Book Review: The 5 Types of Wealth
Sahil Bloom. 2025. The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. SBloom Advisory Inc. Replica Press Pvt. Ltd.
Annavajhula J C Bose, PhD
Department of Economics (Retd.), SRCC, DU
It is more than 66 years since I came into this world and I do not still know how to live well and how I can be wealthy.
I envy the numerous wellness-coaches such as Simone Denny who ask questions as follows: What lights you up? Is what you are doing in life right now bringing you joy, fulfilment, and satisfaction? Or do you feel stuck, like you’re living groundhog day or that you’re flatlining?
If the answer I give is one of the latter then she tells me that I am not living my true purpose and doing what lights me up.
I envy the confidence of such coaches who project themselves to be hugely passionate about empowering people to live with purpose and create themselves from the inside out; whose expertise lies in helping individuals to create effective mindset strategies, to build resilience and gain clarity and direction; and who have a strong passion for mind-body wellness and teach effective techniques for optimal mental and physical wellbeing. More and more books have been coming from them and they are one way or the other related to moulding oneself and manifesting things for onself by the “Law of Attraction” (Hicks, 2004).
The author of the book taken up here is one of them, and exudes super confidence that he can guide you to designing your dream life. And “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading” (Lao Tzu), on the road to hell (Chris Rea).
There are five types of wealth which are individually important but “it’s the relationships across them—the interplay and prioritization—that are critical in building a comprehensively fulfilling existence”: Time wealth, which is the freedom to choose how to spend your time, whom to spend it with, where to spend it, and when to trade it for something else; Social wealth, which is the connection to others in your personal and professional worlds—the depth and breadth of your connection to those around you; Mental health, which is the connection to a higher-order purpose and meaning that provides motivation and guides your short- and long-term decision making; Physical wealth, which is your health, fitness and vitality; and Financial wealth, which is typically defined as financial assets minus financial liabilities, a figure often referred to as net worth. Success is defined as possession of an ensemble of these five kinds of wealth.
Now, the piece of advice from the author to you is as follows: “Make decisions that consider all five types of wealth. Rather than narrowly focusing on Financial Wealth, evaluate a decision based on its impact on all five types of wealth…Design your dream life within and across the seasons to come.” Money alone does not give happiness, which he realized by the age of 30 itself.
Then, the author tells you that he has got the tools and the information to guide you if and only if you “take a leap of faith” in what he is saying.
This book has come out of the exponentially growing self-care industry, which encompasses a wide range of products and services aimed at promoting well-being and addressing our needs, with a growing emphasis on personalized and holistic approaches. It is a moot question whether they or which of them really can make us cope with capitalism or even thrive under the storm and stress of capitalism.
Sahil Bloom is perhaps ignorant about ‘strength of character’ as the meta-wealth we must have. Which is, in turn, based on six kinds of wealth—shat sampathi—that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar conveys us in the Advanced Meditation Courses he has designed for this world of people suffering from corrosion of character:
1. Shama, which means to have that inner tranquillity of the mind. The word Shanti (peace) comes from the word Shama. This is a very important quality. It is wealth that one should strive to acquire. When the mind is not at peace, your intellect becomes dull and hazy, and you are not able to listen or understand what someone else is saying. To sharpen the intellect, you first need to calm the mind. Suppose you see someone breaking a rule – if you get angry, you are only making yourself miserable. Instead, keep the mind calm and steady. If need be, educate the other person about their mistake. And if they are not willing to understand, then ignore it and move on. You cannot improve someone else by getting angry at them. This ability to keep a calm mind under any kind of circumstances is Shama;
2. Dama, which means having a say over your own senses. Many times, when people travel overnight in a luxury bus or airplane to attend to some important work in the morning, there is a movie being played during the journey. Now, though they want to sleep, they continue watching the movie.A moment comes when they say to themselves, “Oh, I have already seen this movie before. It’s the same rubbish. What is there to watch again?” Yet, the eyes say, “No, I want to watch and see what is happening”. Your eyes do not agree with you. Your intellect says one thing, but your eyes disobey and follow something else. To have Dama means to have a perfect alignment between your mind and your senses;
3. Titiksha, which means forbearance. It means the ability to endure even that which is not of your liking. Now, it is not possible that everything will go as per your liking. If you tend to lose your calm and presence of mind when some things do not happen as per your expectations, then that shows a lack of Titiksha. Having Titiksha means to be patient and to have forbearance. To maintain a balance and be able to bear it when undesired situations arise in life – that is a sign of having Titiksha. Suppose someone is very unpleasant to you. If you lack Titiksha, then it rattles your mind and throws you off balance. With Titiksha, you can move on and keep the balance;
4. Shraddha, which means to adore something that you don’t completely know. You do not fully know it, yet you feel there is something wonderful about it and have a deep interest to know more about it. You do not need to have faith in what you already know. Faith is always in something that you do not know, yet you feel a sense of connectivity to that unknown. Without Shraddha, nothing can move in life. Your doctor tells you to take a certain medicine. You take the medicine because you have faith in the doctor. If you do not have faith in the doctor, you will not touch the medicine. So, our life runs on faith. The city’s electricity board gives you electricity having faith that you will pay the bill at the end of the month. Putting a foot forward before you get the fruit of the action is called Shraddha;
5. Uparati, which means enjoying anything that you do – even if it is a small thing. It means to have a sense of enthusiasm in whatever you do. When there is a lack of Uparati, then there is dejectedness – no interest and no enthusiasm. You do not like doing anything if you lack Uparati. One who does not have enthusiasm cannot create or invent anything new. Uparati means to do everything wholeheartedly, finding joy and taking total interest in it; and
6. Samadhana, which means contentment. This is also a gift – a true wealth. A person who is content exuberates a certain sense of joy from deep within. He exudes certain positive vibrations that everyone else would love to have. A restless person cannot be an inventor. Newton struggled all his life. But when he felt overwhelmed with desperation, when his brain got so tired of thinking and calculating, he sat down to rest below a tree. When he took a moment of rest, the apple fell before him and he discovered Gravity. When you look at every invention on this planet with a keen sense of observation, you will find that it has come when people have gotten over their restlessness, desperation, and dejection. It has happened when they arrived at a point of breakdown, and relaxed. In that moment of total relaxation and contentment, creativity came to them. Contentment is not lethargy. Do not confuse contentment with lethargy. Contentment is creativity, and creativity blossoms in us when there is Samadhana. So, these are the six kinds of wealth. Each one is called a wealth because, like any wealth, some of it comes to us easily in life, while others we must make efforts to acquire. Some wealth must be maintained, otherwise it will disappear.”
Neither the world of economics nor the world of business as they exist as usual can enrich all of us on the above lines. Is one’s enrichment entirely a matter of faith? And to repeat, although the contribution of the self-improvement business in this regard is appealing, it is debatable since almost all people fail to do the balancing act of simultaneously achieving the five kinds of wealth that Sahil Bloom is advocating, leave alone shat sampathi as the ‘asli’ wealth, given the pervasive corrosion of human character over the last three centuries.
References
Esther and Jerry Hicks. 2004. Ask and It is Given. Hay House LLC.
https://hbr.org/2018/08/how-self-care-became-so-much-work
https://www.artofliving.org/in-en/wisdom/reads/the-six-kinds-of-wealth-shat-sampathi
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sennett-character.html
