← Making Space with Hoda Kotb
Making Space with Hoda Kotb
Sahil Bloom On The Five Types of Wealth
00:41:05
Sahil Bloom is an author, businessman, and investor. He had a successful career in finance before a conversation with a friend changed his life forever, forcing him to rediscover the meaning of true prosperity. In his book "The 5 Types of Wealth", he writes that a fulfilling life is built around five kinds of wealth: time, social, mental, physical, and financial. He opened up to Hoda about taking a leap and discovering whats on the other side.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:46]
Hoda Kotb
Sometimes being asked one question can change the course of your entire life. And that's exactly what happened to my guest today. Just a few years ago, Sahil Bloom was by all accounts, wealthy. He was living on the west coast and incredibly successful, working at a private equity fund with billions of dollars in assets. But all it took was one conversation to make all of that seem less valuable. A friend of Sahil's asked how old his parents were and then followed up by asking how often he sees his parents. About once a year was his answer. So Sahil's friend just said to him this so you'll see your parents a total of 15 or so more times before they die. And that's the moment that everything shifted for Sahil. He began to re examine what wealth looks like to him and now views success in a whole new way. Sahil started to reprioritize time, his social life and health and that that became his new currency. And now Sahil has created a blueprint examining different forms of wealth. Today he is the author of the New York Times bestseller it's called the five Types of A Transformative Guide to Design your Dream Life. And he's shifting how others view what being wealthy really means. This conversation will have you looking at life through a whole new lens and I promise you'll feel wealthier in a whole new way by the end. I'm Hoda Kotb. Welcome to my podcast, Making Space.
- [02:31]
Sahil Bloom
All right, you've come to great epiphanies in your life and everybody, I think we all just get one life, so we're going to have our own epiphany. So I kind of want to, I want people to gear into the lessons, the life lessons you learned.
- [02:44]
Hoda Kotb
But let's take it back.
- [02:46]
Sahil Bloom
Just tell me about you growing up.
- [02:47]
Hoda Kotb
Like, how were you raised?
- [02:48]
Sahil Bloom
What was life like for you as a little boy?
- [02:51]
I come from a very interesting collision of two worlds, if you will. My mom was born and Raised in Bangalore, India, she applied in secret, against her parents wishes, to come to college in the United States. Went to an all girls school, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. And then my father grew up, born and raised in a Jewish household in the Bronx, New York, right near here. And in many ways, the two of them meeting was like a crazy turn of fates. They crossed paths over the course of a two week window. My mom had just started a master's program and my dad was finishing his dissertation. This is at Princeton here in New Jersey. And my mom asked my dad out on a date. Very bold of her, I know, Very bold of her.
- [03:32]
Audience Member
Wow.
- [03:32]
Sahil Bloom
And we went out on this first date. And during the date, my dad said, my father will never accept us. And my mom was so blinded by his use of the word us that she completely missed the underlying message. And unfortunately, he was right. His father was not accepting of this courtship and the fact that my mother was Indian and told him that he had to choose between his family and my mom. And my dad walked out the door and never saw his family again. And to this day, I never met my dad's parents. He has three siblings I've never met. I have first cousins out there somewhere in the world that I never met. And the reason I tell that story as it relates to my own upbringing is because the legacy and the lineage of that decision that my dad and both my parents made to choose love, to carve their own path rather than accept default. What was handed to them by their families, by culture, the legacy of that, I feel, was sort of ingrained in my DNA to reject common convention, to kind of question some of these things we've been handed.
- [04:36]
Did your dad ever forgive his father or his family after all that?
- [04:41]
I think that to be totally honest, my mother has more grief associated with it than my father because I think she has to this day feeling that it was her fault that this had happened, that my dad had to make that decision, which is an unfair thing for her to carry. And I know my parents have worked through that in many ways with therapy over the years, but I'm sure my dad still has a lot of pain from that. I do think that my father comes from a different generation where men don't talk about the grief and the struggle and the traumas that they have. I never remember my dad talking about those things with me, where now I think it's much more out in the open. Sure, you can talk to your friends, say these things. So I often wonder that your parents.
- [05:28]
Were great, achievers obviously. So when you were a kid, were they like, this is how it's gonna be. You're gonna work this hard. We wanna see you succeed. And how did they define success? Or how did you think they did when you were a kid?
- [05:41]
Very much around academic achievement. So my mother's Indian. Very academically oriented culture. My father's a professor at Harvard. So again, very academically oriented. Clearly, academic success was. Or at least how I thought my family, you know, sort of measured ourselves. And I have an older sister. It's the two of us. My sister was extraordinarily high achieving academically. Maybe to this day, the highest GPA in our high school's history. Like, very, very high achieving. Incredible. And she's four years older than me. And what would happen from a young age was I would go to my first day of school and I would go to the. Go to the teacher, and they would say, like, oh, Sahil Bloom, you're Sonali's brother. And they would have these high hopes. And inevitably, I fall short of those high hopes because from a young age, I was just much more drawn to, like, play and baseball and being outside and all of those kind of things. And unfortunately, it started cementing in me this story that I was not capable. I had started telling myself that I wasn't smart, that my sister was the smart one, and that I was maybe the athletic one or I had to be something else. And those stories that you tell yourself can completely shape your reality.
- [06:56]
Yeah, they bake in.
- [06:57]
Humans are very good at finding evidence that confirms the stories we already believe about ourselves.
- [07:02]
Believe that story too?
- [07:03]
No, they tried at every turn to tell me that it was wrong. I mean, my parents. I remember on several occasions my parents having to sit me down and say, like, you're not trying in these things. You are smarter than your sister and you're not trying. You're just not applying yourself. And I remember saying to my mom once that that might be true, but I need to figure it out for myself. And I might have been 13 at the time when I said that to her. But there is some reality in that, that there's only so much that a parent can say to you or teach you. You kind of have to learn these lessons yourself. You have to find your own way.
- [07:37]
So as you were going through, did you think. How did you think success would be measured for you as you were thinking about college and your first job and what your life would unfold?
- [07:49]
I really thought that I needed to receive the external affirmations and pats on the back to, you know, in hindsight, mask this kind of insecurity that I had developed within me. When, you know, when you have an insecurity, you have sort of an internal void. And what you do, especially as a young person, is you try to find external solutions to this internal problem. We see that with a lot of adults and very successful people out in the world today, clearly insecure and they're clearly looking for those pats on the back. I very much did that. And the way societally that we fix that or that we chase those external affirmations is through money, status, achievements, titles, all of those things.
- [08:29]
Did you get that? Did you get the money? Did you get the status?
- [08:32]
I did get those things, yeah. What happened? I took a job working in finance straight out of school. I played baseball in college, which was a good way to get pats on the back. And then I took this job really because I thought it was the job that was going to get me, that it was a high status, impressive sounding job. Working in finance, you have the good times title. And I marched ahead and put my head down with this deeply ingrained surety that I was going to wake up one day and have gotten enough of those things that I would feel like I had arrived and that all of those insecurities, all of that sort of internal struggle would be gone.
- [09:06]
So here we go with the life lesson. So there are. Everybody is chasing something. It's like the neighbor's house is a little bigger. I like that car. Why do we have this crummy car? I wish my kid would get into that school. She got into this school. Like whatever you're cross to bear happens to be. What did you glean from having the brass ring? Really? What happened? You made the money, then what? What'd you feel like?
- [09:33]
Nothing changes. The arrival fallacy is this psychological phenomenon whereby we assume that we are going to achieve something, whatever we prop up as the destination and we're going to feel fundamentally different. It's like, oh, my entire life will be great once I get that house or once I get that car, once my kid gets into that college. Everything will be fine. I will have a R. And it's a fallacy because we get it and it just disappears and becomes something else on the horizon. It's completely concocted within our minds. And humans are incredibly proficient at allowing that to happen over and over and over again in our own lives.
- [10:10]
I love that you quoted somewhere I heard you speak and you quoted some research that showed people who made a ton of money were asked a question about when would they be their happiest. Will you relay that? That's interesting.
- [10:22]
Michael Norton is this Harvard Business School professor and he did a fascinating where he went and talked to a bunch of high net worth individuals, people worth anywhere from a million on through 100 million plus. He asked them how happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? Then he asked how much more money would you need to be at a 10 across the board, whether people were worth a million or 100 million plus, they all said two to three times as much money. It makes no sense. You would think that at some point you've just got the number and you're happy and there's like some scientific number, but it doesn't exist. And so it's a reminder of this exact fact that a lot of times the things that you have prayed for in life become the things that you complain about. We just reset over and over and over again. And look, I have had this experience unfortunately continue in my own life. I write about these things and I still need the reminder on a regular basis. I have a young son at home, 3 years old. A few weeks ago I was in my office focusing really deeply on something important and he came barging in and he's doing three year old stuff, he's knocking things over, terrorizing my office. And I started having this train of thought, like why is he doing this? This is so annoying, this real complaining train of thought. And in the moment I caught myself and took myself back to four years ago when my wife and I were in the middle of this two year infertility struggle, I had prayed every single night that we would one day have a healthy child. And there I was in that moment complaining about the exact thing that I had prayed for. And it was a reminder of this exact fact that sometimes in life, the things you pray for, the things your younger self dreamed of, become the things that your present self complains about.
- [12:02]
Can I tell you something totally crazy? When you're telling this story, I'm remembering this weird story that when my daughter was born and my partner at the time, he was out of town on a business trip and I was just ticked about it. She starts crying at it's probably two in the morning and I have a dog named Blake, after Blake Shelton, and he needed to go out and it was freezing, it was Feb. And I'm holding the baby, the dog's barking, running in circles, she's crying. The dog goes nuts and kicks a vase over, shatters it. I'M standing in shattered glass holding this kit.
- [12:35]
Hoda Kotb
The dog takes a dump.
- [12:36]
Sahil Bloom
Like, everything's going wrong. So, see, I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God. And literally, what you're describing, I sat down on the couch holding Haley, and I had, like, a total moment that you're describing, too. And I literally had a conversation with God. And I said, a year ago, I would have begged for this day. The day when everything's going wrong, the day when my child can't stop crying and my dog is running crazy. And there's. And so it's like a huge reminder.
- [13:08]
Hoda Kotb
And the funny thing is, when you.
- [13:10]
Sahil Bloom
Talk about, like, happiness, I was also thinking about. I talked. I interviewed Magic Johnson once, and I asked him, when were you your happiest? He goes, oh, that's easy. And I was thinking, oh, when he won this or when he did that or when he proposed a cookie or whatever. He goes, I'm in my dorm room. I go, okay. He said, with cookie, he was dating his now wife. Then he goes, and we were scraping together money for a slice of pizza and two sodas. And we found the money, and we lit candles and we ate that pizza and we drank that soda. This is a man who's achieved in basketball, in business, and he's hearkening back to that day. So how do you. I feel like when you have happiness, you don't know it. It's like you're missing it until you reflect back.
- [13:54]
Viktor Frankl, the famous Holocaust survivor, author of Man's Search for Meaning, wrote, happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue. And I think that that's such a beautiful articulation of that idea. We cannot pursue happiness. You can't chase it. It needs to ensue from inside.
- [14:13]
Inside. I like that. Let's talk about. Because I think what's interesting about your books, it's like your book, it's called the Five Types of Wealth. And when most people think of wealth, they think of their bank account. And there are other types of wealth that will impact your life far more than that.
- [14:32]
So the five types of wealth that I talk about in the book, Time wealth is about freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, when you trade it for other things. It is about an awareness of time as your most precious asset. The one thing that we truly can't get back. The reflection that you had when you were there standing in the shattered glass, holding your child, the recognition that 95% of the time you have with your children is gone by the time they turn 18 years old, 75% is gone by the time they turn 12. There are these magic windows of time during which certain people occupy our world, but we don't take the time to be present in those worlds.
- [15:11]
Well, what about. I feel like some people listening might feel crummy because they're like a lot of people out there and they have to work these jobs and they leave in the morning sometimes before their child gets up, and they come home just in time for dinner, which is usually the end when everyone's out of gas without choice. Obviously, it's like, you know, what insurance and my paycheck. And they don't want to miss either. So what advice for someone who doesn't have the luxury of deciding on their own whether or not they should.
- [15:40]
You make the most of the moments that you have time. Wealth is about deploying your energy into the windows that you do have of time, the attention and the focus. Because what happens is it's so easy to be off in some other world during those moments that you do have. We all have times where we have to commit to whatever opportunities, whatever money we have to make, whatever responsibilities we have. But being able to be present, to compartmentalize and to show up in that five minutes with the recognition that time and energy are not necessarily the same thing. That's interesting, an hour of time with someone. But I'm sitting here on my phone, checking my emails, checking social media. What you and I are going to feel feel far less connected than if I'm here with you for five minutes.
- [16:22]
But I am here, right in there.
- [16:23]
Kids pick up on that more than anyone else in the world. And so we can really be present in the moments we do have. The other thing to recognize is we need to do a better job of including our children in the mission that we're on. And what I mean by that is to say your children want to feel like they understand the why behind what you are doing. When you're working hard, when you're having to go to two jobs, when you're going from dawn till dusk and then showing up just for dinner. Your kids need to understand why that's important, why you are there. You're providing for the family, you're doing the things that you need to do, your responsibilities, and they are a part of that. It's not about work, life, balance, which places the two intention. It's about harmony, that all of this is on, together, part of a mission.
- [17:06]
That you like, that you Just explain to your children, this is why I'm here. This is what I'm doing right now.
- [17:13]
And that's one of the most important lessons that your kids can learn. That working hard on things that matter, your responsibilities, showing up for your responsibilities in life is one of the most important lessons they can learn. And you can't teach them that. They have to see you doing that in the way that you operate.
- [17:27]
I like how you learned about time when it came to your own parents, because I think, you know, for some reason, when it comes to parents or any family member, we think, I'll see em next week, I'll see em next month. They're always with me. It doesn't matter. We don't need to rush there. We could try. Oh, this year it didn't work. We'll do it next year. What'd you learn?
- [17:46]
I spent most of my life thinking that. And In May of 2021, I had a single conversation with an old friend that changed the course of my life. I went out for a drink with this old friend, and we sat down and he asked how I was doing. And I told him that it had started to get difficult living so far away from my parents. They were on the east coast at the time. We were in California, living 3,000 miles away. I had started to notice they were slowing down. What, they weren't going to be around forever. And he asked how old they were, and I said mid-60s. He asked how often I saw, admitted that it was down to about once a year at that time. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. And I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. The idea that the amount of time you have left, the amount of moments you have left with the people you care about most in the world, is that finite and countable that you can place it onto? A few hands just shook me to the core. And in that moment, I realized that my entire definition of success, of what it meant to build a wealthy life, was incomplete. That money was an enabler, but it was not an end in and of itself.
- [18:56]
So did you. What did you do?
- [18:57]
We, within 45 days, made a pretty dramatic change.
- [19:00]
You moved?
- [19:01]
I. The next day, I talked to my wife. I told her about this conversation. And within 45 days, I had left my job. We had sold our house in California and moved 3,000 miles across the country to live closer to both of our sets of parents.
- [19:14]
And how has that been? Like, what's life like it was the.
- [19:17]
Most important and powerful change of our lives. And the reason is there was a powerful realization in it which was you were in much more control of your time than you think. We had taken an action, moving and created time. That number 15 is now in the hundreds. I see my parents multiple times a month. They're a huge part of my son, their grandson's life. We had taken an action and created time for the things that we really cared about. We built time, wealth, and that was sort of the spark that has led to everything else interesting. I mean, we made the move and I've never really talked about this. We had been in the midst of this two year infertility struggle. And for anyone that has wrestled with that out there, it is a painful thing that often feels very lonely, something that most people don't talk about. And we made this change. And within a few weeks of moving back to the east coast, we found out that my wife was pregnant. And I'm not a particularly religious person, but if there was one moment in my life where I felt like God had winked at us, that when life came into alignment, everything fell into place as it should, that was it.
- [20:32]
Okay, that is so beautiful. It's like you're in flow. You're like right where you're supposed to be with your son and your parents and her parents.
- [20:40]
It was just the most beautiful thing. I mean, we. The day he was born, a couple days after he was born, we drove home from the hospital. And I'll never forget, I mean, it's etched in my mind so clearly. Turning onto our street, pulling up to our driveway and seeing both of our sets of grandparents cheering in the driveway, like welcoming us home, that we were right where we were supposed to be. It was just. That moment was perfect.
- [21:06]
You know, that's beautiful. Sometimes people hear those whispers of it's time to move, it's time to change. But change for many is scary. And I feel like sometimes when you hear the whisper, if you ignore it, which most people do, because one is safe and one is unclear, for a lot of people who are making those kinds of decisions, the whisper kind of goes away. What advice for and we're going to get to the next one. But for people who hear the words and think, yeah, I definitely should be doing something different, but I can't right now. I'm buried right now. This isn't the time.
- [21:45]
Later is a very dangerous word. Yeah, we constantly say later. We say, I'll spend more time with my kids later. I'll focus on my health or my family later. I'll find my purpose and freedom later. And the sad thing is that later just becomes another word for never because those things aren't going to exist in the same way later. Your kids aren't going to be five years old later. Your your parents may not be around later. Your health won't be there for you later. If you're not investing in it now. You won't magically wake up with freedom and purpose later. So either we find some way to take a tiny action now or we're going to end up regretting it later. I think that's the important point is that you don't have to take the dramatic leap of faith that we did move 3,000 miles, leave the job, do all those things. You just need to call your mom for two minutes. There was no reason that it had gotten down to being once a year that we saw that we could have made the effort for it to be 3, 4. It could have been a difference. That makes a big difference. Tiny things compound, right? So take the tiny action when you hear the whisper, that's beautiful.
- [22:47]
That's good.
- [22:52]
Hoda Kotb
More Wasahil Bloom after the break.
- [23:04]
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- [24:05]
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- [24:09]
Customer
Thanks. And here's my old phone to trade in.
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T-Mobile Representative
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- [24:20]
Customer
There's always a trade in.
- [24:21]
Sahil Bloom
Not right now.
- [24:22]
T-Mobile Representative
At T Mobile.
- [24:23]
Customer
I feel like I have to give you something in return for karma.
- [24:25]
T-Mobile Representative
That's okay.
- [24:26]
Customer
I don't really have much in my purse. Oh, let's see. Hand sanitizer. It's lavender.
- [24:30]
T-Mobile Representative
I'm good.
- [24:31]
Sahil Bloom
Seriously.
- [24:32]
Customer
Let me check this pocket. Oh, mints.
- [24:34]
T-Mobile Representative
Really, I'm fine.
- [24:36]
Customer
Oh, I have raisins.
- [24:37]
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- [24:38]
Customer
Wait, wait one sec. I've got cupcakes in the car.
- [24:40]
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- [25:07]
Hoda Kotb
If your small business is booming, you might say cha Ching. But you should say like a good.
- [25:13]
T-Mobile Representative
Neighborhood, State Farm is there and we'll.
- [25:16]
Hoda Kotb
Help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
- [25:27]
Sahil Bloom
Okay, so we did wealth and then we did time. What's your third?
- [25:31]
Social wealth is the next type. This is all about your relationships. The few close, deep bonds and then the broader connection to something bigger than yourself through your communities, local, spiritual, regional, et cetera. Social wealth is about identity, identifying what I call your front row people. The people that are going to be sitting in the front row at your funeral. It's about recognizing these people that sit in this cherished place in your world that have this incredible role and recognizing whether or not you are cherishing them, whether you are treating them with that regard, and whether you are being a front row person to those people in your life.
- [26:09]
And isn't that, I mean, did I read somewhere, maybe you said it, that the main indicator of happiness in life is that it's like if you have deep and meaningful relationships.
- [26:21]
Happiness and health. The Harvard Study of Adult Development is this amazing study done over the course of 85 plus years. They followed the lives of 1300 original participants and then another 700 of their descendants. They found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. Not your blood pressure, your cholesterol, not how you smoking or drinking habits. It was how you felt about your relationships that determined how well you aged.
- [26:49]
Wow.
- [26:49]
So it is the single greatest predictor of your health and happiness as you get older. And yet it is the first thing that falls by the wayside when we get busy. Right.
- [26:57]
We don't have time, we don't have. So that's another thing. To prioritize it is to prioritize it.
- [27:01]
In some tiny way. Again, anything above zero compounds in these areas of life. We know that with our money. You know that putting away $10 today is better than zero because it's going to comp investments in your relationships compound better than any financial investment that you can make. Send the text to the friend when you're thinking about them. Get the old group of friends together for the one annual trip. Call your mom for two minutes on the way to work. Whatever that tiny thing is stacks and compounds positively in your life.
- [27:28]
I was just remembering, I interviewed a guy who I love here, Rabbi Leader, and he said one thing that he has done in practice, which was life changing for him, was we said, I think about somebody who I didn't properly think in a way that I would want to. And he said, so I wrote them a letter. I'm like, okay, that sounds great. I thought that was the end of that story. And he goes, oh, that's not all, Hoda. He goes, I take that letter to their house and I ring that doorbell and I read the letter to them. He said, it is a moment for me and for them to have me say the words, not just read the pages and then hand it off. And when you talk about small impactful things that don't cost any, that are all about saying, ah, that's the one. This is today's. This is what I'm gonna do today. And it doesn't. I think that's. I think what we look at it is say we don't speak to our friend for a week or so. And then many things happen during that week. So you're like, oh, God, if I call now, I have to catch him up on the. I'll call him later. And then later becomes two weeks and suddenly more of life has happened. Your kid got sick, you're in the hospital, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they call you. I'm in the hospital with my kid. Wait, what happened? Boom. And then, then the crack becomes like a canyon. And you're right. Just little bits and pieces, right?
- [28:50]
Yeah. I'll give you the easy version of Rabbi Leader's letter, which is your iPhone has this memories feature where no matter what, if you go to your photos, it'll pop up photos from past days. Every single time I go in and look there, I find some memory gets sparked with some people that are in these photos with me. And so I created a habit where every time I see that, I send it to the people that are in the photo. It creates this very easy, natural trig to reconnect with people from your prior lives. And it's like an automatic reminder that just keeps your social wealth building in a very free, low, light, touch way.
- [29:25]
Yeah. Okay, good. Okay, so we've got social. What's the, what's the fourth one?
- [29:29]
Mental wealth is the next type. This is about purpose. It's about growth, and it's about creating the space necessary in your life to actually wrestle with some of the bigger picture, more unanswerable questions, Whether through spirituality, religion, meditation, solitude, Mental wealth is about. About recognizing that you are on your own hero's journey in life and that it is your responsibility to carve your own path into the earth. And that does not need to be through going off and betting on yourself and doing your, you know, creating your own entrepreneurial journey. It is about maintaining your distinctiveness. It's about paying the price on a daily basis to be yourself rather than just consenting to whatever the world has handed you.
- [30:15]
You. Well, it took you a minute to like not be this person, to become that person. So how does one find because Purpose, passion? One question I hear more than any is how do I find my purpose? How do I find my passion? I feel like I am making the donuts at work, but I need to do that. How do you suggest somebody finds that lane so they can get that fulfillment?
- [30:38]
I think that much more than passion. You need to follow your energy. I still don't really know what passion means. I have a tough time figuring out what I'm passionate about, but I know when I feel energy for something. You know, when you feel that sort of pull, that natural interest towards things or towards people, by the way, and this is another very important point, is when you feel a pull towards certain people and energy, they uplift you. Those are good people to spend more time with. And when you feel drained by spending time with someone or on something, that's probably a good sign you should spend less time with them. It's like your nervous system telling you something about the type of person that you are with. If you lean into the things that are creating energy in your life. If you take an hour each month to zoom out and think about what was creating energy in the past month, and you slowly reposition your life to spend more time on those things, you will work towards a better path for you.
- [31:31]
I like that. Okay, what's the last one?
- [31:33]
Physical wealth is the fourth of the five, at least in the structure of the book. And physical wealth is all about your health and vitality. It's about recognizing that you can take controllable actions on a daily basis to fight against the natural atrophy and decay that we go through as we get older. And the important point with physical wealth is to recognize that despite what social media will tell you and what the world will tell you, it is not that complicated. There's always someone out there trying to sell you some fancy, complicated, expensive solution. You know, the one diet that's going to change everything, One workout program. You have to do this. And the reality is that the boring basics are what work, movement, nutrition, recovery. Level. One of that video game, if you will, is very, very simple. And anyone can get started on it. Move your body for 30 minutes a day. Basics. It doesn't matter whether it's walking, hiking, biking, jogging, dancing, whatever you like doing, move. Eat whole, unprocessed foods, 80% of your meals, 17 out of 21 meals out of the week, and try to sleep for seven hours a night on average. If you can do those three things, you're ahead of 90% of people, and they're free. Very, very basic. It's very easy to go and do.
- [32:42]
Yeah. It is true, though, when you have any physical issue at all. And I think mental plays in, too, because I've known people who are both going through the exact same physical thing, and one person is thriving in their own way, and the other person has gone down kind of a dark road, and circumstances are exactly the same. So that mental piece is really important.
- [33:03]
Absolutely, yeah. And when it comes to the last one, financial wealth, which we've talked about at the very beginning, the story that I love of that sort of brings this entire idea full circle is this story of the investment banker and the fisherman. Tell me if you've heard it. Investment banker goes down to this Mexican fishing village, and he's walking along the docks, he comes across this boat, a fisherman who's caught a few fish, and he asks, how long did it take you to catch those fish? The fisherman says, only a little while. The banker says, why didn't you fish for longer? Fisherman says, well, I have everything I need in the morning. I fish for a little while, then I go home, I have lunch with my wife, then I take a nap, and then in the evening, I go into town. Drink wine, laugh, and dance with my friends. And the banker's like, you've got this all wrong. Here's what you got to do. Let me help you fish for longer so you can catch more fish. Then you buy a second boat. Then you catch more fish. You buy a third boat, a fourth boat, a fifth boat, a sixth boat. You take your company public in the big city, and you're going to make millions. And the fisherman says, and then what? The banker says, and then what? Then you can retire and move to a small fishing town. You can fish for a little while. In the morning, you go home, have lunch with your wife, take a nap. And then in the evening, you go into town, drink wine, play music and laugh with your friends. The fisherman smiles and walks off into the distance. And the whole idea. That's.
- [34:19]
By the way, that's a brilliant story. That is like Life Lesson 101. I can't believe I've never heard that.
- [34:24]
So good.
- [34:25]
Beautiful.
- [34:26]
The common interpretation of that story is to say that the banker is wrong and the fisherman is right. I actually think it's more nuanced than that. I think it's about the fact that the two have fundamentally different definitions of what it means to have enemies Enough. It is perfectly okay if the banker's definition of having enough is building something big, chasing his purpose, creating jobs, going and creating something of scale. But the fisherman is already living his version of enough. So for the banker to try to apply his map of reality to the fisherman's terrain makes no sense. And yet that is what we do on a daily basis when we take out our phones and compare our lives to other people, maps of reality. We're taking our terrain and looking at other people and saying, I don't have enough. Because look at all of these other things out there. When it doesn't matter, you get to define your own version of what enough looks like.
- [35:18]
I'm gonna pick the fisherman in that story. I do not think there are two sides to that, because ultimately, the joy that you have with just exactly what you have. And there's a similar study, I think the one that you were quoting, they were talking about people who make over, let's just say $60,000 and people make under $60,000. They say the people who make enough for their bills, two vacations, and whatever the food and stuff they want are the happiest, and everybody else on either side is not, because it's never gonna be enough. Or I am at a deficit, and this life is horrible. But I love the concept of enough. And I've been trying to teach that. So how do you teach these kinds of things to kids? Because some kids grow up in poverty, some grow up in wealth. But how do you teach your children these kinds of concepts?
- [36:10]
I think it is about visualizing the actual life that you are trying to build. The reason I think that's so important is because the tendency in a numbers focused culture, in a money focused culture is to define your life around the number you are trying to hit. It's that study we talked about at the beginning. You say how much money I need to get to but you don't know what that money actually creates. What is the life that you are trying to build towards? What does it look like? Where are you living? Living? What are you doing? How many vacations are you able to take? It doesn't mean that it has to be Spartan or bear.
- [36:41]
Yeah.
- [36:42]
When people ask me my definition of wealth, I say I'm able to take my son in the pool at 1pm on a Tuesday. That is my definition of my wealthiest enough life because it means that I have the time freedom to be able to go in the pool at 1pm it means I'm healthy enough to do that. It means I have a relationship with my son where he wants that. It encapsulates my life that I'm trying to build.
- [37:06]
More.
- [37:06]
Hoda Kotb
With Sahil Bloom in just a moment.
- [37:17]
T-Mobile Representative
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- [37:50]
Sahil Bloom
We meet patients wherever they live.
- [37:52]
Audience Member
During a house call she found Jack had an issue.
- [37:55]
Sahil Bloom
Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high. It was 217 over 110.
- [38:01]
Audience Member
So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.
- [38:04]
Sahil Bloom
He had had a stamp placed in his heart preventing a massive heart attack. If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.
- [38:11]
Audience Member
Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plan, area limitation and exclusions apply.
- [38:19]
Northwestern Mutual Representative
Hear that? That's what a better way to money sounds like. It also sounds and that that's because Northwestern Mutual Financial Advisors get to know you better. They hear what's important to you and help you plan to make it happen. They see opportunities and gaps others might miss. They help make your best life even better. That's a better way to money. Let's get started@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
- [38:55]
Sahil Bloom
Okay, I want to hear. Because you said what your social life is, your partner is the most important thing. So how did you meet your partner and how did you know your partner was going to be the one? Because that's the good and the bad of what people do.
- [39:12]
I met my wife when she was 14 years old. I was 15.
- [39:15]
Oh, my gosh.
- [39:16]
I met her in our high school computer lab. It was her birthday and I tried to give her a high five, like, so I was kind of trying to be like flirty 15 year old. And she stared at me and just started laughing and then walked out. And now kind of we get to laugh about it together because she's my wife 18 years later. But before I got married, my mom asked me how I knew that Elizabeth, my wife, was the one. And what I told her was that it was because I love doing nothing with her. And my mom asked what I meant, and I explained that I had come to the realization that life is not about these glamorous moments that we see on social media. Life is not about the perfect vacations, the date nights, the honeymoon moments. Life is mostly just sitting around doing nothing. And if you can find someone that you love doing nothing with love, that is your person.
- [40:15]
How are you that wise when you hear that, yeah, you're a kid. I mean, to even be able to identify, identify that, because that is big. I was talking to Walker Hayes, who wrote Fancy, like the song I love him, by the way. And we were just wrapping up. We're right here, we were wrapping up a podcast and we were talking about this concept. And I said, you know, I said, I feel like life's a bunch of exclamation points. It's like, it's a girl. She said, yes, you got the job, you won. Or exclamation marks on the other side, which is, you know, he didn't make it. It's cancer. She said, no, you got fired. And I said, I feel like, you know, most of life is Wednesday. And so what are you doing on your Wednesdays? And he goes, you wanna write a song? I go, do I wanna write a song about Wednesdays? I go, yeah, I do. And so he and I, along with another person, wrote this song about Wednesdays but it's your exact concept. It's like some days are the best days, some days are. She said, yes, days. Some days are, it's a girl. Oh, how in the world did I get such a blessed day? And then it's some days are the worst, like the taillights of a hearse days. And it goes on, but it's most days are just Wednesdays. Get up and do the same old same against days. It's like that. But it's that concept of when you can find the person who you can do that with. What a lucky. Your parents must have raised you really well. I mean, did they?
- [41:42]
They definitely did. I'm extraordinarily blessed with my parents who. Who have found this combination of high expectations and high support that I think is really the foundation of every great relationship. What I mean by that is I mentioned earlier my parents had very high expectations for me and my sister, but they always paired it with high support, meaning I always knew that they were there to support me to meet those high expectations. They weren't going to abandon me. Because high expectations without high support can manifest as resentment. In a relationship where you feel like the person has these expectations, but then.
- [42:15]
They'Re not helping you.
- [42:16]
Yeah, they're not there. My parents have always been both. I mean, at my. My whole book tour, my parents were sitting in the front row. My dad, Harvard professor, was sitting there taking notes at every event and we would have dinner after and he would tell me, like, oh, I really loved how you articulated the case. What if you said this a little bit differently? It might hit a little. It was like the cutest thing in the world. Someone took a picture of him sitting in the front, like, with me up speaking. It's just. I mean, it's very, very. It is incredible to see.
- [42:45]
What do you do for a living now? You wrote the book. Are you an author?
- [42:48]
Hoda Kotb
Is that.
- [42:48]
Sahil Bloom
I'm an author, yeah. Full time, I guess I have a number of different hats I wear. I have an investment firm that I invest out of small. I have a few companies that I'm involved with. But the primary kind of energy creator for me is all of the writing.
- [43:03]
You can feel the path, right?
- [43:04]
I can feel the path. I'm having a blast. More than anything else. I left the path I was on because I wanted to find something more meaningful, something where I felt like I could create positive ripples in the world where I could share things and hopefully create some tiny change in people's lives. And I think my wife summarized it well, recently she turned to me. We were lying in bed one night watching a show, and she turned to me and just said, I love our little life. And it was such a powerful statement because we place such a huge emphasis and focus on the big things, those exclamation points, and there's so much beauty in the small. That feeling of, I love our little life. It's like, this is what I want. This is the life that I'm trying to build. This is my. Enough.
- [43:46]
You both picked really well. Okay, so now we call this podcast Making Space. So if you had a day that was all for you, you could wake up when you wanted. When your body clock decided it was time, you had nothing on the calendar, not one thing. You could fill it any way you wanted, and you slept exactly when you wanted. How would you fill that one special?
- [44:09]
But I would take my son to the zoo, probably the Bronx Zoo, with my wife. My son is three years old. He's obsessed with animals. And my happiest days right now are the weekend days when we get to take him to the zoo and go and wander around and just see the curiosity and the childlike wonder in real time.
- [44:31]
Beautiful.
- [44:32]
Yeah, that's it.
- [44:34]
Hoda Kotb
Thank you so much.
- [44:35]
Sahil Bloom
What a great conversation. I appreciate it.
- [44:36]
Thank you. Thank you.
- [44:39]
Hoda Kotb
Hey, guys, thank you so much for listening and for coming on this journey with me. If you like what you heard, and.
- [44:44]
Sahil Bloom
I hope that you do, please give.
- [44:45]
Hoda Kotb
Making Space a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and make sure you tell your friends. Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. Making Space with Hoda Kotb is produced by Allison Berger and Alexa Casaveckia, along with Kate Saunders. Our associate audio engineer is Juliana Masterilli. Our audio engineers are Katie Lau and Bob Mallory. Original music by John Estes. Bryson Barnes is our head of audio production. Missy Dunlop Parsons is our executive producer. Libby Leach is the executive vice president of Today and Lifestyle.
- [45:36]
Northwestern Mutual Representative
What you listen to on your run, on your road trip, your kid's graduation song, their wedding dance, your retirement party, the soundtrack of your life changes as your life does. Just like a financial plan from Northwestern Mutual, it's a better way to money. Our financial advisors get to know you better. They meet you where you are and help you get where you want to go. Let's get started@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.