The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life

by Sahil Bloom

Mark Twain is often quoted as having said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The arrival fallacy is the false assumption that reaching some achievement or goal will create durable feelings of satisfaction and contentment in our lives.

The greatest discoveries in life come not from finding the right answers but from asking the right questions.

reading, I found, can take you only so far—to understand something deeply human, you need to immerse yourself in the human experience.

Close your eyes and imagine your ideal day at eighty years old (or one hundred, in the case of the ninety-year-old!). Vividly imagine it. What are you doing? Who are you with? Where are you? How do you feel? The exercise forces you to begin with the ideal future end in mind—it establishes a personal definition of a successful life that can be used to reverse-engineer the actions in the present to achieve that desired end.

We all want the same thing—and it has very little to do with money.

the ideal future end looks remarkably aligned: Time, people, purpose, health.

In that moment, I had a profound sensation: I had arrived, but for the first time in my life, there was nothing more that I wanted. This was enough. Never let the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.

“Never fear sadness, as it tends to sit right next to love.”

“Find dear friends and celebrate them, for the richness of being human is in feeling loved and loving back.”

“Treat your body like a house you have to live in for another seventy years.” He added, “If something has a minor issue, repair it. Minor issues become major issues over time. This applies equally to love, friendships, health, and home.”

“Tell your partner you love them every night before falling asleep; someday you’ll find the other side of the bed empty and you’ll wish you could tell them.”

Regret from inaction is always more painful than regret from action”).

Your wealthy life may be enabled by money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else.

The term Pyrrhic victory now refers to the victory won at such a steep cost to the victor that it feels like a defeat. The victory damages the victor beyond repair. He wins the battle but loses the war.

Your new scoreboard is the five types of wealth: Time Wealth Social Wealth Mental Wealth Physical Wealth Financial Wealth

thriving does not mean you have to achieve some utopian state of bliss and perfect balance. Thriving is about information and action—understanding the role of each type of wealth, considering the levers to affect it, and acting on the appropriate levers in line with your long-term values and goals. Thriving is not an end state—it is a continuous journey.

In the study of philosophy, the term razor denotes any principle that allows you to quickly remove unlikely explanations or avoid unnecessary steps.

A powerful Life Razor has three core characteristics. It is: Controllable: It should be within your direct control. Ripple-creating: It should have positive second-order effects in other areas of life. Identity-defining: It should be indicative of the type of person you are, the way your ideal self shows up in the world.

I prioritize my family and friendships above all else. I show up for the people I love. I am protective, supportive, and giving.

I take care of myself physically and mentally so that I can take care of others. I am focused and get things done efficiently to make these priorities work.

There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn’t know where to go. —Seneca

Your Life Razor establishes your identity—who you are and what you stand for—while your compass defines where you’re going, your vision for the future.

your compass will dictate your direction as you build toward your dream life.

high-leverage systems are the daily actions that create amplified, asymmetric forward progress.

identify and focus their energy on the actions and decisions that are likely to generate one hundred units of output for their one unit of input. They fundamentally break the fixed relationship of inputs and outputs to create asymmetric outcomes.

What really matters right now in my life, and are my goals still aligned with this?

Are my current high-leverage systems aligned with my goals?

Am I in danger of running afoul of my anti-goals?

What is creating energy right now?

What is draining energy right now?

Who are the boat anchors in my life?

What am I avoiding because of fear?

six key lessons for life: Family time is finite—cherish it. Children time is precious—be present. Friend time is limited—prioritize the real friends. Partner time is meaningful—never settle. Coworker time is significant—find energy. Alone time is abundant—love yourself.

“Despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life.”[2]

Sam Harris once said, “No matter how many times you do something, there will come a day when you do it for the last time.”[3]

All the tiny moments, people, and experiences that we take for granted will eventually be ones we wish we had more of.

The concept of memento mori is a staple of Stoic philosophy, a reminder of the certainty and inescapability of death—of time’s inevitable victory over man.

there is a cognitive switching cost to shifting your attention from one task to another. When your attention is shifted, there is a residue of it that remains with the prior task and impairs your cognitive performance on the new task.

correlation between time poverty and misery. People who are time poor are less happy, less productive, and more stressed out.

Greeks had two different words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos refers to sequential, quantitative time—the natural sequence and flow of equal parts of time. Kairos refers to a more fluctuating, qualitative time—the idea that certain moments are weightier than others, that not all time is the same.

Identify those moments of greatest time leverage and direct your attention to them.

three core pillars of Time Wealth: Awareness: An understanding of the finite, impermanent nature of time Attention: The ability to direct your attention and focus on the things that matter (and ignore the rest) Control: The freedom to own your time and choose exactly how to spend it

Your choice of how and when to deploy your limited attention determines the quality of your outcomes.

Focused, concentrated attention is significantly more powerful than scattered, unconcentrated attention.

The freedom to allocate time according to your preferences—to choose how you spend it, where you spend it, and whom you spend it with—is the ultimate goal.

two minds on this: Being present and spending time with those you love is the most important thing in the end. Having the people you love see you work hard on things you care about is a principle they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.

Depth is the foundational pillar of Social Wealth. It is built through daily actions and behaviors—honesty, support, and shared experience—embraced consistently over long periods.

The allure of these symbols is not that you respect and admire the people who have them; it is that you imagine the respect and admiration that you will receive once you have them.

Entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant once said, “A fit body, a calm mind, and a house full of love. These things cannot be bought—they must be earned.”