Business Builders Podcast

What Drives You?

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 3 • Episode 57

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What am I really doing this for? Have you ever asked yourself a question like this? It's a big-picture question, and at some point, we all find ourselves asking it. But how often do we actually take the time to ponder the question? Today, we're exploring the big-picture questions in our lives and how they help us find our Life-Work balance.

Key Points & Highlights:

  • A Relatable Query: The episode begins with a familiar scenario: an entrepreneur, amidst a flurry of activity, pausing to question their ultimate goals and purpose, sparking a broader discussion.
  • Brenton's Personal Story: Brenton shares a moving story about a family emergency, a moment that led him to reevaluate life priorities, emphasizing the importance of family and personal connections.
  • Ethics and Personal Values: The hosts delve into how our personal values and ethical beliefs influence life choices, especially when faced with difficult decisions.
  • Diverse Perspectives on Life's Purpose: The episode examines various viewpoints on finding meaning in life, from philosophical discussions to personal growth experiences, inviting listeners to reflect on their own beliefs.
  • The Significance of Social Connections: Drawing from studies like the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the conversation highlights how relationships play a vital role in our life satisfaction and happiness.
  • Stoicism and Accepting Change: Stoic philosophy and the concept of life's transience are discussed, underscoring the importance of aligning our lives with true values and priorities.
  • Exploring Personal Motivations: The discussion encourages listeners to introspect and discover what genuinely motivates them, beyond external achievements and societal pressures.

In this episode, listeners are invited to pause and ponder the fundamental questions that drive their lives, both professionally and personally, encouraging a thoughtful exploration of what truly matters to them.

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. Today we're discussing the importance of contemplating life's bigger questions, and how reflection on these questions shapes our life work balance. From personal anecdotes to philosophical insights, we explore what truly drives and fulfils us beyond the daily grind. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian. And Brenton, since I last podcast, how's your sleep been?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, it's been good. I don't have too much trouble sleeping. As we mentioned on the podcast with Dr. Kristen Kemp, my partner sleeps a bit more than I do. She does about nine hours, I'm about six, the one thing I've been trying to do, since we've talked with Dr. Kemp, is keep up my sleep pressure. So I'm trying not to nap on the couch or sleep but other times a day. And I am finding as soon as I go to bed within about 15 minutes on off into the land of nod. So I'm enjoying it and

Ron Tomlian:

15 minutes, it's more like 15 seconds for me,

Brenton Gowland:

Well you're more advanced sensai. I'm glad about that, but I learned a bunch from that discussion.

Ron Tomlian:

And I have to say, it was fantastic. It was really good to hear that it's not that hard to get things back on track, even when you've got sleep problems.

Brenton Gowland:

And just if you are interested, I'm running a poll for our listeners, at the moment on my personal LinkedIn account and in our podcast group account about how much sleep people get on average per night. And it's really interesting, because I think there's about 20 or so people who've responded to it so far. And Dr. Kemp said that, on average, people get seven hours sleep and the column was seven hours. There's people who get this four choices. You either get less than six, six hours, seven, eight or more. And the seven hour sleep column is going wild. So she's spot on, according to LinkedIn poll results. Yes. So if you're out there, just look up my account prints and gallons and jump on the poll and add your two cents worth and love that.

Ron Tomlian:

And the truth matters. I think about it. I'm about seven, seven and a half hours. And we

Brenton Gowland:

haven't responded to the poll. No, no, no, Hannah. So what are we talking about today miss when we're talking

Ron Tomlian:

about lifework balance in general. And we're about to go into a period. But hopefully, if people have been listening, they're taking some time off for the Christmas break. And I thought it would be worthwhile suggesting that people think about the bigger picture, the bigger picture, bigger picture. When you think about life, work balance, and your priorities in life and so on, it becomes way too easy for you to become just busy all the time. I found in my life, that spending some time thinking about the bigger picture is important. Why is it important? What I found and when I talk to people, I think most people find some point in their life, probably more than once they are going to be confronted with some issues that make them think about their mortality, make them think about other people's mortality, or make them think of what's this all about? And if you haven't invested the time to really get into what does this mean for me? What's my perspective? I don't want to my values. What's important to me, what are my priorities, you're going to be blindsided by such events

Brenton Gowland:

a grade. And it's funny, you should mention that because last weekend on Sunday, I got a phone call about six o'clock as my partner and I were driving back from being away. And my mother had had a fall. So we when grabbed her dropped everything immediately took her to hospital. I spent the night and part of the next day in hospital with her. Turns out she had done a great job of breaking her wrist and hip. Now most people apparently they hit breaks and they fall. My mum was doing Pilates up against the wall doing a one legged pose as you do impressive. Yeah. And she's also got vertigo because she's got a hearing mechanism missing in one ear. So she fell and tried to break the fall with her hand and she broke her hand instead and and then broke her hip. She ended up in obviously in hospital and she's had a hip transplant.

Ron Tomlian:

That's a confronting thing. Absolutely her obviously but also for you. But

Brenton Gowland:

the reason I bring it up is I learned years ago through thinking about what's the big picture that in my life, friends and family if anyone has a health issue and near death experience, whatever you drop everything no matter what it is, work can wait, drop everything and go to the aid of that person because if they're not there, if something really bad had happened and ever forgive myself.

Ron Tomlian:

And you've got to the crux of what I've been talking about it, what gives you that capacity to say, I'm going to drop everything. It's a moral compass. It's what you think is right for you. But you need to think about those things before. So that you have the capacity, the direction, the drive, to do what you think is right at the time that those things happen, because everything happens so quickly. Usually, when there's a crisis or a disaster in your life, you don't have time to think about that. It's

Brenton Gowland:

really interesting that came from when I was younger, and I used to spend a lot of time at church, because I've mentioned to you before that, not a religious person, per se, I haven't been to church in many years. You won't talk about that. But when I did a bit longer for me, I can do that, when I did, is really interesting, because sometimes the church sermons a bit like latest pop psychology. So there's some good stuff in it. And it always struck me and they always talked about the fact that people are the most important thing. But it just embedded in me this sense that, really, at the end of the day, people are more important than the things we do like the relationships we have, how we care for those around us and that sort of thing. And so that just stuck with me, because I think it was one of those things that got embedded in me that I went yeah, this is correct. This is right. However,

Ron Tomlian:

there's plenty of research that shows exactly what you're talking about. The Harvard study into what makes for a good life with Robert waldinger as the art director of the study has been going for over a year. And that's shown that the greatest predictor of people's happiness, and I'm talking about fulfilment, happiness, all the sort of concepts, it's social connection, connection to your immediate loved ones, connection to the broader community. It's that social interaction, and relationships that make life meaningful and worthwhile. So if you're looking for life, work balance, you want to get down to the core of it, it comes to that, but thinking about that thinking about what's important to me, what are my priorities? What does this all fit? It becomes, I think, important to do that on a regular basis. And I say this from bittersweet experience. We were talking about it beforehand. I remember, I just got a job as a CEO. I just had my second child, I was working really hard. I had all sorts of things going on in my life. And unfortunately, my dad was dying, many died. And I didn't have time to grieve did not have the time I hadn't thought about it. I previously rejected religion outright. Yep. It's kind of the way to the to go nowadays for a lot of people. But unfortunately, you end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, the concepts that underpin religion. I'm not talking about the dogma, I'm talking about the concepts that underpin this, what is out there? And how do we answer the big questions of our lives, they come into religious practice. And so when you reject that, you are not regularly thinking about those bigger things. Interesting. And so I didn't grieve. And I ended up regretting that later on, because I went into a state of depression. And I didn't know why. And it suddenly came to me that in talking with my wife, who said, you haven't grieved properly, you haven't gone through the process. And it got me thinking about, well, I don't think about this sort of stuff at all, I put it to one side, as though I could put it to one side like this, I could ignore it and get on with the pressing things in my life, which actually weren't that important in comparison to thinking about my family, my father, my mother, and the effects it was having on her mother in law, my mother in law, let's not go there. Yeah, all those things. And, and so my experience, and I see it with the CEOs that I work with, I see in my relationships with other people, when that whole concept of something bigger than the everyday confronts you. And I don't really care whether people use a religious framework to think about this stuff, whether they read about philosophy, whether they meditate I find meditating and walking in nature, especially looking at the night sky. A good night's game, when you're out in the countryside, you can actually see the size, all that helps internalise this sense of there is something bigger out there, and I don't care what you call it. Well,

Brenton Gowland:

it's interesting because we spoke about the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Step programme, we were preparing for this discussion, and the whole premises, beating alcoholism and drug problems and so forth is based on looking at a higher power. Now, I have never been through that programme, but I just think it's interesting that you look to a higher power or whatever It is that you believe to actually help you overcome challenges in your life. So, you also said that we are community driven, really, because we are a social animal, and we need people in our lives. So if we spend time to consider and contemplate the bigger picture, as you're saying, whatever that is for each of us, and I think it is a bit different for each of us, I

Ron Tomlian:

think it's an individual journey. And our one of my TEC members was about Hi,

Brenton Gowland:

yeah, two people know, what about hires.

Ron Tomlian:

Now, can you explain? Well, this is the way he explained it. His religious framework believed that we all had a responsibility to contemplate all sorts of different concepts in terms of the bigger picture, and choose the ones that were the most appropriate for us. In their faith. They don't accept that there's any one path, it's the individuals path, that becomes important. And we should be open to ideas from all different religions. Yep.

Brenton Gowland:

And it's really interesting, one of my business partners is getting a bit older. And we caught up for the Christmas staff show just a little while ago with Nucleus, the agency we own. And he told me that he's now Buddhist. So it's interesting, you say that, because it's interesting to see people and this person was non religious, really non religious. And now they're 10 years on since we've become business partners, and this person has now become Buddhist. So I think that's interesting how people's journeys evolve over time. And you'll notice that, particularly people as they get a bit older, they tend to look for what you're talking about deeper meaning to things,

Ron Tomlian:

I can speak from personal experience it as you get older, your mortality confronts you, whether you want to confront it or not, the fact that you are going to die becomes something that's a little bit more real for you. In that way, it becomes easier to say, well, now we're going to put this in my life. But I think it's important for everyone to consider that I know the stoics. And their philosophy talks about the fact that death is ever present. And you're getting closer to it every day. And in fact, the days that you've already spent are indicators that it is coming closer, it's a wonderful way to think about it because we shouldn't be neglecting this because it's too depressing. It's a fact of life. Yeah. And we're talking about life work balance, one of the things we have to balance is this idea that we are going to die someday. And just

Brenton Gowland:

one of my personal opinions, I have a set of filters, where I now actively have types of people who have a moral code that doesn't align with mine. And what I mean by that is that I've seen plenty of business people just walk over other people have no care, no concern for how they treat people. And I just don't want to borrow that anymore. And that's because my moral compass says that there is a better way to do business than burning everything in your path to achieve a win. Because I think with some people, business becomes the religion business becomes the thing I live for. And I think that's not a life well lived. I agree with you. That's my personal, bigger picture. Yeah,

Ron Tomlian:

big. It's a little bit like I've told the story to people before an Australian goes to Fiji. And he he's, it's a good start. He goes on a charter and the guys running the charter loves it. And the Australian states that the guy running the boat looks and you've got a great business here. But you kind of small, why don't you think about expanding your business to be a lot of people who'd want to do what I just did. And you're great at doing this in the future and said, Okay, tell me more about that. So I said, Well, you could get two boats, and you get three boats. So you get four boats, you teach the people where the good fishing spots are, and so on. He said, Oh, yeah, that sounds fantastic. And the Australian says, and then you could have a business and you could take off and do whatever you want the Fijian gases, and that's great. The Australians too. So what would you want to do if you could have all the time in the world to do what you want to do and the features and probably take people out fishing? That's great. Yeah, we need to think about what's important to us. And business, for the sake of business is not particularly satisfying, because especially as you pointed out before, when you're burning relationships along the way to satisfy profit goals, and so on, you're burning the one thing that makes life worthwhile, which is the relationships.

Brenton Gowland:

So I guess what we're saying here today is that for a life well lived, if you want to have a good life, work balance as the series that we're running at the moment, you really need to consider things things that are other than work, and that is, what is the bigger picture what's really driving you and I know I've talked about this before, but in that book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, I think that's what the first chapter is all about. Working out. What's your driving force? What's that thing that's driving you? And

Ron Tomlian:

answering the question, what does success mean for me and it's not about the biggest profit, if not about the biggest house ruler, or the most expensive car, and so on, because all of those things do not lead to greater fulfilment or happiness. Yeah. And,

Brenton Gowland:

look, I want to stress it, the bigger picture doesn't need to be a religious thing. For some people, it is yes, I believe in God, I don't go to church anymore. That comes from when I was younger. And that's been a really influential thing in my life, particularly to set a moral compass, and to create values. But when I was talking earlier about what you said about us being a social animal, I think, as we're coming up to Christmas, my encouragement would be to invest a bit of time in yourself. And it might be reading other people's opinions on philosophy, as you often talk about, it might be reading, self help books, God forbid, you might be going on those walks you're talking about with your partner or on your own and actually talking about some deeper things. My partner has been doing this thing recently and asking me, I don't know where she found them, I'll find out these deep questions to start conversations. So he should come to me with questions about the most valuable thing that's happened in your life from this point in time? Or what's one of the most foundational things that happened to you as a young person? And I'll be like, Wow, what's your fondest childhood memory? And that would get us she just randomly throw these things into a conversation, and she'd research these questions. I think it made us really talk about things deeply.

Ron Tomlian:

I think having a genuine sense of curiosity about this should be your mantra. Yeah. Well, it is, I mean, to my way of thinking, leadership is about genuine curiosity. Yes, being interested in people and, and and trying to understand them. I'm not always great at it myself, I would say. But I do try and remind myself on that on a regular basis. And I think curiosity about the world and the universe, to my way of thinking, there's so much wonder. And one of the mechanisms for gaining a sense of the bigger picture is being grateful for all the little things. And that sense of gratitude can lead you towards a curiosity about the universe about life. There's

Brenton Gowland:

one thing or one verse in the Bible that really jumped out at me as a kid, and it stuck with me for years and years to the point that I remember it right now, is very pertinent to what we're talking about. And it goes like this, it says, it's the glory of God to conceal a thing. And it's the glory of man to search it out. And that always struck me is, you know, things are hidden for us to find. And I think in what we're talking about to really find that driving purpose, because that's where rural leaders come from, they found their purpose that found that drive and they, they live in it. And when you live in that drive, you inspire other people. And when people around you say, well, that's really inspiring. Well, I want to, I want to do that. I want to be like that. There's a reason they do that. And I think that's because people invest in themselves. And they spend that time searching out the answer to those questions that we're talking about today. What's driving you

Ron Tomlian:

for yourself? For yourself? Yeah, and you can't do it. For other people, you can only do it for yourself, you can help other people to do it for themselves. But at the end of the day, it's you're seeking the answers to those questions that makes it important.

Brenton Gowland:

So our encouragement with today's life work balance series episode is for people to do what as they come towards Christmas,

Ron Tomlian:

well spend some time over the break, thinking about the bigger picture, being curious about finding answers for themselves and to the bigger questions in life, because you will be confronted by them at some stage in your life. Better to prepare beforehand, so that you have a life well lived.

Brenton Gowland:

Fantastic. Now, just a couple of things. We've decided that we are going to keep this series going for two episodes after Christmas, because after Christmas, what are the things we need to work on run food

Ron Tomlian:

intake, because we've probably overdone it over Christmas and exercise. So

Brenton Gowland:

we're going to finish off the lifework balance series. After Christmas with we're going to try and find a nutritionist and a someone who's skilled with physical exercise. So if any of our listeners know anyone, just contact us on LinkedIn and let us know. But we will do our own little search for that. And I think in a couple of weeks time just before Christmas, we're going to do one more episode on

Ron Tomlian:

mental health but mental health in the sense of being able to check into yourself, and I've got someone that I think will be absolutely perfect. Someone who's lived through difficulties, and has what I consider to be a wonderful mechanism or thinking about your mental.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, and a very important time of year to talk about this kind of thing because a lot of mental health issues come home to roost at Christmas. Yeah, Christmas

Ron Tomlian:

can be a stressful time for there can be a wonderful time but it can also be a stressful time. So it's really worth while having this discussion just before Christmas, right?

Brenton Gowland:

And for our listeners, if you haven't already, join our LinkedIn group. It's called Business Builders podcast. So just search out that group. And we look forward to having you be part of that group and we'll see you in a couple of

Ron Tomlian:

weeks. See you in a couple of weeks is buy from me and buy from me