Joe Quattrone 00:33
Welcome back to the FUZZEE’-ish podcast. I’m your host, Joe Quattrone. And today we’ve got a very special guest, Paul’s Ohlman, author of the role of love and the creator of this handy dandy dice that allows you to kind of live out what your what’s your love language is with either a spouse or a peer or friend in a day to day setting. Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul Zolman 00:59
Thank you, Joe, pleasure to be with you today. Looking forward to this. Yeah,

Joe Quattrone 01:03
so I mean, me and you got a chance to catch up a couple of weeks ago. And by all practical measures, you seem like a fairly standard bro, like a dude like myself kind of in that middle age territory. If you don’t strike me as the kind of guy that would get into love languages and stuff like that. When I typically think about love languages. That’s been something that’s been in my wife’s domain, I don’t necessarily associate with men all that often. How did you get into this line of work? How did you get into coming up with this concept around the role of love and, and obviously, wanting to do something about it to impact society?

Paul Zolman 01:40
It’s a great question, Joe. And basically, it was my own problem, that whenever you create a business, that you’re trying to solve a problem, my problem is anger. And I wanted to solve that problem by growing up in a little angry family, and that with anger comes angry humor, angry vocabulary, it’s just a culture all by itself. And I had a lot of that residual leftover into my adulthood. And I kept saying to myself, I don’t want to be angry. And it’s like those double negatives, two negatives, multiplied together, make a positive in math, that doesn’t work in relationships. That’s what got me into it.

Joe Quattrone 02:18
And so funny, because I feel like in my life, I had a very similar kind of pathway. And usually I consider myself a very kind of zenned out person. Not a lot can rattle the cage, if you will. But once upon a time, you know, in my early 20s to late teens, that’s where I was really in my formative years, dealing with a lot of emotional baggage that I had for my youth. And I, you know, me and my wife talk about that, from time to time, she asked me, sometimes when she’s going through her own turbulent emotions, with people in her life, she’s like, How come you never really, you know, blame people for your past or what’s happened in your past. And my line to her is always, you know, that person that would have gotten mad, died when I was 25 years old, when I made a commitment to, I just didn’t want to hang on to the negativity anymore. And I just haven’t even thought about some of those negative things from my past sitting in about 1920 years now. So I totally get what you’re going for here. That’s awesome.

Paul Zolman 03:17
Yeah, sounds like you’ve had very similar paths. But Joe, I actually was blaming my father up until about age 35. blaming him for awkward situations, both in public and at home. If you get angry in a public setting, all of a sudden, your family doesn’t even know you. There. Everybody’s scattered, you’re repelling people like crazy. I did not want to do that anymore. I want people to come to me, and just be with me, rather than scatter when I have these bouts of anger. And I realize that letting go of that blame is for me, it was something that, well, if I can blame someone, I don’t have to change. And it is that way for victims. It’s that way for everybody that blames someone. They don’t have to change because it’s their fault. It’s the other person’s fault. There’s no change on the horizon. I’m not going to change because it’s their fault that I have 61 of those decisions. It really makes a decision that you’re in a spot that you’re not going to change. And then you’re not going to go be worse, you’re not going to be better, but you’re not going to change. You’re going to continue to blame other people. And my father actually at age 35 had been dead for seven years. He’d already passed away. So you caught on quickly, Joe, and kudos to you for catching on quickly. I realized that and just realized that just woke up one day said, Oh, how can I blame him? He’s already got. I can’t talk it out. And I’ve got to take responsibility for my own actions. It was a wake awakening moment, that’s for sure.

Joe Quattrone 04:58
Yeah, and now I because obviously, you know, people know us in this podcast, for talking about coming off of alcohol or alcohol cessation. What I like to call it, you know, we’re not like an alcoholism podcast or anything like that. But I like to think about it as excellence through temperance, how much did alcohol have to do with these issues that you had growing up? Was there anybody in your family that was an alcoholic? Was that a contributing factor in any of these things?

Paul Zolman 05:30
Absolutely, Joe, and that’s, that’s why I’m here as well. My father was an alcoholic. His idea of a date, he dated my mother every Friday, I have to give that to him. I can’t even keep up with that with my own wife right now, nor have I ever been able to keep up with consistently one day a week, they didn’t. They didn’t have my wife or a significant other. The thing about it was, he wasn’t very creative about it. There was always the maverick bar, always over alcohol, that when my mother, and he would have this date, that would be their date, every, every Friday night. And I’m number 10, of 11, in my family, Joe. And so as number 10, I can imagine my mother starting at the very top of all the children to kind of tell him how well how her week went to my father started at the top and, and all of them are brothers, except I’m actually torn between two roses, I have an older sister, and a younger sister. So by the time he gets down through all the boys, and they boys do annoying things, they’re like puppies, they roll around, and they SWAT each other and they break arms. And they do this all accidentally and not on purpose. But they’re just things that happen. And so he’s getting annoyed, he’s getting annoyed, he’s stacking all these annoyances, he’s ready to blow at number 10. And here I am number 10. And I either get the belt or I get a severe spanking. And that seems like the case for most weekends, I dreaded the weekends, Joe, when I was growing up, it was just really bad. Because of that alcohol as he’s becoming imbibed. He’s becoming more and more angry. Yeah.

Joe Quattrone 07:11
And now, when you were saying, when you kind of went through your progression, where you blamed the blamed people for what was going wrong in your life, you’re very angry that all of a sudden you weren’t. One of the things that’s common when we talk to a lot of our guests is there seems to be not just the replacement of the bottle, not the replacement of the physical, tangible alcohol that needs to be replaced. But it’s the replacement of the rituals and the habits and all of the things that you know, that reminded you of the physical liquid and the alcohol and stuff like that. And while I know it’s not apples for apples, did you have to go through some of that ritual cleansing as well, when you were trying to keep yourself in a positive mind frame? Or love people more? Like, was it? Or was it just like a switch where you were just like, forget about it, I can be in the exact same, you know, restaurant or environment, and I’m just going to make a mental switch to love people versus hate people.

Paul Zolman 08:12
Great question, Joe. Let me explain it this way with anger. And with that environment that I grew up in, it’s a culture all by itself, it has the vocabulary of the culture, there’s humor of the culture, there is sarcasm, there’s a put downs, they’re all that, that competition all is in that culture. And when you try to, you know, break up that culture, it’s very difficult, but I tried to break it down into pieces that I wanted to get rid of, and you have to kind of break it up that way. One of the pieces of that angry culture was looking over the fence at what somebody else was doing, and trying to see, think that you have control over that person. And that’s the angry culture that, well, I can make neighbors do something, I don’t like that. And that’s me, it’s bothering me. And I’m gonna get annoyed. And that’s, there’s gonna do something else. And I’m gonna get annoyed and you start winding up here. And then you’re gonna flash, I realized that I had that same characteristic from my father. So what I was doing was saying, What’s wrong with that person? And why are they doing it that way? When I realized that, that’s not even my call, they can do whatever they want. It’s their life, it’s their yard. And when I realized that I gotta stay in my lane, to have any sense of happiness, and rolling the dice, or the cube that you’ve just mentioned, rolling the cube everyday helped me replace that behavior of saying, What’s wrong with that person? Now, I’m watching for what’s right about that person. So I would think that at least 10 to 20% of people have Bad things that they do, or mistakes that they make, and all the rest are good. So 80 to 90% of the people out there really are good people, and they’re doing good things, and they’re trying to do the right thing. Watch for the 80 to 90%, I was watching for the 10 to 20%. That was my life. Now I’m watching because I am so busy watching Joe, I don’t really think about being annoyed at what other people are doing, and focus on what I’m sending up love that I’m sending out without any expectation of it coming back. But trusting the universe, the laws of the universe, like the law of the harvest, you plant a seed, it’s gonna come, or karma or the law of attraction, whatever you want to call it, I’m trusting those laws of the universe, someday, that love’s gonna come back, right. But when I’m sending it out, I’m not expecting it back right away. What happened though, is I’m watching for people to light up when I’m practicing one of the genres. So there’s just two instructions on The Cube. When I’m practicing one of those, I’m sending that out all day long. If it’s touch, I’m doing the high five, the fist bump, that sort of thing. When people light up, when I do something like that, I’ve discovered what their love language is. And I’ve made their day there. There’s a satisfaction of helping people have a great day. They’re going to also spread that to their circle of influence, and help their circle visit floats. Have a great day. So the transition from that negativity that comes with the angry culture to loving was 180 degrees. But it was so easy, because I’m looking for the bad when I’m looking for what’s wrong with people. Now I’m looking for what’s right with people. And there’s so much more right than there is wrong, that it keeps me so busy. I can’t, I don’t, I don’t have time to be annoyed. I

Joe Quattrone 12:03
Now how much do you feel like today’s modern society with the headline news and the social media and stuff like that contributing to people’s bad moods or angry culture?

Paul Zolman 12:15
Well, I think it’s been the trainer for us. It really has been what people read, because there’s nothing else to read. They want current events, but they don’t really want all that bad news. Why don’t you do current events of good things that people are doing? I mean, seriously, why don’t we focus on all the good that’s going around the world? And leave that five to 10% of the news for bad things that are going on? Why do we advertise bad eggs? Is that to help people buy into these bad things? That’s okay to do that. Whoa, I That sounds fun, I’m gonna go kill somebody it’s ridiculous. Why would they? But why would they advertise that for those people that are doing that type of bad out there? I don’t know. I

Joe Quattrone 13:00
I mean, I know I’ve got an extensive background in this type of psychology. But from what I’ve gathered, there tends to be a slight negativity bias amongst human beings in general. And that dates back to like the caveman era where it was fight or flight. And we had, if we’re going to get a meal that night, or if we’re going to live we had to be somewhat on hit, you know, on edge or, you know, you know, you know, wound up if you will always alert we had to be and and negativity can activate cortisol and create stress. And sometimes stress is a good thing. But I think the media empires have taken that to the next level where something was a slight bias, like let’s say 5545, or 6040, or something like that. And not even that. They’ve taken it all the way to the polarity all the way to the extreme. So 90% of what they do is salacious headlines and fake news. And 10% of it’s actually good. But the other thing that I’ve also been studying a lot is, you know, it’s the weirdest thing because even good news needs bad news, right? So like, it’s hard to have good news, unless you have it, it’s hard to have good news. And once you have the bad news first, because we as a human species, we like to tell stories. And we’ve been telling stories ever since those caves, we’re in all of those stories that have been relatively traditional, where you’ve got this beginning, middle and end. And there’s always some sort of an obstacle overcoming some sort of an obstacle. And so I think even if you want to, it’s hard to get rid of all the bad because you need the bad to make the good more interesting.

Paul Zolman 14:39
Well, you need that adversity to know when good is good. Yeah. Total agreement. There has to be that opposite. Talk

Joe Quattrone 14:48
to me a little bit about how you work today. So like when I got in the mail, I was like, alright, well let me let’s go me and my wife. Let’s just figure out what we’re and how we’re going to interact today. But is it more just like Like for your personal self, so you can know how to interact with the world every day. Like, how would you like to see people using this thing? There’s

Paul Zolman 15:07
there’s several ways that it can be applied. John, great question. So the way I do it is, you’ve got, you got the five love languages that you’ve got the touch, got the words, got the gifts, service, and time. But there’s six sides that actually surprised me. So on that day, you’re doing random acts of kindness, but there’s just two instructions. You roll dice every day. That is the love language, you practice all day, that day to everyone. You’re sending it out all day long. And as I mentioned, you’re sending it out without any expectation that we’ll come back at that time, but just trust the universe, it’ll come back at some point in time. Contrast that with anger, you said anger, you’re getting that immediate return on your investment? Why would you do that? Why would you? Why would you even credit being critical of your neighbor? Because you know what, that’s a boomerang that’s coming right back. When you throw a boomerang up. It’s, it’s, it has a lesser velocity than when it comes down because of gravity. When it comes back to you that anger comes back to you, it’s going to be multiplied maybe 10 times worse than what you send it out. Why would you even choose to do that? So in contrast to that, sending love out is a character trait that I needed. I was single when I created this, Joe, and I didn’t have a significant other as Dr. Chapman suggests, I did not have a significant other to practice these love languages with so I thought, What the heck am I gonna love? And then it dawned on me, oh, I’ll just love everybody. Nobody I know is with their significant other 24/7. Nobody. Sometimes some people are very thankful at that job, that they’re not they’re not what’s that significant other 24/7. But I didn’t need a part time job, I needed character development. And so I practiced it with everybody full time, all the time. It’s not like who I did the dishes I’ve done. It’s not an event anymore. For me, it’s a process, I needed that process to change the generational, pass it on slugging the shoulder, pass it on type of thing. It was just that angry attitude, I needed to get rid of that, I needed to change the perception of the Zolman family. And we were perceived as an angry family. And so I just wanted that perception to change. And I thought, you know, I’ve got to start it. Now, who’s going to stop me,

Joe Quattrone 17:43
I hear that. And so taking it back to the love language for a minute, you didn’t create the love languages, but you’re kind of drafting off the love language here. Tell us a little bit more about your personal style when it comes to how you like to receive and give love. I tend to recall reading in your bio, that you were more of somebody that was you know about physical touch, but not for the right reasons originally, and then has that shifted over time, since you’ve been, you know, a practitioner of the love languages has shifted off of physical touch and go on to something else. But start with, with what you were perceiving your love language as when you got started? And what and how that might have been, got you interested in reading about this philosophy?

Paul Zolman 18:32
That’s a really good question. And I think there’s a few moving parts there. One of the moving parts was that I didn’t really get coming from that angry environment that I came from, was Dr. Chapman said, Well, if I take the test, I can find out what my love languages are. And what’s the direction there? Is that what I like to give away? Or is it what I like to receive? And, I realized that the test is mostly what you like to receive. So it could be like 10 love languages, what you’d like to give away is maybe different than what you’d like to receive. So the direction there was just rare, very interesting in the Ask basket, both directions there. So what I like to give away, I think I like to give away service a whole lot more than anything else. I just like to do things for people I’m involved with, with an assisted living facility just a couple blocks away from me, and two or three times a week. I’ll go down there and I’ll go play puzzle with these guys. That’s what they like. They just like to just hang out. That’s all they can do right now is mostly just hanging out. So spending time with those people, serving them doing whatever they asked me to do. That’s what I like to do that way. I’m also involved in several charities around town. There’s a charity that does lunches for school children that are disadvantaged, that can’t walk. Have lunch on, on the weekends, if they don’t prepare and pack those lunches. They’re used to school lunches being provided to them during the school week. But on the weekends, they don’t have any food to eat so we provide lunches for them in that regard. So I’m involved with that charity. So service is what I like to give away. What I like to receive used to be physical touch, because I thought that was how I was, that was what love was. When I was younger. Obviously, that’s all I got physical touch with. And that’s how, you know they express Well, I’m, I’m hitting you, because I love you. I’m correcting you because I love you. And it’s just a bad excuse for, for, for love. It was really a horrible excuse for love. And we’ll find people doing that making an excuse. I’m correcting you. I’m criticizing you, because I love you. And that’s really, that those are two different things.

Joe Quattrone 20:51
Tough Love is what a well,

Paul Zolman 20:53
Yeah, no, my, my tough love was, well, if you don’t like dinner tonight, maybe you’ll like it tomorrow. That was my tough love. You know, just what are you gonna eat or not? I mean, what it is, it is and that’s that it was tough love I practice as a parent. But I think that to your question, what the love language that I like to receive is, is mostly the words now. So it really has evolved to the words. And I think that that’s the beauty of what I’m presenting here is that you learn all five love languages to give it away. But you improve your vision that gives you that peripheral vision to see it when it’s coming your way. It probably won’t be your primary love language, when it is obviously you’re gonna light up. But when it’s not, what you do is say, Oh, I see they’re loving me, I can respond appropriately to that. And I’ve missed so many people that have been loving me and realize that, that they were loving me after the fact, long after the fact. And I didn’t even see it. Just because I didn’t know the love language they were sending my way. Now that I have that vision, I can see that they’re sending love my way and improving communication and improving your reaction to the love coming your way. I really can’t bid love to come my way. But I can respond when it does.

Joe Quattrone 22:20
So this one’s for my fellows out there to talk to me about the gifting love language because I know my wife loves to receive gifts. I personally hate getting gifts. Mainly just because I want anything I want. I buy it for myself like I don’t, I don’t feel like I don’t think there’s really a lot of stuff. I actually need them out there in the world. But my wife, on the other hand, loves giving gifts. And I think that’s one of the reasons I was so turned off to the love language for so many years is because I think my opinion on gifting is just a little bit negative, like how self serving that you have this gifting thing that’s going to cost us an arm and a leg that, you know, I’ve got to keep fueling this, this environment where you’re not happy unless I’m buying you gifts. Meanwhile, I don’t want any of that in return. So do you deal with a lot of people that have had that perspective in the past that’s why I think I led off this interview thinking that the love languages is more of a feminine thing. It’s because all the instances that I’ve seen with this philosophy, are wives telling their husbands that they need to read this.

Paul Zolman 23:25
Exactly. I’m laughing at Joe only because it must be the air in Tennessee. I have a son that lives in Tennessee, and he has died. And one day he rolled gears he said I’m not going to do that. Right. And he rolled the dice again. And he came up with gifts again. rolled it again, gifts again. And finally, finally the fourth time he rolled it was gifts. He said okay, I’m gonna do it. So let me explain it this way. Yeah, just that tendency, err that that must be. I know, it’s probably more prevalent than that. But as you look at Yes, you need to look at it a little bit. Try to be creative without money. So the gift of a smile. And I see gifts as more of an umbrella of all the love languages. Because giving this love away in all these areas that were identified by Dr. Chapman can be a gift to that person, a hug could be a gift. Spending time with that person could be a gift, cooking dinner as a service could be a gift. All these things are creative about giving a gift, something that really won’t cost any money. And if you focus on that, then the time when it is time to buy the gift and package it that way would be meaningful as well. But giving these gifts to say to that person that loves Gifts, gifts in that way. For example, I have a couple that I was working with here locally that he knew that her love language was words, but one day He wrote gifts. He says, What am I going to do? That it dawned on him? Well, I’ll write her a note and put it in a box, he wrapped it in a box. And she opened the gift, she doesn’t like gifts, but you open the gift, and realize that it’s a note. And she was absolutely ecstatic. She was delighted that that was what was in the gift. So a note could be again, but it’s just to be creative about it and work with it and say it this is a gift, and help your wife understand that these also are gifts. Gift is the umbrella for all love languages, in my opinion.

Joe Quattrone 25:36
Gotcha. I think my wife has a different interpretation of what a gift is. It involves using my credit card.

Paul Zolman 25:46
I’m so sorry. for that. I really feel free to joke. Yeah,

Joe Quattrone 25:49
you’re listening to the fuzziest podcast. We’re here with Paul Zalman in the role of love. So Paul, what’s next on the horizon for you? Is it getting this book out there farther and wider? Is there anything you want to direct our audience members towards?

Paul Zolman 26:05
I do want to get the book foreign, foreign wider, I really think that this is something that’s basic, Joe and what what I look at the way I look at this as a, as I was stacking annoyance upon annoyance upon annoyance until I flash there, these are the basics of how to love these are stairsteps that if you stack these kindnesses, kindness, kindness, just as just very similar to as I was stacking the annoyances, but sack the kindness on top of one another, you’re gonna get to the point of compassion, or you get to the point of charity, or you get to the point of intimacy, or forgiveness, or sympathy or empathy, you’re gonna get to those higher laws of love. These are the basics. And if we can understand and spread that understanding that these are the basics, then we’ll get to those those higher laws, but we’re right now, we’re like, we’re like living on Mosaic law, that it’s the lower law of of, it’s just something that should be prepared preparatory for getting to those higher laws of love, we really need to get there. And that’s, that’s one thing, I’m trying to spread this far and wide. I’m trying to develop a nonprofit organization that actually would find putting these dye in those cubes in the schools. In the school system. The way I see it, Joe, is that, at the beginning of the class, as a class rolls, the die, the teacher that it takes two seconds for, wants to take much other classroom time, because there’s a lot that they need to cover. But what I do want it to provide them with is a tamp down of disciplinary action, and an increase of learning. So if you don’t have to handle disciplinary problems, there’s more time for learning. The way this works is that they roll the die in the morning, teacher says for 30 to 45 seconds class, this is the type of behavior that we’re looking for, at the end of the day, then the teacher provides each each class member with a PDF version of this, of what they rolled options, they saw the love in each way. And what they what they did about those opportunities, becomes a journal so to speak, for that child, a love Journal, the teacher will just check it off, send it home, those astute parents would actually keep those in chronological order so that by the end of that first grade, by the end of the sixth grade year, that child has a journal of what they loved in that year, whether they love their teacher, you know, I have experienced job of remembering and loving my first grade teacher, I don’t remember second grade, I don’t remember third grade, I don’t remember fourth or fifth grade. I remember sixth grade. But there is something about those teachers that you loved when you’re there, I would love to have had a journal. Something about that, why I love that. So I’m trying to get that into school systems and looking for corporate funding, as I created a nonprofit looking for corporate funding to help that along. The second thing is that we really need to take this into the workplace. You know, a lot of people the with the sexual harassment and everything that’s gone on over the last 2030 years or more, that we really need to come back to loving kindness, just just decency within the workplace. Just just find a way to practice love within the workplace. Just if you can Majan if there’s hostile workers around, the productivity is going to be weighed down. If they’re working together in a cooperative way. The production is going to be a lot higher, and we can rework that just right tool that a little bit. That’s some of the projects in the future that I’m working on something that, that we’ve got to take this not only from a personal level, but let’s do it to family level that’s due to a corporate level, let’s do it to community level, let’s take it take it really to the world.

Joe Quattrone 30:17
And it’s good, great cause especially with how much you know, animosity there is even in the workplace, you know, especially in the workplace. There’s so many, you know, people at each other’s throats these days, when I’m kind of glad I dropped out of corporate America. And, you know, the crazy thing that I see is, you know, I don’t know, the exact quote, but Dr. King said something like, you know, you can’t heal or you can’t heal hatred, with more hate, only love can do that, or something like that. I love that quote. And I find it to be so much, so refreshing, because, you know, I spent 20 years in corporate America. And it seems like everybody’s walking on eggshells right now, and it’s just the the antidote seems to be like, when I hear terminology, like, anti racist, I’m like, Yeah, I mean, I get it, I get you have to be like, you know, somebody that’s, like, actively opposed to racism. But it’s also just in the terminology that you’re using just anti in front of anything. Like, it’s also like, a very negative thing, you know, so like, I feel like there’s a lot of bad teachings going on in America right now in the school system and in corporate America. And they’re their teachings that are propelled by hate, which is, I think, if we could get back to a system of, you know, not only telling each other to love each other, but also being proud of our efforts, like, you know, loving not only each other, but our cities and our states and our country, and all those kinds of things like I think we’ll make a stronger country for sure.

Paul Zolman 31:52
Absolutely. We really need to be for something instead of against it.

Joe Quattrone 31:56
I agree. I agree. Well, it’s been so good having you on. And for those of you in the audience that want to get in touch with Paul Paul, where would you suggest that they check you out? Is there an Instagram handle or website you’d like to promote?

Paul Zolman 32:09
Absolutely, there’s the website called blog.com Role of Love, kind of did a play on words, you’re all the cube is something that changes within you. And that’s the, that’s the choice for the word for the website, Role of love.com, you’ll find the book, the cube, the journal on there, I’ve got a bundle price right now, especially for your listeners, it’s about 20% off 2999 For that bundle. And it’s cheaper than you can buy it on Amazon, I do you have for your listeners that are listening to this podcast and not not watching it, they can buy, they can choose to listen to the audible version of the book, they’ll find that on Amazon, you don’t want to type in love anything on Amazon, you’re gonna get love a million things. But you want to type in my name, it’ll take you right to that audible version of the book.

Joe Quattrone 33:03
Gotcha. And, Paul, really quick parting words like, I want to I want to end with one quick question. How much easier Do you think it would be to kind of ascend to this higher, you know, level of, of loving and putting more love out into the universe? If you’re not drunk all the time.

Paul Zolman 33:22
There is something about sobriety that really, that conscious effort, I think it’s hard to be intentional about doing good things. When you’re when you’re inebriated. And it’s really hard to be conscious about doing good, because you really don’t have control of your emotions or your body or many things that you don’t have control over when you’re in need. And I think that being sober is really, really the key. There really is a better life.

Joe Quattrone 33:56
Gotcha. Well, thanks so much for joining us. All right. That’s been it, folks. Well, thank you for joining the fuzziest podcast and until next week, I’m Joe Q, signing off.