#193: It Is Time To Diversify Your Portfolio Of Wealth.

You already hold numerous forms of wealth. They just don’t show up on your bank statement.

The term wealth is often reduced to financial wealth. Wrongly so as everyone’s personal portfolio of wealth should be as diversified as a properly managed securities portfolio.

Vocabulary defines the word «wealthy» as follows:

The Old English word wela, via the Middle English welth, meaning “happiness and prosperity in abundance,” is the source of our noun wealth. Although the Middle English wele meant “well-being,” the word referred primarily to money and possessions. Many people still feel that way, but Henry David Thoreau offered a different view: “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” That is, true wealth is having whatever means the most to you.

I like the reference to meaning, «whatever means the most to you». That includes far more than money or what you can buy with money. It obviously starts with you, your physical health and fitness, emotional and mental well-being and the extent to which you can decide on your own what you do and when you do that. Your actions drive your contribution to causes that are bigger than you. And since you don’t live in isolation, it is about your relationships with others. All of that gives you meaning and therefore has value, which you can easily account for.

The one mistake we often make in the process of measuring is the usage of a single currency, which often brings us back to monetizing everything and everyone. An alternative measure would be «enough in terms of quantity and/or quality». Pointing to an insufficiency of wealth in one or another area of your life is easier than you think.

I was asked to pick 2 forms of wealth to work on out of a list of 7 during the Mojo Rising course of Do Lectures, which is run by David Hieatt:

1. Physical Wealth.

2. Emotional Wealth.

3. The Wealth of Time.

4. The Wealth of Work/Career/Mission.

5. Financial Wealth.

6. The Wealth of Relationships.

7. The Wealth of Contribution.

It was immediately clear to me where I felt insufficiencies. I have to work on my physical fitness and regain control of my time. Once I will have managed to address those two areas, my portfolio of wealths will again be equally balanced and diversified.

I would recommend to complete this exercise regularly as both personal circumstances and the environment change over time. You also value some forms of wealth differently at the age of 20 than at 40. That is all natural and no reason to be concerned about.

Someone might challenge my balanced view by claiming that everything else is nothing without a minimum financial wealth. Well, doesn’t the same apply to all other forms of wealth? What can you do with all of your money if don’t look after your physical and emotional health? What is the point in investing all of your time and energy into a project without contributing anything?

Not to mention the value of everything else when you are on your own.

Alone.