 Hi folks. I hope you're having a great time wherever you are in the world. I'm with New Workforce Hawaii and we try to help people transition from where they are in life to where they want to be. And that means that the first step is to define our purpose and know why we're, or what we want to accomplish in our lives. We're here talking with the Blue Zone people. Scott Stenstrad is the executive director and Shirley Andretti is the person that I work with most because she is the community coordinator for Koalapoko. Koalapoko is the windward side of Oahu and we've been working to implement their Blue Zone project on the windward side for a couple of years now. One of the key aspects of their program is to help people live with purpose. And the program is an outgrowth of the National Geographic Association study of communities around the world where people live long and exceptionally long lives. Scott, what is the Blue Zone project? Thanks, the Blue Zone project is really a community-based well-being initiative. And with it, as you said, to make the healthy choice easier so that people can live a longer life. So not just longer but better as well. It's based on National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner's research around those places in the world where people live to be 100 years old, up to 10 times the rate that the average American does. And here in Hawaii, the project has been brought to Hawaii by HMSA. So it's very much a community-based. We're not working in the entire state. We work community by community. And as you mentioned, Koalapoko is one of those communities that we're operating in. You're okay. What are some of the common elements that they found that these communities have? So the basis of the project is really what we refer to as the power nine. And when Dan and the researchers went around to the five locations around the world where people live longer, they like to say they reversed engineered longevity by observing, tracking, not just asking questions about what people thought allowed them to live longer, but really by making observations and looking at lifelong habits and behaviors. And from that, they distilled the power nine. One of those is having a strong sense of purpose. And all of the communities, it was very interesting to them in that, is they're working with translators and they would ask people like, well, what do people do when they retire? In many of these cultures, they had a hard time translating that because there was no concept of retirement. But what they found in Okinawa and Sardini, Italy and Icarai, Greece and the Nikoi Peninsula and Costa Rica is that they all had words or sayings that reflected a strong sense of purpose. Also in all these areas, they moved naturally. They walk places, they bike places, they weren't car dependent. They got up and down in Okinawa from a seated position on the floor in 30, 40 times a day. So little things, little movements constantly. They grew their own vegetables in their garden so they were moving. The gardening kind of leads to one of the other power nine, a plant-slant diet. So they primarily ate a vegetarian, you know, existed on vegetables, fruits and vegetables that they grew themselves. And they ate meat, but it was celebratory, you know, once or twice a month. It was a treat rather than a daily thing. Exactly, exactly. And they also had ways in which they monitored how much they ate, you know, they ate with purpose as well. And in Okinawa, they had a phrase, harahachibu, meaning to eat until you're 80% full so that you're not overdoing it. We've all probably had that kind of feeling much too often, right? You sit down. Stuffed after things. And then, you know, you stop when you feel full and then five, ten minutes later, you know, you're kind of overwhelmed. So 80% rule we refer to that. Also, you know, wine at five we call it if people have a healthy relationship with alcohol. What the researchers found in these different areas is that they tended to enjoy a glass of wine or, you know, other types of alcohol with a meal with friends. But it was a glass or two with the meal and friends. It wasn't the binge drinking that we see sometimes, you know, here in the United States. That was a way to socialize and relieve the stress. And I guess a red wine has a pre-radical idea. I don't know what it's... Yeah, but there's a benefit to being able to drink moderately. Yeah, so there's some hard benefits, particular wine, red wine. And in Sardinia, Italy, their Canona wines have the highest levels of resveratrol of any of the red wines in the world. So up to 10% higher. So that's one of the active ingredients that really contributes to that health-hardy aspect of it. And then, as you mentioned, you know, getting rid of the day's stress, we refer to that as downshifting. So whether it was through a happy hour with family or friends, it could be yoga. It could have been, you know, daily prayers. You know, they had some ways that they did that. In one area that I didn't mention in California, Loma Linda, California, the Seventh-day Adventist population, part of their faith is getting out into nature, doing nature walks on a regular basis. Studies have shown that, you know, being out in nature can help monitor your stress as well. So downshift important. That kind of activity actually generates creativity. Yeah, absolutely. It frees up your mind, allows you to, you know, contemplate things while you're in nature that you might not sitting at your desk or at home in front of the TV, that's for sure. I wonder how many people have experienced solving a problem in their sleep. You're stuck when you went to bed and you got the answer when you wake up. Absolutely. You're in your mind to chance to relax a little bit. It's very important. Some of the other, apart from, you know, family first, you know, making time for friends and family, the right tribe, who you surround yourself with, and then belonging faith, having a connection to one's faith, can add anywhere from seven to ten years to one's longevity. I think it's about the social connectivity and it's not just being part of a faith-based organization but actively participating four times a month is what they found. One of the things about your program that strikes me is that you don't encourage big changes like going on a Mediterranean diet. You want to build small changes into people's lives. How does that work? Well, it's really about trying to, you know, you think, well, when you think about it, you make a lot of decisions daily without thinking about it. And some research has indicated, you know, hundreds of small decisions. So you find that most people can't stick with a diet. I mean, within two, three weeks, so many vast majority people are done with a diet already. So instead of trying to tell people to go on a prescriptive diet, it's just saying, eat more fruits and vegetables. So take it as slow and it becomes a daily habit as they can increase that. And, you know, different tips and tricks on how to eat less. Like, instead of using a 10-inch plate, use an 8-inch plate or a 12-inch plate down to a 10 or 8-inch. So there's different little tricks, things that you can do, and changing your environment in your home. Is that why they give you a small plate in the barbecue? Yeah. Anyway, part of your program is an actual physical class in how to define your purpose. How does that work? Yes, I'll talk about that. So we, in Kuala Lumpur, we're offering free-purpose workshops. It's an hour and a half to two-hour experiential workshop where attendees come, they participate. And it's a way for them to reaffirm, in some cases, rediscover, or perhaps discover for the first time what their life's purpose is. And we go through an experiential exercise using calling cards. And the formula is your gifts, plus your passion, plus your values, equal your purpose. And through this hour and a half to two-hour exercise, we've had quite a few people walk away with an epiphany or an aha moment where they realize, wow, I really want it to pursue this. And I've been doing this. It happened to me. That's wonderful. It's happened to quite a few people. And, you know, a lot of times people say, well, gosh, I really wish I could leave this job that I'm in, but I have a mortgage, I have a family, I need to support them. So one of the things that we connect people to is volunteer opportunities in their community because the research shows that if you can volunteer, you're going to get that same type of fulfillment. So we try to connect them with organizations in Kualaupokal that are looking for volunteers and a way for them to use their gifts and talents through volunteerism. We tell people that volunteering is work and that volunteering can be in a very important part of your retirement career. And so I'm always amazed that people tend to drift through life without purpose. And how do you live a fulfilled life if you don't know where you want to go? Well, I do think it's a topic that oftentimes isn't talked about. We've held these purpose workshops with high school seniors where they're at a different stage in life than, say, you or I. And so they're thinking about graduating in a month or two or what they're going to do. Are they going to stay here in Hawaii or are they going to move away? So their purpose now is going to be very different than what it is in 10, 15, 20 years. And so I think sometimes people don't realize that your purpose can change. Exactly. Your purpose changes as you mature. There you go. That's right. And obviously, on the tail end of my life, I still have things I want to accomplish. And we always will. I think one of the things you touched upon, you talked about retirement, and one of the things that I found most fascinating around a sense of purpose is that the two most dangerous times in your life are the times with highest mortality. One we don't think of, but it's that year when you're born, the first year, but that's why so many cultures celebrate first birthdays. But the second most dangerous time in one's life is the year after they retire. Mortality spikes during that time. And they believe it's because of that loss of sense of purpose. So you hit on it right on the head when you talked about that important time of retirement, having people that before they retired that have a good understanding of what their purpose is and how they're going to live that out because for many people it's through their work. And now that's gone, if you retire it's probably much of your social circle is around work. We spend more than half of our day there. So it's very critical for people that are going through a transition, whether it be high school to college or to the working world, or the working world to a retirement phase in their life to have a good grounding in their sense of purpose. Okay. We got to take a break for the Think Tech people. They want to let everybody know about some of the great programming they have. So we'll be back in a minute. Okay. We are back. And we've been talking about some of the factors that lead to a long and better life and most specifically about purpose. Shuri, when's your next Purpose Class? It's coming up on Saturday, June 10th in Kane'ohe at Unity Church, which is located in the atrium on Kahu'hipa Street. I encourage folks to visit our website where we have all of our events listed, info.bluezonesproject.com slash Hawaii. And they can see all of our upcoming events that we have. And you've expanded to the initial four communities to what now? You're pretty much across the state, right? Right. We started with three communities. We were here on Oahu in Kaua'a-Poko, as you've mentioned, and on the Big Island in two-thirds of the island. That's now expanded to encompass the entire island of Hawaii. We just launched in Maui, in Central Maui, so the Wailuku-Kahalui area. And later this year, we'll be launching three additional communities on Oahu. That will be the Kapolei-Eva area, the Wahiwa, and Manoa, Makaui, Makiki, Mo'iliili. So we're really excited about bringing those additional communities. So if we're not offering Purpose Workshops in your community yet, if you live in one of those, we'll be doing that over the next year. Sherry, I understand that we've been working with this for a couple of years now, and you have very specific goals that you track. That's right. We've been pretty successful with a lot of people, but one of the problems has been with the individual. And how do you reach people and help them make these small changes? That's a great question. What I like to do is say we work in three pillars. That's how Blue Zones Project operates. So we have the people pillar, which is the engagement, and we do that by offering these free activities in the community. So the Purpose Workshop, as we spoke about, cooking demonstrations, gardening demonstrations. We launch walking Mo'ai groups, or huis, of people in each of our communities. And we offer engagement presentations. We also do a lot of outreach tables and partnering with organizations to share what Blue Zones Project is all about. So that's the people pillar. We also work in the places pillar. That's where you or I spend a lot of our time, living, working, playing, if you will. So grocery stores, work sites, faith-based organizations, schools, and restaurants. So we work in all of those sectors where people visit on a pretty regular basis. In fact, the research shows that we spend about 90% of our time within a 10-mile radius. And so with Blue Zones Project, that's what we're looking to do, is impact the community in which we live. Ko'olau poko. A lot of people don't know what ko'olau poko is, but it basically means we're working in Waimanalo, Kailua, Kaneohe, and Kahalu'u to help make the healthy choice the easy choice. And we do this through policy changes, which brings me to our third pillar. Policy encompasses the built environment, making our streets our sidewalks more pedestrian, bike-friendly. Things like complete streets. Things like complete street initiatives, exactly. And then food policy and tobacco. And the complete street is to have not just cars, but provisions for bikes and wheelchairs and people. Exactly. And to help make our streets safer for all users, not just for cars. Talk a little bit about the Moai and how that works, because that's a support group that in Okinawa is established when you're a child and continues throughout your life. Yeah, in Okinawa, it's fantastic. They form these Moais shortly after the birth of their children. And these Moais stay together throughout their lifetime. In fact, one of my favorite slides that we use in our presentation is a picture of these women that have been in a Moai for 97 years. Oh, wow. And their average age is 101.5 years old. It's incredible. And so we're looking to adopt that same principle, that same concept here in ko'olau poko by forming walking Moais. So we'll come into your community. We invite your neighborhood, your school, your church, what not to come together. And typically it's a way of expanding your personal board of directors. So we bring five to eight people together who don't know each other. And they walk together for 10 weeks. The group decides when, where, and for how long they're going to walk. We help them to track that. It's usually the time spent together. And then we meet with them at a midway point. So five weeks in, and then at 10 weeks we have a celebratory event. And I'll tell you, it's fantastic. Many of these Moais that we launched over the last year and a half are now on week 30 or more. Because they've built these friendships and they just continue. Some of them have gone on to be leaders of new Moais. It really is fantastic. That's great. Getting stuck here. Speaking of getting stuck, when you feel stuck in life, your purpose is your guide. And sometimes you can talk to the boss and figure out how you can continue to grow within your business. Sometimes you have to look at volunteer opportunities. What in your program helps people move from a situation that may not be as good as they like to a more fulfilled life? Well, it's really looking at the whole individual. And we talk about BlueZone's project as being focused on well-being. That's not just physical well-being. That's your sense of community. And you have that group of close friends that you're interacting with and you can go to and you can talk to. Is the physical community that you live in, how connected are you to that? And do you feel that that's the best place for you to be? Obviously, the more you know about your community, the more interactions you have and maybe you're volunteering in the community, the more, you know, more pride and more connected to that community. That has an impact on your health as well. So it's looking at the different aspects. It's not just, oh, the exercise, the move naturally, go out and walk more. It's not just the food and trying to eat a more plant-based diet. It's all those things coming together that finding that sense of purpose. That's where you really hit the sweet spot. And we've had some amazing transformations of individuals both here and on the Big Island. And the easiest thing sometimes that people can relate to are things like weight loss. I just heard this week about yesterday, in fact, on the Big Island of somebody that got involved with our project in the last year and has lost over 100 pounds. Wow, that's awesome. But it's not just about the weight for them. It was about the social connectedness and just their physical ability to be connected with other people. So that's really what becomes kind of the empowering part are all those things working together, not just any one of them. And that involves habits, your daily things that happen almost automatically. So you talked about the right tribe earlier and Shree about getting people together, walking together. Well, they're reinforcing one another's positive behaviors. We also have Potluck Moais where we encourage people to get together and eat together a plant-based meal where people are bringing in different recipes that they can try. So you're building that support group within your life that you may not have. And then people try to bring family members involved and just start spreading throughout the community. And that support group is so important because I'm thinking of my kids and they could have grown up in a gang or they actually participated in drama and had positive friends who were good students and made all the difference in the world. Yeah, we talk about in the right tribe and who your friends are, are so important, our parents told us that they were not right when we were growing up. But they've done studies to show that other bad behaviors travel just like a cold might amongst friends or amongst family members. So if your three closest friends are smokers, you're exponentially like 150% more likely to be a smoker or become a smoker. So it's just like other programs out there where if you're going to change behavior, you've got to surround yourself with people that are going to support that behavior. And the folks that have made the major transformations, that's what they've done through their allies, through the purpose, through volunteering. So it's not just that, okay, I'm eating better but I'm surrounding myself with people that support these positive changes I'm trying to make in my life and sometimes that means having to step away from other folks or try to get them to join you, which is even better. Yeah, we talked about why and in the Hawaiian tradition, it's our huis and surrounding yourself with people who have accomplished what you want to accomplish can be very powerful. In today's world, anyone who expects to get a good job and work at that company for the rest of their lives are probably into a disappointment because we're transitioning into what might be called a gig economy and you folks are an example of that because you're hired to do a job and a Poco project, for instance, will be bought in a year and a half and then you may be transferred to another project within Blue Zone where you may be looking for another job. That's what so many of us meet. So we'll be hired to do a specific job and the solution is that we have to act and manage our careers like a business and we need to know where we want to go and we need to, it's not so much who we know but who knows us and our expertise and that involves marketing and so we have to be ready to deal with the contingencies that face our life and I'm very much into helping people live a more resilient life. That means their personal life in being prepared for losing a job or an extra hurricane. It's a financial resilience because if you've got multiple streams of income you can survive losing a job and deal with an emergency and we work to help our community be more resilient in planning for disaster. So be ready for the next hurricane. In the future there's going to be many ways to create an income. Your employer is going to be looking for people who are very adaptable, who can solve problems, who can work with people and who are expert in their field so it's a matter of lifetime learning and so you need to be the best you can in your particular field of endeavor. We'll be back in a couple of weeks and thank you for your time and listening. Thank you Bill.