Work-Life Balance Is a Lie — Here's What Actually Works

Have you ever felt like one part of your life is getting all your attention while everything else slowly starts to drift? Maybe business is demanding more, your relationships are getting less, or you just have that nagging sense that something is off, even if you can't quite name it. What if balance wasn't about perfectly dividing your time between work and life, but about becoming aware of where you've drifted and making intentional adjustments before those blind spots become regrets? You're listening to Mortgage Marketing Radio. My name is Jeff Zimpfer, and I am your host. Today on the show, we're asking a bigger question. What does a truly balanced life look like, and how can you intentionally design one without chasing an impossible version of perfection? To help us answer that, I'm joined by Sean Mingus, mortgage industry leader and author of Reimagining Balance, a framework for looking beyond the traditional idea of work-life balance and evaluating the eight dimensions that shape our lives. In this episode, you'll learn three key things. First, why Sean believes work-life balance creates the wrong problem in the first place. Second, how his balance polygon can help you uncover the areas of your life where you may be drifting. And third, how small intentional actions can create greater clarity, fulfillment, and purpose over time. We'll also explore a powerful idea. Balance isn't a destination you finally reach. It's a dynamic process. And the goal isn't perfect symmetry. It's what Sean calls... imbalance aware. And be sure to check out the link in the show notes to access Sean's brand new book and get access to the workbook exercises that go along with this episode. So if you're ready to get clear about where you are, where you may have drifted, and what deserves your attention next, stick around for this episode of Mortgage Marketing Radio. So Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here, Jeff. It is good to have you here and to have this conversation all around the topic and title of your book, which is Reimagining Balance. So I'm really excited for the people listening here today because I think this is a common, consistent question that runs through all of our lives today. at any given moment or week in time. And it varies in its loudness and volume as well. So we're gonna unpack this. I've read your book. I've got the actual workbook that goes with it. We're gonna talk about that and walk through some of the exercises with people. But let me start with this question, which I think is, people are always wondering what's the real answer? Because there's a lot of people talking about balance. First of all, what is life balance in your definition? So the modern definition to me, and I'll just break it into balance. Balance is a dynamic relationship with multiple forces occurring at the same time. It's not static. So the cool thing about balance, it can be a noun and it can be a verb. That's a cool thing about balance. That's why it is the right word. Right. And I'll talk more about that, that in this context, I want listeners to think about balance as a verb. It's an action. It's an intention. It's never a destination. And it's never about perfection. I remove the word work life. And I'll talk about why that is creates a dilemma. And I just call it life balance because that's ultimately what we're talking about. So how do you respond to, I know in your book, you mentioned that there are a lot of leaders out there that talk about integration, right? Work-life integration. How would you respond to that? Yeah, that's a great topic because it's whether it's harmony. I've heard work-life harmony, work-life integration, work-life cohesion. Those are all end states. Those are all a result of balance. And the way I would define that, I looked at nature. looking at something called systems science. And systems science looks at like the Amazon rainforest has been around 55 million years. And there's a reason why. And it's one word. And guess what it is? Is it balance? It's balance. Balance is the governing principle behind sustainability because it creates stability and it's about relationship. Harmony integration is the outcome. Harmony and integration are very similar. And that is the outcome of balance. But balance is the governing principle behind sustainability and stability. And it's never about equal force. This idea of work life came about in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1970s, apparently there was a burnout culture. Some psychologists wrote a book and then organizational psychologists and HR experts came up with this idea. Hey, we're going to prevent burnout by helping people with work life balance. And it creates a false dilemma because it, in essence, gives us two options. And so a lot of the thought leaders are trying to replace the word harmony or balance with harmony or integration or cohesion. But it's the work-life that is the dilemma because it creates a dualistic fallacy. It also, work-life is a linear way of thinking. And linear thinking distorts reality because it simplifies life, which is way more complicated than just work and life. I think you would agree we are more than just work and life. That's just far too general. And when you think about linear conversations or dualistic fallacies, it basically makes you have to choose one or the other. And that's why people always feel like they're failing at it. I've talked to over 20 years, you know, thousands of people about this. Universally, no matter how successful they are, they're volunteering in life. They have great families. They still say, I'm not very good at work-life balance because it puts them in a position of a no-win position. So my mission is to be the firebrand for reimagining balance. It's not just, you know, how do we do it? It's we have to reimagine the whole concept and rebuild it from the ground up. And that is balance is the right word. Remove the whole, you know, from every HR manual, everything, anytime you ever say it, remove the concept of work and life because that is too simplistic. Okay, so you mentioned that harmony is the outcome. The Amazon River has survived for 55 plus million years because of it being in balance. So can we actually be in balance for a duration period of time? Or are we always going in and out? It, it, it's, it's a constant state flux because we go through different phases of life, you know, whether we're going through health issues, marriage issues, job issues, um, coming out of college, coming out of the military, going through a divorce, um, starting a new job, losing your job, like all of these things, you know, Later in life and, you know, being displaced from work and now like going through these transitions in life and these opportunities where you either want to transition and grow from this, you know, this is the time you ask these questions. And so balance is the right word. It's the work life part that creates the dilemma because so look at this example. So when you look at a linear conversation, work and life, so the answer is, you know, like, think about working out. Here's a great example. Linear thinking basically leads us to believe that more is better, which we know that's not the case, like working out. So you start working out, you're working out 30 minutes, four times a week. And then a couple weeks later, you work out an hour, you think more is better. And then a month later, you're feeling good, so you work out 90 minutes. And then eventually, you're working out for two hours. Well, somebody who's been an avid fitness geek for 20-plus years More is not better. And so that creates a situation where you think, well, an hour is great, then two hours is better. And it's not. And it's the same way with work. Like I'm working 40 hours, I'm successful, so now I'm going to work 50. Now I'm going to work 60. Now I'm going to work 70. And at some point, you leave what are called blind spots or you drift away from the other areas of our life. And there are actually eight dimensions that I've identified, not just two. It's not just work and life. There's eight dimensions, which we can talk about. So I don't know if that helps, but that's my view and what I've observed in my 20 years of teaching this today. topic. Okay. How do we know when we're out of balance? Sometimes we don't. Yeah, sometimes we don't. Okay. It's a feeling, right? Isn't it like, I don't know how to describe it, discontent, or you've got that silent voice that's telling you something about this area of your life that needs attention? Yeah. So actually, the first step towards, and we're never perfectly balanced, but it is operating with, think about like what you just drew, your polygon. You want to operate comfortable. You don't want to be too extreme or you don't want to be too narrow in certain areas. And that's where you start to feel it, whether it's in your marriage. But as human beings, we tend to drift subconsciously. We don't even realize we're drifting. I don't think we wake up one day and just say, I'm going to give up on the life that I was meant to become or the person I was meant to become. It happens. One distraction. one compromise, one season of suffering, and then soon enough we ask, how did I get here? And then we realize when it's too late, and that leads to a life of regret. Interesting. So is it, I've seen a visual before, and I'll hold it up so you can see it. This was a visual I had seen some time ago, a representation of this journey of the, you know, the kind of the constant back and forth, if you will, of balance, equilibrium, or whatever. So you see this on the right in the middle is that line is balance. And then there is our life, right? We're going in and out, in and out, in and out, crossing that center line of balance. Do you think that's a good representation of that, of what you're trying to get across? I don't. And respectfully, the word equilibrium, my research that balance was associated with the word equilibrium in like the 18th or 15th century, where scientifically there, the definition scientifically is balance is where things are equal. That was never the original intention of balance. And that's why I'm asking people to redefine balance. And what the original intent was, it was about relationship. It's the relationship with those seasons of life where we're going like this. And it's never about trying to master it or perfect it. Balance comes from awareness, not grit. Balance comes from awareness. Awareness is the first step. And for us to be aware, we have to have a feedback system. That's what the framework that I teach in the book, it gave you a visual. You can look at your life. So if I said, Jeff, draw me a picture of your life before you read my book and did the workbook. I was talking to my wife about this last night. You know, if somebody said, draw a picture of your life, I would draw stick figures of my wife, our kids, my granddaughter, our dogs in front of our house. That would be a horrible drawing because I can't draw. But that would be like a drawing of my life. The alternative to that is what you drew, which is something different. really complicated. Our lives are complex. Maybe not, we make them complicated, but our lives are complex. And it makes it really simple. You can see visually. That's why when I did this back in 2004 for the first time, it was a similar framework. I've morphed it over 20 years. When I saw my life as a visual depiction, an object, I immediately knew where my blind spots were and where I drifted and what I needed to do. Yes. Yeah, we'll talk about this, the polygon workbook and the balance kind of diagram that you use. A couple more words about balance. This just comes from your book here. You say we aim for a life of aware imbalance, not artificial symmetry. Can you explain? Yeah, when I wrote that I got goosebumps. It was like a sign of maturity. Being aware of our imbalances is a sign of maturity. It means we're actually asking really important questions. You know, we spend more time planning vacations and, you know, trip that you just went on. Unfortunately, as human beings, we spend more time like seeking joy or spend more time. How how can we progress in our career, close more loans, get more realtors on board? And we don't ask ourselves really, really important questions. And so the framework that I provide in the book that, again, I've built over 20 years is asking ourselves really, really important questions that we don't ask ourselves very often. Where am I struggling in my romance? Yeah. Where am I struggling with my finances? Like asking, and maybe as mortgage people, we probably ask that question more often because we're, you know, we're kind of nerd out on mortgage stuff. But other areas of fun, like, or how about spirituality? That was something I struggled with for 20 years. I did not ask the right questions. Eventually got there, Jeff. So the good news, I got there. But, you know, asking ourselves these really tough questions. Where are we struggling and why? Does it start there with identifying those areas of your life, that question? Where do we struggle and why? Yeah. The framework that I teach it does, it's really, and it's not just, this is where I really invite people to be in a place where, because I've done martial arts in my life, to be in a place that's quiet with no distractions, put your cell phone away, shut your door, take two deep breaths and ask yourself, where am I struggling in my life, specifically in each category, each of the eight dimensions, and my suggestion is to go with your gut and not what your mind tells you. Because one of the things I learned through some coaching, an organization called Warrior Week, where we did a lot of emotional coaching that we lie to ourselves. The second you answer that question and it goes to your head, you're going to justify, well, I want to be, I want to say what's right. I don't want to say what's reality. So when we go with our gut, oftentimes that emotional response from our gut is where we need to go. That's where we need to go deeper. Those are the blind spots. So that's the whole intent of this is uncovering where we've drifted to a point that we don't even realize we've drifted. Interesting. So why is this so important, do you think? And why now the book for you? So have you heard of Viktor Frankl? He's a man's search for meaning. Correct. One of the top 10 most influential books in America, according to the Library of Congress. We all have a deep desire, a deep drive to find meaning in our life and to see it fulfilled. We're hardwired to find meaning. And I think the same thing is with purpose. So meaning is what it means to us inside and purpose is how we how we live it outside by helping other people and being of service, being a good human being, making this planet better than what we left it. Ultimately, this is so important because people that are off balance. So you know what a BOSU ball is? You ever seen a BOSU ball in the gym? I certainly do. So when I was training for a world championship in martial arts back in 2020 and 21, I started training on the BOSU and I got to a point when I first started, when I stood on that thing, I was so wobbly and so embarrassed in the gym. I was thinking people were actually during COVID. So this started in 2019 before COVID because then I got one from my home dojo, my gym at home. But when you stand on that thing, what you realize when you're not used to it, your vision is so blurry because you're so off balance. So the reason why balance is so important, and it's not perfecting balance, it's being aware of where we're in balance. It's an awareness, and then it's little micro movements that we make in our life and in our body. And then we get to a point where we can trust being on that BOSU ball. And when we trust, that's the moment our vision opens up. And vision, clarity and vision, Jeff, is the path to finding, to really, it allows our purpose to come into focus. And when we act on that purpose consistently, we live a fulfilling and rich life. And that's what everybody wants. According to Victor Frank, we're all hardwired to want to have meaning in life and want to live a life that's fulfilling and has, you know, like, why are we here? Like, what's my purpose in life? Who am I becoming? These are questions everybody asks themselves. That's what we're doing. We're not doing balance just for the sake of balance. We're doing balance so that we have a clear vision and we can see it out and then our purpose comes into focus and then we can live a rich and fulfilling life. Wow. There's a lot in there, man. Um, we need to unpack a couple of these. Yeah. Right. We need to break this down. Uh, first of all, you said something that I wrote down, which I think was a great kind of visualization, a metaphor. Um, the BOSU ball, right? And how you balance on the BOSU ball is by making micro-movements, micro-changes in where your balance goes, where your attention goes. I think that's relevant to what we're talking about, and I think that'll be relevant when we get into the polygon exercise as well, because I think that reveals those areas. It might be a macro move or it might be a micro, but we're always, would you agree that in all the areas of life which we'll see on the polygon, we're always, it's like the radio dials, we're always trying to tune into the signal? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I so I use martial arts as a metaphor for this. And part of my training, there was a form that I had to do where I had to do a full power sidekick and retract it and then hold it out for two seconds and then other side and hold it. And when I'm holding that sidekick to two seconds doesn't sound like a long time. But at my age, when you're holding the sidekick at your chin level, it looks like you're locked in. You're really not locked. And there's all these movements between where my hands are and my eyes and my knees and my, even my big toe is digging into the ground. My glutes, everything is, is moving in and you might not even be able to see it, but from a distance, but trust me, the body's moving. Life is the same way. That's why you, that curve that you like, there's. Dynamic, you know, relationship issues, money issues, health issues, spirituality, you know, fun. We're constantly going through this maze of life and we're making, you know, the goal is to make little movements, kind of like the atomic habit, you know, concept, making little movements each day versus making big grandiose movements to try to change your life with one fell swoop. It's about little micro movements that add up over time. Agreed. Another thing you mentioned a moment ago was purpose, and I think that's something, you know, people are always like, well, what purpose? How do I find? How do I know? What does purpose really mean? Do I even have a purpose? I mean, I just do loans, you know, and people have been in it for a long time, get a little bit jaded and maybe lose that connection to purpose. So I want to, if you're okay with it, from page 13, read your definition of purpose, and then let's jam on that for a couple of minutes, and then we'll get into the polygon and do these exercises. So your definition of purpose, as I read it from your book, is it's a clear, compelling vision of your best self. So vivid, it fuels your courage, sharpens your energy, and pushes you to take the kind of transformative action that unlocks your full potential. Yeah. When I read that, to me, what I liked about that was it seemed to be concrete and something that I actually can control versus purpose being like divinely inspired or God has a purpose and things like that, which, and to me, that those statements of, you know, we're all born or, you know, have some big overarching purpose. That just seems really heavy to me and really like hard to navigate. And that's why I liked your definition of purpose. So maybe talk about that, especially in the context of our audience, which is loan officers. Yeah, I appreciate you reading that. I've actually memorized that because it's really how purpose feels. So I also want to go back a couple of things because we all say, like, how do I find my purpose in life? And I've come to not only studying Viktor Frankl, because Viktor Frankl talked about meaning as it's interesting. What's fascinating about his research is when he talked about meaning, he talked about finding meaning almost as seeing it. And that it was something that was really significant in our lives that suddenly we became aware of and it came into our vision. It wasn't something that we necessarily sought out, but we created the right conditions. We created the right life that allowed purpose to come into focus. And I'm actually working on my keynote for a couple of events this fall. And that is really the message is that we're not going to find our purpose. We have to create the right life where purpose comes into focus and it's going to change throughout life. I mean, I talk about in my book, a CrossFit competition I did to help a veteran friend of mine who was above the knee amputee and he was helping veterans deal with PTSD. My purpose for 60 days was to learn how to do the snatch. And that's a very, you know, explosive Olympic move that I've never done before. And I had to learn to do that to get in this CrossFit competition. And I did that. I learned how to do it. I did it well. It takes a year to actually learn how to do a snatch the right way. If you talk to Olympic lifters, they don't even lift weight. They lift a bar. The point is that was a purpose in my life for 60 days. I have, you know, and then I talk about a couple of other purposes. I'd started a financial net services, which was a mortgage service provider back in 1999 before anything ever existed for mortgage people on the Internet. That was a purpose, but it was more selfish. It was more about me making $20 million that I was so focused on that. And there's another story. I talk about purpose where I was helping a friend of mine who deployed to Afghanistan You know, purpose, it really, it was a time of life that I had allowed purpose to come into focus. And even though we all kind of want it, we have to create the right life where we have the vision to see it. We have the clarity in our life where parts of our lives are not competing with each other. That, you know, whether it's ourself or relationships or friendships, we have to create the right life where then purpose comes into focus. I know it's a heavy subject, but think about what's at stake here. And it's, you know, there, I do believe in a divine purpose, but that's, you know, that's something I think that unfolds in multiple iterations through our life and multiple opportunities. So I agree with you. It's not one overarching purpose that we got to find it and live it our whole life. I mean, maybe somebody, I mean, even think about like an Olympic athlete. Their purpose maybe is to get a gold medal so that they can take care of their family. And then they might have a purpose after that. Maybe it's becoming, you know, a proponent of the sport and helping youth get in, you know. Purpose can change throughout life, but we have to have the right conditions like on that BOSU ball so that we have the vision. Because when our lives are out of balance, the antithesis of that is we are living in survival mode. All we're worried about is just getting through the day, paying the bills, filling the car up with gas. So we're out of balance, whether it's financially or whether it's we're working too many hours or, you know, you name it. We're letting ourselves get out of shape. Those types of conditions, we're not going to see our purpose when we're living in survival mode. Those are my observations. Interesting. Okay. So do you think then by going through, first of all, reading your book, right? And then secondly, going through the workbook of the balance exercise, this will help clarify somebody's purpose? Balance leads to clarity. I do believe clarity is really important because where clarity plays in is you start to see the different sides of your life and they start working together, even though they're not equal. Look, and I'll say this. There's a time right now in my life for the last year, I've been working seven days a week, but I've done it intentionally. Between starting at the company I work for now and writing this book and then kicking off the speaking business, Saturdays and Sundays are my time to work on my PowerPoints. And I was editing a book and that's that, you know, and then publishing it and now marketing it. And like, but I'm doing it with an awareness. My wife is in support of it. My kids, my friends, my boss, like everybody, I'd created the right conditions that I can do that. So I want to be clear that life balance doesn't mean that we're working 30 hours a week. I think there's a culture where people think, I want work life balance, and I'm going to use that word because it's out there. Like, I don't want to work more than 30 hours a week. I want eight weeks of a day. I'm like, look, I heard this said by a CEO. I won't name who it was. He said, I don't know a 22-year-old that's successful that has a good social life. Like that's the time of life where you have to go all in when you start your first job and really prove yourself. You might be working 70 hour weeks, but you're doing it intentionally. So, so balance. And so balance when, when you realize you get those, all those sides of life that are working together, even if you're working 70 hour weeks, now you can't do that forever. I'm not suggesting that, but you do it for a time that gets you to a point where you can be successful. And as long as the other sides of life are working towards that same goal, your marriage, your spirituality, your friends, your family, then that creates trust and that leads to clarity. So that's where vision comes from. So real quick then, you mentioned your wife's on board with your workings, weekends, etc. And I know there are people listening, myself as well. Maybe help the listener who is going to take on more to move things forward in their life. Let's say it's work related. Let's say, okay, you're in a season in your business where you really need to put a lot of attention on that. I've seen the mistake I've made myself for sure back in the early days of my marriage where I just went and worked. I just went and locked myself away. And oops, forgot to tell the wife like, hey, by the way, I'm working on this very important project. How would you coach somebody on integrating that, I'll use that word, or looping in the other important parts of their life so that those don't become so out of balance because of the lack of communication. Yeah, severe imbalance. So, you know, it's like the basics. It's about communication. So I started a year and a half ago, I went through some coaching and they're like, just write your wife a little love note every morning and put it on somewhere where she sees it. So for a year and a half every morning, she woke up And I wrote a little love note or, hey, thanks for making dinner last night or thanks for taking care of the dogs while I was traveling. And that over time, you know, I'm putting money in that bank, that emotional bank account. And so when I said, hey, honey, I'm going to be working seven days a week for the next year because this book is really important. She's like, let's go. She's pushing me now. She's my biggest fan. So communication, I think another thing too, that a strategy or a tactic I would say is have a weekly family meeting. On Sunday, get together, like look at your calendars. That's where I'd get in trouble is if I didn't like, hey honey, by the way, I'm going to Dallas on Wednesday. And she's like, what? You didn't tell me. I mean, we got dogs. She has a part-time job. She does outside of the house to keep her active. Like coordinating, like communication, communication. You can be working 70 hours a week at work and traveling, but if you are depositing great things into her emotional or his emotional bank account, it doesn't take a lot of time. But it takes intention. It takes awareness. And I'm not perfect at it. I've failed more times than I want to admit in relationships, but that goes a long ways. Having a family meeting once a week, coordinating schedules. being intentional about your travel schedule and your work and then the why behind it. You know, I see a lot of people, spouses over the years, they'll go home and complain to their spouses about how much the mortgage industry sucks, you know, not to be accrued here. And it's like, well, what do you think your spouse is going to think when all you tell them is the negative? They're going to make, you need to get out of the business. This business is horrible for you. And I'm not suggesting because I'm very transparent with my wife, but I talk about the good things, not just all the bad things. So all you tell your spouse is the bad things about working. They're making me work so much and it's so stressful. I hate my job. You know, of course, your spouse is not going to be on board with that. And then there's going to be a dissonance. So those are some basic things that it doesn't take a lot of time, but it takes intentionality. Yeah, that's the key word, intentionality. And loop people in with your plan. Don't leave people in the dark, you know, having them guess why you're not spending time with them anymore. I've been there. I've done that. Oh, for sure. Me as well. All right, let's transition then back to the book and the balance polygon workbook. First of all, let's unpack polygon because it's been a while for a lot of people since they took geometry. Right. So why a polygon to identify and get, you know, to identify the balance areas of your life? I apologize in advance. Chapter seven is a, is a, is a refresher on, on geometry. And I guarantee none of your listeners woke up this morning thinking they were going to get a lesson on geometry in 10th grade. I almost failed it, Jeff. I hated it. I almost failed. I don't know how I passed it. I think my, my, my teacher was my, my wrestling coach. And I think he was kind to me on the final exam. That's the only reason why I passed it. So I, Look back on it now. Geometry has been around 5000 years. Geometry is used to design the most beautiful structures, bridges, buildings, architecture. It's it's intentional to design beautiful things. And when I started thinking about like there's other balanced frameworks out there and most of them use a circle. And a circle implies that we should have a perfect circle. The polygon is different. It has an infinite variety of them. It's a two-dimensional object, closed shape, two-dimensional, closed shape with three sides or more. Triangle, square, octagon, polygon, or octagon and pentagon. Those are just examples. There's many more. You can have an infinite amount of sides. But my polygon is eight-sided. And I don't call it an octagon because that name is kind of over, it's overused in like, you know, the UFC fighting. Plus book number two is not going to have eight sides. Book two is going to be about purpose. That's going to go down the road and that's going to have less than, so that's still going to be a polygon. But a polygon gives us a visual, using geometry and math, you will design a beautiful life, just like the Egyptians designed the pyramids using geometry. You know, it's been around, again, 5,000 years and it's, it's this way of, of designing a life. Cause that's, so first we have to have awareness and then we need a feedback system. And the feedback system is this visual representation of your life. What you just looked at right now is you're looking at that workbook. That's your life right now. And if you were radically honest with yourself, that is exactly who you are today. That's how you show up, Jeff. Yeah. Well, that, that can, I don't know. Sometimes you're like, oh, really? Yeah. I guess this big mirror of like, oh, this is areas of my life that need attention that I've been ignoring for some time. Yeah, so I did a keynote last year and I had surveys that came back. 250 surveys came back. Great, you know, great feedback. But two people said, thanks for reminding me how much my life is bad. Not to say a word. It's interesting how that comes up. Yeah. That makes me sad because you're not a victim. Like now you have the truth. And with that truth, she'll set you free. You have the truth. Like, again, you just identified your blind spots. You've asked me earlier, how do you know when you're drifting? You know when you're drifting when you have a feedback system that tells you you're drifting. Otherwise, the end result, Jeff, is you ignore it. You ignore that pain today. And on our deathbed, we're going to be laying there. And we're going to regret and regrets a killer. This, this is a regret killer. Regret is a killer, but this is a regret killer. That's why it's so important. Face the pain today, but also take it in the context that you're human. Like nobody in the goal is not to have a perfect, perfectly shaped polygon. No, it doesn't exist. All right, so let's do this. Walk people through, for those that are listening, and once again, there's a link in the show notes to get the book and to get the workbook that goes with the book, but you have to read the book in order to actually use the workbook, I will say that. So what are the eight areas then of the Polygon? So first starts with spirituality and that's a belief in something bigger than ourselves. And I don't define it in terms of religion because religion is, you know, it can be manmade and that can be messy. It's really a belief in something so divine in nature that it can harness the infinite, you know, whether it's mother earth or it's the, the Tao, or, I mean, I studied Taoism for five years. Um, uh, you know what, you know, whether you're, um, Muslim or Christian or Jewish, like, you know, it's not religion based. It's more of a belief in something bigger than yourself that is kind of in control of the universe, that there's some power. And so there's a lot of talk about that too. When I did some studies on this, that we're never going to feel fully balanced without spirituality. However you want to define spirituality, it's needed because it gives us a sense of how we fit into the universe. That's it. And without that, we're always going to feel like something's missing, even if it's the quantum or call it the universe, something bigger than yourself that gives you a sense of how you fit into the universe. We are as humans. We need that. Agreed. That's number one. OK, let's just go through them and then we'll we'll go deeper. All right. So, okay. The next one is self, which I define that as our physical, psychological, and emotional being gives us agency in the world. Third is romance. Now romance is love, but it's a different kind of, you've been married, you know what romance is and it's not romance novel. It's not this idea. It's, you know, it's, it's this feeling of being swept off your feet. And I tell a story when I dated my wife in college and, you know, the reason why it's important is sometimes romance can pull us off balance because I remember when I was dating her in college, I stopped going to class. I just want to hang out with her all the time. I was way off balance. My grades suffered the first semester we dated. So romance is very powerful. That's number three. Number four is friends and family. And I put those together because some people don't have family. Their family are their friends. And so to me, it's your mom, your dad, your brother, sister, your kids, your best friends that would be at your funeral, that would be at your bedside. So the video of you coming out after your last chemotherapy was a chemo. You got all your friends. Those are your true friends. Yeah, same radiation, but same thing. Yeah. Yeah, my bad. But those are your friends and that's your family. It doesn't have to be blood to be family. So I put that together. Very, very important. And that too can pull us off balance. You know, I've got aging parents. My sister is way out of balance. She's taking care of my father right now. He's 91 years old. Very powerful. So friends and family is something that sometimes they feed us and sometimes they take, you know. Right. where we're giving and taking, but super important. Most people would say, many people I've talked to over the years would say that's the most important thing in their life is their family and friends. Next up is fun. And however you define fun, some fun can be healthy. Some can be unhealthy. I like margaritas. That's not necessarily healthy, but that's fun for me to sit on a beach and, you know, have ceviche and guacamole and drink margaritas in Mexico. That's like my funnest place. You love the mountains. You know, hiking the mountains, that's super healthy, climbing up and down mountains. It could be playing cards. It could be watching sports. You know, it's something that Catherine Price, she's got a great book out there on fun. It's a state of flow that you lose track of time. And it's usually in connection with nature or other people or something like playing the guitar. I've got a friend. He said, I can sit down and all of a sudden three hours goes by and I've played my guitar. I've lost total track of time. That's his fun. Different for everybody. Right. But important torque balance. As you just said, coming back from vacation, it helped fill your, recharge your batteries. Yes. The next one is, again, this is what most people think is, and I call it profession, not work. Our profession is something that requires a great deal of skill and time and effort to master it. It's not our job. I mean, we all have jobs, but what is your profession? Like, for example, I'm a mortgage guy. I've been in mortgage. I did mortgages, originated for 20 years in the last 16 years or 13 years I've been in leadership. So yeah, mortgage is my product, but my profession is developing leaders to become collaborative and to become live balanced lives and to be a servant leader. That's my profession. My job is being a manager and managing the P&L and making sure price exceptions and making sure loans that need exceptions. And that's my job. But my profession is something that is much more elevated than that. And so even somebody flipping burgers, their profession could be the way they approach that job of flipping burgers. It could be, you know, being helpful and being a servant to other people. And it's the mindset they bring into it. So that's profession. Right. Okay. Then we move with finances because we have to have a job to make money. We have to have a profession to make money. And finances, I talk about that, you know, 33 years in mortgage. I talk about debt to income and, you know, having a budget. I've had a budget. I was in the core back in 2004 and I've done a budget every month since 2004 and I have them in my basement. I can prove it. I do them every month. Now it's on an Excel spreadsheet, but, you know, we have to live within our means. If we don't do that and we're worried about paying the bills, we're going to be out of balance. If we're, you know, extending our income, whether it's through debts or, you know, whatever, like we're going to be out of balance severely, severe imbalance. And then the last one is something I added in the last couple of years, and that's innovation. And I want listeners to think about innovation as it's innovating your physical and digital environment to be conducive to the life that you want to live and the person you want to become. So innovation could be like, for example, in my office, when COVID first hit, I was down in the basement. I was like, I'm going to go to the gym. staring at a wall with a little desk and a bad chair that made my hamstring all tight all day long, staring at a wall. And I'm like, after two months, when I realized we weren't going back to the office, I took a bedroom upstairs. I've got a beautiful view of my outdoor. I've got a standup desk. I've got multiple monitors. I've innovated my work environment to be more conducive. I can do webinars and talk to thousands of people from here. Um, that's, that's an example of innovation. It's, it's, you know, everybody says I'm a life learner, but it truly innovation is the mindset that we can always learn something and make it better. And it gives us value in life. People that innovate are respected and trusted because they're bringing something new to the table. So hugely important, hugely important dimension of life. Okay, that's awesome. Thank you for the walkthrough. There's a lot of content in there. So that's one I wanted to identify the different categories of the polygon that make up your kind of life balance. And then next, so what I'm referencing here, just so everybody listening or even watching this knows, is the workbook and the worksheet that goes along with this. So if you read the book, Sean's going to walk you through this, but it's important for you to go through and carve out some time to sit down quietly and score yourself in these various areas. Because the next step here, Sean, if you want to briefly unpack the emotional scale and the scoring kind of mechanism that you have attached with this, what's the purpose of scoring as it relates to the Polygon? Well, the way I was taught, they'd ask you a question, like on a scale of one to 10, how satisfied are you with yourself? Very vague. And, you know, you could be all over the board. I put an emotional, you know, eight, I think it was eight or nine different emotional words next to, and then a number score value to it. It's how do you feel about that side of life? Are you angry? Are you angry? Are you neutral? Are you joyful? Do you have optimism or are you depressed? Do you have anxiety? And then you could put a number next to it because our emotions, I think you'd agree, you know, emotional intelligence is hugely important. And oftentimes we don't ask ourselves these questions. So that is unique to my framework. That is something that I had a breakthrough on the beaches of Mexico a year and a half ago. And I was going through this training with Warrior Week and every morning we had to wake up and do a self-evaluation on our emotion. I did 300 of these they call stacking. You know, if somebody ever cut you off, you're driving down the highway and somebody cuts you off and you're like, oh, that jerk, you know, he doesn't care about me. He's only cared. He's a selfish person. And they had us going through this questionnaire read. I'd ask myself, well, do I really know that for sure? Well, yeah, he's a jerk. You know, he cut me off, didn't show me any respect. They're like, do you know that for 100% sure that that person purposely cut you off? Like, no. Okay, what would be four alternatives? And we had to come up with four alternatives. And when you start viewing life from a lens of like, okay, maybe this could have happened. Maybe, you know, maybe he had to get to the bathroom or maybe his wife was going through labor. You know, you come up and you're like, okay, I guess he's not such a bad guy after all. And I was just feeding into my emotion. So getting to the bottom of our emotions is hugely important. And that's something very unique to my framework. that, you know, most guys don't talk about that. They don't talk about their emotions, but we are emotional beings. Hugely important that we understand, you know, what's the emotional framework, but more importantly, what's the story behind it? Okay. So do you want to unpack the exercise a little bit? So, so somebody can kind of visualize when they've got this workbook printed out and they've got the polygon, what's the process they're going to go through here? Yeah, so the beginning of the book is really just setting their mindset up to being honest with themselves, that if you're going to go through the process and you're going to put answers down that you think the teacher wants to hear or what you think you should say, you might as well skip it. That radical honesty, so that's really two-thirds of the book is about preparing a mindset. And then you sit down, you go through in a quiet place, you go through and really evaluate those eight areas and where you're struggling. And we start with struggle not to beat ourselves up, but to give us a baseline in hopes of finding our blind spots, finding where we drifted. And again, I recommend go with your gut. So when I ask myself, where am I struggling with my friends and family? I want to clear my mind. And believe it or not, if you just go with your gut and you start writing things down, I've been doing this 4,000 people, 4,300 now I've taken this exercise through. And if you're being honest with yourself and you're using your gut and really, you know, not trying to overanalyze it in your head, you'll start uncovering blind spots. So then that's the first step. And then it's, so after you look at your struggles, then you evaluate each area. Like, how do I feel about my spirituality? And there's a chart that gives you, you know, some guidance on that. And then the next one is how urgent is that side of my life, that dimension of my life? Like, you know, if you're going through, you know, a major illness, then self is going to be the most urgent thing. I mean, if you're going through a divorce, then romance is going to be the most important thing. If you just got laid off from your job, then profession is going to be the most important thing. And then there are other areas of your life that are either on autopilot or they're on a good glide path. And that can be less urgent. And the whole idea is to help people identify your top two or three areas that need your attention now. And what ends up happening, Jeff, is then there's what I call a glow effect in the book. that let's say for self, you like start eating better, sleeping better and working out. How is that going to affect you in the other dimensions of your life? Yeah, it's positively going to have a positive impact. At work, you're going to show up. You're going to show up in your marriage better. Like that's just one example. Or maybe you start focusing on work And now yourself, you have a better self-worth and now you're going to feel better when you're talking to your spouse, your finances improve. And so that's why it's so important to be honest with yourself and then identify what needs help now, what needs your attention now. And, and so that, and then you score that and then you take those scores and you draw your polygon. Right. Yeah, which I've done, and it's an awesome exercise in awareness, and I will stress for people, I really want you to take this seriously. If you're listening, get the book, get the workbook, and spend time looking at the definitions of the emotion or feeling, because what you're gonna do is you're gonna score those out on the polygon. I call it a graph, if you will. It's got the scores right from one to 20, and so what you'll get out of that is, to your point earlier when we were talking about a polygon, you're gonna get some kind of a weird shape, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's never perfect. And so, you know, in fact, I had someone ask the other day, isn't the goal to make it look like a stop sign so it's perfect? You know, because right now mine looks like somebody ran my stop sign over and it's all destroyed. I'm like, no, that's the whole point of using a polygon. You never want. And that's called a regular polygon. Let me ask you, Jeff, do you want to be a regular guy? No, no. So we don't want to be it's called a regular back to the, you know, the geometry class. There's a regular and irregular polygon. An irregular polygon means your points are a little off, you know, and that they're not too off. There's convex and concave. I can get really deep on this and totally lose our listeners. But the bottom line, though, is is you want your polygon. You want to focus on the areas where you're most, you know. where you have the most extreme differences. And so that's the whole goal of that. But it's never intended to create a regular polygon, which I call an NPC character. Any of your kids play video games, you don't have an NPC. Oh, yeah. I'm not derogatory. I call it a nonproductive citizen. And that is somebody who has a perfect polygon, a regular polygon to me, they're not striving in life. They're not pushing any. They're just, they're living a scripted life. They're living life safe. And you and I don't live safe. Like we're old and... Exactly. And so we don't ever want to. That's why my definition of balance is never about perfection. It's about awareness and action and trust. Well, I think that's a huge benefit for me personally, having gone through this. It's a huge awareness exercise because, you know, we've got these feelings and various levels of discontent and these categories that you've mapped out for us. But sometimes we're left with just that recurring feeling, right? And we're like, we never do anything about it. And so what I think has been useful for this exercise is it actually gives you a lot of very clarity. There's the word. and you get to attach a number with a feeling, because everything is, you know, life is all about feelings, and so now you can associate, okay, so here's why in my finances I feel this way, or in my innovation, I don't feel like I'm evolving or growing in my business, right, so I think this is very, very relevant as a self-awareness exercise for people to go through. And then the next phase is exercise five, where will I be? Walk the listener through what's the intent and outcome for exercise five. Yeah, if you stop there, then you're going to, it's kind of like, you know, it's entertainment at that point. You haven't really done anything. So what are you going to do with that information? And I would suggest finding one to two daily actions, habits, or intentions in the areas that you're suffering the most, where you have the most severe imbalance. And maybe one in all areas, but you're identifying one to two daily intentions, actions, or goals or targets or habits that you create that will move you from being severely imbalanced to more of a convex polygon where all points are like, they're close, but they're not concave where you have one side that's like this. So if you have a side like that, that means you need to do something about it. And if you don't, you're going to have a life of regret. That's what we're talking about here. So, you know, I'm not here to sell a book just to like sell a book. I'm here to transform people's lives and it's transformed my life. And that doesn't mean I haven't had a mess in my life. But I have a foundation that I come back to every time that then I rebuild. And so writing goals down and then – and I have a tracker. I could show you. It's an Excel spreadsheet. The eight dimensions of my life, I have a tracker. And I have at least one target or goal in each one of those trackers in my romance, my romance. You know, it's date night and doing some exploration in myself. I, you know, I've got the gym down, but it's like drinking water in my recruiting. I have talk twos because that's my profession. I've talked to is I have hires. I have targets that I hit in an innovation, you know, launching my book this quarter, getting my keynote done, like every area of every area of those dimensions. I track those because tracking it, then I can see where I'm headed. That it gives it's like lead tracking and mortgage. If your leads show you where your income is headed, and when I track my goals and my targets in those eight dimensions, I can see where my life is headed. And right now, it's headed in a good direction. I'm healthy. My marriage is great. I've got a great job. I've got a great profession. You know, our finances, we've done the right things. We didn't, you know, all those things that I've intentionally done that I can start feeling like. And now I'm living out my purpose. I'm living out this purpose of sharing this book with people and then going on stages in front of people and inspiring them to transform their lives. I mean, I even said this bold statement. If everybody in the world was more balanced, I think people would be a lot nicer to each other. We were better human beings. Like people are kind of jerks to each other because they're in a hurry. They're only thinking about themselves because they're spinning in circles. They're out of balance. They have no vision for the future. And they don't even realize they're being complete jerks to people, like cutting people off and, you know, at the airport and, you know, like jumping in front of the line because they're only thinking about themselves. Like, there's a huge benefit. The more people that identify this and put this to work, there's a benefit to all of it. Well, absolutely, because then the ultimate outcome of that is you're more fulfilled, happier, so you're less triggered and reactive, right, going through life. And you're less, yeah, moved off your center of gravity, if you will, because you have an understanding of your world and how you navigate through it, if that makes sense. I was just watching a Tony Robbins video about two hours ago, and he said, nobody triggers you, you trigger yourself. True. And that's emotional truth. So our emotional truths, what was that quote here? Our emotional truths, I gotta think about this, sheds light on our blind spots. That's what I was trying to, so our emotional truth sheds a light on our blind spot. Yeah, yeah. And yeah. Why are you so triggered, man? That's the question. You don't even know why. Right, but go through this exercise and it'll help you get clarity. So how often should people revisit the workbook and the exercise? Well, if you want your life to be moving in a direction that you want to become the person you were meant to become, then every 90 days. Have I done that every 90 days? No. And there were a couple of years where I didn't do it at all, and I became a hot mess. you know, in my marriage, in taking care of myself, my friends, my finances, like, you know, so that's the downside. And having known this for 20 years, there were time periods where I just ignored it. And I allowed those drifts to happen. And before I knew it, I'm like, how did I get here? And so, I mean, look, I can do it now where I could sit down in like 10 minutes, and I can draw my polygon out. And I know what my action steps are. So, you know, the more you do it, I kind of like going through the belts in martial arts, you're kind of a white belt the first time you do it. Do it again in 90 days, you're a yellow belt. Do it for six more months, you're a green belt. Now do it for three years, you'd become a black belt. So it's the same thing. It's iterations. And if, you know, I'm not quite... I'm not saying you have to do it every 90 days, but you will have more fulfillment in your life if you do. Well, I mean, your life is always, you know, it's never, it's not stagnant. Or if it is, you know, that's the problem. That's the issue we're talking about right here. Like life is, I like the old saying, you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting, you know. So I love this. Let's kind of close out on this quote from your book. You can kind of jam on this for a minute or two and then we'll wrap up. And once again, tell people where to connect with you, get the book, get the workbook. But one of the things you said in your book is balance doesn't just happen. It's pursued, evaluated and nurtured. Yeah, it's like purpose. You don't just like find that because that's where people say, how am I going to find balance? Or, you know. Balance is design using a framework like geometry, and then you pursue it by taking action steps, and then you evaluate it every 90 days. So it's like you think about what's more important than our life? I mean, other people are important, but we got to take care of, if we take care of ourselves and we live a more fulfilling life, we're going to have more fulfilling people around us. We're going to be able to show more love. It's like, it's like, why do we make money? We don't make money just to make money. We make money because it's a tool that we can help people in our family, our community, our loved ones, and not just a horde. At least that's my perception of it and where I look at it. So we have to first design it by using a framework, using geometry. look at your life, and we pursue it by tracking and tracing, setting goals up. So we're all good, like mortgage people are good at setting business goals. What are your romance goals? What are your personal goals? Like for self, physical? Like do you want to get to a certain weight? Most people talk about weight and they talk about weight, you know, uh, lifting and, you know, whatever, what do you, what are your goals for fun? So we pursue it and then we evaluate it to see, did we get what we wanted? And if we didn't, what do we need to do to, you know, pivot to get where we want to go? So I do believe that, that it doesn't just happen. Balance doesn't just happen. We don't, uh, we don't find it. Your psych purpose, we don't find it. We have to pursue it. Yeah. You don't stumble across balance. As a matter of fact, you drift to use your words from earlier, you drift away, um, from balance and get out of balance. I'll leave you with this quote. The biggest room in the world is the space between the life we drift into and the one we intentionally design. That's thinking for a minute. It means a lot of us, we just drift. Yeah, yeah. We just drift. We have no vision, so we're drifting because we're out of balance. We have no vision, so we're just drifting. And then we get to this place. There's so many people that live their life, but that's my purpose. Wake up. Wake up. It's not that. It's not. We make it. It's complex, but it's not. We make it complicated. Interesting. I love that. That's great. Okay. So we're going to put the links in the show notes of where people can follow you, LinkedIn, Instagram, obviously the link to the book right now, if you're listening, go to reimaginingbalance.com, click workbook. But once again, read the book because the book will help you navigate the workbook. And it's available on Amazon as well, I assume? Amazon, yes, sir. Okay, cool. Yeah, so Sean, this has been a very insightful conversation for me. It's actually been very revealing as well for me to personally go, I haven't done one of these in quite a long time, actually. And truth is, I'm gonna go back and redo it in the next couple of days, because just talking to you helped me realize a few things, and I need to change my score in a couple of those areas. But the cool thing about it is it's really giving me clarity. Two things about this. Clarity, number one. And then number two, as we've said multiple times, intentional. It's one thing to have clarity and be aware of like, oh, my spirituality is a two or my finances are a four, right? Well, then what are you going to do with that, right? Then you've got to map out the plan, take the action steps to get those to the number you want it to get to. Yeah. And I'm, I'm the guide here. I don't have the answers for you. That's where you can use chat GPT, use your pastor at church, you know, talk to your best friend, like read a book, like figure it out. So I'm just here to open your eyes to it. I'm not, I'm not an expert on any of these subjects. So I want to be clear on that. I'm not any smarter than anybody else. I'd put my pants on the same way, but the reality is I'm a guide through a framework that will help you see your blind spots and help you live with more intentionality. That's, that's, that's my purpose right now. That's my purpose. Well, something tells me you're going to be busy living your purpose with different speaking gigs, training, coaching, consulting, things like that. So if you're listening and you want to contact Sean, the link will be in the show notes to do that. Sean, can't thank you enough, man. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jeff. You're doing a great job for the mortgage industry. Thank you. All right. Thank you, everybody. You know what to do. Click the links. Follow Sean. Let him know your one big takeaway from this episode, whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram. DM him and let him know your one big takeaway. We appreciate you listening, tuning in. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now. All right.