Have you ever hit every target on your own scoreboard and still felt like something was missing?
I ask this question because I have felt it myself, and I know many of you listening to the podcast have felt it too. You work hard, you achieve, you tick the boxes that society hands you, and then one quiet evening you sit with a feeling you cannot quite name. Something does not add up, even though, on paper, everything does.
This was exactly the reckoning that my guest on episode 642, David Gottfried, faced after four decades of extraordinary success. David founded the organisation that turned green building into a global standard, now used in 85 countries. By any conventional measure, he had won. And yet he realised that winning was not enough.
The Three Kinds of Worth
David's father taught him to measure his life by one thing: net worth. Assets minus liabilities. The house, the car, the number in the bank account. And I understand this language, because many of us were raised speaking it too, whether it came from a parent, a culture, or simply the world around us shouting its scoreboard at us from every direction.
But David discovered, slowly and sometimes painfully, that net worth is only one leg of the stool. The second is self-worth: how we feel about ourselves, often built from titles, promotions, and the approval of others. And underneath both of these, he told me, is a third and often neglected measure. Soul worth.
Soul worth is not about what you have or what you have achieved. It is about service, gratitude, and the quiet sense that your life is contributing something good to the world. David described it beautifully as being a gardener: planting seeds, watering them, nurturing them, and not needing anyone to know it was you who planted them.
A Simple Exercise for Your Soul
One of the most practical things David shared with me was his soul-worth ledger. It is disarmingly simple. Take thirty minutes, ideally in a quiet space, and split a page down the middle.
On the left side, write your deposits. These are the moments that fed your spirit that week: joy, art, laughter, gardening, a real conversation, a moment of empathy you gave yourself or someone else. On the right side, write your depletions. The meeting that triggered you. The seven hours of work you hated every minute of. The commute that quietly took a piece of your soul.
David's point is not that depletions are always avoidable. It is that most of us never stop to notice them, let alone weigh them against what is actually feeding us. And I will repeat that, because I think it is worth sitting with: what feeds your soul, and what is taking from it?
The Funeral Question
Towards the end of our conversation, David offered an exercise that has stayed with me since we recorded it. Imagine you are at your own funeral, lying in the coffin as it is opened. Who is there? What are they saying about your life? Did it have all three worths? Did you give? Did you love? Did your life matter?
This is not a morbid thought experiment. It is an invitation. David's point is that we still have the chance, while we are breathing, to change the map and reorient the compass towards the life we would actually want described at the end of it.
Where Soul Worth Meets Purpose
David's work now lives at regen360.net, where he writes about the books he has authored, the podcasts he has appeared on, and an initiative he calls Regen Circles. These are small support groups for what he calls change agents, built in the spirit of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In Circles, but designed as base camps for people climbing their own mountain of purpose.
I found this conversation to be one of those rare ones that earns its lessons slowly, through story rather than statement, which is exactly how I believe the deepest truths tend to arrive. David did not simply tell me that soul worth matters. He showed me, through his father's paperweight, through his penguin analogy, through his own honest account of chasing the wrong ledger for years, why it matters more than we are taught to believe.
So here is what I would like you to reflect on. Is the life you are living today the life you would want people to describe when you are no longer here to describe it yourself?
Stand out, don't fit in.