EFR 857: The Biggest Things Draining Your DOPAMINE (and Bank Account) and How to Achieve Your DREAM LIFE with Sahil Bloom

00:00 - Chase (Host) The following is an Operation Podcast production.

00:03 - Sahil (Guest) The biggest challenge facing most people. They are getting their dopamine from information gathering rather than from action. That is the dopamine that you get from reading the book, from listening to the podcast, but not from actually doing the things that are in the book. That's not how it works. Your results in life follow your attention. If you can put all of your energy, concentrated attention, into the few things that really matter, you're going to achieve the 10,000,000x outcomes that change your life.

00:33 You cannot plan your dream life. You need to go and create it. You need to actually take tiny actions that start walking you towards it, because the truth is that every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something you don't want to do. Answers you seek are found in the actions you avoid, because we live in a world now that is conspiring against you at almost every single turn. There are a lot of people out there who, by the traditional definition of success and of wealth, feel like they're not doing well, and by this definition, they are crushing it. You have within you the power to change the world, and what I mean by that is this is Sahil Bloom, author of the new book the Five Types of Wealth Welcome to Ever Forward Radio.

01:17 - Chase (Host) Are you a health conscious person, committed to daily supplementation as it relates to your personal wellness goals? But are you uncertain if you're taking the right doses, the right combinations or even the right products at all. Are they doing anything for you and your body's needs? Well, let me put you on to Supco, today's sponsor. They are the world's first real supplement tracker and optimizer designed to make supplements work for you. With Supco, you can build your personalized stack. You simply add the supplements you take and it creates your custom regimen. It's got smart scheduling and reminders so you can set daily reminders so you never miss a dose at the right time. It's incredible. It works for you. It can even provide a comprehensive analysis. It'll let you view overall nutrient totals and assess how well your products support your health goals. It's like having a personal supplement coach in your pocket. Not to mention, you can also track your intake. You can monitor your supplement consumption to see how it affects your performance, and that's because SUPCO's proprietary database of over 160,000 supplements provides detailed insights to help you build, track and maintain a supplement plan that aligns with your health objectives.

02:33 They're hooking it up for Everford Radio listeners now. The app is out, it's in beta and they want you to jump on board. Try it for free. So if you're ready to take the guesswork out of your supplement routine for free, visit supco slash ever forward. That's s-u-p-p dot c-o slash ever forward, linked for you, as always today, in the show notes under episode resources. I've done it, I've used it, I got my personal stack in there and it has been a tremendous help in understanding what I'm taking, best doses, best timing and even where to reconfigure a few things. Supco slash ever forward to learn more and try the beta version for free today.

03:24 Hey, what's up? Friends? Welcome to Ever Forward Radio. I got a special bonus episode for you here today. I couldn't wait any longer to sit on this episode with the new homie, sahil Bloom. If you're tuning in here today, I'm wondering if the title caught your attention. Or maybe you're just eager to see what the bonus is all about. But I'd be willing to bet you're curious about the secrets of life, building your life, designing your dream life. But then, more importantly, how do we act on it, right? So today we are going to be unlocking the secrets to crafting your dream life with Sahil Bloom, author of the amazing new book I'm going to have linked for you in the show notes the Five Types of Wealth.

04:00 Have you ever wondered, maybe, why do we often falter in our pursuit of happiness, despite having all the information at our fingertips? We read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, we go to all the masterminds, we do all the things, but look like Sahil's going to break down here today. We need to discover how to take action. Knowing without doing, I believe, is the same thing as not knowing. So, in a world eager for quick solutions, sahil is going to be advocating for embracing life struggles and building meaningful relationships along the way. He's going to have us challenge conventional wisdom about balancing life with our innovative dimmer switch. He calls it this approach to time management. So, instead of turning off life's burners, you're going to learn how to adjust them just right to avoid burnout while preserving growth in family, friendships, work and health All the areas that I talk about on the show that we need to prioritize and maintain some kind of balance for advancing us, for moving us forward, living a life ever forward.

05:03 Sahil was in studio with me. If you prefer video, you can always find us at everforwardradioil was in studio with me. If you prefer video, you can always find us at everforwardradiocom or over on YouTube. If you have not yet done so, subscribing to this podcast wherever you're listening right now Apple, spotify, overcast, castbox, amazon Music, you name it If you just hit follow or subscribe, it takes just a couple seconds out of your day. I greatly appreciate it. It does a lot of things on every platform to help support the show, help us reach more people and spread the good word of Sahil's message. And my goal, my ultimate goal, is to help as many people as possible live a life ever forward. Thank you in advance for doing so and maybe, if listening is more your jam, you know here you are listening to a podcast and if you want to check out Sahil's book, the Five Types of Wealth, but you want to go the audiobook version, you can actually get it for free.

05:50 I've got a great partnership over with Audible, my preferred audiobook platform. I've been using it for years. I like to listen to the book and even read it. To kind of double my comprehension. You can actually get the audiobook for free with your 30-day trial of Audible. Simply head to audibletrialcom, slash everforward to get started. You can cancel. There's no commitments whatever. You get that free credit. Why not use it on Sahil's book. That's audibletrialcom slash everforward A-U-D-I-B-L-E-T-R-I-A-Lcom. Slash everforward to get that free 30 day trial started today, which equates to that free credit waiting for you for his book the five types of wealth.

06:30 Without further ado, welcome to the show. This is Sahil Bloom, so we're here to talk about light subject matter building your dream life. Right, and I want to start right there. I know it's a core of your work and your content, especially the new book, and you actually have this amazing quote in your book that I've heard a few times before and hits home for me because my wife's Persian. So Rumi talks about his dream life. You know he has this quote that says as you start to walk on the way, the way appears. Do you think most people today are spending an appropriate amount of time, money and resources on designing their dream life, compared to those that are actually living it?

07:13 - Sahil (Guest) It's a very good opening question. The biggest challenge facing most people is that they are getting their dopamine from information gathering rather than from action. Dopamine from information gathering is a very dangerous drug. That is the dopamine that you get from reading the book, from listening to the podcast, but not from actually doing the things that are in the book. It's this person that reads Atomic Habits and then comes away from it being like I'm good at habits now. That's not how it works.

07:46 The reality is that the planning all of the five-year plan, 10-year plan, creating all of these things you cannot plan your dream life. You need to go and create it. You need to actually take tiny actions that start walking you towards it, because the truth is that every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something you don't want to do. That is just the reality of how this works. The answers you seek are found in the actions you avoid. The body you seek is found in the workouts you avoid. The relationships you seek are found in the hard conversations you avoid. The business you seek is found in the hours of focused work you avoid.

08:27 All of those things are on the other side of the action. It's taking the action. And the one thing I've learned over and over again in my life is that you cannot stand still where you are and chart the perfect course, Because the most incredible opportunities in life are invisible to you where you stand currently. You uncover them, you make them visible by walking, by taking action. So that's why that Rumi quote has been so close to my heart is because what I've found over and over again is that as I start to walk on the way, those incredible invisible opportunities reveal themselves, and that is only found through action.

09:04 - Chase (Host) Reminds me of this other quote I love. Marcus Aurelius says you know, the impediment to action advances action. Yeah, same way.

09:11 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, it's the exact same theme and that's this is a meta theme that you find, by the way, that, like ancient wisdom, carries so much value in the modern world and a lot of us would benefit from turning to that ancient wisdom more.

09:25 It's the reason why history and some of the ancient texts and ancient epics from different cultures end up weaving their way through the book that I just wrote, because that ancient wisdom carries a lot of value if you're able to listen to it and if you're able to adapt it to the modern world that you're living in, because we live in a world now that is conspiring against you at almost every single turn. I mean the amount that I see people self-sabotage by pressing the eject button too early in their life is crazy. I mean, you think about now, like dating as an example. I have all these friends who are trying to date and they're struggling to find their right partner, and every time I see them dating someone the second, it gets hard. They press the eject button because they have a million other options sitting right there in the palm of their hand on their phone. It used to be when a relationship got hard. What you knew was that if you ejected out of the relationship.

10:16 - Chase (Host) You were going to have to endure the pain and struggle of going and start all over again, and you got to go meet the people in person and like go up to them at the bar and go do those really hard, scary things.

10:24 - Sahil (Guest) Now you don't have to do that. They're sitting right there, you can swipe left and right, so people hit the eject button fast. And the problem with doing that is that the best things are built when you endure a little bit of the struggle. The best relationships are built through struggle. Shared struggle releases oxytocin which creates the feelings of connection. It's why you probably have such a camaraderie with the guys that you went through military with, because that shared struggle created connection. Same thing for relationships. So the world that we live in teaching you and training you and patterning you to just hit the eject button as soon as the thing gets hard, whatever it is, it's setting you up for failure in your entire life.

11:01 - Chase (Host) Another part of your work is this concept of the wealth score the visual in your entire life. Another part of your work is this concept of the wealth score. The visual in your book shows it as five equal quadrants, but is that always the case? Are we supposed to work towards balancing all five, or how do we know when one needs to give more than the?

11:15 - Sahil (Guest) other. This idea in life of seasons has really been something that has been empowering for both myself and my wife on our journey. That idea is basically to say that your life has different seasons. You have periods where you are going to be naturally focusing or prioritizing on different things, and that's okay, that's actually great, like in your 20s and 30s, that is going to be a financial wealth building season of your life. It's a great time to really lean into building this foundation that you can compound off of for the rest of your life.

11:48 As your kids are young, you may transition into a season of social wealth where you really want to lean into that relationship, that period of time when you're so important to their life. So the point is these different things are going to have seasons when you are really focused on them, where they are the primary priority. But what really can't get lost in that is you're typically told that these areas of your life exist on on-off switches. People tell you like oh, there's the four burners theory is called like. It's like what's that, this idea that there are four areas of your life? It's like family, friends, work and health, or something like that Fitness and finance, yeah.

12:30 And that you can only have one on at once. Maybe you can have two on dim, but two have to be turned off. And I fundamentally reject that idea because it ignores the fact that really all of these areas in your life exist on a dimmer switch and when you have one turned way up, you don't have to turn off the other ones, they can be turned down. You can still do the like high leverage, very low time intensity things to keep the ball moving forward. Because in life, anything above zero compounds. So we know that with financial wealth, like you know, investing $10 today is better than zero.

13:06 And because it's going to compound in my life, the same principle applies to all of these areas your relationships. You don't have to shut off your relationships. You can do something as small as sending a text to the person that you're thinking about. That compounds positively in your life in the same way that the financial investment does. So even while you are prioritizing financial wealth building, say in your 20s and 30s, you can still keep the ball moving forward on your physical health, on your mental health, on your relationships, on all of these other areas of your life. You don't have to turn them off or buy into that false dichotomy, that false narrative that's created.

13:42 - Chase (Host) That kind goes against uh popular belief in some some uh schools right now. You know the gotta go monk mode, go ghost mode, you know, flip the switch, you know, just head down lights off and just work, work, work, work, work for a period of time, pretty long period of time, you know, so that you can come out. You know your strongest self, your wealthiest self, you got to turn down the dimmers on every other area and every other person. So what would you say to that person that is leaning towards the monk mode, the ghost mode? How can you really get them to believe in this dimmer philosophy if they're already kind of buying into another popular one?

14:21 - Sahil (Guest) Two things turn it down, not off. So zero compounds negatively, Like in your life. If you turn these things off, it is going to be actually atrophying, which is the thing you need to avoid, because if you let that happen, it will literally zero you out in these areas. If you don't invest in your relationships at all, you won't have relationships. Those people will not be there for you later in life If you haven't shown up in any way for them. Same thing with your physical health. It's very hard to reverse a massive atrophy in your physical health at age 50. If you just move your body for 30 minutes a day, you'll be fine at age 50. You don't have to like do the maximum amount of working out and things all along the way, just do the minimum, and so that's important. Turn it down, not off.

15:03 The second thing is monk mode. Just as a thing. It's much trendier to say, much harder to do. Everyone that like tweets oh, going monk mode, whatever I'm like, okay, you're not going monk mode because you's the trendy dopamine hit that they're getting from being like, oh, I went into monk mode, or they do the YouTube video. Being like I'm going monk mode, that's, by definition, not monk mode, doing the YouTube video. So I think there's a lot of these things where people do it for more of the like, social status flex than for the reality of it. People that are actually going and doing the monk mode are not talking about it, they're just locking in.

15:48 The last thing I'll say on that is that really does align well with the concept of seasons. You can have a season of unbalance as long as you know that you were trying to build towards the seasons of balance, and that's okay. That's actually a natural part of your progression. I actually, right now, am in a season of unbalance. I don't like traveling and being gone from my two and a half year old, from my wife. I like being at home, I like my routines, but I'm in a season of unbalance because I'm focused on spreading these ideas, sharing this with the world, and I know that I can lean into that, that I can be okay with that, with the knowledge that seasons of balance are to come. With that, with the knowledge that seasons of balance are to come, and so that idea of balance being more about macro than micro is a really important one.

16:31 It's okay to be unbalanced in the micro, as long as you acknowledge that you're trying to, on a zoomed out macro basis. Get back to that point.

16:39 - Chase (Host) That's super important. I want anybody, anybody and everybody to go back and hear that again, especially if you're going through any season in your life where you feel burnout, where you feel like, am I dropping the ball with my friends? Am I dropping the ball in any other area of my life? Just go back, listen to that and get very granular with the parameters. If you don't have any, then here's your opportunity to put them on, because it could just be for right now, not forever.

17:06 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, totally, and I think that that knowledge is really empowering. No matter where you are, you are not constrained or stuck in this current season for the rest of your life. There are going to be future seasons, big changes that come positive and negative and you're going to have to ride that wave. I have this thing in the book of this idea of the surfer mentality, the idea that when a surfer gets up on a wave, they enjoy the present moment even though they have the knowledge that the wave is eventually going to end and maybe crash down on top of them. They're able to actually just live in that present moment and enjoy the wave for what it provides, with the knowledge that there are always more waves coming. We all sort of need to adopt that mentality when it comes to the seasons, the waves of our own life, that ability to enjoy the present wave with the knowledge that there are always going to be more waves coming.

17:55 - Chase (Host) Gentlemen, quick break from my conversation with Sahil because I got to bring something to your attention that was instrumental in my fertility journey. To me and my wife getting pregnant. Guys, when it comes to your family planning, your health plays a crucial role, but did you know that assessing your sperm health is essential for understanding your fertility? Look, I get it. You're probably, if you're listening to this podcast, you're doing all the right things or you're on the path to doing all the right things for your health and wellness goals. You're active. You're prioritizing sleep, hydration, good quality food amazing, great, keep it going. But one of the areas that a lot of guys overlook in understanding all components of their health, and especially if building a family now or down the road is on your radar. We got to get that snapshot. We need to understand our sperm health, introducing today's partner, legacy, a modern solution for evaluating and even improving male fertility. I've used them twice in our journey to get this snapshot, to look at my sperm health, to get this incredible in-depth analysis and just understand where I stand and know that I'm doing everything I can to support us getting pregnant. Surprise, it worked. We're about to welcome our firstborn son into the world any day now.

19:06 With Legacy, you get a comprehensive semen analysis. This is going to help you understand key metrics like sperm count, motility and morphology. You even get a DNA fragmentation testing. This helps assess the integrity of your sperm DNA. This is a critical factor in successful conception. You're going can even get personalized recommendations. You receive guidance on lifestyle changes and maybe some supplementation to enhance your fertility that might benefit you. You collect your sample discreetly at home, send it into Legacy's state-of-the-art lab for analysis and even if having children right now is not on your radar or not something you want to act on, they can hold it for you. They can freeze it for a year, five years, ten years. If you've got a great sperm count now, let's not lose it. So take charge of your reproductive health. It has never been easier. Simply visit testlegacycom slash everforward. That's T-E-S-T-L-E-G-A-C-Y dot com. Slash everforward and use code everforward at checkout to get a discount on their at-home male fertility test kit. Learn more about your reproductive health and take the first step toward understanding your fertility today. Again, that's testlegacycom. Slash ever forward. Code ever forward at checkout.

20:21 This episode is also brought to you by our new partners over at QuickBooks, calling all entrepreneurs and small business owners. I know you're juggling countless tasks to keep your ventures thriving. I've been there. Hell, I am there still. Managing accounting, bookkeeping and taxes shouldn't add to your stress. That's where QuickBooks comes in, a comprehensive solution designed to simplify your financial management.

20:45 This has been a game changer for me when it comes to my accounting, payroll taxes, you name it. If it comes to numbers in and numbers out of my business, quickbooks has helped immensely over the years. With QuickBooks, you can track income and expenses, invoice and payments, tax deductions, comprehensive reporting and so much, much more. It offers flexible plans tailored to fit businesses of all sizes and industries. So whether you're an LLC, a C Corp, s Corp, sole proprietor, you name it, they have a model, a dashboard and a program that works for you. Personally, I use QuickBooks self-employed for myself, and then I use their big bad mama jam on normal QuickBooks online for my production company. So I have two different businesses, two different QuickBooks that streamline everything for me. So if you're ready to streamline your financial management, get back time valuable time into your day, which equates to your business.

21:39 Check the show notes. I got a very special link for you. You're actually going to be able to get QuickBooks for 30% off for six months. Again, visit the link in the show notes under episode resources to get that exclusive deal for six months and save 30% off. We have a kind of a set amount of them, right? If let's say, statistically speaking average, I think American lives to 80 years old, right? So if we live to 80 years old we have roughly 2.5 billion seconds of life. So by the time you're 30, you're theoretically only going to have about one and a half billion seconds left. So do you think are we spending our time wisely? And then what happens to our mindset and ultimately, the action we take because of that mindset shift when we quantify time very specifically instead of maybe, the usual. One day I'm going to get to this.

22:28 - Sahil (Guest) My grandfather was a very wise man Passed away many years ago, unfortunately, but he always used to say this one very poignant thing, which was later you'll be dead. And I think about that quote so often now, because life is filled with laters. You say I'll spend more time with my kids later, I'll focus on my relationships later, I'll take care of my health later, I'll see my friends more later, I'll have more purpose and freedom later. And the sad thing is that later just becomes another word for never, because those things are not going to exist in the same way later. Your kids are not going to be five years old. Later your friends are not going to be there for you later. If you're not there for them now, your health won't be there later. You won't magically wake up with purpose and freedom later. So you either build those things into your life now or you're going to regret them later Because, as my grandfather said, later you'll be dead.

23:35 And so look that ethos was the center of the whole idea of time wealth being so central to this book the acknowledgement and the awareness that time is your most precious asset, that it is the only thing that really matters in the end and you can't get it back, and young people are the worst about understanding this.

23:51 We tend to. If you were to map out the amount we think about time, you think about it none, until the very end, when it's the only thing you think about, and then it's too late. Maybe you've experienced some loss, something in your life with a relative, with a parent, with someone in your life where you've had that shock moment of like oh my God, mortality. That kind of shines a light onto your path and 99% of people see that light. They nod their head and then they go back living the same damn way they were before. If you can just take some tiny action to live slightly differently, with the awareness of how valuable your time is, your whole life will change. It's just most people won't go and do that. Most people won't take the time to truly think about how precious that time really is and then start walking in a way that is different as a result.

24:45 - Chase (Host) This all kind of falls under your section around memento mori. I'm so glad to see this in your book Again. Love, the St stoic philosophy influence. And it loosely translates to remember you must die. Quite literally it means remember you must die, Just kind of like your grandpa was saying so why does this ancient philosophy hold so much value in our time? Wealth?

25:06 - Sahil (Guest) Appreciating your own mortality. The impermanence of your life makes every moment more beautiful. One of my favorite movies is Troy. It's like kind of a cheesy war movie about Trojan War and there's this scene where Achilles is talking and he says that the fact that we are mortal makes the gods envy us, because everything is more beautiful because we are mortal, that we will never be more beautiful than we are now. And I think about that so often, that the most beautiful things in life are beautiful because they are impermanent. It's like the sunset. You appreciate the sunset because it is impermanent. You can't always just stare at it.

25:48 No, exactly. I mean you're like these moments with your children. I have a young child. I know you're soon expecting.

25:55 Those early moments with your kid are beautiful because they are impermanent. So appreciating them in those moments, understanding just how fleeting they are, is the way to experience more gratitude, to actually center yourself on where you are today rather than get into that trap of constantly thinking about the next later right. We in modern society especially and ambitious people are the worst at this. We always make our happiness contingent, we make it conditional on achieving something. So we say, well, I'll be happy when I make X million dollars, or I'll be happy when I get that promotion, or I'll be happy when I get that degree, or when I get my own house or whatever the thing is. You're constantly placing your happiness at some destination that is out in the future, and if you keep doing that, you will never get there and you'll be dead. You literally will not. You will have made your happiness conditional all the way along the journey and then you won't ever get there.

26:52 And that is really what memento mori to me is so powerful around. It's embracing the present, appreciating the present, and the ancients understood this. They had chronos, which is the idea of quantitative, linear time, normal time. And then they had kairos, which was the idea that not all time is created equal. It was that there were certain moments or certain windows that had more importance, that had more texture and meaning, and that concept is central to how I live my life, because it's the understanding that a unit of energy deployed into certain moments of time has more impact. It's like watching Lionel Messi play soccer he walks around the field, the whole match doesn't do anything, Everyone's like he's lazy, and then, right in the right moment, he strikes at full force and energy, at the perfect angle and the perfect time. That is Kairos time. That is how we all need to live our lives. Obviously, we're not on a soccer field, but it's that.

27:56 - Chase (Host) That is what we want to do. I'll keep the soccer train rolling. You know you watched Ted Lasso just be a goldfish right.

28:01 - Sahil (Guest) I've watched him.

28:01 - Chase (Host) Yeah, Be a goldfish. Yeah, Different time concept. In your time wealth section you have these kind of three pillars of awareness, attention and control. What do you mean by them and how did you land on those three?

28:14 - Sahil (Guest) So in each section I have this idea of the kind of three pillars that contribute to that type of wealth With time wealth. The reason time wealth comes first, by the way, in the book, is because time is what unlocks all of these other types of wealth. Time wealth is fundamentally about having the freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, when you trade it for these other things, and it is unlocked across those three pillars. So you think about the first pillar awareness. That is about understanding how precious time is. It's memento mori, it's what we just talked about.

28:46 You cannot do anything until you acknowledge that time is the most precious, fleeting thing. The next layer of it is attention, which is sort of playing off that Lionel Messi example, which is to say that your results in life follow your attention, your ability to direct attention into those kairos moments, into those opportunities that have more potential upside. They're asymmetric. It's going to govern your outcomes in life. If you can put all of your energy, concentrated attention, into the few things that really matter, you're going to achieve the 10,000,000x outcomes that change your life. With those two comes control, which is the world where you are actually in control of deciding how to allocate your time. You can pick and choose. You become a time creator rather than a time taker.

29:38 - Chase (Host) Speaking of time, time spent alone continues to trend up as we age. You talk about this in the book and earlier, talking about we don't really always have this concept of time until we age. Talking about we don't really always have this concept of time until we age, which is kind of this conundrum in and of itself. What do you think are the best one to two habits that anyone right now can adopt or develop to become better friends with ourselves and therefore develop more time wealth as we age?

30:02 - Sahil (Guest) Number one would be learning to be bored, and the actual habit here is a 15 minute daily walk without any technology on you. We've become so productivity obsessed and you know we think that idle time is laziness and so we walk through our lives. You know we go for a walk and listen to a podcast on 2x speed and look, we're on a podcast. Don't listen to this podcast on that walk. Um, you know, you go for a drive and you're like if I'm not listening to an audiobook at 2x speed, I'm unproductive, I'm not learning, I'm not growing.

30:41 The reality, if you actually zoom out, is that you have your best, most creative ideas and moments in the shower and while driving the car in silence. The reason is because there's no stimulus. For the first time in your entire day, you have nothing coming in and so, as a result, you're able to think, you have a bigger picture perspective on the world. That's the reason that you have the best ideas in the shower. You need to create more of that space in your life. That is a very powerful habit that you can get from just going on the daily walk and walking by the way, scientifically, probably the single greatest habit you can build oh my God, scientifically, uh mental health, fat loss, I mean connection with nature.

31:23 Stanford Um, there was a Stanford study that found that walking improved creative thinking by 60 to 70%. So people during and after their walks saw an improvement in their creative problem solving and their creative ideation Massive. Um, it also improves relationships If you're if you're walking alongside someone. Uh, feelings of connection are improved when you walk next to someone. The gate, something about how your gates align during it. So if you need to have a hard conversation with someone, go do it on a walk really a much better way of doing it.

31:53 - Chase (Host) Um, that's why the military had us march in cadence with each other all the time.

31:57 - Sahil (Guest) It's an interesting idea actually I wonder if create connection what?

32:00 - Chase (Host) if there's any psychology behind that. I'm sure there isn't just control and order other than control and order.

32:04 - Sahil (Guest) I'm sure there's some, but that would be. Number one is like every morning, just go for a 15 minute walk with no technology. I guarantee you will feel like a different level of of um, of peace and space. The other one is don't run away from solitude. I think it was um Blaise Pascal that said all of man's problems stem from his inability to sit in a room alone. And that is very true. You think about, like in your daily life, how often are you just bored? We are so afraid of being bored. I mean we go to the toilet and we bring our phone because we're afraid of like a minute, two minutes, five minutes, whatever, of just nothing, no stimulus. And look, I'm just as guilty of doing that, and I get it. But so much of our lives is about stimulus and response, and the more that you can create a little bit of space. Viktor Frankl says that our power exists in the space that we can create between stimulus and response, and that is very true. Your life begins to change when you are able to create that space.

33:04 - Chase (Host) I have this little cue with myself, a little game that I play with myself when I'm out in public and anytime that I see anyone else on their phone, I've now kind of conditioned myself to make sure that I'm not on my phone. So if I'm standing in line and getting a coffee or a smoothie or if I see anyone on my phone, it's now a trigger for me to like put it away and detach, and it's definitely helped a lot because now I catch myself not having my phone. So I'm like getting even better and better at detaching more and more in any downtime.

33:33 - Sahil (Guest) That'll be a really good habit for you too, with the little one. I think that one of the most challenging things for us too like you know, a lot of your work is social media.

33:43 It's on your phone, you interact a lot on your phone is like creating that compartmentalization where you're able to shut it off during family time. Uh, and kids pick up on you being on your phone and, like I catch myself sometimes and I have to make sure that my my rule of thumb is to try to never have my phone in between me and my son, so if he's trying to play I can't have my phone in front of in between me and him. I'm not always great about it, but I try to be better about it and they pick up on it and you can tell like they understand and they're starting to understand the distraction that it creates and the impact that it has on your relationship. And so I think the more and more we can disconnect and just pause on all of our like constant stimulus that comes from having these phones in our pocket, the better.

34:32 - Chase (Host) Absolutely, and, you know, the more we can detach and take our time back, we can maybe allocate time to other places and people, which leads me to our other section I want to hone in on, and that's social wealth, social hacks, particularly that you share social hacks I wish I knew at age 22. I got a couple and want to have you just kind of like dive deeper on them for us. Quote say exactly what you mean.

34:57 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, no one is a mind reader. Um, we, because we live in our own heads and because we are player one in our own video game, we assume that everyone else has the same level of knowledge about what we are thinking as they do. This leads to so many challenges in relationships, because when you assume the other person is on the same wavelength as you, even though there's no basis for that, you operate differently and you interact with them differently. And this applies to professional relationships just as much as personal ones. Like if you are going to make the assumption that the other person already knows what you meant by what you were saying, if you didn't communicate it clearly, it leads to a really fast deterioration of that connection. So just assume that no one can read your mind and say exactly what you mean.

35:48 Don't make people read between the lines on all those things and, in line with that, never avoid a hard conversation. When you avoid a hard conversation, you are taking on a debt and that debt has to be repaid with interest at a date in the future. That's so good. I mean. Time does not heal anything when it comes to relationships. It just gets worse. So you either make the minor repairs now with the hard conversation, or you're going to face a major repair later on.

36:16 - Chase (Host) I love that debt aspect. That's such a great analogy.

36:19 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, it's very true, man. I mean, I've been bad about this my whole life. I've always been big on conflict avoidance. I always wanted like I sort of lament it now, but for my whole life I really wanted to be liked. That was my thing. I was like I want to be liked, and if you want to be liked you go along with everything. You sort of like go with the winds left and right you don't set boundaries.

36:47 You say yes to everything. You never rock the boat. You um, you know you're easy. You're just like you're kind of easy and everyone will like you if you do that. But the real goal is to be loved by a few people, and the people that really love you like the real ones.

37:06 They'll love you when you do the opposite of all those things, when you set boundaries when you have hard conversations, when you, you know, are clear about the things that you want, and so that transition, I think, is one of growing up a little bit of like I don't need to be liked by everyone, I just want to be loved by the people that really know me so true, man, so true, I got another one for you Ready.

37:27 - Chase (Host) Another social hack that I wish I knew at age 22,. Quote never keep score in life. Why is that important?

37:35 - Sahil (Guest) We live in a transactional era. Unfortunately. Everyone's big on networking. Now everyone's big on coming with the handout. Hey, I'm like, I'm looking for something from you, and you have to be on guard all the time with people as a result, especially in big cities. You're in New York, you're in LA. Every time you meet someone, they seem all genuine, and then all of a sudden, there's this ask oh, can you have me on the podcast? Can I do this? Can you do that?

38:13 That is a terrible way to live life. Quid pro quo life is an ugly, really miserable existence. The best way to live is to give generously, with no expectation of return, and if you live that way, oddly enough, you end up getting the best returns. And so it's one of those funny truths that the people that you meet that are constantly keeping score that are like hey, I got you that thing once and now you owe me one. You just want to separate yourself from anyone that lives and operates that way. Anyone that has that mental model for life is probably not someone that you want to associate with for the longterm.

38:40 - Chase (Host) So true, so true, man. Give a stranger a compliment every single day. And this one I latched onto because I do it all the time and it drives my wife crazy. She's like can we just order a coffee and get the hell out of here? Give a stranger a compliment every single day. Don't use it as a conversation starter. Say it and continue on.

38:57 - Sahil (Guest) You have within you the power to change the world, and what I mean by that is if you say a nice thing to someone out of the blue, tell them they like their shirt, say you like their hat, like your smile, whatever. Whatever the thing is, think about the way that that person interacts with the world for the rest of the day. They stand up a little bit straighter, they're a little happier, they engage a little bit better with everyone they interact with At work, they show up at home, they're nicer to their kids. They're nicer to their kids, they're nicer to their partner. Their entire day has changed.

39:32 From you taking one second to say something unsolicited, out of the blue to them that was nice about them. If you do that and then they go, do that and then the next person goes and does that, you create this ripple chain reaction in the world through taking two seconds out of your day that cost you absolutely nothing, totally free. That can change the world. If 100 million people tomorrow decided that they were going to do something like that, I legitimately think the world would be changed because everyone would carry themselves a little bit better. You'd be a little happier, you would feel good. You know how it feels when someone gives you a compliment.

40:04 - Chase (Host) It's amazing.

40:05 - Sahil (Guest) If you have a new shirt on, someone comes up to you on the street is like, hey, I really like your shirt and then just keeps walking.

40:10 - Chase (Host) They're not trying to hit on you.

40:11 - Sahil (Guest) They're not doing something they just say the nice thing. Think about the impact that has.

40:14 - Chase (Host) It's crazy um and also, on the other end, create that. Don't take it as as that. You know, maybe you've been on the receiving end of that compliment. Oh man, god, this guy was totally hitting on me. This girl was totally hitting on me. Why can't it just be? Yeah, wow, what a nice thing.

40:30 - Sahil (Guest) And we both move on with our day yeah, I mean like someone, um I, I forget I was like having a bad day and, um, I was in the airport and I had gotten like a new hat or something and I was just like walking around. I was really annoyed about something and some guy that was walking the other direction was like hey man, I really like your hat and literally like it turned my day around and it was stupid. Like it was a dumb thing. It wasn't like some super important hat to me, but my whole day for like a little while was fundamentally changed by this guy taking two seconds while he was walking through the airport to just say that. So obviously don't do it disingenuously, but if you think something like that, just tell the person and continue on your way. You don't have to make it weird by like then lingering and trying to talk to them. Just continue and move on. It really does create this ripple effect.

41:21 - Chase (Host) That's very cool and it reminds you that you have a lot more power than you think. I'll even say this with strangers, yes, amazing. But especially to your immediate relationships, just remembering to, to your spouse, your partner, your brother, anybody that is regularly in your life, your team, just giving them a compliment, pointing one thing out, I mean, and that's your immediate circle. So imagine sending a ripple, a positive ripple, out into the world. But what if you could do a ripple and it just like it, stays in your, it's like an echo chamber. It's just going to come back to you quite literally, better and more frequently and have a deeper impact on your immediate life.

42:02 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, I mean another one on that list is if you think something nice about someone, let them know, and it it's very true. And look, I think, um, the single best piece of advice I got for um, parenting has nothing to do with being a parent. It has everything to do with being a partner, which is, tell your partner one thing you appreciate about them every single day, and I'm going to hold you to this.

42:26 I'm going to follow up and make sure because the thing that happens after you have a kid, especially with your wife, with your partner, is a lot of changes in their body and how they feel and their hormones and all of the different things in your life.

42:40 And suddenly you have this thing baby, that is your single point of focus for both of you. In your lives, you stop remembering to vocalize appreciation to the other person for the little things that you do appreciate. You won't think to say it, and lack of appreciation is where relationships go to die. And so if you know that you can avoid that fate, you can avoid that death of your relationship by just vocalizing the tiny thing that you appreciated about them every single day. I mean for me, seeing my wife and the way that she cared, how much she loved our son it was the most beautiful thing in the world. But I need to take the time to say that because if I don't say it, she'll never know that I'm feeling it or experiencing it in my mind. Vocalizing that appreciation is how you make sure that your marriage continues to thrive and it's how you avoid what is the craziest statistic I've come across, which is that 80% of married couples say that their relationship got worse in the year after having a kid.

43:38 - Chase (Host) 80% of the relationship got worse.

43:40 - Sahil (Guest) I think it's because you stop focusing on each other. You start having a new thing that you're both focusing on, and previously you were each other's most important person. Now you have a new most important person and you forget to vocalize appreciation, to build your bond and connection in the face of this new entrant to your life.

43:59 - Chase (Host) I appreciate you, baby. I love you.

44:01 - Sahil (Guest) I'll comment every day, I promise you have to, I'm going to hold you to it now. Now I'm going to text you and be like dude, dude accountability?

44:06 - Chase (Host) my man, absolutely. So you know you've got all these areas of uh, of wealth that we talk about and you guys want to learn more. You got to check out the book. I'm gonna have all the information listed in the show notes. But we all it comes to a head right Of actual wealth, the more common wealth, financial and you kind of give us this history lesson about financial wealth and this aspect of currency and money. I thought that was so unique and caught me off guard. Why this high level history lesson on the creation of money, coins, paper et cetera? Why is that important to understand when understanding financial wealth, but collectively, these five types? And also how can we create a more abundant financial future by better understanding the history of currency?

44:53 - Sahil (Guest) I think it's a great question. First off, I attempted in each section to provide something of a through line through history to help understand the modern struggle that we have with that type of wealth, and I believe in looking at history as a way to understand where we are today. So to think about okay, have humans struggled with this throughout history? And now it winds us to this new and unique modern struggle that we experience. And it's interesting because money and financial wealth is one area where the modern struggle is very unique relative to what our forefathers experienced. The reason for that is that the very nature of money has changed. In the earliest versions of civilization and throughout history, money was very tangible. It was like there was actual thing that you would hold and the other person would have something you wanted and you would exchange hands and there was a physical thing. The earliest days of the stock market, there was a physical stock certificate that you would get.

45:52 You would actually get an ownership stake in the company and it was very physical. Now, as you think about the modern era, money is just beeps and boops right, Like it's literally ones and zeros on a screen.

46:03 - Chase (Host) Numbers on a screen.

46:04 - Sahil (Guest) And it is based on trust. It is based on the belief that the number on the screen is right and that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and the number is still going to be there, it's not going to have changed to zero, it's not going to have changed to 10 times that, and that everyone in the system is going to continue to believe in that, that some terrorist in the middle of the Middle East has the same exact belief in the American currency system existing as we do. And for the world to continue operating, that belief and that trust has to exist In that modern era, because of the fact that it all exists on screens and it's sort of fake in some way, shape or form. Yeah, all variety of crazy financial things have been created.

46:44 We've created this financial amusement park, as I call it, where you're walking through the amusement park and the whole time there's people yelling at you about how amazing their ride is and how amazing their game is and how you should come and play it. It's like you're walking through and there's the roller coaster over here and there's this ride over here and there's this game and it's all the craziest things, and they're trying to get you to buy into whatever that is, when the reality is that the same boring basics that applied 50 years ago are the best path to generating financial wealth. All of those games, all of those things you don't need to play any of them and you don't need to try to do things faster than anyone else. You don't need to worry about what anyone else is doing. You can just play your simple game and build a life of financial abundance.

47:31 - Chase (Host) That's not trendy. That's not sexy. That's not a cool app.

47:34 - Sahil (Guest) It's the opposite and that's why it doesn't stand out, because all of these areas, the biggest struggle, frankly, is that in the social media age, the thing that sells the in. If I show up at that party and I'm standing in the circle with you and I say, well, I, you know, I buy a Vanguard index fund every month, people are pretty quickly going to lose interest in me and they want to talk to you. The guy that's doing the crypto, double arbitrage, hedge fund strategy, whatever that is, I made my own coin.

48:18 - Chase (Host) Yeah, I made Trump coin and I made whatever.

48:21 - Sahil (Guest) That is what they're going to want to talk to, because it sounds complex, it sounds sexy. Smart people in particular are attracted to complex solutions because they make you sound interesting, so we get attracted to them. But the truth is that the boring basics are actually what consistently work for people. There's a reason they've persisted for as long as they have. Because they work. They kind of have the Lindy effect benefit, and so the whole game is just avoiding stupidity in the long run.

48:49 Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett used to say this like we're not smarter than other people, we're just better at not being stupid. And over and over again that plays out in these areas of your life. Like it's not about the flashes of brilliance, it's about avoiding the dumb, unforced errors along the way. And you hear about the dramatic success stories of the person who like, oh, I put money into this whatever coin and it did this and I made all this money. You don't hear about the person who put their life savings into it and lost it all. You don't hear about all the people that have lost money. Or the people that have made money and then gone to jail for tax fraud because they didn't realize that it was like a taxable gain or whatever the thing was. So, really, the path to financial wealth is built around these three pretty simple pillars, which is like grow your income and you do that by building skills and then leveraging those skills. Manage your expenses so that they don't grow as fast as your income. That creates a gap between your cash inflows and your cash outflows. Invest that gap into things that are going to compound for the next 30 to 50 years.

49:54 Personally, I invest in things that I never intend to sell, so that means that I'm not doing the like trading in and out of stuff. I don't have the time or headspace to think about that. I want to. If I'm going to invest in things, I either want it to be something I have full control of companies that I own, things that I'm doing or I want it to be in super safe, boring basic things like a Vanguard index fund that I don't have to worry about it. I'm basically giving my money to, like Tim Cook and a bunch of other uh, you know executives of enormous companies who I trust that they're going to continue to try to grow their earnings of their businesses.

50:27 Um, that's how I operate. I think the boring basics allow you to then focus on what's the most important, which is growing your skills to build your income. Um, people lose sight of that a lot, especially young people I talk to that have let's give an example like you're making $100,000 a year and you have $100,000 of investable assets. They spend all this time and energy thinking about how to generate a return on the $100,000 of investable assets, to get another 2% or 4% return on it, and they don't think at all about how to just double their income. And doubling your $100,000 salary is an 100% return, while generating an extra 2% to 4%. Here is a 2% to 4% return. So why wouldn't you focus on?

51:13 your income can scale to infinity effectively if you continue to build your skills and you continue to create value. Focus there. That's the path to generating a lot of money. Very few people have ever truly financial arbitraged their way to making a boatload of money. Hedge funds all around the world the smartest people in the world are paid millions and millions of dollars to try to outperform the market. Very few outperform the market, so there's not really a good grounded reason to think that you can.

51:41 - Chase (Host) Yeah, is this kind of what you're talking about? The three main pillars in the financial wealth section of income generation, expense management and long term investment?

51:49 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, exactly. And all of this sort of comes down to a few very basic principles which apply to anyone anywhere, from a career standpoint or wherever you are, whether you're building a business or if you're in a nine to five. And the most fundamental financial wealth building principle is money made is a byproduct of value created. There is no way around that. You get paid on the basis of the amount of value that you create. The richest people in you create the richest people in the world. The reason they're so rich is because they've created immense value for other people and they've captured a small amount of that. So if that's the case, the only real things that you need to think about if you're trying to make money are basically three things it's identify problems, it's create solutions and then it's scale those solutions. The more scalable the solution, the more money you will make, because the more value you will create.

52:45 So if I were trying to go make a whole bunch of money, the first thing I would do take a sheet of paper, walk through a full week of your life with a blank piece of paper in front of you and just write down every problem you encounter, just like don't try to solve them yet Just write down every problem you come across, whether it's your bosses that have problems, your colleagues, your customers of your business, things that you experience as a consumer that are problems, whatever it is. Just map out all the problems you observe. Then you can think about okay, are there any of those that I can help create a solution to? If I'm working a nine to five, that's a great way to get ahead. Is if I'm the type of person that identifies problems that my bosses or the customers have and I've created some solutions. Now you're a top 10% performer at your company.

53:27 - Chase (Host) If you just do that, you're creating immense value.

53:30 - Sahil (Guest) And like, if you're at a company and you're trying to rise up, if you are just in the top 10%, you will make a lot of money, I guarantee it. But very few people are willing to do the work to get there, are willing to do this extra effort. The reality is, like, your salary, your thing that you are currently paid, your compensation is for your job description and if you just do your job description, you'll probably get your like annual inflation pay raise, but nothing else. So if you want to get the step function, improvement, the big leap, the thing that like takes you to the next level, you have to be willing to do more. This is a path to doing more. Go, identify some problems that people are experiencing, come up with a solution and bring those to the table. You may not get paid for it right away, but you eventually will. And people that you a lot of people get held back by the idea that, like well, I'm not, they're not valuing these things that I'm bringing to the table. You eventually will get paid for those things.

54:28 - Chase (Host) It'll even out in the long run.

54:30 - Sahil (Guest) There are going to be times when you're underpaid. There are gonna be times when you're overpaid, but it evens out over the long run.

54:34 - Chase (Host) And if you're not, then you're not solving a big enough problem or you're significantly undervaluing the problem that you are solving.

54:40 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, and if you just keep doing it you can't hide that kind of energy and talent for very long. Someone will poach you. Well said, You'll get some opportunity. Someone will pull you elsewhere. It goes back to what we said at the very beginning, which is like these opportunities are invisible and they are revealed through action. You take the action and you don't know how it's, it's um, it's engineered luck. Like you are increasing your luck surface area by working really hard at the thing.

55:10 - Chase (Host) What do they say? The harder you work, the luckier you get.

55:13 - Sahil (Guest) It's a hundred percent true. You are one year of focus away from everyone calling you lucky.

55:19 - Chase (Host) Yeah, oh man. That's the clip right there, baby. All right, so I want to shift into the personal aspect of wealth. What mindset around wealth do you think you acquired from your immigrant mother that you have the healthiest relationship with, and what aspect did you have to renegotiate the most?

55:45 - Sahil (Guest) My parents' relationship and the fact that they created a house of love for my sister and I as a form of wealth generational wealth really is what I'm most grateful for. I always, every single night, I would come home and we'd all have dinner together at the dinner table and that is a form of privilege that is very hard to put a price tag on. I mean, I had one of my best friends was crazy rich, Like his dad, was, I don't know, in finance, made tons and tons of money, and I would hang out with him in the afternoons and he mansions, private jets, all the. He had all the stuff. I was always so jealous and envious and we would hang out and I would leave and he would have, like this private chef, prepared dinner by himself in front of the TV and I would go home and have a homemade dinner with my parents and sister all around the table and I never questioned the fact that like he was rich and I wasn't In my mind. I was like he's the rich one. I'm not Now thinking about it, I'm like I was rich.

56:49 I was the rich one for the fact that I had that house that my parents had created, that house filled with love, so that is something that I'm just so grateful for. I feel like my parents really prioritize the right things around that. The thing I had to renegotiate, I would say, um, is just this idea that um and I don't know that this was through my parents actually as much as just culturally that, um, I grew up in a very affluent town, but we were middle-class. My dad's a professor, so we always, we never wanted for anything, we were never struggling, but I grew up around a lot of really, really rich people, and so you know they always say this when it comes to money, that-.

57:32 - Chase (Host) And this was apparent to you while growing up, or just talking about yeah, while growing up.

57:35 - Sahil (Guest) Okay, you know, I always knew like I didn't have the big house, I didn't have all the things. You, yeah, while growing up I always knew I didn't have the big house, I didn't have all the things. My friend had a private jet, all of these things that these other people had. They often say this that financial wealth is a very relative thing when it comes to happiness. People are much happier being above average, even if they have less money, than the person that is below average in a rich neighborhood.

57:57 So like I think that, based on that situation that I grew up around, I had in my mind created this pattern that like, okay, make a ton of money and that'll make me really happy. Like I'll have all these things, all this stuff that all these people had and that took me 30 years to break through. Like I was doing that conditional happiness thing that I talked about earlier, saying when I get X, then I'll be happy. I did that for many, many years and saw a lot of other areas of my life really start to suffer before I recognized that it was a trap, that it was a lie.

58:37 - Chase (Host) Which of your five types of wealth do you think your son, roman, already has the strongest relationship with? Oh, um, probably. I can caveat that by saying probably, based on you and your wife's model, the behaviors you all are implementing he, um, my son already has abundant social wealth because he is surrounded by love.

59:00 - Sahil (Guest) I mean, I as a father, I think the the single most important thing is having the feeling that if you dropped dead, that your child would be okay. They'd be good. Wow, and I am so confident in that fact, like my. If I died tomorrow, my son would have an amazing life because he has the most incredible loving mother who cares about him more than anything in the world. He has my, my parents, he has my wife's parents, all of the aunts, uncles, like. He's surrounded by love, and there's not much more you can ask for as a kid than just feeling like you're surrounded by love and support. That was why we moved back to the East Coast was to have that, so that he could grow up in an environment where he was surrounded by love, and I'm just so grateful for that fact. Like just as a man, knowing that and feeling that confidence, I'm obviously extraordinarily grateful to my wife for being that type of mom, but also just to be able to have created this house full of love. That is true wealth to me.

01:00:09 - Chase (Host) I could not agree more. I really resonate a lot with that because growing up we didn't have a lot of financial abundance, but you name it in every other aspect of life, crushing it. I never wanted for anything. I had family, I had grandparents, I had siblings, I had land, I had love in every which way a kid could ever want.

01:00:32 - Sahil (Guest) Yeah, and this is so important, man.

01:00:34 - Chase (Host) It's the most important thing.

01:00:35 - Sahil (Guest) I mean. That's why I feel so strongly about the idea of this book. Also because there are a lot of people out there who, by the traditional definition of success and of wealth, feel like they're not doing well and by this definition, they are crushing it and they're creating abundance in a totally different way. One of my good friends from my college, years after we got done played at Stanford, moved back to his hometown and he wanted to be a gym teacher. He wanted to coach kids and he's a gym teacher at his local high school and he coaches the high school sports teams. And from a traditional definition of wealth and success to have gotten a Stanford degree and then gone and done that.

01:01:19 - Chase (Host) He's not doing great, probably not the most common path, yeah.

01:01:21 - Sahil (Guest) And he's probably making 60 grand a year, 40, 60 grand a year doing these things, not crushing it. But you go look at his life. He is surrounded by people he loves. He has two beautiful children. He has a beautiful marriage. Both sets of parents are right there. They're constantly around their siblings, their nephews, nieces.

01:01:39 He works out all the time. He's outside. He's super fit, he loves being outside and he loves what he does. He loves getting to coach young people and be around these kids and he's free. He works a nine to three job and has tons of free time to spend with his young children and be around. And so it's funny, outside looking, looking in, you say like, oh, he's not doing that great. But you go look at his life. That man is wealthy. Actually, look at him. That man is really wealthy, especially by this definition. And so what I think is we need to measure for the broader picture of our life. That is what this book is about Identify the things that matter to you, measure around those things and then go take action to build your life around them.

01:02:20 - Chase (Host) Do you think money can buy happiness?

01:02:22 - Sahil (Guest) Up to a point. What do you mean? I mean the science on this is pretty clear. At the lower levels of income, money does directly buy happiness because it lowers fundamental burdens and stresses, it reduces them. You can afford food, shelter, basic needs. You can take your first vacation, you can take two vacations, you can take care of the people around you.

01:02:44 There's a very clear correlation up to a point, and that point differs depending on where you live and you know cost of living and different things. So every time people try to apply an average to it and the papers will say 70,000 or 200,000 or whatever. The number is Very hard to say because in LA it's very different than Omaha, nebraska. Very true, but the point, the important point, is that there is a level at which it starts to dip. There's diminishing returns and above that you need these other things. You will find more happiness by having deeper relationships, by being healthier, by having more purpose and meaning. It won't be that money drives this incremental, steady happiness gain and the problem which science has shown quite clearly is that the early years when you are having that money-happiness relationship pattern your lizard brain into thinking that that will continue forever and so you continue chasing it even beyond the point where it makes sense.

01:03:45 - Chase (Host) What was one unique area of writing the book? I'm always curious when talking with authors because you clearly you had an intention and a goal going into the book of what you wanted to research and, you know, find out and write about and share. What is one thing that just blew your mind that really surprised you? Maybe it was I really thought this was true and it completely wasn't or something new or exciting that came up in your research.

01:04:06 - Sahil (Guest) The aspect of the book that is deeply human surprised me. I did not intend for this to be such an emotional and human experience focused book. When I first signed the book deal, I thought it would be much more like 200 pages thin. Uh, you know, very classic self-improvement business framework.

01:04:29 - Chase (Host) I said that when you handed it to me, I was like that's a real book man. Yeah, it's a real book, 400 pages.

01:04:34 - Sahil (Guest) And the reason for that is because I ended up getting to tell the stories of these amazing people who have built their wealthy lives or experienced these things in these different ways, and that came to me because I've been sharing over the last few years all of these things about my own life and that sort of acted as magnets out into the world, where these people then came to me with their stories and I got to go sit with them and spend time with them and immerse myself in these real human stories that people will find themselves in when they read the book, which will make the ideas really stick in a much deeper way.

01:05:09 - Chase (Host) So, well said, I think, whatever our endeavors are, the more humanized we can become through them and the more humanized we can make ourselves because of them is going to amplify whatever goal we set out to do.

01:05:24 That's the secret sauce, my friend. That's the secret sauce. This has been incredible, man. I love the book. I love how much I was surprised by the research heavy approach to understanding wealth that I hadn't seen done before and again really drives home that humanization component too. And I could not help but notice that you had some pretty prominent blurbs and book quotes from some people out there, and I want to share a couple and then kind of have a prompt for each one.

01:05:54 So this comes from this little fella speaking of Stanford, andrew Huberman. Maybe you guys have heard of him. You should be listening to this podcast, not his, I'm just kidding. He says an important clarifying force in anyone's search to make the best possible choices for their life and to experience the greatest amount of joy and fulfillment along the way. This book has you ask the critical questions and then helps you answer those questions with time-tested wisdom, data-supported tools. Answer those questions with time tested wisdom, data supported tools he's got to throw the word data in there and a clear framework to implement them. So my question for you then so what's a recent choice that you have had to make and how did you go about creating the greatest amount of joy and fulfillment through it?

01:06:42 - Sahil (Guest) fulfillment through it.

01:06:43 I guess the biggest recent decisions I've had to make have just been around how to think about time with my wife and son, as I was in this sort of period of focus and real grind with this book launch and with all the things that I'm trying to do, and clarity for us, I think, has come through with that idea of sort of micro versus macro balance that has really helped my wife and I navigate this and alignment with her around it has been what's been the clarifying tool.

01:07:17 When you have alignment around these things with the person that you're going to battle with every single day, everything falls into place, and so being able to have that conversation with her to understand like this is going to be a three month period where I am all hands on deck and we're all in this mission together, like my wife and son are a part of all of these things that I'm doing. The dedication page is to them for a reason. We're all on this together and for me to know that on the back end of that, I need to make sure that I show up for her in the way that she needs me to, and it was one of the first things I did was book a trip for the three of us to just be alone. Just the three of us. Totally logged off as soon as this book launch is done.

01:07:59 - Chase (Host) That has really provided that clarity for me. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I've got one more and then we're going to get to the fan favorite last question here. This comes from Mr Gary V Gary Vaynerchuk, and he wrote about your work. This is, quote an eye-opening and deeply important. Sahil has created a clear, actionable guide to design and build your life around key pillars that bring durable, lasting fulfillment. So what are your key pillars that help you create a clear, actionable guide to design and build your life?

01:08:31 - Sahil (Guest) It's really around these building my life and really thinking about these five types of wealth as we make decisions. And the reason that I think the framework is so powerful is that you can measure, you can make decisions and then you can design. So measurement is about understanding the point in time, how you are doing, and then tracking against that as you make changes. That's really important, because what you measure ends up being the thing that you can focus on and improve around Decisions. You can make decisions with the broader picture of your life in mind. So, rather than just focusing on what the money is going to do with a decision, you can think about these other types of wealth and how the decision is going to impact all of them.

01:09:10 So my wife's decision to stop working after our son was born to focus on being a mom, typically under the old way of thinking big, big hit, because financially it's obviously a hit, but it really improves your wealth on some of these other areas, being able to think about the bigger picture when you make these decisions really helps. Then, finally, design looking at the future of your life that you are trying to build and being able to think about how you want to prioritize these different pillars of wealth as you go about that is a really powerful tool for life design. It's why I say it's a transformative guide to design your dream life, to look out and create that future you want.

01:09:50 - Chase (Host) Kind of just inspired me for one more last question. All right, and then we're going to get to the end here Of the five types of wealth that you write about time social, the end here Of the five types of wealth that you write about time social, mental, physical and financial. Which one do you feel like, for you personally, is the hardest for you to bounce back from when others take higher priority? And how do?

01:10:11 - Sahil (Guest) you. Social wealth is the one that I am constantly, constantly battling with, mainly because, um, I am wired to be on, and forcing myself to turn off and be present with the people that I love in front of me is something that I constantly need to remind myself of over and over and over again. And when I get out of whack, it's the first one that I can feel getting out of whack like I'll be with my that. I can feel getting out of whack Like I'll be with my parents, but I'll be stressed about something and I won't be really with them and they call me out on it. And I'm very lucky to have people that are truth tellers in that way that they will call me out on it when I'm not there. My wife definitely will, my parents will, and getting myself back in sync is really important to do quickly.

01:10:57 - Chase (Host) Good. Thank you for sharing that man, all this information, your new work, the book everything's going to be down in the show notes video description box for everybody Before we get out of here. Man ever forward those two words, what do they mean to you? How do you live a life ever forward?

01:11:12 - Sahil (Guest) To me, it's all about generational wealth, and when I say wealth, what I mean is the mindsets, the values, the lessons that I'm going to pass down, not the money. When I think about ever forward, I think about the fact that the actions that I take today are going to be the affirmations that my son has tomorrow.

01:11:37 - Chase (Host) Ooh, that's good, that's good.

01:11:39 - Sahil (Guest) And I want to take actions that I am proud to have him embody in the way that he lives his life. That is ever forward to me because I'm paying it forward to this next generation.

01:11:48 - Chase (Host) Thank you for your interpretation. Like I always say, there's never a wrong or right answer. Yours is yours, so he'll work in my audience. Go to connect with you the most. Learn more about your work.

01:11:59 - Sahil (Guest) I am at Sahil Bloom. On every major platform Book you can find anywhere books are sold. If you have a favorite local bookstore, go support it, pick up a copy there. I can't wait to hear how you think about it, how you take some of the ideas from the book and run with them in your own life. It's a really special thing, thank you for being here.

01:12:19 - Chase (Host) That's um, it's a really special thing. Thank you for being here. That's a wrap. Everybody, make sure uh like, comment, subscribe all the things and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much For more information on everything you just heard. Make sure to check this episode, show notes or head to everforwardradio.com