It is because they had their priorities appropriately organized that the greatest men and women in history achieved greatness. The best long-term large investors I have known always put the most important pieces of the investment puzzle in place first, a strategic asset allocation that would be the most likely to generate the returns profile they were after. If you identify where you should be headed, the result is likely to be satisfying. So, what is a common framework we can all use to identify our target portfolio to get to our desired outcome? How is it connected to the religious faith of the family you were born into? To what extent will your financial assets be relevant or irrelevant? Is your back pain from the gym sessions or the office connected to it in some manner?

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Contents

The Final Hour
1234What does it tell us?
1234Leading up to it
External Wealth
Internal Wealth
Using Your External Wealth Portfolio
Managing Your Internal Wealth Portfolio
Top-Down Investing
A Balanced Portfolio
1234For the Religious Person
1234For the Competitive Person
1234For the Superb Intellectual
1234For the Financially Wealthy
1234For those who think they are Not Wealthy
1234For Young Adults
1234For Parents
1234For the Elderly
Parting Message

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The Final Hour [top]

If in hospital with the knowledge that you are going to die in the next hour, even if you never believed in a higher power, you too will, like so many before you, call out to that higher power.

I do not know what happens to us after we die. Like other Nath yogis before me, I too hope to be buried without a coffin – for me, it will be next to a fish pond surrounded by banana trees on my village land. I have had no intention to wait until that time to experience a higher power. The realization that we are neither our body nor our mind directs me to focus my thoughts and actions towards that final hour when my physical health may be weak and external wealth ridiculously irrelevant.

What Does that Final Hour Tell Us? [top]

A premortem of that final hour of life tells us that, in the end, when we experience that we will go alone, just like we had come alone, then we have an internal shift to something pure that we wished we had invested more time in during our years since birth.

Leading up to the Final Hour [top]

In the journey of many thousands of hours to that final hour, therefore, we need to always be fully aware of the number one importance of spiritual health.

External Wealth [top]

We need external wealth. You cannot eat your bank balance. You can use the bank balance to have things on the dinner table. That external wealth is there for a purpose and is not a means to an end. When we forget that, we end up becoming as spiritually poor as we are financially wealthy – a terrible tradeoff.

Internal Wealth [top]

Your internal wealth comprises your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wealth. Keeping the most important of these, your spiritual wealth, at the centre is critical.

You can think thoughts but you cannot touch your mental health directly. You can feel emotions but you cannot touch your emotional health directly. It is only through the physical realm that you can touch the mental and emotional realms.

The spiritual realm is the least understood but is as real as all the others, and more important than them. Why do I say that? Our being unable to understand something does not reduce its importance to us. Not understanding the science behind how you pressing the brake pedal on your car stops it, does not eliminate the primary importance of the brake for you. Nor does it eliminate the need for you to ensure that it is functioning well. In fact, for a safe and happy ending to your journey in the car you are driving you must take on the responsibility that you have a well-functioning brake and that you understand how to use it. It is no different for your spiritual wealth – not understanding that it exists and not growing it throughout your life will leave you with a disappointing journey and destination.

Using Your External Wealth Portfolio [top]

The Unholy Trinity is constantly active in keeping you focused on a path, that in the 21^st century, can lead you to spiritual ruin. The 3 parts of the Unholy Trinity: Avoid Pain, Seek Pleasure, and Conserve Energy were necessary for the survival of the individual and the species, but if you are to thrive, you need to be its master, not its slave.

There is a strong positive correlation between the increasing purchasing power of mankind as a whole and the levels of unhappiness or dissatisfaction across the globe. It may well be that part of this phenomenon is fueled by people watching the world outside themselves on screens, followed by feelings of jealousy, or being filled with fear towards that stranger on the road. What is clear is that mindlessly pursuing external wealth without attention to the purpose of that financial wealth is foolish.

We can get caught up in the rat race for reasons beyond our control. We often realize that we were in a rat race after we stopped running in that race and we stopped being a rat. There is a list of billionaires who realized this a little late, but better late than never. Today a large part of their resources is focused on philanthropy for others to enjoy. Even a rat knows when it has enough to eat and need not keep hunting for food it cannot possibly consume in this lifetime.

Managing Your Internal Wealth Portfolio [top]

You do things in the physical world with things that are outside you to impact your physical state as well as your mental state and your emotional state. On a hot day, you might turn on the air conditioner while you eat to feel cooler, relax your mind and feel satisfied. On a Friday night with friends, you might consume alcohol that damages your body by a small amount with each sip but it also helps you relax as you lose some inhibitions and you feel happy to hang out in this manner with your friends. The air conditioner, the food, the alcohol, the friends – these are all things outside you – the thoughts, feelings and physiological experiences are within you.

With so many freedoms and forces at play, we have a responsibility to ourselves to manage the resources available to us in a wise manner and not react repeatedly only to the short-term demands of the Unholy Trinity.

All this feeds into your spiritual wealth. You are neither your body nor your mind, and they are both tools to grow your spiritual wealth. Having powerful tools that can withstand brutal opposing forces will allow you to sculpt the perfect spiritual being. Medication is not what you feed your body for it to be strong. Anti-depressants, ADHD drugs, and sleeping pills are not what sharpen your mind to cut through to the crux of a matter.

It becomes clear then – your lifestyle will drive your spiritual wealth through your physical, mental and emotional states. A good lifestyle will mean that all forms of wealth within you can grow to their potential. Conversely, a bad lifestyle will mean they will not.

Top-Down Investing [top]

In the flow diagram, we recognize 2 patterns. The first is the relative importance of different forms of wealth. The second is the direction in which one form ought to serve another.

It is evil, by definition, to sell your soul to increase the number in a bank statement. Your financial wealth should be the slave that you use to gain mastery over your spiritual health. In the space between those two extremes, one external wealth and the other internal wealth we must work to ensure a high value for our physical, mental, and emotional wealth. Their high values are necessary conditions for spiritual wealth. In addition, working to have them at high values ensures that most of the work to grow spiritual wealth is nearly done.

A Balanced Portfolio [top]

You do not have to run in the proverbial rat race. It is possible for you to take a shortcut and avoid racing like a rat. That does not mean that you must give up your job or sell your business. Instead, simply balance your external wealth accumulation with internal wealth accumulation. What that means is investing in physical fitness, not just medical insurance policies. It means buying experiences rather than just things. It means experiencing the scientific fact that giving is more satisfying than receiving.

In doing everything, it is best that you do not lose sight of the ultimate target – a large amount of spiritual wealth. That is top-down investing in yourself!

For the Religious Person [top]

The religion you associate yourself with has spiritual health at its centre. If you are a keen follower of the rules and restrictions of your faith you must always remind yourself that your religion is just one method for a life of meaning and spiritual growth. Do not let the mechanics of rituals and the burden of rules distract you from the ultimate purpose despite what the person acclaimed to be an expert in the religion tells you.

For the Competitive Person [top]

It is best that you are competitive only with yourself. Often you are forced to compete with others by establishments that you are a part of. That is probably OK but beware of how that ultimately affects your spiritual wealth. Friendly competition to encourage your competitors is healthy. When it comes to spiritual wealth, you will never really know if someone is wealthier than you or not – trying to assess that will mean that you are missing the point and you will miss your target!

For the Superb Intellectual [top]

You may have gained a lot of knowledge and gained enviable expertise in one or more fields. However, if you do not appreciate the importance of spiritual wealth by focusing on increasing that, it is likely that yours will remain a very dry intellect.

I am sure that you already know the importance of good physical health. I hope you are using all that brain power to motivate yourself to have a lot of both physical and emotional wealth. They are critical to support your mental health as you age. Your mind that you are so pleased to use is just a tool – use it well for spiritual wealth too.

For the Financially Wealthy [top]

You may have already realized that if your focus is not on spiritual wealth then you are missing out on true wealth. It is never too late to start to create more spiritual wealth for yourself. If you are privileged to be able to control the lives of others, perhaps you can create environments where others find it easier to create more spiritual wealth for themselves. This does not ignore the aim of your business or project to generate profits – I am only suggesting that you do not lose sight of your ultimate purpose which is no different from that of all other people.

For those who think they are NOT Wealthy [top]

If you have food, shelter, and clothing, and even if you do not, you can always achieve the best internal wealth possible with what little you have, especially spiritual wealth. If you often feel that others have more than you because you struggle to have the basics for yourself or your loved ones, it will help you to observe that so many who have so much more than you are still not joyful. You are closer than others to appreciating a basic truth – true wealth needs very little if any financial wealth. If you do not believe me, ask two puppies playing with each other in the sun!

For Young Adults [top]

You can have an impact on the planet for decades. If you grow your spiritual wealth from an early age, you will have a positive impact on thousands of lives whatever your chosen professions or businesses for accumulating financial wealth. With that in the foreground, work hard at the physical, mental, and emotional wealth while you engage with books and society to grow your financial external wealth.

For Parents [top]

If you do not teach your child that their primary and ultimate wealth target ought to be spiritual wealth, none of that Ivy League education will be of much true value to them in the end. It is important that they learn how to master their physical, mental, and emotional health as they are important foundations for spiritual health. Even with good foundations a palace will not emerge unless there exists a vision. Set that vision right and you will manifest children who are satisfied parents to your grandchildren one day.

For the Elderly [top]

If your physical state is one of pain or if you have multiple illnesses, it is not easy to use your physical wealth to grow your spiritual. But difficult does not mean impossible. Remember that declining physical health as we age does not mean that you cannot guide others towards growing their spiritual wealth. You are in a prime position to teach them that good physical health is the foundation for spiritual health.

Parting Message [top]

Neither you nor I can go back in time and repeat our lives so it is best that we appreciate the importance of a top-down approach to how we invest our time, a non-renewable resource. Use your external resources for growing your internal wealth and do not forget that your spiritual wealth is what will ultimately matter.

If everything you do is consistent with your core beliefs and desires, then a long and healthy life of joy is pretty much guaranteed to be yours. If you want to be guided in detail, you know how to reach me, and if you found this useful, please do share it with others.

Puru

Dr Purnendu Nath spends his waking hours focusing on helping individuals and organizations reach their goals, to make the world a better place. He speaks, writes and advises on topics such as finance, investment management, discipline, education, self-improvement, exercise, nutrition, health and fitness, leadership and parenting.