Cultivating Social Wealth: More Vital Than Your Financial Portfolio

I was listening to the "Diary of a CEO" podcast with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, and I heard an observation that resonated with me: We humans are social beings, and that means we are the caretakers of each other’s nervous systems.

This is both good (we can help each other out when we’re down) and bad (we can drag each other down when we’re good). And it illustrates the undeniable power that human connection plays in our lives.

We’re not meant to live alone.

We’re meant to be in relationships with others.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our relationships is the most significant predictor of our health and happiness later in life.

But how many of us are actively managing our relationships with an eye towards the benefits in our later years?

Regardless of your answer, it’s not hard to see that, as a whole, our society is not placing enough emphasis on teaching us how to create and maintain relationships.

To the contrary, it seems we’re being pushed, en masse, into more solitary interactions taking place between us and our screens.

Need to know what your friends are up to? Don’t call: scroll their feed instead.

Looking for a date? Don’t go out to a bar: scroll and swipe instead.

Want to travel to that country your coworker posted those awesome photos from? Don’t reach out to them: ask ChatGPT to create an itinerary for you instead.

Many things that used to require interacting with another human being can now be solved alone on our screen of choice— phone, iPad, or computer.

And while we’re getting more self-sufficient, we’re losing touch with our fellow humans in the process.

Investing in Social Wealth

When we solve problems on our own, we’re not forming or maintaining connections, and our social wealth suffers as a result.

Why is it that no one ever teaches us to think to invest in relationships the same way we think to invest in stocks or mutual funds?

Just as financial wealth enables us to cope with economic stresses, our social wealth enables us to cope with social stresses.

Scientific experiments show, time and again, that when we do difficult things alongside others, we suffer less. And when we do them with friends, we’re even less impacted by the difficulty of the tasks.

So, at the end of the day, it’s our social wealth that’s going to make our life worth living long after we’ve spent decades making a living.

It’s our social wealth that will fund our feelings of happiness as we age. And our social wealth is something that we cannot accrue in a vacuum. We need others to compound the benefits to our collective health.

So, how many friends—how much social wealth—is enough?

Just as with financial wealth, there’s no one universal answer to the right amount of social wealth to have.

There’s no single answer to the question, “How much money is enough money?” It’s a case-by-case basis, dependent on many variables.

Ultimately, it’s a personal decision as to how much is enough.

And it’s a number we’ve probably thought about many times, especially on the days that work sucks, or the college bills are due, or the water heater breaks.

But have any of us thought about what it means to have enough friends to feel socially wealthy?

Today, you have the chance to ask yourself what your vision of social wealth is.

Do you need a broad network of people you can reach out to?

Or do you just need a small group of close friends that you know you can count on?

Either answer is fine, or even something in between.

It's your personal choice, and how you go about your networking and connecting is really about how it feeds your vision.

No matter what your vision of social wealth is, it’s a safe bet we all want more friends in our lives: the kind of friends that make us feel loved, and seen, and safe.

So how to make these kinds of friends as an adult?

It’s all about finding value alignment.

When you’re out looking for new friends, the key is to find people who are doing the things you like doing, and to actively avoid the people doing things you don’t like to do.

It sounds simple, but it’s not easy, especially if you’ve gotten so busy as a parent, a caregiver, or an employee that you’ve lost touch with those things that make you feel alive.

From the looks of it, lots of us have gotten so distracted and numbed out by the busyness of just making it to the end of the day, we’ve lost touch with what brings us joy.

What is it that makes you feel alive?

As an exercise in tapping into what brings you joy, take a moment to ponder this: If you could take a week away from all your responsibilities, what would you spend time doing?

For me, I feel alive when I’m being active in the outdoors, or when I’m listening to live music. Or gardening. Or cooking. Or riding my bike. I feel valued when I’m performing acts of service that make other people’s lives better.

These activities all align with my values and make me feel alive.

I’m my best self when I do these things.

And I want to attract the kind of people who see me at my best and want to encourage me to stay that way.

These are the kinds of people I want to be friends with, so I find the places people are doing these things and I join them.

So, back to you: what do you value doing more than anything else?

What are your “I feel so alive when I…” activities?

Write them down.

And now that you’ve written them down, go find the value-aligned groups that do all these things you like, too: The running clubs. The book clubs. The church groups. The community bands.

By finding groups that do the kinds of activities and things that resonate with you, you'll enjoy your time, even if you don’t make a single new acquaintance in the group.

Your goal should be to do the thing that makes you feel alive, because when you start to feel alive again you’ll find your joy, and that will attract the right kind of people to you.

Finding your joy again is an added benefit, an uplift, that stays with you, even as you continue searching for new friends.

So is there some Goldilocks-level of connectedness we need to have to consider ourselves socially wealthy? What’s the too-much, not-enough, just-right level?

Well, we know what it feels like to be too detached. Unfortunately, it’s a state I think almost all of us are in these days.

We also know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed trying to keep too many connections going strong.

So, it comes down to our capacity to connect: a capacity that varies for each person, depending on whether you need an extensive, diffuse network or just a few close friends.

The decision is yours to find that level of connectedness that makes you feel loved and not alone.

We’re not aiming for a social wealth level of “not alone.”

We should be aiming much higher than “not alone.”

We should always be striving to find that one more friend, or to be that one more friend for someone else.

That’s the key to our collective social wealth.

So, go find your value-aligned group and start feeling alive again.

These days, the world needs more people feeling alive.

Why not start with you?

What makes you feel most alive? Do you have an experience making friends you think could help others? Just hit reply — your email goes straight to my inbox, and I can include your magic in a future issue. 🙏