Sahil Bloom says his childhood and young-adult years were a steady, monotonous march toward a textbook definition of success. He entered the investment world, enticed by the high remuneration, and at the age of 30 had achieved every marker of what he thought success looked like – the high-paying job, the title, the house and the car.
But his health had deteriorated from lack of sleep and activity and his relationships suffered from absent energy. “My exclusive pursuit of money was slowly, methodically robbing me of a fulfilling life,” the popular blogger writes in his book The 5 Types of Wealth.
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He had been playing the wrong game, looking at the wrong scoreboard. He began to read books that might help him understand the situation and reached out to people for conversations about life and success. He realized we all want the same thing and it has very little to do with money. “Time, people, purpose, health. Without fail, every single person I guided through the exercise had some combination of these pillars at the centre of the ideal future day,” he says.
That led to his creation of a new, broader scorecard for us to adopt, with five measures to balance for success:
- Time wealth: The freedom to choose how to spend your time, whom to spend it with, where to spend it and when to trade it for something else.
- Social wealth: The depth and breadth of your connection to those around you in your personal and professional worlds.
- Mental wealth: The connection to purpose and meaning, which is grounded in the pursuit of growth and life-long learning.
- Physical wealth: Your health, fitness and vitality, which is more susceptible to natural decay, uncontrollable factors and blind luck than the other types of wealth.
- Financial wealth: This is usually defined as net worth or your financial assets minus financial liabilities. But he highlights the importance of your definition of “enough.” If your expectations rise faster than your assets, you will never have a life of financial wealth because you will always need more.
You must balance these five types of wealth through the various seasons of your life. There is no utopian state of bliss and balance. It’s a continual journey. Everyone’s seasons are different. Everyone’s definition of balance and thriving is different.
“The ideal approach for the foundation-building season of your 20s may not be well suited to the compounding season of your 30s, the family-building season of your 40s, the purpose-finding season of your 50s, or the retiree season of your 60s and beyond,” he writes.
As you grapple with the five types of wealth, he says it helps to have a simple rule of thumb to guide you or, as he prefers to call it, a “life razor” after the philosophical term for a principle that simplifies thinking. You will be tested by opportunities, chaos, complexity and challenge. It will be easy to get lost if you lack a sense of priority.
Marc Randolph, the co-founder and first chief executive officer of Netflix, starting from early in his career, when he was working 80-hour weeks, committed to always leaving the office at 5 p.m. on Tuesday night to have dinner with the family. It was non-negotiable. If someone came to him at that time to discuss an issue, they had to be prepared to walk with him to the parking lot and get it over fast. “The ritual illustrates to me and everyone around me – my family, my partners, my employees, my friends – what my priorities are,” he told Mr. Bloom. Similarly, Mr. Bloom has developed this life razor: “I will coach my son’s sports teams.”
To develop such a simple, defining life statement, he urges you to complete this sentence: “I am the type of person who ….” Make sure it’s within your direct control, ripples out into other aspects of life and defines your ideal self. Use it to negotiate the many challenges you will face in enhancing your five types of wealth.
Quick hits
- Two paradoxes of knowledge, from author Mark Manson: The more you learn, the more you realize how little you actually know. And: The more convinced someone is that they’re right, the more likely it is that they are actually wrong.
- It’s human nature to want to talk about ourselves but if you want to be likeable, communications consultant John Millen suggests beginning a conversation by asking three questions to the other person about themselves. A study showed that asking a question, then following up with at least two more questions will greatly improve your chances of being liked.
- Atomic Habits author James Clear says education teaches you to analyze while entrepreneurship teaches you to create. The trick is to balance the two: Keep learning while never losing your entrepreneurial ability to build.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.