Latest / Impact Ready / 200. Social Wealth: Rich in Relationships

Transcript

200. Social Wealth: Rich in Relationships · Impact Ready

• 0:02
  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
• 0:06
  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safra, your host.
• 0:09
  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
• 0:12
  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
• 0:15
  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for Impact.
• 0:22
  Hello, welcome to the Impact Ready podcasts.
• 0:25
  And today we're celebrating 200 episodes, 200 episodes of the
• 0:30
  show, 2 full years of this show. When I dig deeper and I look at
• 0:36
  how many podcasts have had 200 episodes, it's estimated that
• 0:40
  it's under 5% of podcasts that ever reached that number.
• 0:42
  And some estimates would say that it's even closer to 1 to
• 0:45
  3%. So I'm celebrating today because
• 0:49
  I made this commitment to myself two years ago to be having
• 0:51
  consistent conversations about impact and coaching in service
• 0:56
  to all of you, to the people that I love, to community and
• 0:59
  just to start more discussions about something that I think is
• 1:02
  really important. And here we are 200 episodes in,
• 1:06
  two years later, still going strong, feeling good and feeling
• 1:09
  excited about what we're doing here.
• 1:11
  So I just appreciate you. Thank you for sending me
• 1:14
  messages and supporting and leaving reviews and and giving
• 1:17
  it five stars. That helps so much.
• 1:20
  It helps get the conversation in front of new people.
• 1:22
  If you are a regular listener and you haven't had the chance
• 1:26
  to do that yet, please go on to Apple or Spotify wherever you
• 1:29
  listen and just give it a little 5 hearts.
• 1:33
  Write a short little review. That makes a huge difference.
• 1:36
  I know it takes some time from you, but I would really greatly
• 1:39
  appreciate it. You would be having a tremendous
• 1:41
  impact on me. So again, thank you.
• 1:45
  I've had quite a lot to reflect on in the last year.
• 1:49
  I have to say, being able to record something about my
• 1:53
  experiences and about my thoughts on impact on various
• 1:57
  topics has been really cathartic for me.
• 1:59
  It's been very helpful and I hope that that comes through to
• 2:02
  you. I hope it's been helpful for
• 2:03
  you. In December, I left my clinical
• 2:07
  practice as an acupuncturist. After 16 years of practicing and
• 2:11
  having completed over 30,000 patient encounters, I decided to
• 2:16
  step away and go full bore into my other companies.
• 2:19
  And it's been an awesome decision.
• 2:20
  But it's given me a lot of time to reflect and think about my
• 2:24
  career and what's coming next, what I want for my future, and
• 2:28
  of course, having these experiences with my health,
• 2:32
  reflecting on my wife's experiences with her health, all
• 2:36
  of this stuff that has led me here has me thinking about all
• 2:39
  the stuff that I'm grateful for. You know, recently I had a
• 2:42
  conversation with my coach about what I feel grateful for and
• 2:46
  about the tremendous amount of wealth that I feel in my life.
• 2:50
  I've been working with my coach for almost 4 years, and she
• 2:54
  encouraged me recently to look at the different types of wealth
• 2:59
  or riches that I had accumulated in my life and specifically not
• 3:04
  to be thinking about it in terms of money, but in other things.
• 3:07
  And so I started to sort of take stock of what was happening
• 3:10
  around me in terms of my schedule, my family, my
• 3:14
  community, my physical environment, my time, all these
• 3:19
  different things like doing a little audit.
• 3:21
  There's this book called The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil
• 3:25
  Bloom, and he talks about financial wealth, time wealth,
• 3:30
  social wealth, health wealth, and mental wealth.
• 3:36
  Now, obviously we understand financial wealth.
• 3:38
  It's pretty straightforward. Time wealth is all about do you
• 3:41
  control your time or does your schedule control you?
• 3:44
  Social wealth is about relationships, physical wealth
• 3:48
  is about energy and vitality and Wellness, and mental wealth is
• 3:51
  about basically your internal world, your mindset, your sense
• 3:55
  of peace and ease and purpose in your life.
• 3:59
  I talk about these different types of wealth often in the
• 4:02
  coaching space, just organically.
• 4:04
  And you know for damn sure I'm talking about health wealth all
• 4:08
  the time. I think that's probably been
• 4:10
  first and foremost for me in my life for the better part of two
• 4:13
  decades. Being a practitioner and seeing
• 4:16
  patients is an everyday reminder of the privilege of my own
• 4:21
  health. So it's always been there and I
• 4:24
  have always felt a very strong awareness around it.
• 4:27
  I don't think everybody does, and it's something that I really
• 4:29
  encourage you to value at a deep level because it really is our
• 4:33
  greatest asset. In terms of the other types of
• 4:36
  wealth, I have deep appreciation for financial wealth.
• 4:39
  I think it provides so much freedom and opportunity and is
• 4:42
  of the utmost importance in the world we live in.
• 4:46
  I see money as a tool. I see it as an exchange of
• 4:48
  energy, which is very different than the way I used to see it
• 4:51
  when I was in my 20s. You know, we all have money
• 4:54
  beliefs, money blocks that we are sort of instilled with as we
• 4:58
  grow up that influence our relationship with money.
• 5:02
  But coaching, a coaching process can be very helpful for people
• 5:05
  in terms of healing that relationship with money and
• 5:08
  really making it powerful and productive and being able to
• 5:11
  experience abundance in terms of time, wealth.
• 5:15
  I have, yeah. I've been working pretty hard to
• 5:18
  create more time and it's something that I honor and
• 5:21
  always appreciate is freedom in my time and the ability to be
• 5:25
  slow and present if I want to be.
• 5:27
  And then of course, you have mental wealth, which is all
• 5:30
  about mindset. This is a big topic on this
• 5:32
  podcast. Learning how to become self
• 5:34
  aware and improve emotional regulation are crucial skills
• 5:38
  not only in leadership and impact, but for anybody who
• 5:42
  wants to live a peaceful life. But today in this episode, I
• 5:47
  want to talk about social wealth, specifically our
• 5:50
  connections and our relationships with the people
• 5:54
  around us, as any big event can do.
• 5:57
  The last year of my own life has really shown a spotlight on this
• 6:04
  aspect. Social wealth for me, it's the
• 6:07
  one that I think about most right now, Wealth and
• 6:09
  relationships and quality connections.
• 6:12
  And I think one of the reasons it touches me so strongly now is
• 6:15
  because my eyes have been opened in a very different way to the
• 6:20
  power of community and connection, a way that I've
• 6:24
  witnessed but I've never truly experienced for myself.
• 6:27
  There was something very unique about the last 12 months of my
• 6:30
  life that made me integrate this idea of social wealth in a very
• 6:35
  different way. You all know if you've been
• 6:38
  listening to this podcast in the last year that I was going
• 6:40
  through treatment and surgeries for breast cancer since March of
• 6:44
  last year, 2025. And thankfully, I'm in a very
• 6:48
  good place now. I'm healing from the treatments.
• 6:51
  My prognosis is very good. But when I was going through all
• 6:55
  of that, I made the decision to surrender to the fact that I
• 7:00
  need to ask for help and be able to receive that help from my
• 7:04
  friends and my family and my community at large.
• 7:08
  And The thing is, I'm not a big ask for help person.
• 7:12
  I usually am the one who is the helper as a practitioner or a
• 7:17
  coach or a parent or a leader. So this was uncomfortable
• 7:22
  territory for me. But I've had enough coaching to
• 7:25
  know that it's essential to build connection with other
• 7:28
  people is to allow them to support you and and lift you up.
• 7:32
  I also knew that frankly, I needed the help.
• 7:36
  It's damn near impossible to do all the things that you need to
• 7:38
  do in your life when you are going through treatment of any
• 7:41
  kind for breast cancer. So at the deepest level, what I
• 7:45
  needed help with was courage and bravery and support and love.
• 7:51
  And so I did something that I wouldn't normally do, and that
• 7:55
  is that I openly shared my experience online and with the
• 8:00
  people around me. And when people responded by
• 8:03
  asking if they could help me in any way, I said yes.
• 8:11
  I said yes to all the requests, all the offers, and 10 years
• 8:18
  ago, Steph would have said no and tried to uphold an image of
• 8:22
  stoicism and toughness. But team, there was something
• 8:28
  inside of me that was urging me to reject that and allow people
• 8:33
  to show their support. I want to share with you a few
• 8:36
  of the things that happened to me last year, a few of the
• 8:39
  things that made me realize that I was so rich in community and
• 8:42
  relationships, something that brought me to tears multiple
• 8:46
  times. And the support that I felt
• 8:49
  often came in little moments, but they meant more to me than
• 8:52
  people probably will ever realize.
• 8:54
  I tried to express that to them, but I don't know that it really
• 8:57
  can sink in. My wife and I called these
• 9:01
  experiences moments of light. We would often say to ourselves
• 9:06
  last year, look for the light. And so I wanted to share some of
• 9:09
  these moments of light with you. A lot of these little things
• 9:13
  that people did actually inspired this new project that
• 9:15
  I'm working on called Proof of Light, where people submit their
• 9:19
  stories of their moments of light because it was so moving
• 9:23
  for me. And I know that when I hear
• 9:24
  about these stories, it almost feels as powerful as
• 9:27
  experiencing them. There's so many to choose from,
• 9:29
  but I want to highlight a few of them here.
• 9:32
  The first moment of light that I'll share is about my
• 9:35
  neighbors. We have neighbors across the
• 9:38
  street that have just become great friends of ours.
• 9:41
  And I have a really great connection with the husband.
• 9:44
  His name is Jeff. He's just an incredible,
• 9:47
  supportive, loving, helpful person who shows up for you at
• 9:51
  the drop of a hat. And every year, we all put up
• 9:54
  Christmas lights. Yeah, we all do that.
• 9:57
  And some of my neighbor's friends, as a joke, made them a
• 10:00
  lit up star. That's pretty massive.
• 10:03
  It's 8 or 9 feet maybe. So Jeff put it up on his roof
• 10:08
  for Christmas before we even knew about my diagnosis.
• 10:11
  And we kept talking about how much we loved it because we
• 10:13
  could see it through our front windows.
• 10:16
  You can just have like a perfect view of this huge star sitting
• 10:19
  on the roof. So we would always text him and
• 10:22
  let him know, hey, we can see the star.
• 10:24
  We can see our way home. Like just, it was this ongoing
• 10:26
  joke. But of course, you take it down
• 10:29
  once the holidays are over and life goes on.
• 10:31
  Well, I was diagnosed at the beginning of March last year and
• 10:34
  in April we went on a little trip, my wife and I, and when we
• 10:37
  got back we noticed that the star was back up on Jeff's roof.
• 10:41
  And we were so excited because like I said, we love the star.
• 10:45
  The next day I saw him and I said, hey, you put the star back
• 10:48
  up and he looked at me. He had tears in his eyes and he
• 10:52
  said that star is going to stay up until you're done with your
• 10:55
  treatment. We put it up there for you and
• 11:00
  team. It meant so much to me.
• 11:02
  God, it makes me teary. Just think about it.
• 11:05
  These neighbors, these friends of ours wanted to put up a
• 11:09
  symbol of support that was going to be lit up year round as we
• 11:14
  were going through this time of life.
• 11:15
  It was so cool. A couple months went by and the
• 11:20
  star was taking quite a beating from all of our Portland rain.
• 11:24
  And so again we went away for a little trip, like a mid
• 11:29
  treatment getaway, and when we came back we looked up and the
• 11:31
  star had been redone, but this time it was in pink lights.
• 11:35
  Jeff had redone the star and turn to pink for us.
• 11:40
  And so for four more months he kept that star up there.
• 11:45
  It was lit up at all hours of the day.
• 11:47
  Every night over the summer we'd be able to see the pink
• 11:50
  Christmas lights, and it didn't come down until I'd finished my
• 11:54
  mastectomy surgery in September. That pink star lived on our
• 11:58
  neighbour's roof for nine months.
• 12:01
  Every day I would come home from work, every time I'd come home
• 12:04
  from chemo or a doctor's appointment, every time I went
• 12:07
  for a walk outside to try to cope with the reality of what
• 12:10
  was happening. Every day I would see that star
• 12:14
  on the roof and remember that people were cheering for me and
• 12:17
  it was one of the most priceless moments of the entire year.
• 12:22
  And the irony is not lost on me that it was actual light that
• 12:25
  was shining from his roof. A second moment that felt like
• 12:30
  just pure light was when an old patient, an old client of mine,
• 12:35
  was reaching out to me when I first got diagnosed and she kept
• 12:38
  asking how she could support me and I honestly didn't really
• 12:41
  know what to say to her at that moment.
• 12:43
  I was just kind of figuring things out.
• 12:45
  But rather than just moving on, she took things in her own hands
• 12:49
  and started sending me soup. It was this chicken soup from
• 12:53
  her favorite Thai soup restaurant in Portland, And she
• 12:57
  told me that it was one of the things that felt most comforting
• 13:00
  to her family when they were sick.
• 13:01
  She was really adamant that it was clean and nourishing and
• 13:04
  healthy. And she sent me soup that night.
• 13:08
  But she didn't just send it that night.
• 13:10
  She checked in four or five other times during the course of
• 13:14
  my treatment. Not to say, how are you doing?
• 13:17
  What do you need? Just a simple can I send you
• 13:20
  soup tonight message. It was so thoughtful, mostly
• 13:25
  because it was so simple. This is not somebody that I know
• 13:29
  tremendously well or see very often.
• 13:31
  And maybe that's the other thing that touched me.
• 13:33
  But here was this woman taking care of another woman who is
• 13:36
  just in the thick of it just by sending soup.
• 13:40
  It was so nice, it was so helpful, and it meant the world
• 13:43
  to me. A kind of funny moment of light
• 13:47
  that happened was how our community got on kind of a like
• 13:52
  a pickle Jag. During my treatment, somebody
• 13:54
  had initially sent me this little pickle figurine with
• 13:58
  motivational signs that it could hold.
• 14:00
  And so we started posting these little signs online and it led
• 14:04
  to somebody else sending me a disco pickle ornament.
• 14:08
  And so of course we posted that online.
• 14:10
  And so then this thing started to get away from us and have its
• 14:13
  own momentum. So much so that two of our
• 14:17
  friends arranged for this little joke to be played on me.
• 14:20
  It was during the 12th chemo. It was the last chemo of the
• 14:22
  first segment of my treatment. And I walked outside in the
• 14:26
  bright sun with my wife after I was done.
• 14:29
  And all of a sudden I was standing in front of a group of
• 14:32
  my friends and my family who would all come out to celebrate
• 14:35
  me. It was one of the most awesome
• 14:37
  moments to walk out of an infusion center into the arms of
• 14:41
  people who you love and who had taken time off during their day
• 14:45
  to just come and support you right in the middle of the damn
• 14:47
  day. But not only were my friends and
• 14:50
  my family there, but two of my friends had arranged for the
• 14:55
  Portland baseball's team mascot to be there.
• 14:58
  Also the Portland Pickles mascot.
• 15:02
  So here I am, standing outside of the hospital and at this
• 15:04
  patch of grass, being hugged by an enormous pickle mascot
• 15:11
  amongst all of our friends and family.
• 15:12
  It was the weirdest, funniest situation that came to life
• 15:16
  because people cared about making this moment special for
• 15:19
  me, and I'll never forget it. The last thing I want to
• 15:24
  highlight is the power of a handwritten card.
• 15:27
  My wife is responsible for this one.
• 15:29
  She rallied the troops and was apparently posting online to
• 15:33
  have people send me cards to read each time that I was in the
• 15:36
  infusion Center for a chemo session.
• 15:38
  The first couple of sessions I thought to myself, wow, this is
• 15:41
  really nice. I can't believe people are
• 15:43
  taking time to write handwritten cards to me.
• 15:47
  But as the weeks and the months went on, those cards kept
• 15:50
  coming. Team people were writing cards
• 15:53
  throughout the entirety of the 16 rounds of chemo that I had to
• 15:56
  go through, and they weren't just sending me words of
• 15:58
  encouragement. They were talking about
• 16:00
  themselves as well. People were sharing stories with
• 16:04
  me about the hard times that they've been through, or times
• 16:07
  when they felt lifted up in their lives or things that
• 16:10
  encouraged them. They were sending me clips from
• 16:13
  books and poems and drawing pictures and sending me
• 16:18
  paintings that they'd made. They were sharing moments that
• 16:22
  we had spent together that meant a lot to them.
• 16:24
  And some of these people hadn't seen or talked to in years.
• 16:28
  But to read that kind of stuff, to know that that person had
• 16:31
  taken 10 minutes to write their story or their sentiment in a
• 16:35
  card to somebody that they hadn't seen for years, I was
• 16:39
  absolutely blown away. There is something about taking
• 16:43
  the time to write a note to somebody that is so different
• 16:46
  than firing off a text or a voice memo or even a phone call.
• 16:51
  I mean, I cried every session reading those cards and I kept
• 16:55
  every single one. They live in a drawer in my
• 16:57
  bedroom now. One of the episodes on this
• 17:02
  podcast in the past was about how your gift to people is your
• 17:05
  presence. And I believe that more than
• 17:08
  ever now, your gift to people is your presence and your attention
• 17:12
  and your time. It is your thoughtfulness and
• 17:15
  your effort and your intention that you put into someone else.
• 17:20
  When I think about the five types of wealth and how each one
• 17:22
  has its own merit, I realize that the other four are not
• 17:26
  nearly as sweet or beautiful as when you have people to spend
• 17:30
  them with. Whether it's financial wealth or
• 17:33
  health or time or mental wealth, the common thread of value is to
• 17:38
  have someone to spend those with.
• 17:41
  You know, it's widely known that people who are at the end of
• 17:44
  their life sharing their last desires or regrets on their
• 17:47
  deathbed, they are so often talking about the relationships
• 17:51
  and the people in their life. They're talking about
• 17:53
  misconnections or important quality connections or the time
• 17:57
  they spent with loved ones. And the more conversations I
• 18:00
  have with people, the more coaching relationships I build
• 18:04
  with individuals from all over, the more I see how connection
• 18:08
  and quality relationships is what life is all about.
• 18:11
  And we know that logically, we logically understand that, but
• 18:15
  to really feel it and integrate that into your cells, that's a
• 18:19
  different experience. In regard to culture, the
• 18:23
  pendulum might have been swinging in a direction of more
• 18:26
  isolation with advancing technologies allowing us to be
• 18:29
  more individualized and more separate.
• 18:32
  But I think things are going to start moving in a different
• 18:34
  direction because at the core of who we are, humans are wired for
• 18:40
  social connection. We are built to be in community
• 18:44
  and to be reliant upon one another.
• 18:47
  I'm thankful for my experiences in the last year because it
• 18:51
  showed me what I knew, but I didn't fully realize that I want
• 18:55
  to be prioritizing my connections to people as much as
• 18:59
  possible in my life and that time is finite.
• 19:04
  Money will come and go, and we can control our health as much
• 19:08
  as what's within our control. But it's the connection that
• 19:12
  really feels most important. I know I always have room to
• 19:16
  grow with this too. I have space to improve the
• 19:20
  energy that I put into my connections and my people.
• 19:24
  I do just like anyone else. But I wanted to talk about this
• 19:27
  in the 200 episode of the Impact Ready podcast because it feels
• 19:32
  so deeply rooted, almost the crux of our ability to have
• 19:37
  positive impact. Again, I want to thank you for
• 19:41
  listening and supporting the show for the last two years.
• 19:44
  My greatest hope is that it will spur on conversations about how
• 19:48
  to change and improve your life for the better so that you can
• 19:51
  be the creator of your life and and live something of your own
• 19:54
  design rather than just falling into a life or a way of being on
• 19:59
  accident. You are an incredibly powerful
• 20:03
  person. Your presence here on Earth
• 20:05
  matters so much, and you have tremendous potential for the
• 20:10
  kind of impact that you can have in your world.
• 20:12
  So I appreciate you being here. I hope you enjoyed this episode
• 20:15
  and that these conversations make a difference for you.
• 20:19
  Thank you for listening and as always team, thank you for being
• 20:23
  ready to Impact. Thanks for listening to Impact
• 20:26
  Ready. I hope today's episode inspired
• 20:28
  you to own your impact and recognize that you are powerful.
• 20:32
  By elevating our energy and awareness, we can create
• 20:35
  exponential change in this life. If you enjoyed today's insights,
• 20:38
  share them with a friend and subscribe to the show for more.
• 20:41
  I truly appreciate you. Thanks again for being here.