A (4:23)

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?

B (4:34)

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 building and investing in their relationships. They're not following their curiosity to engage their mind. They're chasing money in the present 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 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.

A (6:31)

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I've been saying, I think on this 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?

B (7:05)

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 fine, 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. But in the context of this idea of enough and this idea of understanding very clearly and rationally what your version of an enough life looks like. 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.

A (10:21)

It's really interesting. I think those five types of wealth are. 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.

B (11:23)

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. To the point where I didn't think I wanted kids. Cause that's gonna 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 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 clear 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.

A (14:16)

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 got me to stop and pause. I'd love everyone on the back of this conversation to start thinking about their own liferaiser.

B (15:04)

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 liferaiser 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 5pm 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 liferaiser. 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. That 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 liferaiser, which I talk about in the book, are is it controllable? That is, can you actually take action to control this thing? Is it ripple creating 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 raiser 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.

A (18:12)

Yeah, I really like it. I love what you said in the book and what you just mentioned there about Marc 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 then perhaps give us a few pointers as to how we can start increasing our own social wealth.

B (18:45)

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 going to be the same later. Your friends are not going to 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. Yeah, 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 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.

A (20:21)

That point about later. It's just so good and it's so applicable to frankly, anything. You know, 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, but at the moment I can't. But that later never comes. It never comes for so many people.

B (20:48)

For me, what happened was I got to a point where I was confronted with this reality that I was living 3,000 miles away from my parents. I was seeing them once a year, the two people that I was closest to in the 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 might live until 80. It was math. It was brutal, terrifyingly simple math. 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.

A (21:40)

Yeah. How'd you think about friendship?

B (21:44)

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 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, okay, 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.

A (24:30)

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.

B (24:44)

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.

A (25:34)

Hope you enjoyed that bite sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.