Episode 1409: Interview with Paul Zolman on his book The Role of Love

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1, 409 of the Inspired Stewardship

[00:00:05] Paul Zolman: Podcast. I'm Paul Zolman. I challenge you to invest in yourself. Invest in others. Develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find the way of showing love every day is the key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this.

[00:00:32] The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:42] Children, you can guide them, but really to take over someone's life and say, you're doing it all wrong, and what's wrong with you, and saying such stuff like that really is nobody's part. It's nobody's business. It really isn't. So I realized that that has to be a hard and fast boundary. And when I [00:01:00] started realizing that I didn't have control over that person, it was such a relief.

[00:01:06] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself.

[00:01:25] Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:37] In today's podcast episode, I interview Paul Zolman. I asked Paul to share with you his journey to writing The Role of Love. I also asked Paul about how his faith journey affected his life journey. And Paul also shares with you how this in the book, applies to more than just couples. I've got a new book coming out called [00:02:00] Inspired Living, assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures.

[00:02:06] You can find out more about it and sign up for getting more information over at InspiredStewardship. com Inspired Living. That's InspiredStewardship. com Inspired Living. Paul Zolman is the international best selling author of The Role of Love, but the true author of love is God. Paul feels that in God's wisdom, he placed in us a variety of circumstances that require us to find our way back to his pure love.

[00:02:37] So what qualifies Paul to speak about love? His childhood experiences of the opposite of love. He came from austere beginnings, and in that distaste it formed inside him, he searched for and eventually created a method that transformed his life from anger to loving everyone. He grew up in a family of abuse, where physical touch became his preferred love style, [00:03:00] only because of the regularity of its occurrence.

[00:03:02] He could almost count on it. It was consistent. Paul came to think that this was the way that others express love. But deep inside, he knew that this was a twisted belief. And he wanted a better life for himself. So he created a paradigm shift that works. In his book, The Role of Love, you'll find what helped him move from a childhood boot camp of abuse to being a person who loves everyone and can find the good about anyone in all circumstances.

[00:03:34] Welcome

[00:03:34] Paul Zolman: to the show, Paul! Hey, Scott, thank you so much. Thanks for the invitation to be here. Absolutely.

[00:03:40] Scott Maderer: We talked a little bit in the intro about your book, the role of love and the work that you put out. and how you've been focusing on this idea. And you shared a little bit about your past and being brought up in an abusive situation and that.

[00:03:59] Let's [00:04:00] go into it a little bit more. Talk a little bit about your journey your past, and what brought you to the point of wanting to put this message out into the

[00:04:09] Paul Zolman: world. Great question, Scott. And really the journey was the start of the journey obviously was when growing up at home. My father was a truck driver.

[00:04:21] He's gone through the week, came home in the weekends. Every Friday night he was home and every Friday night he dated my mother. I don't know that he ever missed. And I love that about my father. I don't I can't even duplicate that myself. However, he wasn't very creative about that date. Always the Maverick bar, always with alcohol.

[00:04:42] So while he's getting in vibes, they're sharing how they're, how each my mother and father's weeks were. And I can imagine my mother starting at the oldest child and coming down. I'm number 10 of 11, Scott. So it took a while to get down to number

[00:04:56] Scott Maderer: 10. Because sometimes they didn't get to you before that.

[00:04:59] Paul Zolman: [00:05:00] What was happening, Scott, and I imagine this is what was happening, that my father's getting annoyed at what my older brothers are doing. So he'll be mildly annoyed, maybe, and then another annoyance, and this stack on top of that another one, and he's stacking these annoyances. Now, by number 10, he's ready to flash.

[00:05:21] This is the straw that's going to break the camel's back, and I felt targeted in that way. In addition to that, because he took my mother out every Friday night, he valued the women, and I loved that about him as well. But I'm sandwiched between two, two women. I have an older sister and a younger sister and all the rest are boys.

[00:05:44] So I'm the target in that way as well, that if I look cross eyed at these sisters, then I'm in trouble. And so I grew up, Scott, trying to be as Obedient to those rules [00:06:00] and stay out of trouble as much as I could. I remember at age 17 I took a career test and the career test said that I would be a great IRS agent probably because of all those rules that I wanted to keep, and I'm gonna make you keep those rules too.

[00:06:16] And it's just one of those things I never did go to be an IRS agent, actually became a, an accountant. Which also has,

[00:06:23] Scott Maderer: yeah, I was gonna say, there's a similarity

[00:06:26] Paul Zolman: there. Yeah. It's pretty close. So that there's all the rules there and actually eventually became a CFO of a public company. But that's my financial background.

[00:06:37] All along the way though, I'm, I've still got this residual anger from that childhood, the angry culture that I grew up in. Scott, lemme describe that just a little bit. It's a culture that where people will talk over one another. that regardless of whether you're talking or not, doesn't matter to that person.

[00:06:54] They've got something more important to say. And that's that mindset of, what I've had to say is more [00:07:00] important than whatever you're saying. And I'm going to say it and then nobody gets hurt. And it's just that kind of culture, there are no boundaries. And it's just all the put downs.

[00:07:11] If I put you down, that raises me up. All that is in that angry culture. There's humor. That's angry. Vocabulary is angry. It's just that there's abuse of all sorts of kind, obviously emotional, social, financial, just physical, sexual, all those abuses and then more are all coupled right within that angry.

[00:07:36] Kind of culture. And that's what I grew up in. So I have this residual anger that's come coming up over over the course of me being married and I found that I had that same generational thing that's passed on from my parents that I'm stacking all these annoyances until I have that flash of anger.

[00:07:59] I [00:08:00] would never know when that was going to happen, neither did anybody around me. But when it happened, sometimes it happened in public, and that's like someone in a swimming pool having an accident, and everybody runs away from that accident and say, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, it wasn't me. And you repel people.

[00:08:16] I did not want to do that. I wanted to stop repelling people, stop sending them away, try to figure out how do you draw people to you? How do you make people go to a store and say, I want. The customer service of John or I want the customer service of Scott or Paul. I want that person to help me instead of repel people.

[00:08:39] And so that part and just these anger, angry outbursts actually were. Contributory to the demise of my first marriage after 23 and a half years and eight children. Just we got divorced. I had primary custody of children, five children left in the home. [00:09:00] And so when it was a weekend off and she had the children for her weekend, I decided I'm going to do a very cool midlife crisis thing.

[00:09:10] I was going to do what I call destination dating. So I found somebody online. They were in a different city. I was in a different city. We'd pick a city to meet in, we'd have a date, go back home. And I did this for about a year and a half, and I went to Daytona Beach and Jacksonville and Atlanta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, New York City, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Nashville, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Cabo San Lucas, and many more cities that I went to, to have a date.

[00:09:41] I felt at the end of that, I felt like I was part of the lyrics of that song that say looking for love in all the wrong places. I wasn't finding anything, Scott, and it was really frustrating, but I thought I had a line on someone and was developing a good [00:10:00] relationship. Some of those dates were multiple dates with that same person, just different cities.

[00:10:06] And so I thought I had someone in Phoenix that was gonna work out, but I moved there and then obviously that was not the right thing to do. Did not work out at the same time. My ex wife decides that she wants now primary custody. The remaining three children about three and a half years after the divorce.

[00:10:26] She wants custody of those remaining three children and her plan is to move in with her parents in California. So I thought, you know what? At number 10 of 11, I did not know my grandfathers at all. and my one grandmother was 350 miles west of where I lived. The other one was 350 miles east. We're right smack in the middle.

[00:10:47] We rarely visited them. It was just not very often at all. So I thought these three children would have a great time learning their grand, learning to know their grandparents. So I relinquished primary custody to my ex [00:11:00] wife. Now I'm all alone. In that state, my older sister calls me and said she had this neighbor that she wanted to introduce to me.

[00:11:08] That neighbor I, my sister lived seven hours away, and I thought, you know what, sis, I don't want to do this destination dating anymore, and she was older sister, and she says, oh, come on, and then you've got to do at number 10 of 11, you've got to do what big sister says. or Big Brother. You really, number 10 of 11, you don't have much say at all.

[00:11:34] At least that's the family structure. So I said, okay, I will email her. What kind of relationship can you develop an email? I didn't think it would go very far at all, but this lady actually was a really good writer. Just excellent. And so we had these interchanges and they're fun and everything.

[00:11:53] And after about four or five times, Scott, I get brave and I ask her how many times have you been married? Which is [00:12:00] a loaded question, and it's you gotta develop a little. There's

[00:12:03] Scott Maderer: no really good answer to that, because none or 15, it doesn't matter what number it is, it's

[00:12:08] Paul Zolman: all bad.

[00:12:10] Yeah, but she made it fun. She said, counting the five that are buried in the backyard. And I absolutely roared with laughter. Yay, I have a live one. I've got someone with personality here. Somebody's got a sense of humor. I want to pursue this a little bit more. So we actually started getting closer, started calling and started visiting.

[00:12:32] And then I moved up to where my sister was at and we became more serious. Now it's time for big brother approval. Number 10 of 11. I need that as well. So it went 300 miles north up to my brother's house. And first thing that happened, I take her in, my sister in law pulls her aside and says, The only emotion that the Zollman family learned growing up was anger.

[00:12:52] At first I denied it, I said and it made me mad.

[00:12:58] Scott Maderer: No, it's not. I'm not [00:13:00] angry. Oh, wait.

[00:13:02] Paul Zolman: So I was busted. I was absolutely busted, Scott. And from that point, I realized that I've got an opportunity to change this generational thing that's been passed down from generation to generation. Who knows where it started, who knows how long it's been going on, but I've got that opportunity.

[00:13:19] So I thought, I'm going to start reading books and start seeing if I can get out of this angry culture and get into a more loving culture. So I started reading the color code and then settled on the five love languages. I really like the principles of the five love languages. Dr. Chapman as is a pastor.

[00:13:36] And when he wrote the five love languages, he said that they reconciled to the life of Jesus Christ. I'm Christian. I wanted that. I thought that would be a really good path for me to take. But coming from where I came from, I wasn't getting it. I went through the book four to five times, but the book never went through me.

[00:13:54] I didn't understand it. You mean, Dr. Chapman, if I guess what Scott's love language is [00:14:00] and cater to him, that you're going to call that love? That doesn't sound like love to me. Who am I to say what love is at that point in time? But it just didn't sound like it. And plus, I'm a very bad guesser. It wasn't working for me up until that time.

[00:14:16] Why do you think that'll work now? The second suggestion Dr. Chapman had was that if you take this survey, You can find out what your love language is, right? What do I do with that, Scott? Advertise? Hello, Scott. I'm GIFS. What do you have for me today? That's so awkward. It wasn't, just absolutely wasn't working for me.

[00:14:37] So I had an idea. Even as dysfunctional as our family was growing up, We played games, and the games brought the family together. Yeah, there was still all the put downs, all the smack talk, and all the aggressive competition in those games, but it brought the family together. I thought, I wonder if I could make this a game.

[00:14:56] So I contacted Dr. Chapman and said, Are you [00:15:00] licensing those little pictures of the icons that you have for each one of the love languages? And after a couple of weeks, his attorney wrote back, said, no, we're not doing that right now. So I had a friend in town here that was a copyright intellectual property attorney, and I went to him and told him my idea, and he said this.

[00:15:17] He said, theory, like the love language theory, is not copyrightable. Application is. So how you present that theory is copyrightable. So what I did was I created my own icons and actually put it on the dice. So I've got the dice. I'm holding it up for the listeners that are listening. I'm holding up a dice.

[00:15:39] It's about one inch by one inch cube, and on each side of the cube I've got pictures. One I'm showing right now has two hands like they're holding hands together. That represents the love language of touch. The next side has a hand holding a gift, representing gifts. The next side [00:16:00] has a hand holding an hourglass representing time.

[00:16:06] The next side has a, looks like a waiter that's holding a platter that would represent service. And then The last love language would be two hands together forming a heart, and just like a cartoon or something, you've got a little conversation file, like the heart is talking, those would be the words.

[00:16:26] Five love languages, six sides on the cube, the last one is a hand holding a question mark, that one surprised me. So there's just two instructions, Scott. You're rolling the dice every day. Whatever it lands on, that's the love language you practice giving away all day that day, all day to everyone. And that's really rolling the die and focusing on sending out love every single day has really changed my life.

[00:16:54] Scott Maderer: Now that and so you started using [00:17:00] the dice idea yourself to change your own behavior or correct.

[00:17:03] Paul Zolman: That's and I started with that thinking that I've got to figure out how to I've got to figure out a replacement behavior for becoming angry. What I realized is that started with that little annoyance.

[00:17:17] And what I was annoyed at Scott wasn't myself hardly ever annoyed at myself. The one time I was annoyed at myself, I didn't talk to myself for three days. Try that for a little bit.

[00:17:33] Scott Maderer: Hey, I have arguments with myself and lose them. So I perfectly understand.

[00:17:37] Paul Zolman: You understand that silent treatment now.

[00:17:42] So I was annoyed at other people and I realized that's one of those boundaries that I did not learn growing up that I'm not in charge with them. I'm not in charge of their life. They make their own decisions on their life. And who am I to decide that I'm above them and can [00:18:00] direct them in how they live their life?

[00:18:03] For children, you can guide them. Really to take over someone's life and say, you're doing it all wrong. And what's wrong with you? And saying such stuff like that really is nobody's part. It's nobody's business. It really isn't. So I realized that has to be a hard and fast boundary. And when I started realizing that I didn't have control over that person, it was such a relief.

[00:18:27] Oh, you mean I'm not responsible that for that, what that person does. And it just goes throughout, throughout work. It goes throughout everything that you do, you think you're responsible for someone else. But it's not really that way. You really are responsible for for yourself and what you send out.

[00:18:49] And I realized that I can't bid love to come my way. That's almost like being responsible is telling that person, start loving me. And it's more of a [00:19:00] manipulation, more of a command of and making it more of a duty for that person rather than anything that would resemble love. So I couldn't do that.

[00:19:08] What can I do? And I realized all I can do and what's in my power and control is give love away and respond when it comes my way. As I'm rolling the die, over a 30 day period, I actually learned all five love languages to give it away. What that did for me, Scott, is improve my communication skills so I could see it when it came my way.

[00:19:33] Most people can only see, and according to Dr. Chapman and I absolutely agree, most people can only see what they like. They only see their primary love language. as love. Everything else might be nice, or it might be something kind, but they don't see it really as love. This gives you the peripheral vision to see, oh, they're loving on me, and then you can absolutely respond to that.

[00:19:59] Scott Maderer: You [00:20:00] mentioned during the beginning of this that, that you were a Christian yourself and you were looking for something that had that Christian language. That's one of the things that attracted you to the love languages by Chapman. So can you talk a little bit about your faith journey and how that.

[00:20:17] Has affected both what you're doing, but then vice versa too how has what you're doing affected your view of faith?

[00:20:26] Paul Zolman: Great question, Scott. Thank you for that. My mother actually joined the church before, three years before I was born. So I was actually raised going to church and I was grew up in Great Falls, Montana.

[00:20:39] Great Falls, Montana in the wintertime. We only lived two blocks from the church. Walking in 50 below weather was my strength that I had to do that. My nose was black or blue. My ears were black or blue. Tips of my fingers were black or blue. just from the frostbite of walking two [00:21:00] blocks to church.

[00:21:01] So I linger at church to thaw out and then get that bravery again to walk back home. And so just, I had a strong feeling, so to speak that by going to church and by doing those things, that I would become a better person. So that's what I was trying to do.

[00:21:23] Scott Maderer: I think there's some obvious benefits we've talked a little bit about couples throughout this and you talked about the dating and your parents and all of that.

[00:21:33] So I think there's obvious a lot of people could see the obviousness of, oh yeah, I could use this. And it would help me when I'm in my relationship. How do you see the benefits of this for. Single people or for maybe young children or teenagers people that maybe aren't in a relationship yet, maybe don't even want to be, you

[00:21:55] Paul Zolman: know, yeah, exactly.

[00:21:56] So that's a great question. Scott Dr Chapman [00:22:00] writes the book, the five love languages, and it really is mostly about romantic. So I'm created the die and I'm single at the time. And I said, Dr. Chapman, who in the heck am I supposed to love? Then I thought for a minute, and I thought I guess I'll just have to love everybody.

[00:22:17] For me, it was actually a perfect situation, because if I was only expressing love to a significant other, I don't know anybody, Scott, that's with their significant other 24 7. Some people don't want to be with their significant other 24 7, but I don't know anybody that really is with them connected at the hip.

[00:22:38] all the time. So having to love everybody was perfect. I needed a consistency for loving. I needed a consistent behavior that would replace this other behavior. So instead of saying now what I was saying, instead of saying what's wrong with that person and going down that [00:23:00] critical path, I found myself after rolling the die.

[00:23:03] Watching for opportunities to love and thinking and saying what's right about that person? What can I love about that person? It came to the realization that I was looking that at the For the negative part of it and the critical part of it I was looking at maybe 10 maybe 20 percent of what that person was Just looking at their faults looking at their weaknesses looking at their misgivings Focusing on that and talking about that I was missing the 80 to 90 percent of what was good about that person.

[00:23:34] Now with this paradigm shift, it was like an about face. Now I'm always watching for what's right about that person, and I became so busy. about watching for what's right about that person that I forgot to be angry. I forgot to be annoyed and I did never ever go down that path anymore. Now I'm focused on the good things and sending it out there.

[00:23:55] So as far as single people and as far as people that may not be in a [00:24:00] relationship, this is absolutely perfect. You're in a position to actually make this a character trait for yourself to love all day long. As you roll the die, it sets a theme for the day. It sets a purpose for the day. So no longer is your day willy nilly come what may.

[00:24:16] I can be mad, I can be happy, I can be sad, I can, you're not going to ride that roller coaster of emotions. You're focused on loving whatever whatever comes that way. And it's always the theme of love. It makes a huge difference. And have you

[00:24:34] Scott Maderer: been looking for opportunities to use this with schools or youth groups, that kind of thing.

[00:24:42] Do you see a

[00:24:43] Paul Zolman: benefit there? Absolutely. So I am testing it in schools right now. Scott's great question. And in that school, I'm testing it with K through six right now, because for the most part, they're in the same classroom at the start of the day as, as they are at the end of the day. So what [00:25:00] happens is that they roll the die.

[00:25:01] It takes two seconds to roll the die or less. Now the teacher takes 30 to 45 seconds. So really less than a minute is as the start of the day. 30 to 45 seconds to explain exactly what love language class we're looking for this type of behavior today. At the end of the day, so what I have is a journal page, a pdf journal page that has what they rolled, opportunities they saw to love in that way, what they did about those opportunities.

[00:25:27] I provide the teacher with that pdf of that. They can print as many copies of as they like of that journal page. And have each class member write about their day and what they love. What happens with this I've talked with teachers around the world, Scott, every teacher, there are bar none there.

[00:25:47] Every single teacher I've talked to said the last 10 to 15 minutes a day is really non productive time. The kids have been there all day. They're tired, they're anxious, they know the bell's gonna ring, and their [00:26:00] minds are mush. They can't learn really one more thing because they've been trying to learn things all day, and it's just, they're all to the, they're to their limits.

[00:26:10] So with that, this journal writing actually becomes a decompression type of activity that they can just let go of all that. stress of the day, write it down, and just walk away from it. And what happens with that, now that child is actually responsible for their own behavior. No longer is the teacher the teacher has some responsibility to manage it, but the teacher's not responsible for that child.

[00:26:40] The principal's not responsible to make sure that child behaves. The child themselves are responsible to make sure that they behave. They have to write about it, they have to report about it at the end of the day, what they did that was loving. With that, it also becomes a journal for that child. I would have loved to have a journal [00:27:00] from first grade.

[00:27:01] I remember my first grade teacher, like it was yesterday, Scott, And it was, Mrs. Rogers was just so very kind. She was elderly and may have been close to retirement years. I think she may have retired one or two years after my first grade year, but I don't remember second, third, fourth, or fifth grade. I do remember sixth grade.

[00:27:20] Now, there's something about a teacher that you remember, but I would have absolutely loved to have a journal about what it was that I loved about that particular teacher. Must have been a feeling, maybe the contrast from what my home life was to what school life was, and it just made an impression on me in that way.

[00:27:37] The teacher does just a checkmark that the child did it for those very special stories. Maybe the teacher will hold those over to the next day, read that in front of the class. Johnny did this, Susie did that. Yesterday and it encourages the children, all the other children say I want my story read in front of the class and I'm so it [00:28:00] encourages good behavior every single day.

[00:28:03] So hopefully this will tamp down a lot of misbehaving tamp down any bullying that's going on and help them focus on how to send out love and make it consistent. That's the whole idea of this. So with students were really trying this project. It's in test mode right now. So that's where we're at with that.

[00:28:20] Looking for corporate sponsors, actually, in that way that people that would actually sponsor purchasing the dye and just for it's a very inexpensive investment for a corporation and invest in a school within their own community.

[00:28:39] Scott Maderer: Well, a lot of schools have a sponsor. Corporation already that they work with.

[00:28:45] So it may even just being able to exit that a lot of times they're buying Chromebooks or other technology devices maybe this could be packaged in with that reach out to some of their current sponsors as well. So that's awesome. Yeah. I was a school [00:29:00] teacher for 16 years.

[00:29:01] So it now I taught. sixth and up, but I taught everything but eighth graders. I haven't ever taught eighth graders. I taught sixth, seventh, ninth, 12th, but not eighth. I jokingly say I didn't want to teach eighth graders. They're not human. I'm not sure what they are, but they're not human.

[00:29:21] I love sixth and seventh and I love ninth and 10th and 11th and 12th but eighth graders are, it takes a particular skillset to teach eighth grade. They're a rough. They're a rough age group.

[00:29:33] Paul Zolman: That's the transition age, right?

[00:29:34] Scott Maderer: That's a transition age. Exactly. It's like kindergarten teachers, quite frankly.

[00:29:38] I think all kindergarten teachers immediately qualify for sainthood. It's it's a rough age to teach when they're first coming in. So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I ask those, is there anything else about the work you're doing or the book that you've put out or the dice that you'd like to share with the lister?[00:30:00]

[00:30:00] Paul Zolman: Absolutely. Since it's a Christian broadcast and I have a Christian background, I really love the one thing that really helped me all along the way that will maybe help your listeners as well. And that's the interaction at the Last Supper, when Christ says, one of you is going to betray me.

[00:30:18] And each one of the disciples one by one said, not knowing if it was them, said, Lord, is it I? And I've used that phrase in my life. with relationships is Lord is that I am I the person that's causing the friction and or the distance in this particular relationship. Now, as I've used that phrase in my life, I've actually been able to reconcile to what Christ would do.

[00:30:45] Reconcile to those things that really I should be doing in that particular relationship. And unfortunately, the answer is usually always yes. Yeah, it's you. Take care of this business. And it really is, has been something that has just been a motivator for [00:31:00] me to just try to be a little bit, maybe just 1 percent better each day.

[00:31:05] Try to build up. of the loving and kind relationships stay away from that angry culture and develop that loving culture.

[00:31:18] Scott Maderer: So my brand is stewardship and I brand, I run things through that that lens of stewardship and yet that's one of those words that a lot of people have heard it but don't necessarily always mean the same thing when they say it.

[00:31:32] So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:31:36] Paul Zolman: Scripture comes to mind am I my brother's keeper? And it's just exactly that, that we really are in this world together, that we really need to be inter interdependent in that way to help one another. I found in my life, Scott, that if I felt down, if I felt just having my pity party and sitting here waiting for [00:32:00] love to come my way, I felt it was a lot better if I got up Walked out the door, walked down the street, find someone that's just a little bit lower than I was, try to raise them up, and by raising them up, actually, it lifts me up as well.

[00:32:15] That's my stewardship. It's to reach out and help others have a better day. As I've rolled the die, I found that what I'm watching for every day is to watch for people to light up. When they light up, I've discovered what their primary or their secondary love language is for that person to just wash, rinse, repeat, make a mental note and just keep doing it over and over again.

[00:32:40] But by making their day that day, it actually helps you feel a great satisfaction that you've helped somebody on their way. That's the stewardship I'm talking about, and we really need to do that every single day. This purposely loving and sending love out every day is part of that stewardship that I feel that we [00:33:00] are, we're responsible to help lift everybody up, everybody that we can.

[00:33:05] Not everybody's going to respond to the same love language, but there are several that will respond to that genre of whatever you're practicing that day.

[00:33:15] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Paul, imagine for a minute that I invented this magic machine. And with the power of this machine, I could pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years.

[00:33:31] But through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life and see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left

[00:33:41] Paul Zolman: in the world? I hope that, yeah, that's a powerful question. Nobody's ever asked me that, Scott.

[00:33:49] So I, I would hope that I would have kind of the mythical nature of Johnny Appleseed, but in a different way, planting seeds [00:34:00] of love all around the world so that those seeds would grow and that it starts with an individual, goes to the neighborhood, goes to the community, goes to the state, goes to the nation, goes to the world, and that poll that it would pollinate and each one of those love trees, so to speak, that I would plant.

[00:34:22] would actually grow and produce and then produce even more. And it just keeps rolling out that we've become a whole lot more loving. I think that the media has taken us down a road of negativity, focusing 90 percent of the newscasts is negative. Maybe 10 percent might be positive. Let's change that around, turn it back right side up.

[00:34:43] And focus on that which is positive in our lives and really make it, make a difference in that way. So

[00:34:51] Scott Maderer: what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you go into 2024?

[00:34:56] Paul Zolman: What's on the roadmap next is I'm still working on [00:35:00] developing a program that actually will take this to businesses. The word love in the business sector has really gotten a black eye.

[00:35:10] And a bad name because it always seems like it's when you say love, it's always thought romantic love. I'm talking about decency. I'm talking about common sense. I'm talking about common courtesy, bringing that back into the workplace and developing a program exactly like I've developed now here for an individual, but develop it for business in that way, doing that as well as continue with the school program, trying to get into the schools.

[00:35:37] Across the world. And I've got a few that are using it. A school in Washington State, a school in New York State, the school right here where I'm at, and there are a few that are using it, but I want to obviously expand that. Quite a bit more.

[00:35:59] Scott Maderer: And you can find out [00:36:00] more about Paul, his book, the role of love and the dice setup that we've been talking about over at his website, roleoflove. com. I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. Paul, is there anything else you'd like to share

[00:36:14] Paul Zolman: with the listener? Absolutely. There's just one last thing, Scott.

[00:36:18] There's a, I love the sound of music and it was just, it's been a classic throughout the ages. And there's a scene in there where Rolf, the little delivery guy with his little bike and everything is on the lawn and Maria von Trapp is up on the second story. Rolf starts singing a song and he's, and that lyrics of that song, he says, love in the heart wasn't put there to stay.

[00:36:43] Love isn't love till it's given away and hopefully we can do that. Hopefully we can send love out all day every day. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Scott.[00:37:00]

[00:37:01] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor, go over to inspired stewardship.

[00:37:25] com slash iTunes rate, all one word, iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.[00:38:00]