Extraordinary People Waste Their Lives Waiting for Approval From People Who Never Notice Them

**Sahil Bloom** (0:00)
There is clear scientific evidence that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50 It wasn't your blood pressure, it wasn't your smoking or drinking habits, your cholesterol levels, it was how you felt about your relationships. It is a form of compensation to live close to the people that you care about. If you are making a whole ton of money, but you're lonely, what's the point? No one dreams of being on a yacht by themselves.

**Tommy Mello** (0:27)
Today I'm with Sahil Bloom. I'll tell you, this is awesome, dude. I'm excited to be here. We are in New York with the best view of the city. It's an honor to have you on. And this is right up my alley because right now I'm doing a lot of business. And some would say I'm a workaholic. And I'm also engaged and that needs to change.
You wrote The 5 Types of Wealth. And that's a framework that redefines success beyond money, which includes time, relationship, health and purpose.
And you studied happy marriages and you're a PE guy. Tell us all about why you're here today in the new life that you created for yourself.

**Sahil Bloom** (1:05)
Yeah, well first off, appreciate you having me. I, you know, the way that I would put it is that I spent really the first 30 years of my life marching down the most traditional path to what we all think of as like a successful life.
I, you know, I often reflect, I was a pretty insecure kid growing up. I, like, grew up in this household. I have an Indian mother and then a Harvard professor father. So you can imagine, like, I was getting academic pressure from all sides of this equation. I have an older sister who's extremely high achieving academically. So from a young age, for whatever reason, I started convincing myself that, like, I wasn't very smart.
I was like, she's the smart one, I have to be something else. And it started creating this insecurity, like this, you know, this little story that you start telling yourself in the back of your head. Like, you're not that capable, you're not that smart. And those little stories that you tell yourself, they start to shape your entire reality. You start living the reality of that little thing that you started saying.
And for me, what that meant and how that manifested was this desire for achievement, like, things, right? It was, how do I get enough pats on the back that one day I wake up and feel good about myself? Like, that I feel like I'm enough? And as a society, the one clear way that you can go out and get those pats on the back is through financial success, through achievement, right? I go take the job out of college. That's the job that sounds good on LinkedIn. Sounds good on the resume. I go take the job in finance. I'm working in private equity. And I, like, basically convinced myself for this seven-year window to start my career that my happiness and success and fulfillment as a person was just on the other side of, like, some bonus or some promotion or some title or something. And for me on that journey, while I was winning in that one very specific battle, I started to see myself losing the much bigger picture of war. I was falling apart in a lot of other areas of my life. I mean, I was living 3,000 miles away from my parents, never seeing them. My wife and I were in the middle of this struggle with infertility. It was like creating strain in our life. I was 50 pounds heavier than you see me today. It's like drinking seven nights a week. All these other areas of my life were falling apart. While on the surface, you would have seen me and said, like, this guy's winning the game. Like, I'm doing the things you're supposed to want to do.
And that whole journey really came to a turning point in May of 2021 I went out for a drink with this old friend and we sat down and he asked how I was doing. And I told him, it started to get difficult living so far away from my parents. They're getting old. It was the first time in my life I had noticed them slowing down. And he asked how old they were and I said mid-60s. He asked how often I saw them and I admitted it was about once a year.
And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die.