Tom Le Noble on High Performance When Life Gets Hard

Today's special guest is Tom Lenoble. I know you're going to love the show. He's one of the very first employees of Facebook and he's got some incredible insights to share. Enjoy. Tom, a huge welcome to the Habits of High Performers podcast.

It's great to be here. I am so excited to be with you. I've been waiting to do this.

Yeah, me too. Look, I'm so excited. I mean, let's first of all, just for the listener, get the. Get them really clear on the book that you've just released. And it's went straight to number one. So My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns and High Heels. Very interesting title. There you go. We're holding it up. It looks stunning. So tell me, if someone's walking past the airport in the bookstore, they see this book. What is it for? Who is it for? How does it help them?

So I will tell you the reason I did this book. It's a memoir that crosses over into self help. And I'm a very private man and I just spilled every secret I have. In fact, I have a friend of 50 years and one of 48 that came to me and said, what secrets could you possibly have that we don't know? And I looked at them and say, enough secrets that I changed both of your names. So the purpose of this book is who we are today is the some parts of who we've been in our life. Some of those parts we might feel shame for or that they're a little outrageous or. Or we want to keep them private or that people just wouldn't understand, but you would not be who you are today without all of those parts. And how do you own them and celebrate them and understand they're part of who you are?

That's beautiful. I could just resonate so strongly with that. Looking back through the chapters of my life and even the pages of my life that have kind of created where I am today and beautiful. And if we talk, because a lot of our listeners are midway through their careers or getting started in their careers and they're moving towards leadership positions, perhaps if we look at your career for a second, I mean, you've been a senior executive in some of the largest companies on the planet. So I think Facebook was one of those. You were an early employee in Facebook.

Yeah. Yeah. So I. I'd like to say I retired, being retired to be inspired because I had this great corporate career. I was a leader at customer service for mci, which back in the day was a long distance carrier that broke up all the local Bell companies here and helped drive Everybody to dial 1. And then I was the head of customer service@walmart.com in their early days and spent far too much time in Bentonville, Arkansas. And then I was led global service operations for Palm, the Palm Pilot Trio, people that are now part of hp. And I got a phone call at my desk one day and it was a recruiter from a little company that I didn't know what it was called Facebook. Facebook was still in colleges. I told the recruiter, I'm working my dream job, thank you very much. And I hung up the phone and a buddy in the Valley called me that it's a VC there now and said, I referred you to Facebook and you didn't talk to them. And I said, well, what's Facebook? And so long story short, and it is a great story, it's in the book. I interviewed with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 19 and I went to Facebook to work, left my corporate office with a view, walked in the first day of work into this nothing but one big room of everybody sitting in an open room. There was one office in the back and I was for sure that they were going to take me there and they didn't. The controller was there. They just wanted me to sit outside. And I remember sitting in that chair thinking to myself, what have you done? What have you done? Well, everyone there was 20 or 21. They had deferred business school, law school, medical school, because Facebook was in colleges and this was their dream job. And here I come, old enough to be everyone's father now. What an experience that was.

Hey, James, here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlund.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes. I can imagine. And what did happen in that experience with Mark, in that interview that you went from your dream job to, to this young 19 year old mark Zuckerberg convincing you to join his team? What happened in that Interview.

Well, I arrived at the office in a suit and at the time they were above, I think it was a Chinese restaurant or a sandwich shop. It was a very small space. And I remember walking up the stairs and I got to the top and the first thing I saw was graffiti art that was all murals of women's breasts. And as I turned the corner thinking, why do I have a suit on? I looked at a one room with about maybe 15 people tops. And the first thing I thought was looking through their faces in a few liquor bottles was, I'm old enough to be everybody's father. And I was taken to a conference room which had a Game Boy and a video whatever in it and a couch. And in comes Mark being introduced to me in his signature sandals, T shirts and shorts at the time, and asked me just to sit down and talk to him about what I do and what I could do for Facebook. But what happened? I finally realized I needed to take something off. So I took my jacket off, which made me a wee bit more comfortable. But I got intrigued with the product. There was something told me, I just knew there was something about it and. And then I was fascinated with this generation that was willing to share all this information. Unlike my generation, we didn't share anything that everybody was willing to share information. And I got intrigued enough that I took this big risk to go to Facebook. Wow.

How long did you stay?

I was there about two and a half years. And then I was the chief support officer for a company that's now the backbone of Geek Squad Remote support. I have my own consulting business and I worked at a dating site of all things that match.com bought. And I managed that merger. And then boards would send me into their startups as either the VP of HR or the COO with their perceived problem, which I might add was never the problem. And to go in there and see what I could fix. And then I fell in love, got married and traveled the world and I pulled back a bit from business and. But I knew I had more to do, more wisdom to share. So the inspired part is today I'm a coach. I'm a number one best selling author, I'm a speaker, I have my own podcast opening Pathways. And I'm the CEO of the Academy for Coaching Excellence, which is a 26 year old coaching academy and we train coaches around the world.

That's amazing. Well done. And tell me this, you've been a rock star in your career. So if you think back to what got you there, were there some habits that you go back and go, yeah. James, there were some very definitive habits that helped me achieve success. What would they be?

I'm going to answer that, but I first want to share something with you. During everything I just told you, I had two life threatening illnesses. The first I was told was terminal and I've lived with metastatic cancer 14 years this year. And as you can see, I'm still here. Yeah, one of the things that I did in that career is I had this thing that I used to do when I was aspiring to something new, we'll just call it act as if, if I wanted a different level of position within a company or something new. I just stepped into being that in my own world. And for me that was doing something where I was, for a lack of a woo word, was putting out energy, drawing it to me and calling me to step up to it. So that was one of the things that I did in that. The other thing that I did is I'm a creator, a builder. If something's in maintenance mode, it doesn't interest me much. So in some cases I went in to fix things. A lot of things it was, they were in the beginning and it was the starting of it. And I just get supercharged about that, about that kind of activity. I get asked occasionally, so you work for some of the largest companies in the world, you work for startups, which was your favorite? And my answer is yes. You know, there's nothing like being at Walmart. And I spent a lot of time in Bentonville and I was afforded the opportunity to be in the, the famous Friday morning meeting where all VPs and above would come and report numbers from around the country. And since I was there working on stuff, I would, wasn't a VP at the time and I was the one presenting on some weeks walmart.com numbers. And when you sit with people and of a size that big and scale that big, I remember one time they were, they were reporting the numbers from all the stores and super centers about how many strawberries they sold. And as I was trying to wrap my mind about the millions and millions of dollars that they were had sold on strawberries. And as I was imagining me going and buying my little pint or maybe a flat of how many strawberries. That was fascinating, right? Or I'm sitting in a conference in a break room waiting for the president of Financial services for a meeting, tiny break room, couple refrigerators, vending machines. This woman walks in and I introduce myself and I said, what's your name? My name's Monica. I said, monica, what do you do? She goes, I monitor the refrigerators. So I look at her as I look at the room and I see these two refrigerators. And she knew what I was thinking. She started smiling. She goes, I know what you're thinking, but here's what I do. I monitor every refrigerator and freezer in every Walmart store. I know if there's a problem with a refrigerator or freezer before they do. Bam.

That's incredible. Systems and processes at scale. That's incredible. And let's talk about these illnesses for a bit, because when we look at high performers, often they're very driven, they're very hardworking, they'll put in the big hours, they'll get results in one area of their life, usually in their career or their sport, but often there's collateral in other aspects of their life. They're not looking after themselves. Did you fall into that category?

No, I didn't get sick because I was working. In fact, through everything I told you, no one ever knew I was sick.

Wow.

I never shared that with anyone because. Which is one of the reasons why this book is so liberating. I have a fantasy every now and then somebody's going to pick it up and they're going to read and go, what? And then they're going to read a few chapters about high heels and really go, what? But I knew that they would have not hired me, likely, if they knew I was sick. And they certainly wouldn't have hired me if there were ever high heels involved. And so I kept those two worlds very, very separate. But I think that, you know, as you ask me that question, what a balancing act that was at times, and being driven to stay well in the presence of being told three times that I had six months to live.

How do you deal with that, like, psychologically, emotionally? When you're told you have six months to live, is your response the same each time?

No. You know, the interesting thing about that is when I was a little kid, you know, we probably all had a little bit of this, but for me, it was. Didn't ever end when our parents would say things like, you do as I say I do, and you don't ask questions or don't do that, but they don't want to tell you why. For me, that was like, there must be something I need to know now. That got me in trouble quite a few times, I bet. But that kind of translated in my career and with some of the illnesses of, you know, somebody'd say, you have six months to Live. And my reaction would be, kind of really, watch this. And I remember the last time there was a group of doctors and the cancer had come back, and I've had enough radiation that I could be your night light. I glow in the dark. You just put me in the corner and I'd light up the room for you. And this time, the cancer had come back. The results came, and they said, it's five locations. We can't radiate it. It'll kill you. We just don't have anything for you. And I chuckled. Now, if you want to get some doctors attention, chuckle when they tell you you've got six months to live. But you see, I knew something. By that point, I had already faced the possibility of death. And I knew that if that was the case, I could still live fully while dying. But I also knew that I had learned that if you can just stay around and find something, something else will come along. And so I went on a journey to find it. It's actually informed a new keynote that I've done, which is called living fully while dying. The first phase of that for me is living fully without regard to dying. The second phase was living fully while being told you're dying. The phase I'm in is living fully realizing I was dying all along. As soon as we're born, we're going to die.

That's a real. A massive paradigm shift in terms of looking at death. And to me, that's a habit in itself, that you've formed a habit of thinking, a habit of perspective. That changes everything. And with these big announcements from these doctors, did anything in your life change in terms of how much rest you had, how much adventure you took, what you ate, what you drank?

Absolutely. You know, one good thing which some people think that, why does that matter? But this is my 52nd year that I haven't eaten meat.

My partner, Caroline, will be delighted. She's a vegan. She will be very happy.

I'm a pescatarian, so I couldn't give up the seafood, but I definitely haven't had meat. And then I knew about supplements, but they became a bigger part of my life. But what I created in the first illness, and then when I got cancer, I thought that really worked. I'm going to recreate that again as something that you can read about in the book called the Healing Wheel. And if you can imagine a wheel with spokes, the spokes are to Eastern medicine, Western medicine, acupuncture, massage, supplements, whatever the things were. But in the middle was me. I was in charge of what happened. Whatever I was told to do, I took that information and made decisions. My oncologist today teases. He tells me all the time I'm a clinical trial of one, because I don't. I. I don't really follow the rules or do whatever for me. That gave me power, if you will, gave me some skin in the game. And I. The other thing that I've been asked before, why do you think you're still here? And I'll be candid. I've had the best medical care. I've had access to the best treatment. I'm privileged. But there was one thing about it I believed I could be. There's a huge, huge power in what we believe.

I agree. Achieving anything begins with believing anything, whether it's health, whether it's money, whether whatever. It has to start with internal belief.

Yeah, So I will admit. And I don't want to belittle illness for anyone because I've been there and it can be very difficult. And I'm well aware not everybody can do what I have done, but I hope that I can inspire people to see possibility, because some of the side effects. You know, I used to go to meetings and I wasn't concerned of whether I was in the right conference room in the building. My first thing was, where's the bathroom? Then I worried about whether I was in the right meeting, whether I was in the right building, whether I was in the right place or not. But I needed to know, because one of the side effects that was common then was, you know. But yes, it did require, I'll say, consciousness about how we care for our body and getting enough rest and eating well and trying to do my part. You know, I have this great story about the first illness I was on disability. Hardest thing I did was leave nci. You heard some great companies. It was the best I ever worked for. And the doctor said, the first time you have six months to live, he said, do you want to live at your desk or do you want to go do something you might enjoy? So I was on a fast track and I had to go on disability. Some years later, I remember sitting with a doctor who said to me, this is the best it will get. And I remember thinking, hmm, I don't know about that, but if this is the best it's going to get, then I'm going to try a few things. So I made this decision to go back to work. The doctor said, it will kill you. The disability company said, we're going to give you an extra Year to fall back on. We don't think you can do it. I went and interviewed during the dot com days in Internet startups. I had missed the whole Internet revolution. I was sick, I hardly knew how to use email and I'm applying at Internet startups. I told myself, you're bright, you'll figure it out, you'll find your way through it. And I remember I was in Union Square in San Francisco and got a call and they offered me the job. I think I was levitating when I said yes. And my immediate reaction after I hung up the phone was, I have nothing to wear. I looked up, there was a men's store. I went in and bought three suits. Here's the great news about this. I went back to work against all odds as an executive at an Internet startup. My health soared.

What's the connection there? Why do you think it did Sora and not do what the doctor said it was going to do?

I think that when we're willing to accept what's being said to us and look at that and think about what's possible, what are we going to do with this time? How are we going to do this? That we take some skin in the game, that we take some control in it. So many of my clients that I talk to today live in the past. It's as if there's going to be a do over. As if our life is like when you watch a movie on your phone and there's that little 10 second button you can press and go, like we could actually do that in life. While you're living there, unless you can learn something, you're missing what's happening here. As I love to say, you're going to miss the butterfly that just flew by. We get too far in the future, you got to do a few things right. You got to make sure there's gas in the car, the kids have food, the lights are on. But if you get too far, I always remind myself, I woke up today, some people didn't. So I think that was part of it was what is happening to me in the present? What is it that I can do right now that best serves me? And sitting around waiting to die just didn't feel like a great option.

I love that. So pragmatic too. I mean, I remember reading Eckhart Tolle's book many, many years ago, the Power of Now. And I kind of struggled to connect with it initially as in my maybe early 20s. But now, many years on, I'm starting to connect with that message of Just be present. Like, just smell the roses, look out, as you say, for the butterflies. Be grateful for another day, even if it's not the best day you've ever had. Yeah, it is the best day you've ever had.

Yeah. I have this thing called terrible gifts.

Tell me about it.

So we all have things, and if you haven't, you will. If you're living these things in life that are terrible. We lose somebody we love, a relationship ends, a pet dies, some disaster, God forbid, wipes out our house or something like that, we get sick. These are things we wouldn't wish upon anyone, much less ourselves. They're terrible. But what I have found is whether it's a month, a year, five years, there's a gift from it. And I want to give you my favorite example. I met this woman. She was near Olympiad. Her life was nothing but sports. She went into the hospital for minor surgery and got MRSA and they had to cut off her leg. There she is in a wheelchair with a cane and a walking stick. Terrible. Yeah, terrible. She didn't like the cane in the walking stick, so she in her own oven made an acrylic cane. She fashioned the handle around a wine bottle. Today, this woman has a global business making the most beautiful canes and walking sticks for people. So that when people see them, they see that beautiful cane and walking stick and not their limited ability. That's a terrible gift.

That's beautiful. I love that. It's interesting. I live in Christchurch, south island in New Zealand, and 2010 and 2011, we had big earthquakes, destroyed a lot of the city, a lot of lives lost. And of course that was a terrible experience and we all wanted to get away from it. But many years on we start to see all the amazing things that have came from that and birth of new things and new people and new connections, new buildings. I think that's a terrible gift. I've never heard of that before.

I love that. Yes. I coach through the Miller center at Santa Clara University. I'm a pro bono coach, a leadership coach for entrepreneurs around the world. Not in the States, but I have one person I coach in Kenya and Uruguay and India, and this woman I coach in Kenya. Her village was large, village was burnt down by fire. And she and her now co founder started building homes. And they started doing out of a completely different way, a different material, a different model of doing it turned out the new homes they built would withstand the moving earth, the different temperatures, fire. That could be done modular. They have this huge business now that started in the Guise of doing something for people that had no home. Incredible, terrible gift.

So we should be on the lookout for these moments when terrible things have happened or are happening and appreciating that something beautiful might come from that.

Yes. And I suspect if you think hard enough, you'll realize you've already had 100% life. Life. When people tell me their life is just perfect and nothing's going wrong, it's sort of like it's just going like this. You know what it reminds me of? It's like those monitors. It's like flatline on the monitor. I always think to myself, are you, like, living? Right. Yeah. Because what I see life as is a series. We could call it ups and downs, whatever we want. I think that what we perceive as downs is where we have our opportunities to learn and grow for the up times that we get to express and use and experiment and put into a place those things we learned. Yeah. Knowing that life is life. Yeah.

It's going to happen. As you say, if something terrible hasn't happened to you in life yet, it'll come your way. It's coming. It's guaranteed. You talk a lot about resilience and as a form of capital. Resilience is a form of capital. What are the, say, daily or weekly habits that actually compound that capital over time?

Yes. Well, let me tell you about what I think about resilience. I look at resilience as more than falling down. When you get up, it's not getting

back to where you left off.

Resilience is about getting back up. But how do you grow from it? I see resilience as a muscle, just like we exercise our bicep or tricep to make it stronger. When you exercise resilience, it gets stronger and stronger. And what I say is resilience is your greatest currency. Because, you see, the stock market can crash, you can lose your job, titles can change, God forbid, a disaster, whatever, but no one can take your resilience away from you.

How do we build that muscle? So something happens, whether it's an economy, a war, an earthquake, a loss, whatever it might be. How do we then get back up? And how do we then build more strength?

Yes, here's what I found, which is why I talk about risk, resilience and reinvention that these times offer us to take risks. Those risks allow us to use and make our resilience even stronger. That generates the opportunity for reinvention.

So we've got to be willing to take a risk and step in. I love that. And that's how we reinvent ourselves. Through building that resilience.

Yes. Yes.

When you look back through your life, how many reinventions can you clearly identify?

You know, there are many of them in the book. And the book was probably the hardest part of this book was when they told me what I had to cut from, but it was like three times too long to put in a book. And then I partied a bargain with them saying, can't we make that into another book of just stories from Tom?

I love that.

I think that, you know, there are a number of them of, of how to use resilience. And some people, like, see resilience as it has to be big. Sometimes resilience is small wins. Small baby step wins. You know, my logo for my business is a dandelion.

Beautiful.

Now you can cut a dandelion down, you can stomp it out, you can poison it. It's going to come back. And what it does beautifully is then it's smart enough in a wind to spread itself all around. That's resilience. I love the biggest gifts I've been given out of this is a life of service to others.

It's the best kind of life there is. That's true leadership. Now this book, Tom, people can get it at Amazon. I'm going to put a link in the show notes as well. High heels. I mean, come on, you've got to tell me what's going on. Tell me all about it. Like, I'm very curious.

Well, you know, I say you have to read the book because, you know, I don't want to give away. But you can see the book cover, half of it behind me. And just so you'll know, there's three characters in the book, as you can see, the business suit, the hospital gown, the high heel. So I'll just share with you that the COVID of this book, all three of these or me.

Beautiful. I will have to read the book to find out the rest. Right? I love it. The suspense. That's so good. It's exciting.

Yeah. The thing I love, I hear two things the most about this book. One of them is, I cannot put this book down. Well, that's like music to my ears, right? But this guy called me and he said, tom, I'm a hundred pages in and my wife told me to get out of the house with the book because I'm supposed to be doing all these things around the house and I won't put the book down. I loved it. Right. And the only thing that I hear the Most is I laughed, I cried. I did both at once.

Well done.

So this book starts when I was very young and I grew up in. We actually called it the Shack. No hot water, no refrigerator. My dad block brought home a block of ice every day to the ice box he used to warm in huge vats on top of the kerosene stove, which I can smell right now for our bath water. Different world all together. That's how it all started. You know, when you're a little kid, you don't know any different. There was a lot of love. I had amazing parents, but I was one of those kids I went to school when I was five. And I remember in my little five year old mind, not like I'm saying it now, but in my little five, five year old mind after a few weeks of cool, coming home and looking around, going, yeah, this isn't what this is supposed to look like. There's something about this that isn't what other people that I'm seeing have.

Perspective shift, eh? It's interesting. Yeah. Just think, looking back on our lives as kids, you know, things we believed and you talked about belief earlier, you know, whether it's Santa Claus, whether it's some religious figure, whether it's whatever it might be that our, our parents are superheroes. And then new facts come to life and new evidence is presented and our beliefs start to shift. But belief is such a powerful, powerful thing. And I want to think about these habits as well, around how you kind of go through life. So if you had to choose two habits that really define success for you, what are they and why?

I think that we've talked about a couple of them, but I'll give you one that I just want to reiterate about living in the past and getting to the present. You know, there's times that I'll get a diagnosis, lab work will come back, and I know what it means. The resilience I've built allows me to look at my phone at the time and say, Tom, got 40 minutes. Scream, yell at God, cry, stomp your feet, get it up, do whatever it is you want to do and then get on with it. Because if it means I'm going to die, what am I going to do with that time? It also puts me in the position of possibility.

Tell me more about what you mean by that, the position of possibility.

Well, if we're living in and wallowing in, which I'm going to admit is not easy to get out of it, it takes that muscle. But while we're there, we're missing out on the possibility of what we can do with whatever this is that we have left. Get to the present. What are we going to do to move forward?

I love that I talk about this

time I shared with you and they said it's in five locations. When we don't have anything to do for you is the time. I chuckled. I engaged with another doctor in la, convinced the doctor into letting me do treatments to one that was approved, one that was back in the day before immunotherapy became a big deal. I did both of them these at once. I flew to LA for 18 weeks. I would get these infusions early in the morning. I'd fly down on the earliest flight and they go, we think you should stay at a hotel at night. I said, look, this is la. By the time I get to the hotel I'll be in my bed. Yeah, here's what they told me after I agreed, your insurance isn't going to pay for this. We need a half a million dollars. So I pulled a few things and fortunately was able to, which I know most can't, but I was able to give them a half million dollars. It's going to change life a bit but. And I went through the treatment after it was all over. I remember calling the business office. I said, I need you to file that on insurance because I need the explanation of benefit. I said, well, you know they're not going to pay for it. I said, I'm well aware of that but I have to have proof of it to file it on my tax. They filed it, the insurance company paid. They had to give me my money back.

So good.

That's the power of taking a risk of having resilience and reinvention and remembering that just as anything is possible, nothing is certain.

That's the world that we live in, the life that we live. That's incredible. And a couple of questions just before we wrap up. I want to be respectful of your time. What's one habit you would encourage high performers to start to stop or to strengthen as they step into 2026?

You know, I think that I go through this year end process that I've been doing for over 35 years and I am going to. I was going to do it this past year but the book launch took over my life because I've been asked if I would turn it into a workshop. And I'm going to. I do work on releasing the past year. I even use ritual. I take what's staying, if you will and how do I need to polish it up and fine tune it. And then I do work even ritual on what I'm bringing in in the new year.

Beautiful.

Set some intentions around it. It even ends up being a calendar, a word of the year, a theme of the year, because almost like people who do vision boards, which can be very, very, very powerful, that you've set a vision, you have something to anchor to. It's mine. I can erase it and change it whenever I want. But the power of it and what I've been able to manifest and accomplish with it is amazing. So I encourage people to do something of that process of their own, of a way to look at what doesn't need to come with them and what needs to stay, how it can be enhanced or adjusted or polished up, whatever. And when looking at the new things that they're going to bring in, the reason behind it, what it's going to yield them. And look at this process of this transition that happens more than just flipping the calendar and putting the new calendar up. So I would encourage people to have some form of that.

That's beautiful. I love that ritualizing it. Did you pick a word or a theme this year?

My word of the year is faith.

And why did you pick Faith?

Faith wasn't about faith because that's a whole different podcast, which I'd love to engage, but it was. I've launched so many new things, including this book, that in doing the release, I noticed in the unbelievable success that I've had. This book I wrote 16 years ago, in the last year, two years ago, it came up in my process and I decided to either trash it or run with it. I made a decision to run with it and when if I told you every door that opened for me, you would not believe it. So when I looked at where I was currently, I found my brain in this tremendous success of this bit, going to what still needed to be done and even a little bit of slipping because we all slip into some thinking of, you know, oh, oh, oh, you know, wringing up our hands and stuff, and knew that I needed to apply faith to it.

That's beautiful. I love that. Thanks for sharing that so publicly. That's. That's beautiful and helpful. My word for the year is, is simplify. And last year was full on and very exciting. A lot of great things happened and launched. However I want to simplify.

One year was outrageous. One year was love. One year was courageous. One year was free. There are a couple more of these on another desk.

I love it. I might start Doing that myself and keep them. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Caroline, my partner, hers is ease. She wants to have more ease.

It's a great one. It's a beautiful one. The other thing that I would share of what people could do is we often get so focused on our to do list and so focused either on work or the things that we need to accomplish, or even the things we're not accomplishing that we're behind, and we forget things like the energy of enjoyment. Yeah.

Because enjoyment's not productive and, you know, it's not building towards the big project.

Yes, yes. The academy. We work with six forms of energy. Some of them are the energy of time, the energy of relationship, the energy of physical vitality, the energy of enjoyment. And I look at these almost sometimes as, like, tanks. And the goal isn't for them all to be full. The goal is for them to be imbalance. Because if one's in excess, it causes an imbalance for others. If one is in lacking or low, it causes an imbalance for others. But how do you keep imbalance? One of them that people tend to forget about is the energy of enjoyment. And if you can see just the energy of enjoyment, how it filters through the other ones, because if you're not using the energy of enjoyment, it's probably affecting the. The relationship, how you use your time and your physical vitality.

Definitely. I see this a lot in people in their 40s and 50s who are in the thick of their career, and maybe they've got kids and mortgages and enjoyment. That's a nice to have. That's a. Maybe I'll get that twice a year if I'm lucky. But that needs to be a priority. Right. And it needs to be in balance.

One of my favorite things that happened last year is there's a. A group of us that were the first, I think 200 people at Facebook. I was in the first 75. I might have been 57, but who's counting?

Wow.

And we had a reunion, and I wasn't going to go because not only was I old enough to be their father then, but now I'm old enough to be their kid's grandfather. And I started watching them posting as they're hitting 40s and they've got kids and they're writing about their midlife crisis and their life's over. And I decided I'm going to go and we'll see what happens. And it was fabulous. They. It was just so heartwarming how they treated me. And my favorite was the ones who were now managing younger people, and they would walk up and look at me and go, how did you put up with us? Right? And I shared with them that, you know, I read you writing about your midlife crisis and that life is over. And I want to share with you. You're just getting started.

A really lovely reframe.

Every one of these decades that don't fall perfectly in the number, but they kind of do bring something new. One of my favorite thing I do is when people that are close to me turn 40 or even 50, I take them to lunch or dinner, and I share with them what their opportunities are that they might learn in this decade.

May I jump in and ask you, because I'm 39, about to turn 40 this year, if you and I sat down and you'd said, james, here's a few opportunities for you in this next decade. What might they be?

Yes. You will find out who you are more clearly than ever before. You will realize and hopefully take the opportunity to realize that what you do in this decade and the beginning of the next will determine how you live your life when you're in your 60s, 70s, and beyond. If you're so fortunate. What you will learn in this decade, hopefully, is how much relationship and having people in your life that you can trust. And that trust you is to you as you grow older. And most importantly, this is one of the times that while we maybe talked about service, we maybe did things if we did or didn't, but if we did, this is the time when you really get to understand, if you're willing, the power of being of service to others. And there's so many ways to do it. People don't realize their time can look like just helping somebody learn something. It can be stopping and saying hello, opening a door that their talent. There are people who probably guided you on the journey to get you where you are today. The opportunity that you have to do that, I get so watching how the generations is so predictable. They did it with mine, they did it with X, they did it with Y. They did it with doing it with Z. They'll probably do it without. They all get labeled lazy millennials. When I was at Facebook, everybody's told me they're lazy. They all got tattoos, they don't wear good clothes, they don't wear good shoes. Right. The Zoomers. Now I get to work with them, and I just love it. You know, they're taking things that we used to talk about, work, life, balance, our mental health. And they're going enough where this means something. To us, what we don't realize is those generations at those ages are forming our new societal changes that are coming. And our role, instead of looking down at them and criticizing, is to model, mentor, and hold the space. And I guarantee if you're willing to do it, you'll learn something. I read an article the other day that Gen Z has got a problem talking because they grew up in Covid time and they're online and they can't get a nerve, can't talk to people. My response to it was, then start talking.

Yeah, simple.

Then start talking to them. So in our 40s, we get to learn what service can really mean and the cliche of how true it is that in giving we receive.

I'm so excited to be stepping into my 40s after that conversation. That's beautiful. Thank you. And before my very last question, I just want to remind everyone, please go to the Show Notes, go and buy the book. It's on Amazon. The link is right there. Go get it. Support Tom and his amazing work. It's went number one already, globally, which means people are loving it. There's reviews of people loving it. So I'm very confident you're going to enjoy this book, folks. Tom, if you and I were to pretend for a moment that we're going to fast forward many years into the future and you're highly aware that it's your very last day on earth and some very young person that you love, maybe it's a family member, but they're quite young. They come in and they say, look, Tom, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What might you say to them?

I would say first, there are things you've always wanted to do that somebody either told you you couldn't or shouldn't, or you thought you wouldn't go find that thing and do it. Beautiful.

I love that. That's so cool. I think there's a lot of people needing to hear that right now, especially in current times.

I know that on my last breath I'll be wanting to learn about it and I'll likely sit up and want to orchestrate it. Be a lifelong learner. Don't ever stop learning.

Be curious. I love that. And I think that says a lot about your character, your personality, the fact that you have your own podcast where you're leaning into curiosity. It's something that you're passionate about. So I deeply appreciate you. I'm sure this is not the last time that we will chat, but I want to say a huge thank you for today. I'VE taken a lot away from that.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Tom.