Social wealth is the connection to others in your personal and professional worlds.
The more people who love and support you, the more social wealth you have. It’s the depth and breadth of your relationships to those around you. Social wealth is having good friends and family who care about you.
Having a meaningful human connection is important for a fulfilling life.
Prioritising relationships is essential to your happiness and well-being. Fortunately, there is a framework for building Social Wealth through three core pillars: Depth, Breadth, and Earned Status.
This is still a review from Sahil’s book – 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.
From his book (now a bestseller), I will share the practical systems and hacks for improving your social fitness and developing stronger connections.
The Core Idea is Prioritising People
Deep, meaningful relationships are the foundation of a wealthy life.
No matter how you focus on your career or financial success, your achievements in other areas will feel empty without strong social connections.
Do you really picture yourself alone on that plane or yacht? What good is the big house if there is no love to fill it?
Human connection is ultimately what provides the lasting texture and meaning in life.
The Three Pillars of Social Wealth
Your Social Wealth is built across three core pillars.
1. Depth: The Front-Row People
This is the connection with a small, inner circle of people with whom you share deep, meaningful, and durable bonds.
These are your Front-Row People. You can rely on them for love, support, and connection during good times and bad.
How to Build Depth
- Be Honest: Share your inner truth and weaknesses and truly listen when others do the same.
- Show Support: Be present and supportive during difficult times. Sit in the darkness with those who are struggling.
- Have Shared Experience: Engage in positive and negative experiences together. This will strengthen your bonds and build resilience in all your relationships.
Your circle of depth is not limited to family.
Meaningful connections can be found anywhere.
Your circle of closest and irreplaceable people must not be static. It can evolve and change over time as relationships grow or fade. But note this, depth is crucial for a happy and fulfilled life.
Your depth of social wealth provides a foundation of support and love that makes anything possible.
2. Breadth: Belonging to Something Bigger
Your breadth of social wealth is connecting to a larger circle of people for support and belonging beyond your inner circle.
You achieve this by participating in communities or having more individual relationships. Community is very important. It provides a sense of belonging and connects you to individuals you may not have physically met.
Belonging to communities also lets you connect to something larger than oneself. And communities can be formed around various interests, such as cultural, spiritual, local, or professional affiliations.
How to Build Breadth
- Join Local Clubs or Communities: Participate in activities related to your hobbies and interests. It can be book clubs, art clubs, or gyms.
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- Attend Spiritual Gatherings: Engage in faith-driven activities if you are a spiritual individual. It can be church programs, gospel artistes’ concerts or volunteering for evangelism.
- Sign up and join Digital Meetups: You can join online communities that focus on causes you care about.
- Coordinate Walks or Hikes: Organise regular outdoor activities with others in your area.
- Attend Networking Events: Overcome shyness and attend events that can lead to new connections.
Expanding your breadth of social wealth requires trying new things and being open to the world.
To do this, you must be generous and not expect anything in return. Both are essential for building meaningful connections within a broader network.
3. Earned Status: Social Currency That Lasts
This is the third pillar of your social wealth.
Earned status is the respect, admiration, and trust you receive from your peers based on your actions and character, rather than acquired possessions or social symbols.
There is a big difference between bought and earned status.
Bought Status is achieved through acquired status symbols such as club memberships, expensive cars, jewellery, or private plane flights.
Earned status is achieved through hard-won treasures like freedom to choose how to spend your time, loving family relationships and purposeful work. It can also be accumulated wisdom, adaptable mind, fit physique, professional promotions, or company sales.
Focus on Increasing Your Earned Status
Lasting, durable satisfaction comes from pursuing earned status.
Genuine respect and admiration (from those whose opinions you value) comes when you focus on improving your earned status.
Bought status is fleeting and provides only temporary social positioning. On the other hand, earned status is durable and lasting, providing a solid foundation for Social Wealth.
Concentrate on what must be earned rather than what can be bought.
This is how you will live a life of abundant Social Wealth.
The Social Wealth Guide: Systems for Success
There are actionable systems for building Social Wealth.
These systems are not one-size-fits-all, so feel free to select those that resonate and align with your personal goals.
First, there are some anti-goals you must avoid. Don’t allow the pursuit of financial success to damage deep connections. Don’t neglect local relationships and community ties.
Now, here are ten Proven Systems for Building Social Wealth
1. Social Wealth Hacks I Wish I Knew at Twenty-Two:
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- Happiness is direction, not destination; whom you travel with counts.
- People are made for love.
- Political disagreement doesn’t preclude close relationships.
- Happy people love people, use things, and worship the divine; unhappy people do the opposite.
- It’s a bad trade to prioritize being special over being happy.
- Approach disagreements as a “we,” not a “me.”
- Happiness requires generosity in love and allowing yourself to be loved.
- Talk to people unlike you to expose yourself to new perspectives.
- Treat fighting like exercise.
- Focus on relationships, not leaving them to chance.
- Expand your time horizon with love.
- Entrepreneurs risk their hearts by falling in love.
- Say exactly what you mean.
- Don’t treat family like emotional ATMs.
- Make friendship an end, not a means.
- Don’t spread misery.
- Put on your oxygen mask first.
- Don’t focus on looks and status in others.
- Let people know when you think something nice about them.
- Tell your partner one thing you appreciate about them every day.
- Ask intimidating people what they’re most excited about and then listen closely.
- Offer unwavering support during tough times.
- Record video interviews with your parents.
- Send a book you love as a gift.
- Always carry a pocket notebook.
- Never keep score in life.
- Avoid overly transactional friendships.
- Wait twenty-four hours before acting on strong emotions.
- Compliment a stranger every day.
- Focus on being interested, not interesting.
- Do things worthy of stories to tell your kids someday.
2. The Relationship Map (Pillars: Depth and Breadth):
- List your core relationships (10-25).
- Assess relationships based on if they are supportive, ambivalent, or demeaning, and by their frequency.
- Map the relationships on a grid with Relationship Health (demeaning to supportive) on the x-axis and Relationship Frequency (rare to daily) on the y-axis.
Then put your core relationships into these zones:
- Green Zone: (Supportive, frequent) – Prioritize and maintain.
- Opportunity Zone: (Supportive, infrequent) – Increase interaction frequency.
- Danger Zone: (Ambivalent, frequent) – Manage impact or improve interactions.
- Red Zone: (Demeaning, frequent) – Manage or remove the relationship.
3. Two Rules for Growing in Love (Pillar: Depth):
Rule 1: Understand Love Languages: Words of affirmation, Quality time, Gifts, Acts of service and Physical touch.
Recognize and show love in your partner’s preferred language.
Rule 2: Avoid the Traps (The Four Horsemen): Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt and Stonewalling
Use antidotes like gentle start-up, taking responsibility, building appreciation, and physiological self-soothing.
There is also some additional relationship advice you can adopt.
Avoid scorekeeping, maintain separate interests, understand that it can’t always be 50/50, avoid involving non-professional third parties in disagreements, prioritize your spouse, and accept each other without needing approval from others.
4. The Life Dinner (Pillar: Depth):
Have a monthly date with your partner to discuss personal, professional, and relationship progress, challenges, and goals.
5. Helped, Heard, or Hugged (Pillar: Depth):
When someone comes to you with a problem, ask if they want to be helped (solutions), heard (listening), or hugged (comfort).
6. The Four Principles of a Master Conversationalist (Pillar: Breadth):
- Create Doorknobs: Use questions or statements that invite storytelling.
- Be a Loud Listener: Use sounds, expressions, and body language to show engagement
- Repeat and Follow: Repeat key points and add insights or questions.
- Make Situational Eye Contact: Deep while listening and organic while speaking.
7. The Anti-Networking Guide (Pillar: Breadth):
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- Principle 1: Find Value-Aligned Rooms: Put yourself in places where you’ll meet people with similar values and interests.
- Principle 2: Ask Engaging Questions: Start conversations with personal questions.
- Principle 3: Become a Loud Listener: Focus intently while the other person speaks and listen to understand.
- Principle 4: Use Creative Follow-ups: Show effort beyond a typical exchange.
8. The Brain Trust (Pillar: Breadth):
Build a personal board of advisers (5-10 people) with diverse perspectives for feedback and advice.
Focus on their genuine interest in your success. They might each have a particular archetype, such as senior executive, inspirational leader, or contrarian thinker.
9. The Public Speaking Guide (Pillars: Breadth and Earned Status):
During Pre-Event Preparation: Create clear Structure, practice your key moments and study the best speakers you want to emulate.
During Pre-Stage Preparation: Address the Spotlight by confront your worst fears about what could go wrong. Then get into character and eliminate any form of stress.
During Delivery: Cut the Tension with jokes, use big, confident gestures to hype yourself up and move purposefully.
10. The Status Tests (Pillar: Earned Status):
When seeking status, take these two tests:
The Bought-Status Test: Would I buy this if I couldn’t show it off?
The Earned-Status Test: Can the richest person in the world acquire this easily?
Tailor Your Social Wealth to Fit What You Truly Need
The exact levels of social depth and breadth appropriate for an individual can vary by person.
You may be more naturally extroverted and desire high degrees of social breadth and depth. Or you might be more introverted and prefer fewer, deeper connections.
This means if you are a natural extrovert, you need significant breadth and depth of connection to keep loneliness at bay. If you are a natural introvert, you will need only a few close relationships to do the same.
Your goal is to look at the three pillars of social wealth and know where to improve.
The plan is to prioritise relationships and build a life rich in meaningful connections.
I hope it helps.
Zamai
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