Exploring the 5 Facets of Wellbeing: A Journey Towards Personal Growth

Eric D Brotman [00:00:04]:
Good afternoon. This is Eric Brotman from BFG Financial Advisors. I’m here with Linda Burton from DRW. We’re excited to present exploring the five facets of well-being, a journey towards professional growth. And for those of you who know me, you know if it’s not fun, I don’t do it. So this will be both educational and entertaining today. We’re gonna have some fun. Just so you all know in the chat box, if you have any questions, you can interrupt us anytime during the presentation.

Eric D Brotman [00:00:32]:
Hannah Dennis is behind the scenes, and she’ll be, collecting those those chat questions, and we’re happy to be interrupted anytime. And without further ado, Linda, why don’t I let you introduce yourself?

Linda Burton [00:00:43]:
Well, thank you, Eric. Linda Rosack Burton. I am, home base. World headquarters is is Ellicott City, Maryland right in between DC and Baltimore. I’m an executive coach. I’m also a well-being coach, very grounded in research and, evidence based practices, but I promise I won’t get too much into the science today. If if I do, Eric is gonna remind me that I need to cut it off. And I’m here because it’s always fun to be with Eric.

Linda Burton [00:01:13]:
I was just thinking, how long have we known each other? Ten, fifteen years? I was much you you were much older

Eric D Brotman [00:01:18]:
than than that. No. No. Yes. I I’m far your senior. No. It’s been it’s been north of twenty years, Linda.

Linda Burton [00:01:25]:
Wow. Well and that goes to show you good relationships are worth staying in touch with. So I’m excited to be here today.

Eric D Brotman [00:01:34]:
Well, glad to have you. And for those of you who don’t know me, BFG Financial Advisors, our headquarters are here in Lutherville, Maryland, not too far from Linda in Ellicott City. We do financial planning and wealth management for families all across The US, and we deal with a lot of the qualitative, portions of financial planning and family planning, not just the quantitative. I’m not a math wonk. I promise. So, Linda, why don’t you start us off? We’re we’re gonna talk about five different facets of well-being today. We’re gonna dive into each one as we go, but I I know you have some, I know you have a couple of a couple of takeaways that we wanna start with.

Linda Burton [00:02:10]:
Yeah. Thank you. Some elements to really ground what we’re gonna be talking about today because all of these facets, this holistic approach to well-being is all interconnected. So the first element would be self awareness. Are we beating ourselves up because of our well-being? Are we coming to our well-being with deficit thinking or scarcity thinking? Or are we connecting with who we are, what’s important, and what agency we have over the directions that we choose for ourselves? The second one is environmental stability. Right? Simply saying, does our environment support our well-being or not? And if it doesn’t, then when we embark on a plan to increase or improve our well-being, that we take into consideration what the environment is and what we need from our environment. The third is fundamental beliefs, which is very much related to number one. But our fundamental beliefs is can we grow? Can we improve? Can we enhance our well-being? Rather than having self limiting beliefs that impair our progress or inhibit what we want to to move ahead on? And the fourth is what we think is the highest level of engagement with our well-being, and that is when it’s in when we have something outside of ourselves, something greater than ourselves.

Linda Burton [00:03:38]:
So if any of you saw my email, you saw that the preprogram reflection was what purpose does your well-being serve? Well, we know self care is what is what it serves, but what purpose does it serve outside of ourselves? So those are kind of the grounding, the self awareness, the fundamental beliefs, the, environmental stability, and then the overall, common common chord of greater than something bigger than ourselves.

Eric D Brotman [00:04:09]:
So I’m going to make a suggestion. I’m gonna make a suggestion to everybody watching today, whether you’re watching live on, April 29 or whether you’re watching this, recorded later. It’s very tough to work on five aspects of anything, at the same time. So if you hear an idea today on any of these five things, grab one. Try to make a material improvement in your own well-being in one of these five areas, whichever one, whether it’s the one that you feel you’re weakest at and you want to make some improvements or whether it’s one of your strong zones and you just want to continue to hone those skills, pick one thing because you’re going to hear a lot of different suggestions and ideas today. Don’t try and do it all at once. This is a crawl before you sprint type exercise. We are going to talk about five different areas that are on your screen.

Eric D Brotman [00:04:56]:
We are gonna talk about the the physical well-being. We’re gonna talk about psychological well-being. We’re gonna talk about financial well-being, which is what most people think when they think of me is the financial side. But I I assure you the physical and psychological sides are things. I’m going to self deprecate a little today, and Linda looks forward to that. We’re gonna talk about social well-being and then, of course, personal well-being. And, Linda, why don’t we jump right in, and and we’ll let you get started on the first one, which is physical well-being. That is not, in fact, a picture of me and Linda.

Linda Burton [00:05:27]:
Nor nor I. So physical well-being, it it is maintaining a healthy body, and we primarily do that through nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Does anybody remember the last time you had a really good night’s sleep? Sleep deprivation is huge in our culture. And I once had a friend that said, when I have a good night’s sleep, the whole world looks better in the morning. And so what what are the benefits of sleeping? If you wanna add that to the chat box, when you have a good night’s sleep, what are the benefits that you achieve out of that? And what about our relationship with exercise? Is it a love hate relationship? My relationship is thousands of dollars that I have lost on gym memberships without the return on investment. So when we think about exercise, what is that awareness that we have over how we are looking at our own physical health? And then what’s our relationship with food? Is it comfort? Is it reward? Well, jewelry is a pretty good reward for me as well. But what about the the the ability to savor the food that we have, to really enjoy that? So here’s a tip. Eric is exactly right.

Linda Burton [00:06:56]:
You cannot take everything here and say, I’m going to improve my overall well-being. Well, that works as good as New Year’s resolutions. Right? By the July of January, they’re we’re done. So it is to pick one area, whether you’re doing well in it or you want to do even better. And to so this is from Atomic Habits. What would 1% improvement look like in nutrition, in exercise, in sleep? If you’re looking at the physical entity, 1% improvement daily. So think about the compound interest. Right? Over a year, you have over 37% improvement in what you are looking to get better at, grow in, develop from.

Linda Burton [00:07:43]:
And so and with that comes a higher level of productivity, greater knowledge about your physical well-being, and, really, it kind of puts that whole self awareness package together. So I don’t know if anybody has any ideas. You can put it into the chat, but what might be one area that you want to commit to? And if you cannot come up with an idea, what’s that 1% improvement? And then you know what? If you miss a day well, is it a mulligan? What’s a mull is it a mulligan in golf?

Eric D Brotman [00:08:15]:
Mulligan. It is a mulligan.

Linda Burton [00:08:17]:
Do it over. Do it the next day. And and, you know, if there’s this voice in your head saying, oh, gosh. I didn’t do. Don’t beat ourselves up. That’s the most important thing.

Eric D Brotman [00:08:28]:
You know, we’ve been doing do overs since we were on the playground as kindergartners, and there was any close call at first base. We’re like, I just do over. Like, that was a good way to solve it. So first of all, I had a really good night’s sleep last night since you asked and since since this is therapy for me as well. I sleep great at night and I didn’t for years. And and for me, actually, a sleep study made a huge difference. And I realized there were things that I could do to sleep better. And now I sleep.

Eric D Brotman [00:08:54]:
I sleep into a small coma every night. It’s great. I sleep great. I wake up rested. And part of that is part of my own physical well-being. I also exercise a lot, but not by myself. I have a trainer. I have a yogi.

Eric D Brotman [00:09:08]:
It’s true. That is, in fact, no, it’s not. But I have a trainer because I need an accountability partner. Linda, I know there’s people listening who are thinking, I know how to do this, but if I don’t have somebody saying drop and give me 20, I might not. And so by having an appointment with a trainer and you said you spend thousands of dollars on health clubs, health club membership did not help me because I didn’t go. But if I had an appointment, I would always show up. And so I do have a trainer who I think is terrific. I do have a yoga who I think is is terrific.

Eric D Brotman [00:09:37]:
I do sessions a couple of times a week, and I love that my physical well-being challenges around nutrition because I have what playfully gets called a seafood diet where you see food and you in fact eat it. I don’t have a healthy relationship with food. I love to eat. I don’t have a sweet tooth, but I eat too fast. I’m not mindful. You talked about savoring. I definitely don’t do that all the time. So my physical well-being is I try to do self care, and some of that is massage or other types of stretching or other types of things that can help with self care.

Eric D Brotman [00:10:11]:
Some of it is from a physical standpoint, it’s just walking. We all have step counters on our wrists now. So our office is doing a challenge in May to see which of our various departments, which of us get the most average steps. And I was not going to participate, and I was guilted into it. So now I have to try and win because I’m competitive that way. So physical well-being for me, if I were to pick one of these areas, sleep, I feel like I’ve conquered the sleep thing. Nice. And biorhythms are important.

Eric D Brotman [00:10:41]:
Going to bed at the same time every night, getting up at the same time every morning is supposedly healthy. That I know is really hard. If you have kids, if you have a business, if you travel, that’s really tough. But for me, it’s about nutrition, and that is something I can commit to. So thank you again. Anything in the chat box. If there are questions about this, No, neither Linda nor I will be demonstrating downward dog on this particular Zoom, but another time. So now that you’ve got that mental image and you can’t get rid of it, let’s talk about psychological well-being, which comes back to self care as well.

Eric D Brotman [00:11:16]:
And I I once again, I’ll I’ll defer to you to get started.

Linda Burton [00:11:19]:
Yeah. Thank you. Well, so we think mental health and emotional health go hand in hand. Right? Psychological. So when we think of mental health, we wanna look at things as, like, how are we making sound decisions? Do we have good problem solving skills? How’s our rational thinking? How are we handling conflict? How are we handling the ups and downs of life on a regular basis? Because every day, we could become more upregulated, as we say. And so that’s the that’s the the the mental health that we’re looking at. The emotional health is, do I have coping skills for my anxiety? How well am I managing stress? What about the ability to regulate our moods? I talk I talk about this mood elevator that we’re on. When we wake up in the morning, where are we? Are we on the Basement Floors of frustration, anger, or are we right First Floor kinda neutral? Or are we moving all the way up? I think on the Top Floor, it’s not lingerie.

Linda Burton [00:12:21]:
It’s not men’s wear. It is gratitude. So where are we on a daily basis on our mood elevator? And then how do we regulate our emotions? So we all have negative emotions. We don’t suppress them because they only get larger when we do suppress them. And this is where the environment stability comes in. Right? So, Susan David talks about negative emotions, treating them as data. Don’t attach a story to it. So the story is I’m not smart enough.

Linda Burton [00:12:56]:
I’m never gonna get that promotion. Right? So looking at the data, I’m feeling insecure or I’m feeling very frustrated. But what is it about the situation or the circumstance that makes us feel that way instead of that story that we probably have said to ourselves many, many times before that just keeps us going in the downward spiral. That is one way to kind of regulate the emotions in a in a more healthy way. And then to really understand that how we process that emotion is an indicator of how well we are handling. I had one client, Eric, that listed all the things in her psychological well-being that she felt she was doing very well to your point at the beginning of the program. It may be that you’re doing really well in area, but you wanna bump it up a notch. And so recognizing, hey.

Linda Burton [00:13:52]:
I do have some really good coping skills, but maybe I need to be better in how I respond to conflict, something like that. How’s that sound?

Eric D Brotman [00:14:01]:
It sounds like a plan to me. I I will tell you that when I think of psychological well-being, I usually think of stress levels, cortisol. I think of are we feeling under the gun? Are we feeling pressured? You talked about do you wake up in that high state of gratitude, or do you wake up sort of in the dumps? I think there’s also a sense people report when they don’t like their job. They report that Sunday night they start to feel almost sick. That’s a very sad way to go through life, actually. And it does scream for finding something else to do by day, I think. But the stress level, the cortisol levels are important. How you deal with them are important.

Eric D Brotman [00:14:38]:
Think of the stressors that we’re under at all times today that didn’t exist thirty years ago. For those of us old enough to remember when we didn’t have a phone attached to our hips that was pinging and banging at us all day long. Remember the emyth email was going to transform work. We were only going to have to work four hours a week because of email, and now you could spend four hours a day answering emails. So I think it comes down to how we balance stress. I created something for the consulting clients that we work with that I refer to as the Joy Revenue Matrix. And I try and balance the things that make us more successful and the things that bring us joy and put it into four quadrants. And so for people who’ve gone through that exercise and it’s a professional exercise, not a personal one, but psychologically on the professional front, it allows you to spend most of your time doing things that bring you joy, whether they make you money or not.

Eric D Brotman [00:15:33]:
You want to carve out time for things that bring you joy, whether they make you money or not, but then also to try and figure out what do we do with the things that don’t bring this joy? The parts of the job, some of them you can’t get rid of their reality. Some of them you can delegate to somebody who loves to do something you don’t love to do, and some of them you can just plain get rid of. Some of them you just stop doing. I’m not suggesting you go out and get fired if that’s part of your job responsibility. I am saying that if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a business owner, if you’re self employed in any way, or if you have some control over the way you spend your days, spending as much of it in that joy zone creates much better relationship with work. I would say the same thing is true at home, although it’s a different exercise. But psychologically, it is home a respite. A lot of people who work at home report that they have challenges because they feel like they never leave work.

Eric D Brotman [00:16:25]:
And so having a specific area in the house physically where you punch the clock, you punch into work, maybe you get dressed for work and go to that room, and that’s what you do. The other thing you talked about, I think, relates to mindfulness. We haven’t talked about this. And I remember doing at one point during the eight nine recession, a group of 30 or so financial advisors were invited up to the Berkshire Mountains to do a yoga and meditative retreat. It was at a Buddhist resort. It was not a religious event. Resort is probably the wrong word. A Buddhist retreat center, I guess.

Eric D Brotman [00:17:03]:
I don’t know if Buddhists do resorting, but nonetheless, it was not a religious event, but it was a deeply spiritual and amazing thing. And for four days, for four days, we quieted our minds during a really stressful time for us professionally. What I can tell you is it took three days for me even to decompress to the point where I could relax at that moment. Wow. And I came home a different human, and it didn’t last. See, a lot of times people say, oh, I really need a vacation. And they take that vacation, but then you know, their flight is delayed on the way home. And by the way, by the time they get home, they’re already stressed about work the next day.

Eric D Brotman [00:17:39]:
I think moving, putting meditation or putting some kind of quieting the mind into your daily routine is probably really helpful. You know, I have I have a mixed bag with it. I think professionally, I’m doing an awesome job. And I think personally, quieting the mind and eliminating some of the noise in my personal is a little harder for me. But, again, put something in the chat box if you’d like. I’m going to move on to the next topic. And, Linda, I’m going to take first shot at this one because it’s my bailiwick. If you look at all those half dollars, financial well-being is something a lot of folks they don’t have access to.

Eric D Brotman [00:18:17]:
Financial wellness programs are not common. It’s something that at BFG, we started doing for companies, for nonprofits, meeting with employees. Employers are happy to help their employees find financial wellness. And there’s a couple of reasons for that. One is I liken money to oxygen. If you have enough, you don’t think about it. And if you don’t have enough, that’s all you’re thinking about. So if you have employees who are worried about sending their kid to school or paying for a medical bill or paying their rent the next month or whatever it is, or a car needs to get fixed or whatever it is, if they’re worried about money, they’re not thinking about work.

Eric D Brotman [00:18:54]:
In fact, when they’re home, if they’re worried about money, they’re not thinking about their relationship with their spouse or children or other loved ones. And so it’s really important to develop some wellness around financials. I also know that when people retire and I don’t love the word retire. You know, I wrote a book called Don’t Retire Graduate for a reason, and it’s because retirement sounds awful and no one should do it. And what I mean by that is you don’t go from fifty or sixty hours a week to daytime TV and shuffleboard and still thrive. You just don’t. You need a purpose. But I discovered over my thirty plus years doing this that there are three secrets to the happiest retirees.

Eric D Brotman [00:19:32]:
And I think the financial well-being and the personal well-being become hand in hand with these three things, and I’ll share them. One is that they’re debt free. And I know there’s good debt and there’s bad debt and a mortgage or a business loan are different than, say, credit card bills. All true. But there’s something about being retired or being at that stage of your life and not owing anybody anything. It’s a big deal. The second is that they’re healthy. So we talked about physical well-being.

Eric D Brotman [00:20:05]:
If you don’t have your health, I don’t care how much money you have. You’re not going to be a happy human. It’s really tough. And so you can’t just decide one day you’re going to be healthy after a lifetime of not doing that and expect overnight success. You talked about the 1%. It is much easier to stay healthy than to get healthy. I would argue it’s much easier to stay wealthy than to get wealthy in the same regard. So if you’ve taken care of yourself in all the different well-being areas and you’re debt free, the third is you have a purpose.

Eric D Brotman [00:20:36]:
You have a reason to get out of bed every morning, something that drives you, something that gets you excited for your day. It can be for money if you feel like it. It can be volunteering. It can be family. It can be travel. It can be a lot of things. But I would argue a bucket list is not enough because a bucket list is individual, check the box and move on, And this needs to be a lifestyle. I’ll say one more thing about this, and then I’ll let you take a stab at all the stuff I missed because no doubt I’ve missed a few things.

Eric D Brotman [00:21:02]:
And that is that the relationship, the conversations that we have about money and about finance, it’s so taboo. And I have so many examples of this where families don’t communicate and loved ones don’t communicate. And there’s such a heaviness in the room around this, and people don’t feel comfortable talking about it. And if you don’t have someone to talk to, like anything else, this can fester and become a real issue. So I think retirement to me is not the absence of work. It’s the absence of needing to work. And part of your financial well-being is being financially independent to the point that you’re spending your days doing things, ideally, that bring you joy at least most of the time. So I’ll I’ll leave it at that and see if if you’ve got more to add on the financial side.

Linda Burton [00:21:48]:
Well, I actually love everything that you said, Eric, because it’s a mindset just like, with with mental health or emotional health. Right? Sometimes there’s this taboo, and and and we don’t wanna talk about it because of whatever messages we’re sending ourselves. So I think putting that wellness emphasis on it is a a way to start lowering the defenses that we have or the uncomfortable feelings that we have, and really being able to say, I need help. Right? Whether in any of these areas of well-being. If if we’re stuck, it’s okay to ask for help. There’s a saying that says, asking for help is not about giving up. It’s about refusing to give up. And so it is it’s it’s a healthy thing to ask if there there’s also a practice that that came to mind when I was listening to you, and that is what if our best friend had the same situation that we’re facing, whether it’s the financial situation or or health situation, what would we advise them? Because when we take ourselves out of it, if we’re helping someone, then we’re really we’re really able to kinda get to get to thinking, getting out of our own way, if you will, and get to thinking about, yeah, what would that advice look like if I wanted to help the a very special person in my life.

Linda Burton [00:23:24]:
Yeah.

Eric D Brotman [00:23:25]:
It it’s really hard to be dispassionate about your own affairs. Very hard. You know, financial advisers should have financial advisers, and and we do. I I I have my wife and I meet with a different financial adviser from our organization, and I take off my planner hat, put on my husband and father hat, and look at it in a very different way because I don’t want it to feel like I’m the one telling her what we need to be doing. I want us to be talking about what we need to do and having a healthy conversation and a healthy relationship around money. It’s really it’s loaded territory. People just they don’t talk about it. And you hear so many stories of lottery winners who suddenly have more money than they’ll ever know what to do with, and they become reclusive or they wind up bankrupt or just terrible things happen because they’re ill prepared for it.

Eric D Brotman [00:24:13]:
I consider what we do as financial advisors to be a little bit like trainers in the gym. Nothing we do is neuroscience. Absolutely none of this is performing surgery. It’s all things people could do for themselves, but they either have a blind spot where they don’t want to think about it or they’re too busy or for whatever reason, it’s not how they want to spend their time. And we become an accountability partner. And I think any of these areas are well billing, whether it’s the trainer in the gym, whether it’s a therapist or a coach or a consultant or somebody for some of the other things, I think having accountability partners makes a huge difference, don’t you?

Linda Burton [00:24:49]:
%. Hundred %. I actually had to have an accountability partner when I lost my I was walking two miles a day, five days a week, but probably more like seven days a week, and I lost that routine. And the only way I could get it back was to have an accountability partner. And sometimes that partner walked with me or was with me on the phone, but sometimes it was just on our phone, we were connected to our each other’s activity. And I knew that I had to put that two mile activity on my watch so that they saw my two. So that accountability is really, really important. And, you know, I also thought about what you said earlier about cortisol.

Linda Burton [00:25:35]:
Because I believe when we when we are in some financial straits, that cortisol level is with us constantly. That cortisol is a chemical that’s in our bloodstream for about twenty four to twenty six hours. So if we were stressed about our finances yesterday, guess what? The cortisol is still going through our our bloodstream. And if we have to pay a bill or if we have to draw whatever, that’s more cortisol. And over the long term, that really hurts our cardiovascular health. So looking mindfulness, looking for ways to decrease that that cortisol and infuse more what we call dopamine and serotonin, those really good neurochemicals, that’s really how we can offset that that increase of cortisol. And, you know, those who know me know that I research gratitude. I’ve been doing it for ten years.

Linda Burton [00:26:34]:
We actually know that when we practice gratitude, we can decrease the level of cortisol by 23% in our body. So and and what what was that joy matrix again? Because I couldn’t I love that.

Eric D Brotman [00:26:49]:
Yeah. No. It’s it’s well, it’s it’s four quadrants. One one axis is joy, and one is either revenue or success, however you define it. And so you have a box that’s high both and a box that’s low both and a box that’s high one and low the other and so forth. And it allows you to sort of rate the things that you do based on how happy they make you and also rate the things that you do based on how much either revenue or success or money they bring you in some quantifiable way and then determine these are the things that I should be spending most of my time on. It’s allowed me to completely recreate my career. I really went through and changed my entire career around that.

Eric D Brotman [00:27:32]:
And to the best of my knowledge, I came up with it on my own, although I’m sure somebody out there would go, no, I had it first look. But as simple as it is, it was an exercise that I listed everything. And then I found people who really, truly in our organization, who truly loved doing the things that helped make us more successful that I didn’t love doing. And I brought them more joy by taking stuff that wasn’t making me happy off my plate. That’s unbelievable. It was so simple. And if you have a transparent relationship with your coworkers or your Department or whatever, you can have these conversations. And it’s not that everything is unicorns and spit bubbles.

Eric D Brotman [00:28:13]:
Work is still work. There’s stuff we do that we don’t maybe want to do or love to do. But how do we tip the scales in favor of spending most of our work day doing things that at least fill our tank rather than emptying it? It means that you don’t have to be on empty when five hits or whatever, and you’re on your way home and you’re showing up to the people you love the most, potentially with an empty tank. I mean, how you show up at home matters, and how you show up at work matters. And, you know, all of those things play a role.

Linda Burton [00:28:41]:
And you wanna be congruent in both. And so yeah. So you’re also filling up someone else’s tank, which is a great segue into social well-being if we can go there.

Eric D Brotman [00:28:51]:
It is. And, you know, somebody gave me control over the slides, so I hadn’t gone there yet. So let’s talk about social well-being.

Linda Burton [00:28:58]:
Hint hint. So Yeah. You So social well-being very is simply

Eric D Brotman [00:29:03]:
how we You’re as subtle as a sledgehammer, by the way. As subtle as this alright. Go ahead.

Linda Burton [00:29:10]:
Social well-being. How we Yeah. How we connect and interact with each other, with people in our community, with the people that we work with. And so so this is a time to pause and think about who are the people in our lives that have a positive influence on our well-being. How do we spend more time with them, or how do we maximize maybe the short amount of time that we have with them, but to make it really rich and fulfilling to to both of us? So think of the people that you have fun with, Eric, that are loving, that are respectful, that just show kindness and and compassion to you, and and to also think of social well-being as it’s tied to social contribution. So, Adam Grant, who many people have us have a many people know about, he was talking recently about contribution journaling. So the question is, how do we contribute to other people’s well-being? And you just gave a great example of that, Eric, by taking things off of your plate, but that can be fulfilling to others, right, is a way of contributing to their well-being. And so the the here’s how you do the contribution journaling.

Linda Burton [00:30:34]:
If you’re a journal or if you’re not just on the on your whiteboard or or whatever. So how have you been useful to someone in a given day? What three ways? And why that’s so motivating is that we we remind ourselves that we really can make a contribution. Maybe it’s this big, maybe it’s this big, but we can make a contribution. We can make a difference in somebody’s life that that, you know, maybe we just thought I can help them with this because they really kind of look like they’re under stress or they’re running short. And that just motivates us to do more, and that’s that that’s that connection with some something greater than ourselves that we are contributing to others’ well-being. So I think it’s it’s really important. It goes back to our fundamental belief, right, that we can grow, we can improve our own well-being, and what a beautiful association with contributing to others’ well other well-being as well.

Eric D Brotman [00:31:37]:
What do you

Linda Burton [00:31:37]:
think about it?

Eric D Brotman [00:31:37]:
I’ve heard I’ve heard it said. I I agree with you entirely. I’ve heard it said that the older you get, the more you need the friends you knew when you were young, which is sort of a really interesting way to to put it. And, you know, being that my thirty fifth high school reunion is this weekend, and I’m looking forward to seeing 20 or so of the folks who I had formative years with, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to that. The older we get, the more that means, I think, to a lot of us. And it doesn’t have to be your high school. Some people had disastrous high school experiences, but whatever it is, whether it’s the neighborhood or whether it’s high school or whether it’s college or whether it’s early in your career, the people who sort of knew you when you were becoming you, which really does. It is a process, and we’re still sort of evolving in that way.

Eric D Brotman [00:32:24]:
I want to take a different approach to social well-being. And we now have this thing called social media. Social media is probably the single biggest contributor to stress and and the lack of well-being I can come up with. And actually, I’ve taken social media breaks before where I’ll just take, Facebook and and such off my phone and not have access to it for a week or a month or whatever. It’s actually wonderful. And if I didn’t use it professionally, I’d probably get rid of it entirely. However, I did an exercise, over the last year or two on a couple of the sites. First of all, I got rid of ones I don’t use frequently.

Eric D Brotman [00:33:03]:
Secondly, I went through LinkedIn because I thought, well, LinkedIn is a great way to connect with people professionally. You have your friends and your circles of friends and family, but this is a great way to connect with people professionally. And I looked at my LinkedIn, and I had an absurd number of people on there who I either barely knew or didn’t know at all because over the years, it just accepts it. So I went through and I put a filter on it. I essentially pruned my bonsai. And by doing that, I said, if this is somebody I wouldn’t email tomorrow or want to see or sit down with or have coffee with, I’m not keeping them in my profile. So I wound up deleting almost 5,000 people. It took a really long time.

Eric D Brotman [00:33:48]:
And if you were one of the people deleted and you’re on this call, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen you in a while. But I then started reengaging with the people who were in that and have reengaged with folks. And it’s been so rewarding to now see a feed of people I actually do want to talk to and hear about and celebrate and congratulate on their accomplishments. And so I did the same thing with Facebook on the personal side. And I said, this is somebody I wouldn’t pick up the phone and call. Why are we connected here? Why do we need to, especially when there’s so much political noise and so much ugly going on on social media. If you’re not filling my tank, let’s not do this anymore. You wouldn’t sit at a cafe and do that with somebody you hardly knew.

Eric D Brotman [00:34:32]:
Why are you doing it online? And so some of my social well-being, in addition to staying connected with friends who I’ve had for many years and family and loved ones, has been filtering really thoughtfully the folks whose content is being submitted to me. And it has made a huge difference. Facebook is no longer a place to go and raise my cortisol. Now it’s a place to go and see people I maybe haven’t seen in a while or reach out and wish somebody happy birthday. So social well-being is it’s changing over the years. These people aren’t necessarily friends. They’re connections. The word friend is so loaded.

Eric D Brotman [00:35:13]:
We’re blessed to have half a dozen really good friends in our lives we’ve lived. So these are acquaintances and understanding the connectivity, the Kevin Bacon two degrees of separation thing. It’s good to know that somebody you know, knows the answer to something you need. Great. But be thoughtful about what social media is doing to us. And frankly, I got a teenager. I swear it is the hardest thing to navigate for parents of anything I’ve ever seen because you cannot control it. It is it is a nine headed hydra and a and a, unfortunately, it can suck you right in.

Eric D Brotman [00:35:52]:
And so these kids really have something that we didn’t have to deal with.

Linda Burton [00:35:56]:
Yeah. No. I I I’m so glad you brought that up because I think a lot of the stress that I see is the isolation that people feel. You know, we we felt it certainly during the pandemic, but it’s continued. And I do believe social media contributes greatly to that feeling of isolation. Be that’s and for the young individuals such as, you know, your your daughter and many others, that is their social connection. And it’s very powerful, very harmful. So I love how you took control of how you are defining the social media platforms, how they serve you well, and where you have a significant connection because isn’t isn’t that about what’s important? Who are those people in our lives that contribute to our well-being? And, you know, this isn’t so when we talk about isolation, what one idea that filters through my mind is what is an extreme introvert think when we’re talking about how you spend more time? And and so it it really is in a measured approach.

Linda Burton [00:37:10]:
Right? If we’re an extrovert, then we’ll find that time easily to call, text, get together for coffee. But if we’re an introvert, we need to be able to recognize some interaction is important, but it’s gotta be in a metered approach where you don’t end up feeling exhausted or completely de energized. But that it works for you rather than against you because that isolation, it just allows so many other things to come into our way of thinking. And we don’t have anybody that’s gonna challenge us in how we’re thinking. Right? Which I love. I work with the coach as well just like you work with a a financial planner. Challenge me on my thinking and let me explore other perspectives that I’m just I’m stuck in my own orbit, and it’s very helpful to get outside of that. So you really took great control of that.

Linda Burton [00:38:10]:
I love it, Eric.

Eric D Brotman [00:38:12]:
Well, it it it took some time. It was thoughtful. I I will say that we have never been more connected as a society, and we’ve also never been lonelier. And the conundrum there, that is so mind blowing to me that you can literally pick up a phone and see what your friend is doing in Singapore tonight. But you’re sitting there and you feel like you’re by yourself. I don’t know how it happened. And certainly the science of it, it became very simple to just sit home in your bunny slippers and text people instead of going out and seeing somebody. Remember, neighborhoods have changed, too.

Eric D Brotman [00:38:50]:
Many, many years ago, you knew all your neighbors. That was your community. Now it’s not your community. Then it became based on hobbies and interests. So you knew people because they were at the same swim club or they were at the same they did ballroom dancing or they did golf or whatever it is, whatever your hobbies were, that became your community. And it’s so rare as adult people that we get a chance. You talk about social ability. We never get a chance to be that freshman again.

Eric D Brotman [00:39:17]:
You walk into the freshman year and everyone’s the new kid. So I take advantage of the cohort learning and cohort groups, whether it was leadership. I did leadership Baltimore County. Many years ago, I did leadership Maryland, where you show up and you’re one of 50 people, and ideally, none of you know each other. If you do, it’s a small number, and you’re all the new kid at the same time. And there’s something so incredibly powerful on getting to know people where it’s not about who you knew or what you do. It’s about who you are and who you want to be. And so I encourage people from a social standpoint.

Eric D Brotman [00:39:53]:
I know introverts are going, but the idea that you can be in a cohort group where you’re all very much on equal footing from a click standpoint, you’re not the new eleventh grader who’s showing up and everybody’s already got their friends. Right. That’s hard. It’s hard to change schools. And so I think as adult people, it’s really good to have those experiences. I actually seek them out because it provides me it’s almost like a I’m not going to say it’s a do over. We started with that. It’s not a do over, but it’s a way to continuously evolve.

Eric D Brotman [00:40:31]:
And women are so much better at evolving than men are. I mean, I don’t know why that is. And maybe we’re off topic, but women evolve in totally different ways and men don’t. And I just upset half our listeners, I’m sure. But sorry, guys, it’s true. They evolve and we don’t. Let’s go to our fifth, our fifth type of well-being on that note before I get myself in trouble. And let’s talk about personal well-being.

Eric D Brotman [00:40:53]:
And this is a very broad this is a very broad this is sort of the catchall. This is everything else. And it’s interesting because one of the things we didn’t put on here is professional well-being, which is probably something we should have talked about also, because as we spend more hours potentially with our coworkers than we do with our own families, I think that’s playing a role. So I’m going to equate personal well-being to your whole person, meaning who you are when you’re with your family, who you are when you’re by yourself, who you are when you’re with your coworkers or you’re at a conference somewhere or you’re doing whatever you’re doing. And to me, personal well-being starts with really understanding who you are and that who you are is not what you do. We equate in this country. It’s especially bad in The US. In this country, we seem to equate who we are with our day job.

Eric D Brotman [00:41:48]:
And so when someone says, oh, tell me about yourself, the first thing somebody goes is I’m an accountant. I’m an architect. No, that’s what you do all day. That’s not who you are. And if it is who you are and there’s ever a day where you don’t do that anymore, either because of retirement or illness or whatever, you just lost your identity. It’s not that you just don’t have the same activity from nine to five or whatever. It’s that your identity was tied up in what you did. So I don’t want to be just a financial adviser.

Eric D Brotman [00:42:19]:
I think the day I’m not doing that, I would be lost. I’d rather be a husband and a father and a hockey fan and a financial adviser and a traveler and a wine enthusiast, whatever. And I think there’s so many more facets to ourselves that personal well-being, I think it comes down to some balance. It also comes down to knowing ourselves. And I host a podcast every Thursday, and every single guest, I ask the very same question at the end, and I get some really amazing responses. But the question I ask is, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I’ve asked this of 80 year old humans who haven’t been asked that since they were seven, and they wanted to be astronauts because why not? So what do you want to be and not what do you want to do when you grow up? Do you want to see the Pyramids in Egypt, or do you want to take a cruise? Who do you want to be? What do you want to be? And it is such a hard question. And as I’m trying to define my own next chapter of adulthood and I am trying to evolve against all my biological abilities, trying to come up with a way to reinvent myself and to always be evolving and moving forward, I think, is a really good thing. I think personal well-being comes from satisfaction, some balance.

Eric D Brotman [00:43:38]:
I think a little bit of clarity and a little less opacity could make a difference too in terms of what you’re looking forward to.

Linda Burton [00:43:46]:
Yeah. I love that. There’s just so much in what you just said. So it it is also to me, it is our why. Right? Maybe yeah. It’s our why. It’s our purpose. We all you know, what is the purpose if if we’re not who we are at work? What is the purpose of of what we do? I think there’s also the higher power that, is part of our why and not and definitely grounded in values and beliefs and strengths.

Linda Burton [00:44:23]:
So I go to ethos, which is the Greek meaning of distinguishing characteristics and guiding values and beliefs of an individual, of a of a community, of an institution. And when we have that ethos in our in our personal well-being, then we’re able to fulfill our company’s mission statements, and we’re able to to really recognize what our purpose is or how meaningful our interactions are with each other. So I think it’s all that you said, but and I think it’s how we engage with something bigger than ourselves, which I said at the very beginning of the program. And and, so the one thing that I would add to this, the tip, the activity, is who are those individuals that are important in our life? And how does our well-being serve them? Outside of ourselves, how what’s the purpose of our well-being? And to do that, I just start with a list, listing the names of those people. And next to each name, I write how they benefit from my well-being, all facets. Alright? Whole being. How how do they benefit? And next to that, I write, why is that meaningful? And so then we’ve taken that relationship and and tied it to how we can continue to grow and develop and improve in any areas of this well-being so that it’s our our whole self and really listing how they benefit and why that is meaningful. And that brings us back, I think, to really living a life that, is is very rewarding and, bringing us a lot of satisfaction, a lot of happiness that can offset because these these issues are gonna continue to come towards us every day of our life.

Linda Burton [00:46:28]:
And so the more that we focus on what the purpose of our well-being and how that helps others and why that’s meaningful, I think that’s a way for us to start to quiet that fight flight freeze and tap into what what the the well, like, our parasympathetic nervous system to get technical. But that rest and

Eric D Brotman [00:46:51]:
digest you go. Sorry. She wouldn’t do that.

Linda Burton [00:46:57]:
Right. So where do we carve just move out all that clutter and have that focus and have that sense of calm and understanding. I think that’s, yeah, all of that

Eric D Brotman [00:47:12]:
together. We’ve talked about lots of different facets of well-being. We didn’t talk about specifically professional well-being. We didn’t talk about spiritual well-being, which which you referenced. And certainly that’s an option and something important. I also think when we talked about physical well-being, we talked a lot about sleep, nutrition and exercise. We didn’t talk as much about health care. And what’s interesting is I think in this country, we’re focused on sickness, not on health.

Eric D Brotman [00:47:41]:
And we spend an enormous amount of time, energy and money treating illness, but not being quite as preventative as we could be.

Linda Burton [00:47:50]:
Bingo.

Eric D Brotman [00:47:51]:
Oh, my gosh. And Western medicine has really become maintenance of the sick instead of care to keep people healthy. And I think as adult people, we are responsible for our own. And that means getting physicals, and it means getting the oil change, so to speak, before you have a breakdown. And if you’re not getting that, finding a physician you trust and have confidence in to do that, I think we owe it to ourselves to check for things before it’s a real major issue because just about anything you catch early, you’re better off. And so some of the well-being is just taking care of ourselves, if not for ourselves, then for the people who love us, for our kids or anybody who or even for coworkers or clients or others whom we serve who Yeah. Rely on us.

Linda Burton [00:48:42]:
Well, everybody in our sphere of influence. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Preventive care. That’s absolutely right. That’s really, really significant, Eric, because if we don’t have our health right, everything stops, and that’s what we have to focus on. So what can we do preventatively? And the other thing that I think maybe we need another show, is intellectual well-being. And you reminded me of this when you’re talking about your continual learning learning

Eric D Brotman [00:49:11]:
Oh, yeah.

Linda Burton [00:49:11]:
And so there’s an intellectual well-being that nurtures us in many ways. Even if even in these different facets, there’s an intellectual component of it. It can go to the professional as well.

Eric D Brotman [00:49:27]:
Well, I I think learning has to be lifetime. If you think you’ve gotten your degree and you’re 22 and you’ve learned everything you’re going to need for the rest of your life, I have bad news for you. That’s not how it works. And it’s harder to find. It’s harder to find the time. It’s harder to dedicate to anything formal. But I like cohort learning. I do.

Eric D Brotman [00:49:48]:
And I’m constantly in school. And I encourage our folks here to constantly be in school because it is difficult for adults to find ways to do intellectual improvement. Right. And did you read the book From Strength to Strength? Are you familiar with that book? Yes. If there’s a homework assignment today, we’re going to sell some books for this guy. Go to Amazon and get from strength to strength. I couldn’t put it down. It’s not a long book.

Eric D Brotman [00:50:16]:
It’s not a complicated book, but it changed the way I felt about so many things. And it allowed me to understand why I’ve moved as an adult from the intelligence curve to the curve, where my highest and greatest value professionally right now is not the cusp of current education that was thirty years ago, but it is the life experiences and the actual life lived and things you’ve seen and done and navigated. And that’s why marrying somebody young and technically sound with somebody who’s seen it can become such a valuable partnership. Staying sharp. Staying sharp is not easy. Staying sharp professionally, staying on the cutting edge, whether you’re in medicine or architecture or finance or anything, it is hard to stay on the cutting edge. And you can find people who are there and hire them and work with them. But if they don’t have real world experience, they’re only as good as their textbooks.

Eric D Brotman [00:51:18]:
And so the combination of what they’re learning and what you’ve practiced and lived and seen and maybe seen go wrong, it’s hard to learn from other people’s mistakes. As humans, we like to screw it up ourselves, and we like to invent new ways to do it. But if you can learn from somebody else’s lived experience, I think it’s a big deal.

Linda Burton [00:51:38]:
Right.

Eric D Brotman [00:51:38]:
So we’re running low on time. I really could talk to you all day, although I don’t know that people want to watch us all day. There are two resources that we’re going to provide here. If you take your phones out, we’re going to need you to use your QR codes. The first is a well-being checklist that I will let Linda describe momentarily. And the second is for business owners or folks who have employees, and it’s a guide to supporting employees overall wellness, financial and otherwise. And so if we go to the next slide, there is the well-being checklist. Linda, you want to talk a little bit about this?

Linda Burton [00:52:13]:
You’re right. This is this is goes back to what you talked about at the very beginning. This is a checklist where we select one area, whether we’re doing really good in it and we wanna improve or we feel like, yeah, now is a good time to put some attention to it. So select one of these areas that we talked about. And then to think about what what what’s good what’s good in that area of well-being right now? Let’s first look at our strengths. What is working well? Because that informs how we’re gonna move forward in the in this area of making improvement. What changes do you need to make? What are you aiming to achieve? Are you gonna measure it? What might be some milestones? Who’s gonna keep you accountable? And and specifically as specifically as possible, maybe it’s that 1%. Specifically, I’m going to, practice adding a more nutritional element into my diet for the day, whatever that might be.

Linda Burton [00:53:16]:
And put it down on paper, share it with somebody, and be able to make it a tool that you come back to not to feel bad. Again, if we haven’t really hit it the way we wanted to, let’s do a do over. Let’s start over. Maybe the first selection is something that felt is now too onerous. So let’s step back where something’s changed in our environment. Let’s take a step back to say, okay. What do I need? What do I really feel that I can be responsible for and use that checklist. And there’s also in the back of the checklist is the the definitions of what we talked about today.

Linda Burton [00:53:56]:
And and then by all means, it’s, you know, if we need to ask for help or we know someone that needs to ask for help, there are some resources on the second page that can help.

Eric D Brotman [00:54:08]:
Terrific. So, last chance

Linda Burton [00:54:10]:
I’m gonna interrupt for one moment. We have one question. Sure. There. Can you talk about the name of the book again, just so

Eric D Brotman [00:54:17]:
Oh, yes. The book is called the book is called From Strength to Strength, if you wanna put it in the chat box. For the life of me, I can’t remember the PhD who wrote it, and shame on me for not quoting No.

Linda Burton [00:54:27]:
I’m drawing a line too.

Eric D Brotman [00:54:29]:
It is it is a fantastic, fantastic read. A game changing read for adult people, in my opinion.

Linda Burton [00:54:36]:
So Oh, Oprah. For for the Oprah Winfrey lovers, she had them on her show. And and I can’t remember his name either.

Eric D Brotman [00:54:45]:
But yeah. Hannah, why don’t you Google it while we’re sitting here, and you can put it in the chat box. The it’s called from strength to strength, and, we can make sure everybody knows about that. Here is the the next QR code, and this is for this is for 10 ways to support your employees overall wellness. If you scan this QR code, there’s a whole lot of information and ways to consider the folks who work with you or work for you and ways to support them in not only their financial wellness, but all different aspects of that. And then lastly, if you scan the top one, you get to schedule with me. If you scan the bottom one, you get to schedule with Linda. If you scan them both, we’ll see who has the more open calendar.

Eric D Brotman [00:55:30]:
But, no, we we would love to chat with you if, if if you enjoyed this presentation, if there’s ways that we can help you, certainly on our end, if if you would like to talk about your financial wellness, the wellness of your coworkers, your family, any of that planning, I I would be delighted. I also invite you to check out, the podcast, Don’t Retire, Graduate. And while you’re buying books, there it is, strength to strength. While you’re buying books, there’s also, there’s also mine. So if you like, reading about financial wellness, Don’t Retire, Graduate. I’m going to do the shameless plug because it’s here. Get a copy of this, and if we’re in person, I’ll sign it for you. Linda, I know folks can schedule a consult with you as well.

Eric D Brotman [00:56:13]:
You wanna talk about that a little bit?

Linda Burton [00:56:15]:
Yeah. Definitely. Reach out to me. Email me. If my phone number is somewhere on this, I’m I’m happy to take text messages. It’s really when you feel that you really are ready to make a move or you wanna bring more of this well-being work into your workplace. Let’s talk about it. And, and a plug, my gratitude heals journal, which is part book, part journal, part workbook is something that you might be able to start for yourself in looking at how you bring, the science of gratitude into your well-being, your overall well-being.

Eric D Brotman [00:56:54]:
I’m so glad you brought that up because I wrote down the word gratitude on the paper in front of me because I I wanted to have a takeaway from this also. And my takeaways are twofold. One, nutrition is still an issue for me. And if I did 1% better every day, I’d be better off. But I’m gonna need an accountability partner to, like, slap a fork out of my hand or something. But gratitude, I can do. And what gratitude looked like for me, I did this for a long time and I got away from it was writing a single handwritten thank you note to someone every day, just one. And I did it for a long time.

Eric D Brotman [00:57:26]:
And it dawns on me that when we go to the mailbox now, it’s really about how much garbage we’re going to have to throw away. None of it is useful. Bills don’t come that way. Nobody’s reading magazines physically anymore, not very many. So it’s mostly going to the mailbox to get trash we can recycle. But when you get a handwritten card, when you get something personal from somebody, you open it and you look at it and realizing the two, three minutes that it took for somebody to take pen to paper, that is a lost art. And don’t let your handwriting hold you back. None of us can write well anymore.

Eric D Brotman [00:58:00]:
But but by all means, I’m gonna I’m gonna go back to that because I actually think and my first one might be to you, Linda, for your time today.

Linda Burton [00:58:06]:
You know? I love I do that. I have that ritual right now, a thank you note, at least five to five people every week. That’s great. And there is something about handwriting, not an email. Right?

Eric D Brotman [00:58:18]:
Not Yes.

Linda Burton [00:58:18]:
Not a Word document. We actually are using both sides of our brain when we are writing that note. And so I love that. I’m gonna encourage everybody to try to to maybe just start with one thank you note a week. And, why are you thankful? How did they benefit? Or how did you benefit? And why is it meaningful is a great prescription for everybody.

Eric D Brotman [00:58:43]:
Alright. Well, I as I see it, I think we we gave folks about 10 or 20 potential exercises or ideas today. I I hope this was meaningful to everybody. I hope you pick one, and and I hope it helps you on your own wellness journey. I look forward to speaking with some of you. That would be a pleasure. I know Linda does as well. And Linda, my gratitude is to you.

Eric D Brotman [00:59:04]:
This was so much fun. I knew it would be. And you only slipped into science, like, once or twice. You did great. You really a minus work at at least, so strong job. But thank you all for joining us. Any closing any closing comments?

Linda Burton [00:59:20]:
Just gratitude to you and to Hannah and to everyone that that took the time out to today. It’s, very meaningful. And, I I hope we’re all making progress.

Eric D Brotman [00:59:31]:
Well, thank you all for joining us. Have a an incredible rest of your day, and, we look forward to speaking with some of you soon. Take care all. Bye bye. Take

Linda Burton [00:59:38]:
care. Bye bye.