Wide Wealth

               

Appreciate the more than 40 kinds of wealth that you already have!



Summary: In most people’s minds wealth means money and possessions. But after thinking about it, we realized that everyone has over 40 kinds of wealth. A few examples would be: cherished memories, skills, whatever level of health you have, the beauty of nature, relationships, relationships that can lead to resources.

If people got in touch with all their kinds of wealth, they would 1) be less envious of the rich; 2) more able to resist manipulation such as advertising; 3) more able to appreciate all that they already have; 4) more likely to build on what they have, once they’ve appreciated it; 5) more likely to live in balance when they realize they are deficient in a certain kind of wealth; and 6) more resilient, once they understand that many kinds of wealth can be exchanged or traded, in ways similar to the obvious trading of time for money, or leaning on a friend to get you through a stressful time.

To begin to create an active relationship with the more than 40 kinds of wealth, we developed an exercise:  You create an imaginary mansion, with each room containing one form of wealth. For instance, in one room you would imagine pictures of the most important people in your life. (You would either create the mansion online by cutting and pasting photos of rooms and mansions, or in a binder by cutting out photos of well-decorated rooms that you like and listing your wealth in each room.)

 

This is a recent idea that’s still in development. We're thinking of a half-day workshop in which people begin to build an imaginary mansion for themselves. Or this could turn into a self-help book. Each room in the mansion will contain one of the 40+ forms of wealth that most everyone has.]  For the exercise, they must sketch out or download floor plans. They must either collect pictures of rooms they like, or download them from the Internet. Since 40 rooms is even a lot for a mansion, participants can put some of the rooms on a yacht or private jet (or a tree house, summer home, condo, series of caves, house on the Moon — whatever strikes people’s fancy!) 

The exercise would either result in a kind of scrap book, or a computer file with pictures and notes.

In each room they imagine a) the look of the room  b) a place to sit for themselves  3) the specific form of wide wealth, or some symbol. For instance, in the room for relationships, they could have pictures of people they love.

After building the imaginary home(s), they are encouraged to visit a few rooms of their mansion each day, or at least weekly.

The goals of the exercise are to 1) cultivate an appreciation of what you already have. 2)  Have you take a kind of inventory, that will occasionally inspire to better maintain what you have, or build on it.

Here are the first twenty kinds of wealth:


EXTERNAL

1.  Money

2.  Possessions 

3.  Job or income source. 

4.   People who love you, or care about you.  Friends and loved ones. 

5.  People who you love or think beautiful, even if they don’t love you.

6.  The beauty of the natural world.  The grace or personality of animals.  Flower and plants. Smells.  Tastes.  Color. Your share of the natural world.

7.   Infrastructure.  In certain parts of the world, there are readily available fresh water, sanitary sewer systems and a variety of public services, hospitals, many offered for free or at low cost.  There is also safety from invasion in some parts of the world.

8.  Culture, language, cultural heritage and the arts. Language and culture often provides some of the context for a rich mental life. Public museums.  Art openings and performances.  Free public libraries.

9.  Outer freedoms.  Legal Rights.  Sense of agency and having some control over your life.  (No one has complete control.)  

10.   Role models. (and or bad examples.)   Mentors.   (Borrowed experience!)   Even from historical examples. 

11.   Time in the moment.  Existential time because your body and mind exist in time.

 

 

INTERNAL

*  BODY

12.  Your body.  Gives you the ability to feel pleasure and feelings. 

13.   Health and physical energy, if you are healthy.

14.   Expected time remaining in your life. (A function of your body’s age.)  So you’re in a sense richer if you’re younger.

15.   Good looks or physical assets  (voice, strength)   if you have them. 

16.  Your sexuality. 

 

*  MIND

17.   Knowledge.   Practical Knowledge.  Perspectives (Ways of looking at things.) 

18.    Intelligence if you have it.  An ability to reason, make good judgments, think logically. (Kinds of intelligence).  Solve problems.

19.   Creativity.  Talent.  It’s different than intelligence.  People who are creative can make many things: art, music, inventions, literature, and so forth.

20.  Skills.  Informal know-how and also formal certifications and degrees.  Some skills give you the ability to earn money.

Status: We own the domain names WideWealth.Com and WideWealth.Org.



Plans and Needs: Create a workshop to refine the concept, and then create a video to share the idea. In the future create a cell phone application.


Potential Impacts: Increase happiness and fulfillment in the world by helping people appreciate what they already have. Better preserve the environment by reducing consumption.  (Although reduced consumption might hurt the economy, projects such as Helper's Helper are expected to more than offset any loss of jobs by increasing employment in the nonprofit sector.)