“The gross national product (of a country) does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
– Robert Kennedy, March 18, 1968

How are we measuring a life well lived?

Is it quality of life based on a personal assessment of what makes us happy? Or are we allowing media and popular culture, systems that know nothing about us, to steer us to false measurements?

What are the things that need to be happening for you to feel great? Making enough income so you don’t have too much financial stress? Spending lots of time with family for personal enjoyment plus the sense of harmony that comes with a house “in order”? Helping others less fortunate? Making time in your life to count your blessings? Having adequate alone time so you can assess things in your life, work and personal? Spending time in nature? Doing things you love whether travel, going to the movies, listening to music, playing sports, watching a ballgame on TV? Having a short commute? The list goes on.

You might not have arrived yet at your ultimate quality of life. For example, you have a goal of working within five miles of home and perhaps right now it is not practical. The point is to know what your quality of life drivers are so you can arrive at them as soon as possible but reckoning with

So going back to 30,000 feet, what does quality of life mean to you?

Ariane de Bonvoisin

I had the opportunity to interview Ariane de Bonvoisin this summer.  We met last year and I have quickly become a fan of her endeavors.

Ariane is the author of First 30 Days: Your Guide to Making Any Change Easier and has built a media company around her desire to help people enjoy life more.  Ariane embodies this Quality of Life Project purpose:

-  Contributing to the growing worldwide movement in which individuals are increasingly measuring success based on quality of life over other pursuits and are increasingly drawn to authenticity over pretense.

Ariane’s independent approach to life is truly inspiring. She lives like an explorer constantly finding new and interesting experiences to enrich her life. And her path through life is a great indicator. She grew up living in six countries, was an internationally competitive swimmer and graduated London School of Economics at 19 and Stanford Business School at 24. She went on to leadership positions in the venture capital world, at one time overseeing Time Warner’s venture fund. But she felt out of synch and saw how her personal life was suffering through by not being in tune with her true inner voice. She was always a spiritual person but felt she needed to regroup. Ariane ended up taking a new path. In 2005, she decided to become a media entrepreneur, which led to her First 30 Days book and the launching of www.first30days.com and soon www.arianestudio.com.

You can view the VIDEO of our interview with Ariane HERE.

Within the video there are index tags so you can navigate per your preferences.

There are some outstanding takes on big picture life perspectives that have helped Ariane enjoy her life.  You should not miss out on these.  But the best part of the interview in my opinion are the little things we unearthed that any of us can immediately try out.

-  Trampoline in office (“What brings you joy” section)

-  Five year journal.  (“What brings you joy” section)

-  Wheatgrass (“Diet or health practices” section)

I hope you enjoy the video!  Ariane is doing great work so if you like her book, definitely help get the word out…

Gary Player

Gary Player is one of the most amazing people I’ve met.  Gary is best known as being one of the greatest golfers in the history of the game (he is the only player to have won a Grand Slam on both the PGA and Senior’s tours.). He’s 73 years old and has more energy and strength today than 99% of us.  He’s been married to his wife Vivienne for over fifty years and together they have six children and 20 grandchildren.

More than anything, Gary epitomizes what it means to be a successful human being.  He does it all.  He is a great family man.  He is an accomplished entrepreneur.  He is a successful philanthropist.  He is a kind man who walks the earth with an open, grateful heart.  He literally touches someone every day.

And he is an absolute expert (whether he knows it or not) on longevity and making use of energy to maximize enjoyment in every aspect of life.

Gary will tell you that maintaining energy is one of the key to a life well lived.  That energy is the reason he has managed to be successful on so many fronts.  Family, career, philanthropy, social.    

Here is a 45-second clip of our interview where he talks about the impact of energy on being there for family.

Download MP3 clip – Time Management and Family

In other parts of our interview (www.qualityoflifeproject.org/gary_player), he talks about specific ways to build energy through diet and exercise.

It’s interesting how Gary connects building energy and time management with being a successful family man.   That that is what allows him to get up early to take care of his work and to get back to the house to have breakfast with his grandchildren. The idea that we can have a great intentions but if we’re not working on the building blocks that allow us to execute…

If I can digress, another parallel this makes me think about is the altruistic dimension to productivity.  Lets say someone does two hours of volunteer work a week.  And then by adopting some productivity and time management concepts, the person now has extra time and does four hours of volunteer work.  Is there not an altruistic element at play here with developing the building blocks, in this case productivity?  The same goes for someone like Gary who through his practice of exercise and diet, maximizes his energy which allows him to be a better husband, father, grandfather, entrepreneur, philanthropist etc.

Lastly, and this is out of left field and is totally unrelated to the above concept of energy.  But this one minute clip of Gary talking about love and planting seeds is too good.  So I’m just going to throw it in.  Call it a bonus.

Download MP3 clip – Love

I hope you enjoyed this first post in which I’m including audio clips from my interviews.  Please let me know through the comments section what you think of this new format and the post in general.

Thank you to my dad’s friend from college Dr. Marshall Burns who is a friend of Gary’s and made the interview happen.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Scott Hahn. Great guy, best known for his role as a founder and leader at Rogan, a revolutionary player in the fashion industry. Rogan is the edge with its design and its sustainable sourcing methods and environmental practices.

It was one of my best interviews. He is the definition of quiet confidence and has a piercing, inviting intensity about him. He is a person who is both gentle and fierce.  As I found out in my interview, a lot of this comes from his practices of humility, intellectual curiousity, and physical exercise methods. More on that at qualityoflifeproject.org/author/scott-hahn/

We talked about a lot of things but I was most struck by what Scott said when I asked him about whether he is good at giving people the benefit of the doubt in life:

“I was very resentful of my father growing up for not being in my life at all. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago from cancer but before he died I had a chance to go see him in Scotland where he lives. It was one of the most important experiences in my life to spend time with a father I had barely known and to become reconciled. I had made him out as a monster. But when I took the step to simply be with him I was able to hear his side of the story and come to realize that he has always loved my sister and me unconditionally. That was a really wild experience. He’s got four other kids that are great and we’re connected now. Obviously an experience like this has had a huge impact on me in terms of better assuming the good intent from others.”

Can you imagine what a powerful life experience this must have been? On so many levels. Scott went on to talk about how this learning experience has made him a freer person by not allowing his energy to be consumed by assuming or dwelling on when others have wronged him.

For all of us that has had a life lesson on this front, are there not so many quality of life dividends to adopting this “assume positive intent” mindset? I’ll share with you my own personal experience. It was one of the most transformational episodes of my life.

After I graduated from UCLA in 1994, I was preparing to move to San Francisco for a job, and I talked to a friend of mine from college who is from the Bay Area and was also planning to move up there. Since I didn’t know anyone up there, I was happy when he insisted I call him right when I get up there and that he would introduce me to some cool guys to hang out with up there. During my first four months in San Francisco, I called my friend three times and never heard back. I started to nurture my inner chipped shoulder and was building some real resentment towards my friend. I was all pissed off – “screw him” etc. — and self righteous about the whole thing.

A few months later, I ran across my friend at a party and I was about to give him a “WTF, man…” when he looked in my eyes with sadness and warmth I can still feel and told me how his dad was diagnosed with cancer a few months back and what a wreck his life has been. Ok, pause here for a second… Can you imagine what a self centered loser I felt like? Lets just say that it wasn’t about me. I remember right there telling myself to learn a lesson or be damned. The reality is I did follow up on my commitment and did learn my lesson. [My friend’s father did beat his disease and is now very healthy for his age.]

Lessons from all this? I think first of all, others deserve the benefit of the doubt from you. In fact, is it not sort of a moral issue to damn people for scenarios that you are not certain exist? But the greatest benefit to assuming this mindset is the self serving reason. You feel so much better as a person when you simply move on when you find yourself thinking about why this person didn’t call you back or why you weren’t invited to a party or how that person is undermining you at work. Don’t play the game. You will feel more freed up and ironically your relationships with those you suspect of undermining you will flourish.

Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of Pepsi, says it best in an interview with Fortune magazine earlier this year:

“My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. You don’t get defensive. You don’t scream. You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, “Maybe they are saying something to me that I’m not hearing.” So “assume positive intent” has been a huge piece of advice for me.

In business, sometimes in the heat of the moment, people say things. You can either misconstrue what they’re saying and assume they are trying to put you down, or you can say, “Wait a minute. Let me really get behind what they are saying to understand whether they’re reacting because they’re hurt, upset, confused, or they don’t understand what it is I’ve asked them to do.” If you react from a negative perspective – because you didn’t like the way they reacted – then it just becomes two negatives fighting each other. But when you assume positive intent, I think often what happens is the other person says, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe I’m wrong in reacting the way I do because this person is really making an effort.”

“Assume positive intent” is definitely a top quality of life best practice among the people I have interviewed for my book. The reasons are obvious. It will make you feel better, your realtionships will thrive and it’s an approach more greatly aligned with reality.

But it dawned on me recently that nothing could require more entrepreneurial skill and offer more entrepreneurial gratification than parenting.

There is no leadership position more challenging. There is no project where the results of your efforts will be more apparent. There is no business where you can use your talents with such a lack of constraints.

For parents who stay at home or the parents who work, we must remind ourselves of the incredibly entrepreneurial nature of the work of leading, teaching, molding our children. Besides involved parenting being a responsibility of having kids in the first place, it can also be the best outlet for our entrepreneurial tendencies. [I am focusing on the responsibilities of parenting - and the gratification within this realm- rather than the many other aspects of parenting that are incredible in other ways; such as what you learn from your children or just the immense amount of fun being around them. I am focusing on the aspect/gratification of building them up and seeing your efforts bear fruit over time.]

My kids are still young and they will always be evolving, but at some point in my life I will know whether I made a positive impact on the degree that they are contented, compassionate, confident people. And I realize right now, that when that moment occurs – when I genuinely feel that I have made a positive impact on their lives – that it will be a bigger rush and more gratifying feeling than any business I have built or any deal I have closed.

I work full time so my ability to make an impact and to experience a sense of accomplishment is much less than what my wife’s, who is involved in our children’s lives a lot more than me. I admire the hard work she has to put in and how much patience and discipline she needs to muster on a daily basis to be a constant leader. But I also see that she is an incredible entrepreneur with our children. She is constantly improving her skills, learning from other people, experimenting with new ideas. Taking the time to communicate effectively. Having the stamina to keep going on during tough times. In the end, she is developing people. Per Jack Welch, a leader must have that innate ability to know when to push and when to hug.

Needless to say, the in-the-moment benefit of being with one’s children and having fun with them is as gratifying as the process. But I think the most gratifying will be to see the rewards later on of how I have contributed to the type of human being my children have become.

It’s a competitive world no matter what your philosophy on work/life balance. So I’m not telling people to work less if you need to do it to put the bread on the table or lay the foundation for other opportunities. But, I also know there are many parents that work unnecessary hours due to the addiction to the process or a feeling that it is an entrepreneurial outlet they need to feel gratified.

I guess I’m writing more than I need to. My point is just that what could be more entrepreneurial than parenting?