would, how he would qualify a good life, you know, in a successful life, and he says, you know, it's simple, the number of people that love you in the end, that's it, right? That to him, that was the KPI, KPI of life, that said to him, whether you led a good life or not, and it was a good reflection. And I thought that was a great way to look at life.

Mick Spiers: 50:47

Yeah, what? And what a great, great way to summarize what we've been talking about in today's discussion as well. Bill, right? And finally, how do people find you? There's going to be people listening to this. Hopefully. They've been scoring themselves a little bit in their head as they go. But how do they find the book? How do they find the app? How do they find you, Bill?

Bill Zujewski: 51:03

Yeah, well, just screenshot this right now. If you're watching because it's a juice key, is the key. There's not many of them. So if you just Google. Bill Zujewski, I'm the only one. But go to goodlife.com. You know, with two eyes, that's, that's you. You'll, you'll see my story, my book, my software and all that LinkedIn, same thing. Connect with me. I love connecting people. DM me. And then if you want to email me, bill@goodlife.com and if you go

Mick Spiers: 51:27

All right, wonderful Bill, well, thank you to Amazon and search on Zujewski, there's only one book written, what's your life score on Amazon? So that's the best way to get a hold of me. for sharing your wisdom for us today, and your very practical book and your practical app. It really is something that's easy for us all to do, but it's meaningful. It's easy, but meaningful, I encourage everyone to do. So thank you so much. Bill for sharing it with us today, and congratulations on the success of getting it out there, and what you're doing not just to help yourself, but to help others, to get their life in order and to be good at life.

Bill Zujewski: 52:05

That's my tagline. Thanks Mick, appreciate it.

Mick Spiers: 52:10

What an amazing conversation with Bill Zujewski. What if life really did come with a scorecard, not to rank you, but to remind you, to nudge you, to pause, to help you live with intention instead of inertia. Today, Bill gave us more than a framework. He gave us permission, permission to stop running on autopilot, permission to check in with ourselves, permission to design the life we want before it designs us. So here's your reflection prompt for today. What's your life score in health, in purpose, in joy, and what's one small action you could take today to improve it? If this conversation resonated with you, please share it with someone who's ready to reflect too. You never know who might be silently struggling behind their leadership title, and don't forget to check out Bill's book and The Good Life app. They're both great companions on the journey back to yourself. In the next episode, we're going to be joined by Jonathan Stutz, who talks us about intentional actions for inclusive leadership. It. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo and my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care. Look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.