As we’ve been talking about friendship this week, an article I wrote for Zia Magazine keeps coming to mind. While it seems we can’t do much to stop our financial 401ks from dropping like rocks lately, I still believe we can stay wealthy in the ways that matter most.
Here’s an excerpt:
Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
It turns out there might be more truth to that simple saying than we think. Friendships have a vast number of benefits–from improving our happiness to lengthening our lives.
But while we’re coached from the start of our career on how to bolster our 401k retirement accounts, we get a lot less training on how to do the same with our relationships. Fortunately, many of the same concepts apply. So here’s a little guide for building your very own friendship 401k.
Invest
The first thing we have to do with a 401k is put something in it. The same is true of friendships. While retirement accounts require money, friendships need something even more scarce–time.
Yes, it’s going to cost us. But in the end we may reap benefits we didn’t expect. For example, Dr. Joan Borysenko told Prevention how she instructed an attendee at one of her seminars suffering from frequent headaches to spend two nights a week with friends. To her client’s surprise, the headaches cleared up and she could be even more productive.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
And when you’re done, come on back and share one little way you’ve grown your friendship 401k with us.
