Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I was basically like steadily marching down the path to
Speaker 2: what I thought was the good, successful life. Take the
Speaker 2: high status sounding job and just put your head down,
Speaker 2: and if you do that for long enough, you'll wake
Speaker 2: up and you'll have made a bunch of money.
Speaker 3: You'll be happy, fulfilled, etc.
Speaker 1: Sawhill Bloom spent years working as a financial advisor, putting
Speaker 1: in long hours and cashing huge paychecks. But even though
Speaker 1: he'd found career success, he wasn't happy. He started to
Speaker 1: question whether the life he was building was actually what
Speaker 1: he wanted.
Speaker 2: My entire definition of success, of what it meant to
Speaker 2: build a wealthy life had been incomplete. I was prioritizing
Speaker 2: one thing at the expense of everything else.
Speaker 1: On today's show, hitting pause on the rat race, and
Speaker 1: defining success on your own terms. I'm Maya Schunker, a
Speaker 1: scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans, a show about who we are and
Speaker 1: who we become in the face of a big change.
Speaker 1: When was the last time you checked in with yourself
Speaker 1: and asked if you were really living out your values?
Speaker 1: Today's conversation is about questioning your beliefs and being more
Speaker 1: intentional about what you prioritize. These are the kinds of
Speaker 1: ideas that Sahil explores in his book The Five Types
Speaker 1: of Wealth, A Transformative Guide to Design your Dream Life.
Speaker 1: Growing up saw Hill saw firsthand the value of defying
Speaker 1: social norms and challenging other people's expectations.
Speaker 2: My parents came from very different backgrounds in worlds. My
Speaker 2: mom was born and raised in India. Her father was
Speaker 2: a professor, my father was raised in the Bronx, New York,
Speaker 2: and the collision of their lives was a very unlikely one.
Speaker 2: My mom had applied in secret to come to university
Speaker 2: in the US, my dad was finishing his dissertation, and
Speaker 2: my mom was working in the library at the school
Speaker 2: to kind of pay her way through program that she
Speaker 2: had applied to, and the two of them connecting and
Speaker 2: building a kind of thriving love and relationship was just
Speaker 2: extraordinarily unlikely, and it was an example of them choosing
Speaker 2: to create their own path rather than accept one by default.
Speaker 2: My dad's father was not accepting of the idea of
Speaker 2: his son marrying an Indian woman and told him that
Speaker 2: he had to choose between his family and her, and
Speaker 2: my dad walked out the door and never saw his
Speaker 2: family again. To this day, I never met my dad's parents.
Speaker 2: He has three siblings I never met all through this
Speaker 2: decision to choose love over the conventional path that was
Speaker 2: handed to them.
Speaker 3: And so I would say, if there.
Speaker 2: Was one value that was more important than any other
Speaker 2: in our family, it was the idea of independent thinking,
Speaker 2: of cultivating an environment to question things and not feel
Speaker 2: apprehensive or any degree of shame associated with that questioning.
Speaker 2: But that's a difficult thing to understand or internalize as
Speaker 2: a kid.
Speaker 1: It is a really difficult thing to internalize. And in
Speaker 1: your case, you know, despite these values at home, you
Speaker 1: still grew up very eager to achieve right. You were
Speaker 1: still influenced by other social pressures. And this was in
Speaker 1: part because your older sister was very academically gifted and
Speaker 1: received lots of praise from teachers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately, I would say, from a young age, I
Speaker 2: started telling myself a story that I was not capable
Speaker 2: of the same level of achievement academically as my sister.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of instances, first second grade whatever
Speaker 2: it would be, where I would get to a class
Speaker 2: they would say, oh, your Sonali's brother, Like all this
Speaker 2: hope and excitement that I was going to be the
Speaker 2: next star student. And then I was kind of into like,
Speaker 2: you know, dicking around for lack of a better word,
Speaker 2: it said. I was like, you know, I was a kid.
Speaker 2: I was really active, I was really rambunctious, and I
Speaker 2: would inevitably sort of disappoint this teacher. And I could
Speaker 2: see it in them and in the way that they
Speaker 2: treated me and acted, and the things they would say
Speaker 2: to my parents and whatnot. And it started cementing in
Speaker 2: me this story that I would tell myself that I
Speaker 2: wasn't that smart, that I had to be good at
Speaker 2: something else because my sister was the.
Speaker 3: Smart one and I wasn't.
Speaker 2: And those stories that you tell yourself are really hard
Speaker 2: to break.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it sounds like you grew up in a home
Speaker 1: where it was very clear giving your parents values that
Speaker 1: their love for you is not contingent upon your success,
Speaker 1: and they valued free thinking and they valued independent thinking.
Speaker 1: And so how interesting is it that even in an
Speaker 1: environment like that, we can grow up feeling the need
Speaker 1: to prove our value in specific ways, to anchor it
Speaker 1: to a form of success or wealth or what have you.
Speaker 1: It's not like you grew up in a family where
Speaker 1: your parents were like, this is what you need to
Speaker 1: be valuable to us, they weren't saying that, And I
Speaker 1: just think it shows how pervasive this need for self
Speaker 1: validation is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when you're young, because so much of your
Speaker 2: identity is being established in those young years around how
Speaker 2: other people react to things that you are doing. And
Speaker 2: I think that when you see those first pieces of
Speaker 2: evidence of what the scoreboard is, then you're kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's the thing that's going to build the evidence bank
Speaker 2: of what my identity is and who I am. So
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of like an addicting thing of
Speaker 2: what you measure, you know, really mattering, because that's where
Speaker 2: you can make progress. That's the video game, if you will,
Speaker 2: that we're going to play life around in this family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you eventually figured out what your lane was,
Speaker 1: right you were like, Okay, maybe I'm never going to
Speaker 1: be as good as Sonali academically, but I'm good at sports.
Speaker 1: And you ended up getting a baseball scholarship you intended Stanford,
Speaker 1: huge achievement. Take me back to that time. What role
Speaker 1: did baseball play when it came to shaping your identity?
Speaker 3: Hard to overstate how much.
Speaker 2: My own self worth was defined around these baseball achievements.
Speaker 2: I basically grew to define my own worth around the
Speaker 2: sort of external affirmations that I could accumulate in any
Speaker 2: one thing, and baseball I found to be a very
Speaker 2: good conduit for accumulating external affirmations, a sport that's very popular.
Speaker 2: Getting a Division one scholarship was like a big deal.
Speaker 2: A bunch of people would think you were really impressed.
Speaker 2: You would get attention from different people, and every single
Speaker 2: time you got one external affirmation, it made you hungrier
Speaker 2: to get the next one and the bigger one and
Speaker 2: whatever it was.
Speaker 3: So it's self fulfilling as well.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 2: The problem with those things is that they further cement
Speaker 2: this narrowness of identity as you do that, where every
Speaker 2: single one of the pats on the back that you
Speaker 2: are getting makes you more and more convinced that that
Speaker 2: is who you are and that that is what you
Speaker 2: need to continue doing.
Speaker 3: That is the only path. And that really did happen
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 1: Your baseball career ended earlier than expected, and I'm curious
Speaker 1: about how you personally handled that transition.
Speaker 3: It was challenging for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, I you know, I thought for many years
Speaker 2: that I would play professionally. I hurt my shoulder summer
Speaker 2: after my sophomore year. I had one game when I
Speaker 2: was pitching and just felt something in the back of
Speaker 2: my shoulder and didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker 3: And basically, over the course of two years, it just.
Speaker 2: Got worse and worse, and it got to the point
Speaker 2: where I just couldn't throw effectively anymore.
Speaker 3: At that level.
Speaker 2: And the hardest part of that entire transition was calling
Speaker 2: my dad. So much of my and our relationship over
Speaker 2: the twenty years leading up to that was built around baseball.
Speaker 2: I thought of him as like the dad who came
Speaker 2: home from work after a long day and he would
Speaker 2: always have the energy to go outside with me and
Speaker 2: play cash in the backyard. He was the one that
Speaker 2: took me to all my lessons. He was the one
Speaker 2: that coached my little league teams. He was the one
Speaker 2: that showed up to all of my high school games.
Speaker 2: He flew out to all of my college games. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was my number one supporter in everything that I
Speaker 2: was doing. And before I called him to let him
Speaker 2: know that I was going to not be able to play,
Speaker 2: I had this fear that he was going to be disappointed.
Speaker 2: And I called him and I was in tears, and
Speaker 2: I told him, you know, I can't play anymore.
Speaker 3: I can't throw.
Speaker 2: And he was like, I'll be there to you with
Speaker 2: whatever's next, Like whatever your next thing is, I'll be
Speaker 2: in the front row. And there was so much power
Speaker 2: in so few words that he had said there, because
Speaker 2: it was just a reminder that he did not think
Speaker 2: of me as a baseball player. It was like that
Speaker 2: identity maybe was something that I had convinced myself that
Speaker 2: that's who I was, but he didn't. I was his son,
Speaker 2: and he would support me in whatever it was that
Speaker 2: I was off and doing. He was going to be
Speaker 2: in the front row of whatever that was. It was
Speaker 2: a baseball field, now it's going to be something else,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to be there for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It is interesting how often we can impose beliefs
Speaker 1: on other people that they don't actually carry right, that
Speaker 1: aren't rooted in facts. You know, in your book, you
Speaker 1: write about how you attended college with a bunch of
Speaker 1: high achievers who measured success by who got the highest
Speaker 1: offer from Goldman Sachs or from McKinsey, and you know,
Speaker 1: those norms affected you, right, You really internalize belief that
Speaker 1: money leads to happiness, and as a result of that,
Speaker 1: when you graduated, you reached out to the richest people
Speaker 1: you knew and found out what they did and then thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the same thing. And that is
Speaker 1: ultimately what led you to become a financial advisor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I spent those first seven years of my career after
Speaker 2: I got done in school basically like steadily marching down
Speaker 2: the path to what I thought was the like good
Speaker 2: successful life. You know, take the high status sounding job
Speaker 2: and just put your head down, and if you do
Speaker 2: that for long enough, you'll wake up and everything will
Speaker 2: be good. You'll have made a bunch of money, you'll
Speaker 2: be happy, fulfilled, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And all on the way.
Speaker 2: I felt like there was this tendency to make my
Speaker 2: happiness conditional on some end, Like every year, I'd convince
Speaker 2: myself that, like, oh, I'm going to feel totally different
Speaker 2: December thirtieth when my bonus comes in. I'm going to
Speaker 2: get this much money and this I'm going to be
Speaker 2: so happy, and over and over again, those mountains, those
Speaker 2: like you know, summits that I had built up as
Speaker 2: being my arrival. Were anything, but I would get them,
Speaker 2: I would feel that momentary blip of kind of dopamine
Speaker 2: induced euphoria, and then I would reset to whatever right.
Speaker 2: It was like I'd never done enough. It was just
Speaker 2: more and more and more, And unfortunately, as the years
Speaker 2: went by, I became more rather than less focused on
Speaker 2: money being the path to living a good life. Like
Speaker 2: as I got around it more and as I got
Speaker 2: more indoctrinated into this financial culture, I grew sort of
Speaker 2: these blinders of like, Okay, let me just keep getting
Speaker 2: more and more, folks, this is what really matters. I
Speaker 2: grew so convinced that like this one scoreboard was the
Speaker 2: one that mattered, that every other area of my life
Speaker 2: started to show cracks, and my relationships. I was living
Speaker 2: three thousand miles away from my parents. I was noticing
Speaker 2: for the first time in my life that they were
Speaker 2: slowing down, getting older, but we were three thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: My wife and I were struggling to conceive at the time.
Speaker 2: Now was creating strain in our relationship. I was drinking
Speaker 2: six seven nights a week, and it all coincided with
Speaker 2: a point in time in my life where from the
Speaker 2: outside looking in, you would have said I was winning
Speaker 2: the game, and I started to have this sensation that
Speaker 2: if that was what winning, felt like I had to
Speaker 2: be playing the wrong game.
Speaker 1: You described this pivotal moment in your book, when you're
Speaker 1: roughly thirty years old and you have I think it's
Speaker 1: coffee with a friend. Is that right?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, Toraink.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately you had a drink seven nights a week of drinking.
Speaker 1: You had a drink with a friend and they say
Speaker 1: something to you that just stops you in your tracks.
Speaker 1: Walk me through that story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I went out for a drink with this old friend
Speaker 2: who I hadn't seen in a while, and we sat
Speaker 2: down and he asked how I was doing, and I
Speaker 2: told him that it started to get difficult living so
Speaker 2: far away from parents that I had started to notice
Speaker 2: they were slowing down. And he asked how old they were,
Speaker 2: and I said mid sixties. And he asked how often
Speaker 2: I saw them, and I said once a year at
Speaker 2: this point, and he just looked at me and said, okay,
Speaker 2: so you're going to see your parents fifteen more times
Speaker 2: before they die. And I just remember feeling like I
Speaker 2: had been punched in the gut. Even now, it sort
Speaker 2: of gives me chills remembering it. But the idea that
Speaker 2: the amount of time you have left with the people
Speaker 2: you care about most in the world is that finite
Speaker 2: and countable that you can place it onto a few hands,
Speaker 2: that just shook me to the core. And in that moment,
Speaker 2: I realized that my entire definition of success, of what
Speaker 2: it meant to build a wealthy life, of this path
Speaker 2: that I was on, had been incomplete, that I was
Speaker 2: prioritizing one thing at the expense of everything else. And
Speaker 2: in that moment, I realized that if we didn't make
Speaker 2: a change, if something didn't change fundamentally, that we were
Speaker 2: going to end up somewhere where we didn't want to be.
Speaker 3: And so we did.
Speaker 2: My wife and I had a candid conversation the next
Speaker 2: day about what we really viewed as our center in life,
Speaker 2: what we wanted to build our life around, what our
Speaker 2: true north really was, and we made a change. Within
Speaker 2: forty five days, I had left my job, we had
Speaker 2: sold our house in California, and we had moved three
Speaker 2: thousand miles across the country to live closer to both
Speaker 2: of our sets of parents. And in that one decision,
Speaker 2: was a very important realization, which is just that you
Speaker 2: are in much more control of your time than you think.
Speaker 2: I see my parents multiple times a month. They're a
Speaker 2: huge part of my son, their grandson's life. We had
Speaker 2: taken an action and actually created and that was the
Speaker 2: spark that really changed everything.
Speaker 1: I'm so curious about this conversation with your wife right
Speaker 1: So for people who are listening right now thinking Ooh,
Speaker 1: I need to do one of these reflection sessions with
Speaker 1: myself and with my partner to really question assumptions. What
Speaker 1: kinds of questions were you asking each other?
Speaker 2: The first thing I would just say was thinking about
Speaker 2: what we wanted the end to look like, like what
Speaker 2: is the end goal? What is the end that I'm
Speaker 2: trying to create? And for both my wife and I,
Speaker 2: it had very little to do with money, you know.
Speaker 2: It was being on like a porch with each other,
Speaker 2: with kids that want to spend time with us, with
Speaker 2: grandkids in the yard, with friends coming over for dinner.
Speaker 2: It was like, Okay, both of us have just laid
Speaker 2: out an entire scenario that has people at the center
Speaker 2: of it. It has relationships, especially our core closest relationships,
Speaker 2: and yet.
Speaker 3: On a daily basis, what are your prioritiyizing right now?
Speaker 2: We live in California where we don't really have any connection,
Speaker 2: Like we don't have close friends that live here, and
Speaker 2: we're living three thousand miles away from the people that
Speaker 2: we're closest to, And that was just extremely illuminating. You're like,
Speaker 2: I just shined a light on the fact that my values,
Speaker 2: the things that I really am saying really matter to me, Yeah,
Speaker 2: are very different from what my actions are showing those
Speaker 2: values to be. And that gap is sort of the
Speaker 2: fundamental gap that we should all be trying to close
Speaker 2: in life.
Speaker 3: It's like the difference.
Speaker 2: Between what you say your priorities are and what your
Speaker 2: actions show your priorities are. When you close that gap,
Speaker 2: your life improves, But you need to highlight the gap
Speaker 2: before you can close it.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans. Once saw Hil realized he needed to make
Speaker 1: major changes to live out his values, he and his
Speaker 1: wife packed up their bags and moved across the country
Speaker 1: to be closer to family. He also quit his demanding
Speaker 1: job and started to write more, and he got curious
Speaker 1: about what it means to live a good life. He
Speaker 1: started asking people what advice they give their younger selves,
Speaker 1: and from these conversations he came up with the idea
Speaker 1: that there are five buckets of wealth.
Speaker 2: The five types of wealth are time wealth, social wealth,
Speaker 2: mental wealth, physical wealth, and then financial wealth. Time wealth
Speaker 2: is fundamentally about freedom to choose how you spend your time,
Speaker 2: who you spend it with, where you spend it, when
Speaker 2: you trade it for other things. It is about an
Speaker 2: awareness of time as your most precious asset.
Speaker 1: What are some strategies that you've found helpful when it
Speaker 1: comes to protecting your time, but then also feeling just
Speaker 1: more agency over your time.
Speaker 2: Your outcomes in life tend to follow your energy. Very
Speaker 2: few people are actually aware of their energy in a
Speaker 2: meaningful way, meaning understand the types of activities and the
Speaker 2: types of people in their life that create energy versus
Speaker 2: drain energy. When you spend time and lean into things
Speaker 2: that are creating energy for you, your outcomes will improve.
Speaker 2: And when you lean away from and remove things that
Speaker 2: are draining energy, Similarly, your life and your outcomes in
Speaker 2: the way that you feel on a weekly basis improves.
Speaker 2: The fastest way to develop an awareness of that is
Speaker 2: to just use your calendar. I mean, if you look
Speaker 2: at your calendar at the end of a weekday and
Speaker 2: color code the activities according to whether they created energy,
Speaker 2: meaning you felt sort of a natural pull or interest
Speaker 2: or excitement around the thing that's green, if it was neutral,
Speaker 2: market yellow, and if it left you feeling physically drained
Speaker 2: market red. If you do that for a week, you'll
Speaker 2: have a very clear visual perspective on the types of
Speaker 2: active vites that create versus energy from your life. That
Speaker 2: information allows you to make slow, incremental changes to your
Speaker 2: weeks that will improve the overall outlook and outcomes in
Speaker 2: your life, like removing certain things that you previously said
Speaker 2: yes to that we're actually draining your energy that you
Speaker 2: can remove, removing people from your life that consistently drain
Speaker 2: your energy and are not adding a.
Speaker 3: Whole lot of value.
Speaker 2: A piece of that is this idea of just saying
Speaker 2: no more effectively.
Speaker 1: Yeah, terrible at this.
Speaker 2: We all sort of know that it's important to know
Speaker 2: when to say no, but very few people have good
Speaker 2: framings for how to actually do that. I offer two
Speaker 2: in the book that I have found personally very useful.
Speaker 3: One is this idea of the right now test.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I love this one.
Speaker 2: If someone asks you to do something, whether personal or professional,
Speaker 2: two months from now, ask yourself whether you would want
Speaker 2: to do it if it was tonight or if it
Speaker 2: was right now. If the answer is yes, you say
Speaker 2: yes to it, because then in two months you'll still
Speaker 2: want to do it. But if the answer is no,
Speaker 2: and you're just saying yes to it because two months
Speaker 2: seems like so far in the future, Like sure, I'll
Speaker 2: have more time than two months in the future future,
Speaker 2: maya will have way more time, you should.
Speaker 3: Just say no to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a failure of empathy with your future self. Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: can we talk now, sihil about social wealth? So how
Speaker 1: do you define it? And what are ways that we
Speaker 1: can try to boost the amount of social wealth that
Speaker 1: we derive in our lives.
Speaker 2: Social wealth is all about your relationships. It's the you know,
Speaker 2: it's the few close, deep bonds, and then it's the
Speaker 2: larger circles of connection to things that sort of extend
Speaker 2: beyond the self, whether through communities, local, regional, spiritual, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I love this visualization that I propose in the book
Speaker 2: of Imagining your Own Funeral and thinking about the people
Speaker 2: that are going to be sitting in the front row,
Speaker 2: And the most important part of that visualization is actually
Speaker 2: not identifying those people. It's about recognizing the traits and
Speaker 2: the experience that those people create for you, and then
Speaker 2: reminding yourself that the most important thing is to be
Speaker 2: a front row person to someone else. Everyone always asks like,
Speaker 2: how do I build deep, loving bonds? How do I
Speaker 2: find those people that you know I can call at
Speaker 2: three in the morning when things are bad. The most
Speaker 2: clear obvious answer is be one of those people to
Speaker 2: someone else.
Speaker 3: We attract in life what we put out into the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean there's also the now famous Harvard study,
Speaker 1: Robert Weldinger study about how our social relationships are the
Speaker 1: greatest predictor of long term well being and physical health.
Speaker 2: The most interesting finding of that study was that the
Speaker 2: single greatest predictor of physical health at age eighty was
Speaker 2: relationship satisfaction at age fifty. I think it's the most
Speaker 2: impactful study of the last one hundred years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you mentioned already one of the best ways
Speaker 1: to boost our physical health, which is to invest in
Speaker 1: our social relationships. Tell me how you think about physical
Speaker 1: wealth and just a few strategies you might share.
Speaker 2: That's basically three pillars. Move your body for thirty minutes
Speaker 2: a day any type of movement walk, run, jog, bike, row, dance,
Speaker 2: whatever you like doing. Move your body for thirty minutes
Speaker 2: a day, eat whole unprocessed foods eighty percent of meals,
Speaker 2: and then try to sleep seven hours a night.
Speaker 1: What about mental wealth?
Speaker 2: Mental wealth is about purpose, It's about growth, and more
Speaker 2: than anything else, it is about creating the space necessary
Speaker 2: to wrestle with some of these bigger picture, sort of
Speaker 2: unanswerable questions of life. I really think about mental wealth
Speaker 2: as being about carving your own path and pursuing your
Speaker 2: curiosity enough such that you can unlock whatever that is.
Speaker 1: A lot of these techniques do become more accessible when
Speaker 1: our financial needs are met, and there is a profound
Speaker 1: amount of financial anxiety in this moment, for session, fears, layoffs, inflation.
Speaker 1: What advice would you say to someone who is really
Speaker 1: eager to think bigger than money, just see things more expansively,
Speaker 1: but they feel like they are stuck in survival mode.
Speaker 1: Can they still take some of the advice from your book?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: I would say a lot of this does reflect Maslow's
Speaker 2: hierarchy of needs to say that until you achieve these
Speaker 2: basic needs of food, shelter, you know, basic pleasures, money
Speaker 2: directly buys happiness. Beyond that, you start wanting to think
Speaker 2: about money as a tool to build and accumulate these
Speaker 2: other things. What I would say is that some tiny
Speaker 2: daily investment in these other areas of life will pay
Speaker 2: dividends for you. Doing the like tiny daily action is
Speaker 2: better than doing nothing, and it prevents atrophy in all
Speaker 2: of these areas. So even if you do not have
Speaker 2: the luxury or the privilege of investment thing meaningfully into
Speaker 2: your physical wealth or into finding a purpose, you can
Speaker 2: still do the tiny daily action. Anyone can find five
Speaker 2: minutes to just go for a walk around the block
Speaker 2: before going to bed to clear their head, or doing
Speaker 2: the like two minute journaling thing before going to bed
Speaker 2: to get some stressful thing off your brain to help
Speaker 2: you sleep a little bit more clearly at night. Anything
Speaker 2: above zero compounds in all of these areas of life.
Speaker 2: But we don't think that way. We think that something
Speaker 2: needs to be optimal in order for it to be beneficial,
Speaker 2: when the reality is that the tiny thing done well
Speaker 2: on a daily basis will stack and compound positively in
Speaker 2: your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you personally think about navigating the trade
Speaker 1: offs between these types of wealth. So obviously there are costs,
Speaker 1: right if you are prioritizing your mental wealth, it might
Speaker 1: come at the expense of other buckets. And if you're
Speaker 1: moving to be closer a family, it might also strain
Speaker 1: your career options or your finances.
Speaker 2: I really think about life coming in seasons, and these
Speaker 2: trade offs are fundamentally about what sort of dimmer switch
Speaker 2: you want to turn up versus down during different seasons
Speaker 2: of life. The traditional wisdom has always been that these
Speaker 2: things exist on on off switches, and that is what
Speaker 2: I fundamentally push back on. And so the idea to
Speaker 2: me is that you have these dimmer switches in front
Speaker 2: of you, and what you are going to have way
Speaker 2: turned up at any point in time is going to change.
Speaker 2: In your early years twenties, thirties, forties, you might be
Speaker 2: really focusing on building that financial stability and financial foundation.
Speaker 2: So that area is turned up. That doesn't mean the
Speaker 2: other areas are turned off. It might just mean they're
Speaker 2: turned down low. Maybe low means the five minute walk
Speaker 2: every day. Maybe low means the two minutes of journaling
Speaker 2: for the headspace that you get. Maybe low means the
Speaker 2: one phone call to your family each week.
Speaker 3: Whatever it is down low, but it's not off.
Speaker 2: At a different season of life, what you are choosing
Speaker 2: to have turned up or you know or to the
Speaker 2: middle is going to change, and you are not tethered
Speaker 2: to what your prior season was, and you don't have
Speaker 2: to stress about what your future season might look like.
Speaker 2: You can just embrace whatever does exist in the present season.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of my favorite parts of your book is
Speaker 1: that you talk about the fact that balance is not
Speaker 1: achieved on a daily level. It's achieved at a macro level.
Speaker 1: When you zoom out and you say, look at a
Speaker 1: year or many years in the aggregate, that's when you
Speaker 1: see the balance reflected back to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love that idea of like being able to just
Speaker 2: lean into the unbalanced when it comes. As long as
Speaker 2: you have a broader macro awareness of the desire to
Speaker 2: create the balance in the future can be really powerful.
Speaker 1: What's the most difficult change that you've had to make
Speaker 1: since shifting how you define wealth.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest and most challenging change is that
Speaker 2: your definition no longer aligns with the world around you's definition,
Speaker 2: and when you live differently, and when you embrace different things,
Speaker 2: and when your scoreboard is different the way that you
Speaker 2: kind of value and think about the world, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, it's very clear to you that it's in
Speaker 2: conflict with how other people do. You're no longer playing
Speaker 2: like similar games to other people, and so your ability
Speaker 2: to have and carry on conversations with a lot of
Speaker 2: people sort of just goes away. You know, I've had
Speaker 2: like a lot of friends who I thought of as
Speaker 2: real friends that it no longer feels like I speak
Speaker 2: the same language as them in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: And that's challenging just in the context of relationships.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, But has it also brought you closer to
Speaker 1: other people that share those values.
Speaker 2: It's brought me closer to the people that I hold dear.
Speaker 2: I would say that it has like narrowed and focused
Speaker 2: my people around the real people that I want to
Speaker 2: be on these few missions with in life.
Speaker 1: So do you find, for example, that you're in an
Speaker 1: impast with friends who continue to focus a lot on
Speaker 1: financial wealth? Like where are you finding that disconnect?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I wouldn't say an impasse.
Speaker 2: I would just say almost like a you know, an indifference,
Speaker 2: Like you know that we no longer have in common
Speaker 2: the things that previously maybe bonded us around, like thinking
Speaker 2: about and talking about money and fancy things and status
Speaker 2: and like the club memberships. All the things that we
Speaker 2: previously used to have a shared language and communication around
Speaker 2: it no longer exists. And so you realize, you know
Speaker 2: at times that like some of the things that bonded
Speaker 2: you together, it wasn't like maybe real deep connections. It
Speaker 2: was these surface level things that once you change those,
Speaker 2: it no longer is there. The point, the meta point
Speaker 2: of the whole book is that you get to choose
Speaker 2: what races you wrut. You get to choose, and you
Speaker 2: don't need to live by default into someone else's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean, I think this aligns so closely
Speaker 1: with how we can buttress ourselves against the dynamic force
Speaker 1: of change in our lives and what can stabilize us.
Speaker 1: And I think the premise of your book, which is
Speaker 1: to question our value systems and to essentially put more
Speaker 1: weight into these other buckets of wealth over the course
Speaker 1: of our lives, to diversify those investments, does actually build
Speaker 1: our resilience in the face of change, because life will
Speaker 1: throw these curveballs our way, and we may stop having
Speaker 1: to play baseball at one moment, or we may face
Speaker 1: a financial crisis at another moment. There's a safety net
Speaker 1: when you do have these investments in many places and
Speaker 1: you allow it to be a dynamic space that is
Speaker 1: shifting in real time. Like I think, another thing that's
Speaker 1: really important for listeners to understand is you're not proposing
Speaker 1: you figure out your pyramid and then it's fixed and
Speaker 1: locked for life. It's like an ongoing dialogue with yourself
Speaker 1: and your loved ones to figure out where you want
Speaker 1: to make those investments at any given moment.
Speaker 3: Exactly right.
Speaker 2: It is entirely dynamic, and you have the freedom to
Speaker 2: choose during any season of life to take actions to
Speaker 2: change where you are and what your priority is and
Speaker 2: what your life is being built around. And certainly there
Speaker 2: are going to be situations where you just have to
Speaker 2: lean into certain things because of responsibilities or because of
Speaker 2: life circumstances. But when you do find yourself with the
Speaker 2: luxury to choose, if you do, it is a responsibility
Speaker 2: to take advantage of that as well to do right
Speaker 2: by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of people listening are probably thinking, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: sy Hill's got it all figured out, because not only
Speaker 1: is he successful, but then he's also got this like
Speaker 1: deeper philosophical wealth pyramid thing figured out. What is an
Speaker 1: area of your life where you're currently struggling and maybe
Speaker 1: where you're finding it hard to apply some of these
Speaker 1: principles and tell me about how you're working through that challenge.
Speaker 2: I would just say I have nothing figured out. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think I understand some of these things, but all
Speaker 2: of them are sort of notes to self that I
Speaker 2: am presently wrestling with and struggling through. I tend to
Speaker 2: think that in life, your best bet or your best
Speaker 2: hope is that you just kind of stumble a little
Speaker 2: bit better each day. You never like FULLI er on
Speaker 2: your feet and feeling great and that you have it
Speaker 2: figured out. I have found personally, whenever I think I
Speaker 2: had it figured out, I'm about to get punched in
Speaker 2: the face. And so I really like to think about
Speaker 2: just like stumbling a little bit better, you know, for
Speaker 2: me personally, Like in the aftermath of the book release
Speaker 2: and the impact that it's had, I have really wrestled
Speaker 2: with like finding this balance around especially time and social
Speaker 2: wealth of this wealth of new opportunities that feels like
Speaker 2: it should be a good thing. But that has really
Speaker 2: meaningfully negatively impacted my life in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: because I've gone and like taken on too much chase
Speaker 2: too many things that have spread me thin. The quality
Speaker 2: of everything deteriorates. When you do that, it pulls me
Speaker 2: away from my family. My wife had to have you know,
Speaker 2: we had to have a sit down and talk about,
Speaker 2: like this spring and summer, you need to like reset
Speaker 2: more time. My son is three years old. It's gonna
Speaker 2: be an amazing summer. And that is that was really
Speaker 2: a struggle. It sort of this like natural push and
Speaker 2: pull that happens with these inflection points in life.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. I've written a newsletter
Speaker 1: post inspired by my conversation with Saalhill. It's all about
Speaker 1: how we can better invest in our friendships. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to this free newsletter at Changewithmaya dot com and
Speaker 1: next week join me when I talk to psychiatrist Judith Joseph,
Speaker 1: who learns to feel joy again.
Speaker 3: We were built with the DNA for joy.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to derive pleasure from the basic things in life.
Speaker 1: If you're not deriving pleasure from those things that is
Speaker 1: a problem That's next week on A Slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 1: See you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created,
Speaker 1: written and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight
Speaker 1: Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor
Speaker 1: Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producer Britney Cronin and Megan Leeuvin
Speaker 1: and our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our
Speaker 1: delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
Speaker 1: very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
Speaker 1: See you next week.