THE SIX TYPES OF WEALTH – PART 2: SOCIAL WEALTH
Healthy relationships are the best predictor of life satisfaction – that is your real currency.
Humans are social creatures. We enjoy connecting with like-minded individuals, sharing experiences, and generally being accepted and respected by the wider community. Our position in society matters. At least, it should matter.
Over the past 30-plus years, technologies meant to connect us have made us lonelier than ever before.
How many times have you sat in a restaurant and focused more on your phone than on the people dining with you? Next time out, pay attention to the other tables and note how many people at each table are busy on their phones – not talking to each other, messaging others, probably telling them what a fantastic time they are having.
How many times has an urgent text, email, or work notification pulled your mind away from the people sitting right in front of you?
How much of a part is Facebook in your life? Do you tell your loved ones you love them and thank them for many wonderful years of marriage via Facebook, or do you tell them in person?
How often do you grab your phone and Google something while you are in the company of others? Google has become the go-to for information in many conversations. It seems like meaningful conversations and even business meetings cannot take place effectively without Google.
Now there is one even better. AI can just be asked a question, and various answers roll off your device. Suddenly, you can be an author, a poet, an artist and a specialist in just about anything. But can you talk with authority about these topics without your electronic device, or have you become reliant on technology to back up all you say?
Be cautious not to allow technology to strip away our humanity. Technology is fantastic and enables us to be more efficient, more accurate and more dynamic, but be careful that we do not become so reliant on it that without it, we become non-communicative, unsocial, inhuman and useless as social human beings.
Technological innovation has increased your connection to the world around you. You have more connectivity, but you feel less connected. Human connection ultimately provides the lasting texture and meaning in life. Without social wealth, achievement in any other area will feel unfulfilling.
We need to socialise and live actively in a society, and communicate in person with colleagues, friends and family. We are social because we are human, and we are human because we are social.
In my previous article, I referenced Sahil Bloom’s book, where he states the following:
“Close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Imagine you’re dead. You’re at your funeral. People are walking in, crying, hugging each other. Everyone sits down. Who is sitting in the front row? Imagine their faces. These people – your front-row people – are the ones who truly matter. Open your eyes and think about them.”
What are you doing to cherish the people who hold those special seats in your world?
How are you letting those people know what they mean to you?
Are you prioritising time with them or letting it float by and disappear?
The responses to these questions form the foundation of your social wealth – the depth of connection to those few significant, irreplaceable people in your life. These deep, meaningful, healthy relationships with a select few will always offer a stable base of support and affection. They are the individuals with whom you can celebrate life’s joys and mourn its sorrows.
Irrespective of your personality, you should build this foundation because the ability to call upon people for support during hard times becomes increasingly important as you age.
Social wealth is built on a foundation of depth – through the strength of your ties to a few valued relationships. It grows through breadth – by connecting with an extended circle of friends, communities, and cultures. Ultimately, it is secured through earned status, a lasting form of social positioning that cannot be bought.
The key to healthy ageing is relationships, relationships, relationships (Dr George Vaillant in a study conducted in 1972). The study found that strong, healthy relationships are the best predictor of life satisfaction, far outpacing other predictors such as social class, wealth, fame, IQ, and genetics.
It found that relationship satisfaction had a direct positive impact on physical health. The research found that the people who were the most satisfied in their relationships in their 50s were the healthiest at age 80. Swing this around. The healthiest eighty-year-olds today had the most satisfying and fulfilling relationships in their 50s.
Researchers from the Harvard Study of Adult Development always ask participants this simple question: Who would you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? The responses range from a list of names to “nobody” and served as a simple measure of an important metric: loneliness.
When someone answers “nobody”, it reflects real loneliness and the sense that nobody in the world has my back. I previously referred to the fact that loneliness is more deadly than obesity.
When you fail to measure and value your social wealth, you fail to consider it in your decisions:
What’s the point of all that financial gain and growth in wealth if you’re alone?
How many people have moved abroad, for whatever reason, and left their family and friends behind, only to realise that without them, they do not feel at home?
How many people have embarked on cruises, visited foreign countries and jetted to far-away places just to realise those experiences are not that meaningful when experienced alone?
How many people have taken high-paying jobs in new locations only to find themselves deeply unhappy without their friends and family?
The days are long, but the years are short…
You are your child’s favourite person in the world for 10 years. After that, children have other favourite people – best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, partners and eventually their own children. You have 10 years to build this all-important foundation of the child-parent relationship, a relationship that is so important to many people’s social wealth.
Will you be able to look back when your children are 30 and consider those 10 years as “The Magic Years”, or will they be “The Missing Years”? Finding balance between family time, me-time, and work time is crucial and a fine balancing act. The goal is to have clarity to choose, to define your balance and live by design rather than by default.
Stop living the deferred happiness plan, saying, “Well, I’m just going to work hard now, so that I can be happy and spend time with my kids when I’m 60.” Because when you’re 60, your children are not going to be three years old anymore.
It is impossible to sit where you are and plan your journey. Focus on the people you want to travel with, and the journey will reveal itself in due time.
Find your front-row people. Cherish them. Be one to someone else.
