Redefining Wealth: The Truth About Money & Happiness with Sahil Bloom

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you are chasing more because you just want a
bigger number on your scoreboard, you want more fancy things
to try to impress other people for whatever reason, you
are going to end up losing sight of the things
that are more important.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Along that journey, Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,

(00:34):
our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This

(00:57):
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wealth.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
What if everything you've been told about wealth is missing
the point? For years, we've chased more money, success, achievement,
only to find it doesn't always bring fulfillment. Today's guests
saw Hill Bloom had everything society says should make you happy.
But it wasn't until a quiet morning with his newborn

(01:27):
son that he understood what true wealth feels like. So
how do we balance striving for more with appreciating what's
right in front of us? Can we redefine wealth beyond
dollars in status? What happens when we start treating time
as our most valuable currency. That's what we're going to
explore today. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the one

(01:49):
you feed Hi Sawhill, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Thank you so much for having me. Thrilled to be here.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm really excited to talk with you about your new book,
which is called The Five Types of Wealth, which is
really a holistic way of looking at the different ways
in our lives than which we can be wealthy. And
I think it's interesting to look at as a way
of seeing where we might want to be more wealthy,
but also as a way of really recognizing there's a
lot of places we already are wealthy. And I think

(02:17):
recognizing that is really important because self improvement is part
of the game, but so is self acceptance, you know,
and appreciating what we have. And we're going to get
into all that after the parable. But let's start there.
And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
wolves inside of us that are always at battle. What
is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and

(02:40):
bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
the grandchild stops think about it for a second. They
look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life, in the

(03:00):
work that you do.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
It really is an important representation to me of a
simple fact, which is that you have the power to choose.
Each day, we have a choice in which wolf will feed.
We can feed the dark wolf and be filled with anger, fear, hate, jealousy, envy,

(03:23):
or we can feed the light wolf and be filled
with hope, kindness, joy, love, optimism, and at the end
of the day, that choice is fundamentally yours.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Wonderful. I'd like to start with a quote that you
use at least once in the book, if not a
couple of times, which is you say, never let the
quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.
Let's start there.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
I'm glad you pulled this out because this is such
a fundamental and important concept to the entire book, the
entire idea, and really my life in general. The genesis
of this was a very personal experience, which was that
shortly after my son was born, you know, after a
two plus year journey with infertility that my wife and

(04:11):
I had faced, we were blessed with a little boy
and I was walking him around outside early one morning
and an old man came up to me on the
street and said, I remember standing here with my newborn daughter.
She's forty five years old. Now it goes by fast,
cherish it. And I took my son home and I

(04:32):
brought him into bed. My wife was still asleep, and
the sun was kind of coming through the windows, and
he had this little smile on his face, and I
just had this sensation that for the first time in
my life, I had arrived. But there wasn't anything more
that I wanted. That moment was truly enough, And that
was when that line came to me of never let

(04:55):
the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough,
because it is so easy in life to allow the
things that you prayed for to become the things that
you complain about. We see that over and over again
in our own lives. The house that we prayed for
becomes the house that we complain is too small. The
car that we prayed for becomes the car that we
can't wait to trade in. The relationship we prayed for

(05:17):
becomes the relationship with the person that we criticize. Today's
version of more becomes tomorrow's version of not enough if
we allow it to, if we don't stop, pause, catch
ourselves and pull ourselves back into that moment and recognize
that sometimes you are literally living out your prayers. So
that is what that quote, what that line is all about.
To never allow that chase, that quest for the more,

(05:41):
whatever it is, whatever more we're searching for, to distract us,
to pull us away from the beauty of enough in
the present moment.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
Yeah, that's so beautifully said and so very true. We
adapt to nearly anything and start to take it for granted,
and then you're even going a step further, which is
we then see it as a burden, which is a
really fascinating thing. And is a surefire way to never
be happy in life. And so there's this balance, and

(06:09):
I think I've been exploring it on this show for
a decade and I mentioned it kind of in the beginning,
and you're getting to it right in this question. How
can I both strive for more, whether that be financially,
in my relationships, et cetera. How can I do that?
Because I do think that's a natural human thing, it

(06:29):
seems built into us, and also be satisfied with exactly
where I am. And doing both those things is at
the same time, turns out to be the thing that's
an art far more than it's a science.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
The fundamental tension there is an important one too to
wrestle with, And the way that I wrestle with it
is to say that the quest for more needs to
be grounded in the right things. Yeah, it is dangerous
if it is about something as surface level as money
or fancy things. If you are chasing more because you

(07:04):
just want a bigger number on your scoreboard, you want
more fancy things to try to impress other people for
whatever reason, you are going to end up losing sight
of the things that are more important along that journey.
If you are chasing more because it's your purpose to
go and build something big, because you really feel fundamentally
that you want to grow, that you want to develop yourself.

(07:25):
You're trying to get better at the things that you're
working on. That is a very well grounded and important pursuit,
and there's nothing wrong with that. One where it goes
awry for people and where they lead themselves on the
road to the rich yet miserable existence that we know
a lot of people are living is when that chase

(07:45):
for more is just about these things like money or
fancy things.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
I agree with you that that's a fundamental distinction, and
I have found even in my own life, even if
my striving for more is pointed in the right direction,
you know, I want to be become a kinder person,
or you know, it's about growing this show, which is
kind of the way that I try and put love
into the world, that even within there, I can get

(08:13):
caught in this more and more and more, which pulls
me out of the moment. So I think what you're
saying is, first off, we've got to be really clear
about what we're striving for, and if that's misguided, we're
always going to be off track. And then the second
part comes to even when I'm on the right track,
how do I relate to being on that track? And

(08:33):
how do I relate to being on a journey that
you know there's not a destination on?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, I think that this comes back to a really
beautiful quote. I believe it's Victor Frankel who said that
our power exists in the space that we can create
between stimulus and response, and that concept of space is
really essential to the whole book. It's one of the
pillars of what I think of as mental wealth is
the ability to create space. And the reason that space

(08:59):
is so important is because that is where you actually
get to choose your response. To go back to the
wolves parable, the ability to choose every single day, you
actually need to have the space to choose. You need
to be able to stop and pause so that you
can choose your response. Which wolf are you going to feed?
The same applies to this never ending chase. If you're
able to pause on a daily basis and appreciate the

(09:22):
things that you have while still pursuing the things that
you don't that are grounded hopefully in the right reasons,
that is where you find your sort of Goldilocks like
your sweet Spot. From a life standpoint, I think it
was Kurt Vonnegut. In nineteen ninety seven, he gave a
commencement speech at Rice University and he talks about his
uncle Alex, who had this tendency when things were going

(09:45):
nice and you know, the day was really pretty out,
he would just stop. He would pause, and he would
look up at the sky and he would say, if
this isn't nice, what is? And that idea of forcing
yourself to pause and appreciate those moments literally say out loud, say,
if this isn't nice, what is? On a more regular basis,
I guarantee you will find new joy in the journey

(10:07):
in your life.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah. Vonagett also has that classic story about enough of
where he's at a party with Joseph Heller, the author
of Catch twenty two, and they're looking around and seeing
all these people who have way more than they do,
and Joseph Heller, basically I think I'm paraphrasing, says something like, yeah,
but I have something they don't, which is I know
what enough is?

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, exactly, the knowledge that I've got enough. It sort
of all relates to one of my favorite stories of
the fisherman and the investment banker. I don't know if
you've ever heard this, but like this investment banker goes
down to an old Mexican fishing village and he comes
across this old boat and the fisherman is in the
boat and has caught a few fish. And the banker says,
how long did it take you to catch those fish?

(10:49):
And the fisherman says, only a little while. And the
banker asks, why didn't you fish for longer? The fisherman says, well,
I have everything I need. In the morning, I fish
for a little while, and I go home. I have
lunch with my wife, then I take a nap, and
then in the evening I go into town and sing
and dance with my friends. And the banker's like, you
got this all wrong. What you need to do is
you need to fish for longer so you can catch

(11:10):
more fish. Then you can buy a second boat. Than
that boat will make money. You buy a third boat,
a fourth boat, a fifth boat. Eventually you build a
fishing boat enterprise. You move to the big city, you
take the company public, and you'll make millions. And the
fisherman says, and then what and the banker says, and
then what then you can retire and move to a
small fishing village. You can fish for a little while
in the morning, and then you can go home. You

(11:31):
can have lunch with your wife, take a nap, and
in the evening go into town and play music and
dance with your friends. And the fisherman kind of just
smiles and walks off, and that story. It's interesting. Is
common interpretation is to say that the banker is wrong
and the fisherman is right. I actually think it's more
nuanced than that. I really think this is about the
two of them having a fundamentally different definition of what

(11:53):
enough looks like. The banker may be grounded in this
purpose of building something big, creating jobs, creating this growth,
pursuing his definition, and he's trying to apply that map
of reality to the fisherman's terrain, which is fundamentally very different.
The fisherman is already living his enough life, and so
for the two to be seen as in conflict is

(12:16):
very interesting because that's what happens when we spend all
of our time on our phones comparing our lives to
other people. We start getting obsessed with someone else's life. Yep,
and starting to apply their map to our reality, which
is a recipe for discontentment.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Absolutely. I had an experience of this not too long ago.
We spend a lot of time in Atlanta. My partner Ginny,
is from there, and I'll be driving around Buckhead and
one of the most noticeable things about certain areas of
town are the houses are enormous on these giant plots
of land, Like it's a lot of money that you

(12:54):
just see kind of right out there, and as if
I spend enough time driving around there, my brain starts
going like, gosh, shouldn't I maybe I should have a
house like that? Why don't I have enough money to
have a house like that? And then at the same
moment as I was thinking that, I turned my attention
back to what I was listening to on the radio,
and it was a band called the Gaslight Anthem. They're
kind of a punk type band a little bit, and

(13:14):
then it reminded me of what my ethos actually is,
and I was just able to see right in that
moment how easily I was getting turned away from my
ethos to buy what I was surrounded by and what
was attractive, and I needed help to be reminded of
where my true values are. And I think that's kind
of what you're speaking to here. And the problem is

(13:36):
sometimes we don't get those reminders often enough, and so
we just get more and more sucked into this idea
of someone else's success.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yeah, and it's so governed by the environment that you
are in, the people that you're surrounded by. I will
say anecdotally, my friends that live in New York City
or Los Angeles struggle with this much more than my
friends who live in a small town in the suburbs.
It is very much like a cultural indoctrination. If you're

(14:06):
surrounded by people who measure their worth in terms of
how expensive their kids' school is, or how many weekends
they get to spend in the Hamptons or what charter
plane they're taking to X, Y or Z. It is very,
very difficult to opt out of that game when you're
surrounded by it. The environments that we operate and really

(14:26):
do govern our reality. They really shape the way that
we view the world. And so I have often said
to people that your environment that you spend time in
a two way feedback loop, because you shape your environments
for sure, but your environments then in turn are shaping you.
And you really want the environment that you operate in

(14:46):
to be a reflection of your core values, because it
will be very difficult for you if the to are intention.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah, And I think a lot of people find themselves
in this spot. I know a lot of our listeners
certainly do, because I've just heard from enough of them,
worked with enough of them over the years where they've
achieved some degree of conventional success, at least in the
way that like, they've got a home, they've got retirement savings,
they've had children, and then somewhere in there, something wakes

(15:14):
up in them and starts desiring more. And yet they're
firmly embedded in this place that had these different values, rightfully,
so they're very hesitant to be like, well, I'm just
gonna blow my whole life up here, right because they
may have, you know, a good family and a wonderful spouse,
but they need something else. And I think that's why

(15:36):
it can be so helpful to try and seek out,
even in smaller doses, people who align with your values.
It's so important in being able to stay the course
with anything.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
I think, Yeah, I mean the people you surround yourself
with fundamentally determine your outcomes. There is clear scientific evidence
that the expectations of the people that you surround yourself
with actually hermin whether you are kind of rising or
falling to meet those expectations. The Pygmalion effect is the
name of this psychological phenomenon whereby we rise to the

(16:09):
level of the expectations that others have for us. So
if you're surrounded by people who believe you are capable
of more and sort of lift you up, you will
actually rise to meet those expectations. But similarly, if you're
surrounded by people who make you feel bad, who put
you down, who tell you you don't have enough, or
who show you that with their actions or their behaviors,

(16:29):
you will fall to the level of those expectations in
the way that you engage with the world. And it
is fundamentally a call to action to be very very
careful about the people that you allow into your energy,
into your reality, because they really will have a profound
impact on your happiness or misery in life.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Let's talk through that in a little bit more depth.
I'm curious how you would think about this, because you
clearly value family and loyalty to family to some degree.
And so let's take my scenario where somebody is middle
aged at this point and they find themselves surrounded by
maybe their family and people that maybe do have lower

(17:10):
expectations or don't support their values, and yet one of
their core values is to be of support and love
to the people that are around them. You know, how
would you go about thinking about honoring those two values,
One which says, hey, I do recognize that the people
that I'm around affect my trajectory, and one of my
values is I don't only see the people in my

(17:31):
life that I love as an instrument for making me
more successful.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah. I think that there's a big difference between people
who are sort of a neutral force in your life
versus a truly net negative in your life. And at
the end of the day, the person that you need
to be most loyal to is yourself. Yeah. And I
don't mean that in the sense that you just, you know,
cast everyone else off and you're like, you know, fundamentally selfish.

(17:58):
But you do need to protect yourself certain ways from
people who consistently durrain you and pull you down. And
the way that you do that does not have to
be cutting people off. The most traditional way that people
talk about this is like, oh, you know, if you
have a family member that treats you poorly, you have
to just cut them off. You never see them again.
And that's easier said than done, and it's frankly unrealistic

(18:20):
in a lot of cases. Like you know, I have
family members who have not been a positive force in
my life. Fortunately not direct blood relatives, but family members
who I see it every holiday, or close family friends
who are the same. And the way that I always
advise people to manage that, which is the way that
I have come to terms with it, is just because
you are around someone physically does not mean you have

(18:42):
to open up to them energetically or spiritually. If you
believe in that, you can be closed off to someone.
If you know that someone is a toxic force on
your life, if you know that they happen to say
things that are negative or they put you down in
certain ways, you don't have to open up to allow
them to put the knife in. And by the way,
this is the reason that scientifically ambivalent relationships, relationships that

(19:03):
are sometimes supportive and loving and sometimes demeaning, are actually
more negative for your health, yes than purely toxic ones.
This has been shown over and over again like that.
You know, you put someone up on stage to give
a talk if the audience is purely toxic versus if
the audience is ambivalent, sometimes booing, sometimes cheering. The blood

(19:24):
pressure spikes and stress levels of the speaker actually are
worse when the audience is ambivalent because it opens you
up when they're really nice, and so then the knife
on the demeaning part really hurts the toxicity. And I
think that with relationships and family members that really applies.
We need to really monitor who and how they are

(19:45):
impacting our energy in those ways so that we can
create those level of boundaries that just allow us to
continue in our own flow.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, that's such a great point, and I agree ambivalent
relationships like that are really difficult to sort out because
sometimes they're good and you're like, okay, this is great,
and then sometimes they're really bad and you're like, oh,
got it. Maybe you know, if it was just always bad,
it would be clear what to do. You'd be like,
all right, you know, I really need to minimize my
time with this person or you know, put them out
of my life. And if it were only good, you

(20:15):
wouldn't be having the struggle. I think that so many
things in life we end up with ambivalence about, and
that ambivalence is really challenging.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, absolutely completely agree. I sort of ascribe to the
wisdom that you should give everyone a second chance, but
never a third, and I think that that is kind
of a healthy way to approach these things when it
comes to relationships, and when it comes to relationships that
are sort of on the edge for you in your life.
Life is too short to allow people into your energy

(20:44):
that are truly a consistent negative force over and over again.
The first time someone's that way, I personally default to empathy.
I assume person's having a bad day. Even when I,
like encounter a stranger and they do something that is
sort of negative, like you know, treat you in a
certain way, It's like something is going on in this
person's life that caused them to act this way. Give
someone a little bit of grace, But when it becomes

(21:05):
a consistent pattern, it's no longer something that's just a
one off.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
So I want to get into the different types of
wealth here in a second, but before I do, I'd
love to talk about the life raiser. Tell me what
the life raiser is.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
So the life raiser is this concept of having a simple,
single statement that is an identity defining rule for your life.
A raizer, just as a term, is a sort of
rule of thumb that allows you to simplify decision making.
So a life raiser is a rule of thumb that

(21:39):
allows you to simplify decision making across your entire life.
The way that I articulated in the book is best
brought to life through a story, which is Mark Randolph,
the first CEO, the founder co founder of Netflix, has
this thing that he has talked about and written about
in the past that throughout his entire technology career he
had a hard rule that on Tuesdays at five pm,

(22:02):
he was leaving the office to go out on a
date with his wife. And he talks about the fact
that what he is most proud of from his entire career,
which founded all these incredible companies, built these incredible things,
is not that he achieved those amazing successes, but that
he was able to do that while still remaining married
to the same woman and having kids who, as far
as he can tell, love to spend time with him.

(22:23):
And I thought that it was such an interesting thing
after I spoke to him in reflecting on it, because
what I understood was that it didn't really have anything
to do with any one date or the date in
and of itself. It had everything to do with the
identity that it established in his life that he was
the type of person that never missed a five pm
Tuesday dinner with his wife. It means something about how

(22:45):
he shows up in the world, and it sends a
clear signal ripples to everyone around him about the things
that he holds most dear and about the way that
he is going to show up in these different situations
in his life. To all have our own version of
that Tuesday five five pm dinner rule, some single identity
defining statement for your own life that allows you to

(23:06):
cut through the noise in the various situations that you
encounter is very powerful. So on my desk, I have
a little sheet of paper that says I will coach
my son's sports teams. That is my life raiser. That
is the idea that I am going to be the
type of husband, type of father, type of community member,
type of individual who is always going to put those

(23:28):
things first, who is going to make sure that whatever
decisions I have to make in life, they are not
going to come into conflict with that ideal version of myself.
How that version shows up in the world.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
This idea of a life razor, and I have one
of my own. I want to dig a little deeper here, though,
I'd love to see how you think about this. Right,
Like you'll coach your son's sports teams. It's a good
overall framing, But even with that clarity, you're going to
be faced with lots of decisions about where time goes. Right,

(24:21):
do I put it towards one of my professional pursuits?
Do I put it towards my son's development? And you're
not always going to choose your son's development, because if
you take that to a extent, you could spend your
entire life doing nothing but focusing on your child, which
it would be fine. How do you think about applying that?
Like the Netflix guy's rule was pretty straightforward, like I

(24:43):
just have to make sure for an hour and a
half on Tuesday I show up. There's a lot of
latitude around that. How do you think about taking that
I will coach my son's sports team and practically applying
it as you go through your day.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
To day life. To me, it is about the statement
about the timeype of person you are. I mean, my
son is two and a half, so he's not even
on sports teams yet, so this is very much a wide.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Latitude statement for it already.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
No, no, and I'm far from that type of parent
because my parents weren't like that with me. But this
is about the type of person that I believe I
am when I show up as my best self. Let's
take an example. Someone comes to me and offers me
a new business opportunity, and I'm looking at it and
it's exciting. They're going to pay me a bunch of money,
but it's going to require me to be on planes
for one hundred days out of the year, going around

(25:29):
and doing a bunch of things. I can look at
this card and say, well, this seems exciting, but what
does the type of person who coaches his son's sports
teams do in these situations? Well, I probably can't be
away that much and still be the type of person
who will be there for my family in this way.
So that means I might need to go back and
adjust the opportunity. It doesn't mean I'm just going to

(25:49):
blanket say no to it, but maybe I need to
make adjustments to the construct of how it exists. Similarly,
if someone comes and offers me a bunch of money,
but it might jeopardize my integrity or morals the way
that we're going to be making it, it's a hard no.
I can immediately look at this and just say there's
no way, because I cannot jeopardize my relationship with my
son or wife because for me to coach that team,
that's not just my choice. That's his choice that he

(26:12):
wants to have me around. That's my wife's choice that
she's proud to have me out in the community with
other people. So I cannot take actions that wouldjeopardize that
if I'm the type of person who does these things.
So it's really important to understand the ripples that that
one statement creates into other areas. And in Mark's example
of the five pm Tuesday dinner, yes it's just this dinner,

(26:33):
it also creates a ripple to all of his employees.
Because his employees see the CEO of the company creating
these boundaries and prioritizing his family and having a life
outside of work, well, they're empowered to now do something
similar it's not to say that, you know, if you're
a junior person, you can do the exact same thing,
but they can create something because they know that there's

(26:54):
a core of value now and that makes them more
loyal to the company, that makes them want to stick
around and work together, and it creates you for everybody involved.
So it's really those ripples that extend off that single
statement that become very interesting.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah. I love that idea. That is really good, And
I also love the idea of having a statement because
life happens fast and it gets confusing, and having something
that's that always at hand can be so valuable. Mine
is just that I try and leave every situation, whether

(27:27):
that a person a place better than I found it, Like,
that's just kind of my life. Raiser just sort of
orients me in general. Doesn't solve every decision making quandary
I come up with, but it does point me in
a direction, and it's simple enough that it consistently can
be useful.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
I love that one. That's a very very good one. Yeah,
there's several examples in the book that I go through
from people in sort of different walks of life, and
that's a really important piece to this idea of the
life raiser too, to recognize that your life raiser will
change across the different seasons of your life. My son
is young man, Wow, this is clearly a key focus.
When he goes to college or when our children are

(28:04):
no longer in the house, it obviously doesn't serve in
quite the same way. So recognizing and assessing sort of
pressure testing whether the life raiser that you have is
still one that suits the stage that you're in in
life is also just a healthy kind of natural process,
over and over again.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,

(28:43):
emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the first step

(29:06):
towards getting back on track. My son is now twenty six,
so you know, if he was your son's age, I
might have a very different focus. The stage of life
I'm in in the stage of life you're in, are
very different.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Yeah. I think that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
So we just alluded a little bit to stages of
life and how you spend your time in different stages
of the life might be different. So let's move on
to the first type of wealth that you talk about,
which is time wealth. And my favorite part from this
is just this very simple question, would you trade lives
with Warren Buffett? Talk to me about that question, because

(29:40):
that is such a great and illuminating question.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
I love asking young people this question. Yeah, it is
such a simple articulation of a very important point, which
is that time is your most precious asset. If I
ask a young person, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett,
it's a hard charging young person just starting their career,
and I tell them he's worth one hundred and thirty
billion dollars. He flies around on a Boeing business jet.

(30:06):
He has access to anyone in the world. He basically
reads and learns for a living. Sounds pretty good, but
you would never trade lives with him for one simple reason.
He is ninety five years old. There's no way that
you should agree to trade the amount of time that
he has left for all the money in the world.
And on the flip side, he would do anything to

(30:26):
be twenty two again, he would give up every single
dollar that he has to be twenty two and to
have the amount of time that you have. So in
that articulation, what you're recognizing is that your time has
quite literally incalculable value, incalculable value, and yet on a
daily basis, are you really wasting it? I mean, we're
spending all this time scrolling on our phones, comparing ourselves

(30:48):
to other people, stressing about the past, anxiety about the future,
all of these things that are fundamentally disrespecting this one
most precious asset that we have, the one asset that
we can never get back once it's gone.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
I love that question too, because you first hear it
and you think, well, of course I would, until you
get to the ninety seven. You know, he's ninety seven
years old piece, and I think then it kind of
wakes you up to this idea. And as you were talking,
I was thinking a little bit about you know, we
talk about spending time. If we really applied that idea
of spending time the way we did money, There's a

(31:22):
lot of ways I spend my time that I would
not spend money on. It's really interesting to think about, like,
I do this thing, but would I pay to do
that thing? Of course I wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
That's a really interesting way of thinking about it. I've
actually never articulated it that way in my mind, but
it is an important framing. It is just really interesting
what changes you start to make when you recognize that
time is really the thing that you have, and that
all of these moments, these windows of time are actually

(31:55):
in a little bit more of your control than you think.
That is a really important and peace is to just
recognize that you can actually create time for the things
or with the people that you really care about in
your life. You can make decisions, you can take actions
that actually create more of these moments with the people
that you want to spend time with, or for the

(32:17):
things that you really enjoy, for the experiences that you
really want to have. You can take actions that fundamentally
create time in that sense, and once you realize that,
you start living differently in a lot of ways. But
it all comes from that awareness of the fact that
time is the really precious asset, not the money, right.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
And I think there's a second level to this. The
first level is being intentional about where I put my time.
I think the second level is being intentional about what
I bring to the things I'm doing. And this gets
back to where we started. You said, you know, certain
things that we used to pray for we now see
as a burden.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
It can be easy when you're trapped in the just
the word I use there describes the mind state that
we're in, even though I don't believe it. That word
in this way with your two year old for four hours,
and it can begin to feel overwhelming. So your time
is in the right place, But what you're bringing to
that time is also an important part of what makes

(33:14):
that time valuable or non valuable.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
I think what you're hitting on is a really important concept,
which is that your ability to direct your attention and
energy into the moments or windows of time that really
matter is where you achieve the greatest successes and outcomes
in life. There are these particular windows of time during

(33:37):
which certain people are, certain opportunities present themselves, and they
are weightier, they are more textured than others. The ancient
Greeks actually had two different words for time. They had chronos,
which was the idea of chronological kind of linear, quantitative time,
and then they had chiros, which was the idea that
not all time is created equal, that there are certain
moments or windows that have more texture, that have more

(33:59):
meaning or more importance, and your ability to direct attention
or energy into those is actually amplified in terms of
the outcomes that you can create. So those moments with
certain people that are really important, those business opportunities that
are time sensitive, that if you just lean into and
really sprint at, you can generate these incredible outcomes for

(34:19):
your life. It's sort of like the Lionel Messi version
of playing soccer, where he walks around the field the
entire game, and then he sprints in the exact right
moment to achieve the incredible outcome that he's going for.
It's taking the approach that to life, rather than the
consistent jog, finding those moments of time and deploying your
attention and energy into them.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
I want to do a thought experiment here with you,
which is the business stuff I totally get right, Like,
this is the time you go hard. If we're talking
about time with family, Let's say you know, you recognize
that the first ten years of your son's life you
call him I think the magic years. I've always said
the glory years of parenting are like five to eleven.
But you're right, the first ten years are so critical.

(35:03):
You can't just pick a couple of moments to sprint there, right,
because that would be the equivalent of what you know
people call the Disneyland dad. Right, you drop in and
you take your kid to Disneyland, and you create these
great moments. But day to day, your wife is doing
kind of.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
All of the work.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
And one of the things that I found is that
sometimes training my attention in non important moments to be
prepared for the important moments is valuable. I mean, I
think in many ways this is what meditation is. Meditation
I think is training your attention in a moment that
theoretically isn't that important, right because you're just sitting there

(35:43):
with the goal. At least my goal is the ability
to actually really inhabit the important moments.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I love that articulation training your attention in the unimportant
moments for the important moments. It's not dissimilar from my
articulation of the reason we do hard things. You know.
I am an avid cold plunger, way past the point
where it's no longer trendy like it once was. And
the reason I believe in doing that is because I

(36:10):
fundamentally believe that when you take on voluntary struggle, you
are more well equipped for the involuntary struggle that inevitably
comes into your life. And you're sort of articulating the
same thing when it comes to these moments, which I love.
I do tend to think of life more on a
season basis than on a day's basis, and I think
that balance as a concept, attention as a concept is

(36:34):
actually more well thought of on a kind of waves
versus specific tiny moments like the Disneyland trip, because that
is a really helpful framing at least for me, that
has provided a lot of comfort, and it's provided a
lot of security and how we think about our sun
and this journey. I mean, like just to be fully transparent.
The last three four months, I've been in a season

(36:56):
of unbalanced, like truly sprinting to put these ideas out
into the world that I care deeply about that I
think are going to impact a lot of people, and
being able to do that without stress and anxiety, knowing
that it is in service of a season of balance
to come. Yes, that my wife and I are going
to be able to zoom out and spend tons of

(37:18):
time together with our sun present moments energy there because
of the fact that I sprinted and really leaned into
this thing and was able to create that. That is
a really important reframing of these things because what it
tells you is that you don't have to stress over
a lack of balance in the days as long as
you understand on the zoomed out view that you're working

(37:38):
towards the balance in the seasons.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
I agree one hundred percent with that idea because people
talk about work life balance, and I think when you
look at it in short chunks, you might see that
it's really out of balance. If you're looking at a
day or a week, you know, if your kid is sick,
that week may be way more child than work because
you're home and you know you're taking days off to

(38:02):
take care of the child and you suddenly work is
out of balance. But I think the trick comes like,
I think you've been real intentional about Okay, once I
get through this time, which is a book launch, right,
A book launch demands a ton out of someone. Once
I get on the other side of that, I'm going
to be very intentional about how I'm rebalancing this. I
think the problem that a lot of people fall into,

(38:24):
and I did this, I think for a number of
years was I kept believing that just on the other
side of this project, I was in the software world.
Once we get this release out, then I'm going to
dial it back. And the reality was, particularly if someone
else is said in your priorities like the gas pedals
all the way down all the time. And so I

(38:45):
think in those situations it did become more important to recognize, like, okay,
I have to watch a little bit closer that I
don't get stuck in the belief that, Okay, I'll balance
this out later and the next thing you know, three
years have gone by.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Later is the most dangerous word in the dictionary. We
say I'll spend more time with my kids later, I'll
spend more time with my partner or my friends later.
I'll invest in my health later. I'll find my freedom
and purpose later. And the sad thing is that later
just becomes another word for never, because those things are

(39:20):
not going to exist in the same way later. Your
kids are not going to be five years old later.
Your partner, your friends won't be there for you later
if you're not there for them now. Your health won't
be there for you later if you don't invest in
it now. You won't magically wake up with freedom and
purpose later if you don't build those things now. And
so the idea is that you have to design these

(39:40):
things into your life in some tiny way today. It
doesn't have to be dramatic. We know that life has
seasons and you're not going to be able to massively
focus on all of these things at all points in time,
but they need to be designed in in some tiny
way on a daily basis, otherwise you'll just end up
regretting it later.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
You talk about these five types of wealth, I'm just
going to put them out there, just real quick time wealth,
social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and financial wealth. But
you have a concept in there of we tend to
think about these things as like I'm investing in this
or I'm not, And you talk about trying to take
a dimmer switch approach to these five different areas of wealth.

(40:37):
I think this piggybacks on what you just said talk
to me about that mentality.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
I'm glad you brought this up, because I do think
that this is probably the single most important idea to
understand in your own life for building the life you want.
The traditional wisdom around creating change in your life is
that you have to pick an area that you're going
to focus on. You turn the light switch on, and
then every other area of your life gets turned off

(41:03):
while you focus on the one. So if I'm going
to be trying to build my career, build my finances,
I turn that switch on, and two bad relationships, too
bad health, too bad mental health, those all get switched off,
and I'm just gonna be hard charging. And we actually
pad a lot of people on the back for saying
things like that. We say, like, oh, obsession is good
and grit and like we use all these positive words

(41:24):
for sacrificing all these other areas of your life to
build the one. I fundamentally reject the idea that you
have to do that all of these areas of your
life exist on dimmer switches, and you can and probably should,
have one area turned up. That is the area that
you are focusing on during this season of your life.
But it doesn't mean the other ones are turned off.

(41:44):
It just means they're going to be turned down. And
the important point here is that down is infinitely better
than off. Yes, because anything above zero compounds positively. We
know that when it comes to money, if you put
fifty dollars or one hundred dollars in S and P
five hundred today, that's better than zero because it's going
to stack up and compound over long periods of time.

(42:06):
The exact same thing applies to these other areas of
your life, your relationships. Sending the one text to the
friend when you're thinking about them is better than doing nothing.
Going for the ten minute walk is better than doing nothing.
But what happens is that ambitious people allow optimal to
get in the way of beneficial. So they say, Oh,
I don't have an hour to work out, so I'm

(42:27):
just not going to work out. I don't have an
hour to go on a coffee date with this friend,
so I'm just not going to talk to them. That
is the worst mentality. That is the light switch being
turned off. And if you allow those light switches to
be off for too long, you can't turn them back on,
or they will be very difficult to turn back on.
So what we need to do is just have them
down low. Design a tiny investment on a daily basis

(42:49):
in those areas, into your life on a daily basis.
Send the text to the friend when you think about them,
call your mom for two minutes in the car, get
the group together for the annual trip once a year,
you know, do the fifteen minute walk even when you
don't really feel like it, journal for three minutes in
the evening, breathe for three minutes in between meetings. Whatever
those tiny things are, they stack wins because anything above

(43:11):
zero compounds.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
I love that line. Anything above zero compounds. I used
to say to coaching clients all the time. A little
bit of something is better than a lot of nothing.
It's this core idea. The other thing that I think
speaks to why this is such a useful strategy is
that these things tend to amplify each other. Right Like,
if you are taking good care of your physical health

(43:34):
or decent care of it, and your mental health, your
professional world is probably going to do better. So again,
I think there's these ways that not only are they
each important individually, they work together to a certain extent.
I have a friend Jonathan Fields. He wrote a book
a number of years ago. The main idea was, we
have these different areas of life buckets similar to what

(43:54):
you're talking about, and that the lowest level of one
of them can end up being a cap on all
the others if you're not careful.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
I love that. I have often thought about that in
the context of physical wealth, you know, your health. That
the reason I harp on it so much, the reason
I think it's so important, is because it is a
catalyst for all of the other types of wealth. When
you take an action in your physical wealth and you
see an outcome, that rewires your brain to remind yourself

(44:27):
that you are capable of creating change in your world,
That you are capable of doing something and getting the
desired outcome. That has ripple effects into everything else that
you do. Because you start to see yourself that way,
you start to recognize that you are capable. So if
you're ever feeling down and you start doing that, you
start to remind yourself of that fact. Suddenly you have
this new energy to go and take on other things.

(44:48):
Because you recognize that you have that power, you remind
yourself of that power that you have.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
I agree, And for me, exercise is sort of this
keystone type habit, right, and it is because of what
you you just said, but it's also because doing it
actually does give me more energy, and that energy then
can be deployed to these different areas of wealth. Right,
if I have enough energy, then I'll go out after

(45:13):
dinner to see a friend versus just collapsing on the
couch and watching Netflix. You know, if I have energy
to do it. And so for me, that is the
keystone that unlocks a lot of other things.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
That's absolutely right, completely agree.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
All right, let's move on to social wealth for a minute,
which again I love this idea of just having a
question that anchors this whole thing, which is who will
be sitting in the front row at your funeral? And
this comes from an exercise I learned it in the
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, like twenty five years ago,
where you imagine your funeral and you imagine what people

(45:49):
will get up and say about you as a way
of orienting what's important to you, but you've given it
a slightly different spin. So talk to me about this
front row idea.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
The idea is is to visualize your funeral, but not
in a morbid sense, in an empowering one, which is
to say, at your funeral, there will be a lot
of people that will show up, and certain people will
sit down in the front row. The recognition that those
people hold a very special place in your world, and

(46:22):
the recognition that you need to ask yourself whether or
not you are cherishing those people, whether you are cherishing
your front row people making sure that they know that
special place that they hold in your world, and whether
you are being a front row person to someone else
out there. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
I love that idea. I love the funeral thing in
general because it allows you to step back from your
life and think about what's important. But I had never
thought of it in this sort of front row way
of really thinking about who would be in that for us.
And also I love what you said where it's am
I being a front row kind of per am I
being the sort of person that would deserve to sit

(47:03):
in the front row for these people.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, I think that that's the important piece, is like
flipping these things on yourself and recognizing your own actions
and how your actions are either creating or pushing you
away from that future that you want. In a lot
of the visualizations that I run through in the book,
there is this idea of identify and visualize the future
that you want, then ask yourself whether your actions in

(47:28):
the present are bearing out that future, and if they're not,
you can change your actions in the present. That's great news.
You can actually do something different today that will create
the future that you want. But recognizing that there is
that gap between what you want your future to look
like and what it is likely to look like if
you don't change is the important first step. That awareness,

(47:49):
that self awareness which most of us are afraid to confront. Yes,
the reason I talk about and I bring up all
these questions in the book is because I fundamentally believe
one important fact, which is the answer as you seek
in life are found in the questions that you avoid,
the questions that you avoid asking about your life. That

(48:09):
is what we need to dig into. If we can
sit with those questions, then we're able to actually uncover
and act on these answers that will change our world.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
That's a great way of thinking about it. I've led
groups of people through the funeral exercise before without the
front row edition, and for some people it's a really
difficult thing. It's a really difficult thing because they are
forced to see, indeed, the way in which they are
not living according to what they want their you know,

(48:38):
quote unquote legacy to be. And a lot of us
have a tendency when we when we come face to
face with something that's uncomfortable, a question that's uncomfortable, is
to run away from it.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
And it's very easy to do. Yeah, I mean, look,
there is nothing forcing you to confront these questions. It's
much easier to just sit around, scroll on your phone,
you know, void asking these questions, avoid making the changes
that are hard. Like everything in the world today is
about reducing friction. All of the technology we've developed over

(49:08):
the last twenty years has reduced friction in your life.
It's made it easier to press the eject button out
of these challenging situations. You have more choices than ever before.
Everything is easier if you want it to be. And unfortunately,
what you find is that the friction actually created a
lot of meaning. The friction actually was a good thing
because on the other side of that friction was the

(49:29):
most beautiful things in life. And on the other side
of the friction of asking yourself these hard questions is
the life that you actually want to build for yourself.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Let's talk a little bit
about mental wealth. What does mental wealth mean to you?

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Mental wealth is all about purpose. It's about growth. It's
about creating the space necessary to actually wrestle with some
of the big unanswerable questions in life, whether through spirituality, medicalation, solitude,
what have you. Mental wealth is fundamentally about allowing yourself
to pay the price for your distinctiveness in the world.

(50:09):
I talk about this shareholder letter that Jeff Bezos wrote,
where he says that the fight against normalcy is the
most important fight of your life. You have to every
single day pay a price to maintain your distinctiveness, to
walk your path rather than the one that was handed
to you. That is really what mental wealth is about.
It's about paying that price, about doing the things, pursuing

(50:31):
your curiosity, pursuing your growth, to allow yourself to live
your life rather than consent to the default that was handed.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a

(50:59):
free guide to help soup you recognize the hidden patterns
that holds you back and give you simple, effective strategies
to break through them. If you're ready to take back
control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now
at oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts
happen starting today one you feed dot net slash ebook.

(51:23):
That line jumped off the page to me, It's a
life that pays the price for its distinctiveness. Such an
interesting way to think about what we're trying to protect.
You say that the mental wealth is a life of
victory in the fight against equilibrium, and that's another way of,
you know, sort of pulling us back to what is

(51:46):
kind of Well, that's not the right way to say it,
because distinctiveness is actually what is its normality as you
say it, or average.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I just think that this
is not about that being grand or impressed to anyone else.
You know, there's this important idea of dharma, you know,
ancient Hindu idea of your sacred duty. And the most
important part of that is that your dharma does not
have to be grand, impressive to other people, sound so

(52:15):
incredible or big. It just has to be yours. And
doing your dharma imperfectly is better than doing someone else's perfectly.
That is so liberating to understand that your purpose, your pursuits,
the things that you were excited about are doing, the
path that you're walking, does not have to be impressive
to other people. You don't need to go off and

(52:35):
do these grand things or feel like you need to
build the billion dollar company or be the biggest you know,
best at whatever it is. You just need to live
your life. You need to walk your path, not one
that you've been handed by default. You need to live
by your own design.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Yeah, going back to what we talked about earlier, which
is that even if you have your life pointed in
the right direction, you can still get caught up in
the concept of more, more and more versus enough enough enough.
And I think that this happens to us in these
dharma purpose type things, because we think that, you know,
if we're not starting like a charity that eliminates hunger

(53:13):
in Africa, we're not doing anything valuable or important. But
as we've talked about seasons of life, like for a parent,
that's a pretty critical it's a pretty critical dharma right there,
which is in the years that your children are little,
raising them to be good people.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Amen. Amen, could not agree more.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
We're near the very end of our time here. But
I would love to just end with one idea that
you talk about, which is that falling in love is easy.
Growing in love is hard.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
This goes back to that idea of friction. Falling in
love is what you see on social media. It's the beautiful,
manicured photos, the filtered moments, the perfect honeymoon phase, all
those fancy things. But that's not reality. Real, beautiful, deep
loving relationships are built through shared struggle. They're built through

(54:04):
the growing, through the periods of crawling through the mud
with someone, through embracing the friction and finding your way
to the other side. And until you embrace that, until
you recognize that we need to focus more on the
growing than the falling, and recognize that that idea applies
to much more than relationships in life. You will never

(54:25):
find the things that you are actually seeking.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
Beautiful. Well, I think that is a wonderful place for
us to wrap up. Thank you, sau Hill. I really
enjoyed the book, and I've really enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Thank you so much for having me. This was a thrill.
I can't wait to get to chat again soon.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I'd
love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing
from one person to another is the lifeblood of what
we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm
certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better,
and that's you. Just hit the share button on your

(55:01):
podcast app or send a quick text with the episode
link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means
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at a time. Thank you for being part of the
one You Feed community.

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Host

Eric Zimmer

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