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Today's clip is from episode 517 of the podcast with online creator, entrepreneur and author of The Five Types of Wealth, Sahil Bloom.
In this clip, Sahil shares some of the powerful life lessons that inspired his book, and we explore the small daily actions and practical tools that could help you build a happier, healthier and more fulfilled life.
Let's get into this idea or this redefining of wealth that you talk about.
What I like about this book so much is that it speaks to the quote that I think about all the time, which is from the Tao Te Ching True wealth is knowing what is enough.
It's the question I ask myself all the time.
What is enough?
What does enough look like?
And why I think that's such an important question is because I believe the biggest disease in society these days is the disease of more more money, more followers, more downloads, more holidays, more anything is going to bring you that happiness or that validation that you deserve.
Think you can get from the outside, but you actually can't right.
So understanding what is enough, I think, is so important for each and every single one of us.
And I think you've got quite a unique take on it through these five types of wealth.
I tell this story in the very outset of the book that In May of 2022, just after my son was born, he was like a few weeks old and I was out for him on a walk because he wouldn't sleep.
And this old man approached me and he looked at me and he said I remember standing here with my newborn daughter.
Well, she's 45 years old now.
It goes by fast.
Cherish it.
And it hit me so hard that I walked back home.
And for the first time in my entire life, I had this sensation that I had arrived, but there was nothing more that I wanted.
It was no longer that arrival fallacy of you get to whatever summit you've propped up and you just immediately reset to some new height.
I had the feeling for the first time in my life that that moment was enough, that if I never got anything else in the world beyond the joy of that moment, that that would have been enough.
And I write in the book this one line never let the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.
And the heart of the entire book is that line.
It's that idea, that idea of embracing the beauty of enough, is so central to how we think about living a good life.
Because that chase, that endless quest for more, that treadmill that so many people find themselves on, is going to end in your own misery.
Yeah.
Why do you think so many of us are on that treadmill where we keep thinking that we need to do more and be more and achieve more and earn more?
Where does that come from, do you think?
Our scoreboard is broken.
The default scoreboard, the way that you measure your life, is fundamentally broken and dislocated from what actually creates a meaningful happy, fulfilling life.
I went, I did this, and you can go do it.
You go ask hundreds of people all ages of life What does your ideal day look like at age 80 or age 90?
They'll list off a bunch of things.
Being around people.
They love being of healthy mind and body, working on things or thinking about things that they really care about, living in standing in their purpose.
Those are the things that you talk about that matter.
Those are the things that create a meaningful life.
And then you ask them, what are you doing on a day to day basis today to actually affect that end?
And the answer is nothing.
They're not working out.
They're not, you know, building and investing in their relationships.
They're not following their curiosity to engage their mind.
They're chasing money. moment.
And so we have this weird dislocation where we know what creates a really meaningful and happy and fulfilling life.
And yet we don't take actions in the present to actually affect that.
The fundamental reason is because our scoreboard, how we measure our lives is money.
And in my opinion, and what I propose, it's because money is so easily measured.
You can literally take a single number, place it next to your name and define your entire life.
It's a way for us to transact, to barter, to measure ourselves on status hierarchies.
But that feature is has harmed us in so many ways as we have failed to measure these other areas of our life that are much more important in actually winning the war that we're trying to win.
Yeah, I completely agree.
I mean I've been saying, I think, on the show for the last year or so that what I've realized in life over the last few years is that the most important things are the things that can't be measured right.
So the unmeasurables, but I think actually you do a pretty good job at actually making them measurable in this book, right?
So can you just outline these five types of wealth and then explain why your new scoreboard is so important for them?
So the five that I cover in the book, Time wealth, that's the idea of the freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, when to trade it for other things, and an awareness of time as your most precious asset.
Just how important it is, how finite, how impermanent.
Social wealth is your depth and breadth of connection to the people around you, to your communities, and how you engage that in what I call earned status.
Mental wealth is the idea of purpose, of meaning, of growth and of the ability to create space in your life.
Physical wealth is your health and vitality, your ability to engage in controllable actions that promote vigor in your life as you age.
And then financial wealth, which is a very important type of wealth.
And one of the important things that I heard you say just then is.
This idea of not being able to measure these other things and all of those types of wealth that I just mentioned.
Financial wealth is the most easily measured.
Trying to create a way of measuring these other things for your own life is what I'm seeking to do in this book.
Money. is very easy for us to measure across people.
I can look at you and sort of figure out from all these external metrics how you're doing and how I stack up against you.
And so we use that.
And the weird, almost dystopian thing about that is, the single darkest moment of my life was also the moment where you would have looked at me and thought that I was absolutely winning the game.
Everything about my life looked great on the surface.
I had a great job, a fancy title, a nice car, a house.
I was married.
You would have thought, oh, he's winning the game.
And in my own life, my experience was I had the realization that, if that was what winning the game felt like, I had to be playing the wrong game.
And my own journey to figuring that out and then learning that I needed to redefine the game that I was playing.
That is what this book is about.
That is the manifestation of it.
I say this at the outset of the book, and it's an important point.
Money isn't nothing.
It simply can't be the only thing.
Every single discussion where people say money can't buy you happiness and you should focus on these other things.
I agree.
I actually completely agree with the pushback that.
At the lower levels, money directly buys you happiness.
And that's why financial wealth is one of the five types of wealth, because it is a part of this journey.
Earning money, especially in the early on, is a direct action that will create real happiness.
It will reduce unhappiness, reduce fundamental burdens and stresses and improve your life in meaningful ways.
Beyond a certain point, it will not.
And you need to focus on other things.
You need to focus on these other types.
It's really interesting.
I think those five types of wealth, they're really broad.
They're applicable to everyone.
And I actually appreciate that you do put financial wealth in there.
Because money and happiness, there's a complex relationship.
And that question of enough is important, isn't it?
So why I'm so passionate about this is a it's helped me personally.
But during my career as a medical doctor, right, I have seen People get this wrong badly.
I have seen people keep chasing more, even though the warning signs were there.
They kept pushing, pushing, pushing until they get sick.
And then they wish they'd paid attention five years before.
I feel your book yes, it is about purpose and meaning and joy, but actually there's a very serious health consequence if you're not paying attention to these things as well.
I felt that in my own life too.
The first seven years of my career were spent steadily rising through the ranks of the old scoreboard.
I was making more and more money.
I was getting promoted.
I was getting bonuses.
On the old scoreboard, things were going great.
But while I saw that happening, my own focus and priorities were so narrowly myopically honed in on money being the path to my good life, to this idyllic land of success and happiness and joy.
That to the point where i didn't think i wanted kids, because that's going to get in the way of the thing that really matters, which is me making a lot of money so i can puff myself up and that other people think sahil, he's so impressive.
And that journey slowly cracked and crumbled all of the other areas of my life.
I was drinking seven nights a week.
My physical health was deteriorating.
Mentally I was lost.
My relationship with my sister had effectively ground to a halt.
The competitiveness of our early years that I had created led to a resentment that had torn us apart.
And, most importantly, my relationship with my wife, who I had been together with since high school, was struggling.
And so I saw, I experienced this viscerally, this chase and this focus on just the one narrow thing and how it was robbing me of everything else in my world.
And fortunately, I found my way to the other side.
We as a society glamorize and celebrate financial success so much that and very rarely shine a light on the negatives or the cost of some of that success.
You read books about all of these billionaires, famous historical success stories.
You don't read about the broken relationships.
You don't necessarily read about the children who don't want to spend time with them.
You don't read about the divorces.
You don't read about the massive health trauma or mental health issues that these people had.
You read about or at least what you focus on is the celebration.
It's the celebration. billion dollar company sale.
It's the IPO.
It's the those are the things that we learn to celebrate.
And so, as a result, the visible evidence of these other costs is not highlighted in our minds in the way it needs to be for us to take action against it.
Some things look like a good deal based on the list cost what you just see, but a rip off when you take into account the real cost of all of these other trade-offs and sacrifices you're going to have to make.
But the important point and what I'm trying to get across in the book is that you need to clearly define what matters to you and build your life around it.
You cannot accept the default settings of meaning that the world is going to hand you and just walk with them.
Yeah, I love that.
This idea that you can build... an intentional life.
But to build an intentional life you have to put a bit of thought in, you have to do certain exercises, you need space to reflect.
If you just wake up every day and live on autopilot and react to your email inbox and your social media platforms and the news and what everyone around you wants you to do Well, that's a default life right.
That's not an intentional life.
So it makes me think of one of my favorite things in this book, right?
The life raiser.
So could you just explain what the life raiser is?
Because this caught me to stop and pause.
I'd love everyone on the back of this conversation to start thinking about their own life raiser.
Yeah.
So the idea of a razor just to define the term is a rule of thumb that allows you to simplify decision making.
The most famous one is Occam's razor.
You've probably heard of it.
It says that the simplest answer is often the best one.
Simple is beautiful.
My concept of the life razor is to take this idea of a rule of thumb to simplify decision making for your entire life.
And I derive it from a man named Mark Randolph.
He's the founder and first CEO of Netflix.
He posted this thing that talked about the fact that throughout his entire life he never missed a Tuesday dinner with his wife a Tuesday 5 pm dinner.
He always had a date while starting all of these incredible companies.
He never missed that date night.
It was a sacred ritual.
And I had this realization that It wasn't really about the dinner.
It wasn't really about the date nights with his wife.
It was about the ripples that that created, what that meant, the identity that that defined about him and how that impacted the circles in the world around him.
That got me thinking about this concept of the life raiser.
How can you come up with a single defining rule, a single statement in your life?
Like I never miss a Tuesday dinner with my wife, instills this identity that you can use to answer the various questions that come into your world.
I'll use an example from my own life to walk through this.
The three tests to ask yourself about your life razor, which I talk about in the book, are is it controllable?
I.e., can you actually take action to control this thing?
Meaning does it extend beyond just the direct action?
And then the third is, is it identity creating?
Does it signify something about who you are as a human and how you show up in the world?
My life razor is I will coach my son's sports teams.
What does that mean?
It means certain things about the type of person that I am.
It means that I am the type of father that he wants to have around.
It means that I'm the type of husband and community member that people are proud of.
It means that I will never sacrifice my morals or integrity because I wouldn't want to harm those relationships and that important bond that I have with him.
So one statement now implies a whole series of things about my life, about my identity, who I am, how I define myself.
So when an opportunity comes along, someone's offering me a lot of money, but it might come with 300 days away from my family.
I can say, what does the type of person who coaches his son's sports teams do in this situation?
And I can think about that very clearly to say well, I need to prioritize time with the people I care about most, with my son.
So I would probably not take that opportunity in that situation.
It becomes a way to look at these problems through a very clear lens of who your ideal self is, how you show up in the world.
That is very powerful in your ability to navigate the chaos that inevitably enters your life.
Yeah, I really like it.
I love what you said in the book and what you just mentioned there about Mark Randolph and that actually it's not about the actual thing necessarily.
It is, but it's more about what it symbolizes to him and to the people around him.
Let's get into these five types of wealth that you talk about.
You've sort of given us that top line summary right at the start.
Social wealth.
If you could just remind us what is social wealth and perhaps give us a few pointers as to how we can start increasing our own social wealth.
One of the central ideas here is that you need to invest in all of these areas.
They compound just as well, if not better, than any financial investment.
And in the absence of that investment they atrophy.
You cannot keep saying later about these other areas.
There's a tendency to always use that word later.
You say, I will spend more time with my friends later, or I'll invest in my physical health later.
And the reality is that later just becomes another word for never.
Because those things are not going to exist in the same way later.
Your health is not gonna be the same later.
Your friends are not gonna be there for you later.
And so if you don't start investing now, they will not exist.
You will not be able to.
An investment in your social wealth, which we'll talk about, can be as simple as sending a text to a friend.
It can be making that phone call.
It can be going for a five minute walk with your wife.
It doesn't need to feel dramatic.
It doesn't need to be optimal.
It just needs to be beneficial because anything above zero compounds.
I mean we.
So many times in your life You experience some light from the other side, some death in the family, a near-death experience?
You read regrets from the dying.
You hear these incredible stories of wisdom from older people and they shine a light from the other side back onto your path.
That light is the wisdom.
It's the insight.
It's the thing that you learned.
And 99 of people will hear it.
They'll nod their heads and then they'll go back living the same damn way they were before.
That point about later, it's just so good and it's so applicable to frankly anything.
A lot of people listen to the show for physical health tips and knowledge, right?
And yeah, I'll do that workout.
I'll be the person who moves one hour a day when I have time, you know.
But at the moment I can't but that later, never comes.
It never comes for so many people.
For me.
What happened was I got to a point where I was confronted with this reality that I was living 3000 miles away from my parents.
I was seeing them, world that knew me so well, that had created so much for me, that had supported me so wholeheartedly in anything that I was doing.
And if I didn't make a change, I was going to see my parents 15 more times before they died.
They're 65.
I saw them once a year.
They.
The way that I phrase it in the book is that I am not here to give you the answers for how to live your life.
You already have the answers within you.
You just haven't asked the right questions yet to reveal them.
Yeah.
How do you think about friendship?
I think that the loneliness epidemic is the scariest trend in society today and that we are really in a friendship recession.
And the data that you're seeing coming out of everywhere in the world is terrifying.
I recently saw a statistic that teenagers in the United States are spending 70 less time with their friends in person than they were 20 years ago.
The lack of in-person real, textured human interaction is devastating to who we are and how we derive meaning.
The science is very clear that human connection and relationship satisfaction impacts our health and happiness more than any other factor in our lives.
The Harvard study of adult development found that over the course of 80 years, 1300 plus people that the single greatest predictor of their physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50.
How you felt about your relationships was more impactful than your cholesterol, your blood pressure, any of those things smoking, drinking any of those things.
We need to invest time. in our relationships the same way we invest in anything else.
We need to send the text.
We need to tell the person how we feel about them.
We need to open up to people more.
We need to tell people we appreciate them.
Those little daily deposits have lasting positive benefits.
And people always ask, well, I can't, find someone to be there for me.
No one's ever there for me.
If you don't have someone who is there for you, be that to someone else.
Because what you put out into the world as a friend, you will receive in return.
I truly believe that.
If you are there for someone during their hard time, they will be there for you during yours.
People never forget the person that was just there with them in their dark moment.
If you send a text to the person who's currently being dragged for whatever reason personally, professionally and you tell them that you are there with them, they will be there for you during your dark moment.
But if you don't, if you don't show up for people, you can't expect people to show up for you.
There's a tendency for all of us to think that all of these areas in life exist with an on off, that OK, if I'm going to focus on money, then no more friends, no more physical health, no more purpose.
You know, all of these other areas get flipped off.
And what I said earlier is true.
If you don't invest in these areas, they will atrophy and not be there later in life.
So you still need to take the couple of small, tiny daily actions for the dimmer switch to be on the recognition that anything above zero compounds in your life.
It's the balance, isn't it?
And you say something really beautiful towards the start of the book.
Each of the five areas of wealth are important, but it's the relationship across them that is crucial.
Okay.
The way that I articulate this is that your life has seasons.
And what you prioritize and focus on during any one season can change and will change.
But you never lose sight of the fact that in all of these areas they need to exist on a dimmer switch, not an on-off.
And the only thing that I really want people to do if you read the book or if you don't is to hear the things we're talking about right now and just take one tiny action.
I don't care what it is.
It doesn't have to be dramatic.
It doesn't have to change your entire world.
But the tiny little action to just change something, to live a little bit differently than you were before, the momentum from that and the ripple from that will dramatically alter your life.
Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back next week with my long-form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.
