Your Dream Life: Setting Your Direction

Do you do a lot of thinking about things you’d like to accomplish, but when it comes to taking action all you do is spin your wheels? That’s why I picked up Sahil Bloom’s The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life (Ballantine, 2025). If, like me, you’re ready to put your dreams into action, Bloom has the blueprint. 

In my last column I shared my results from Bloom’s The Wealth Score Quiz.  In a nutshell, my results reflected what I already knew intuitively: I have deficits in both Time Wealth and Physical Wealth.  

I also developed my life razor: “No matter what I’m doing, I always pick up the phone for my family.” That’s my core identity and guides my decision making. Depending on the situation, I might have to call them back, but I always pick up.      

Now it’s time to set the direction, or set goals, for my dream life. Bloom’s goal-setting framework has two components: goals and anti-goals.

Goals

Goals should include both big, long-term objectives as well as mid-point markers along the way. Bloom likens a big goal to reaching the summit of a mountain, with campsite visits, or medium goals, along the way. For example, I set a goal of running a marathon, my mid-point goals might include completing a couch to 5K program, running a 10K, half marathon, etc.   

Anti-goals

Anti-goals are the things you don’t want to happen. In my example of running a marathon, an anti-goal might be sustaining an injury or missing breakfast with the kids more than twice a week. Bloom recommends coming up with one to three specific anti-goals, or things you want to avoid, for each long-term goal.

The next step is creating high-leverage systems to drive daily progress. This is where the rubber meets the road, and Bloom includes systems for each of the five types of wealth in his book. Since my quiz results confirmed I have a deficit in Time Wealth and Physical Wealth that is where I will focus my efforts. 

Ten years ago I lost over 100 pounds and kept it off for about seven years. Then I slowly started gaining. Looking back I realize now where I went wrong. I hyper focused on Physical Wealth—it was like a switch was turned on in my brain. Great! Then, after I met my weight loss goal, I let the switch dim for a while. The problem was, I eventually got busy with other things and let the switch turn totally off. That’s the danger of the on/off switch. If a switch is turned off for too long, you can lose the ability to turn it back on. Instead, Bloom advocates for using a dimmer switch and implementing maintenance systems to stay in check. The dimmer switch allows you to focus on specific areas without completely turning off and tuning out in other areas. Use it or lose it in action, and it holds true for all five types of wealth.

So this time around, I will try to find better balance so that I keep that switch turned on, even if it has to be dimmed from time to time. I’m excited to get started, and a little intimidated to be quite honest. Just scanning through the next few chapters I can see that it is going to be a deep dive and it’s going to take commitment.        

Tune in next time for my real goals and anti-goals. There’s nothing like throwing it out there for public consumption to keep me on the straight and narrow! Interested in joining a discussion group to track progress on your goals? Email [email protected]