However, Bloom quickly realized that money didn’t buy happiness. He had the life most people dreamed of—financial stability, professional accolades, and life’s luxuries—but everything that looked good on paper didn’t translate to a fulfilled life. Something was missing, and Bloom sought to find out what that was.
All it took was one conversation for Bloom to alter his life path radically. An old friend pointed out how little time that he had left with his parents—moments Bloom realized were “finite and countable.” With how infrequently he saw his family, he estimated there might have been 15 more times to be with them before they passed.
“In that moment, I had a realization that my entire definition of success, of what it meant to build a wealthy life, was incomplete,” Bloom told Fortune earlier this year. “That the pursuit of the one thing which we all use, which is money, status, [and] fancy things, was a part of building a wealthy life, but it was not the complete picture.”
Within the next month and a half, Bloom said he would leave his job, sell his house in California, and move 3,000 miles across the country to live closer to both of his parents. They were life-altering decisions, but the change taught Bloom that he had the power to change his outlook on leading a wealthy existence. He was redefining what it meant to be successful in ways that other money books and wealth gurus weren’t exploring yet.
“That one action was really the spark behind everything, because in it was a realization that you are actually more in control of your time than you think,” Bloom continued. “Building a wealthy life is about so much more than just accumulating money and things. It is about time. It is about these other aspects of our lives that we have historically just not had a way to measure.”
It may be assumed that billionaires would be the last group of people to pick up a wealth guru’s book, but even those with eye-watering net worths crave ways to redefine their success. Happiness goes deeper than one’s pockets. Bloom first discovered this in his 20s, and finding the right balance between all five types of wealth is key to genuine success.
“What the world is going to tell you to do is to chase money over and over and over again. That is the path that leads to a life where you have a lot of the one thing, but you’ve lost out on everything else,” Bloom said. “You measure your entire life’s worth around this one number. And unfortunately, while it is a part of building a wealthy life, it is not the complete picture.”
