Four main steps for increasing your social wealth

Although most of us focus strongly on increasing economic wealth, taking steps that can increase your social wealth is just as important for increasing life satisfaction. Here are four general steps that can be taken to help do that.

Step 1. Increase the number of social connections.

A social connection is a person that your interact with on a somewhat regular basis. If it is a person that you like to interact with then the connection is positive. Increasing the number of these people increases you social wealth. Some specific actions may be to make more friends, increase or start a family, reach out to relatives, etc.

Step 2. Increase positiveness of existing positive social connections.

The more you like to interact with one of your connections the more positive it is. Increasing how much you like interacting with each of the people that you are connected to will increase your social wealth. Some specific actions include, doing more enjoyable activities together, getting to know more about them, etc. Also, if you have negative connections(people that you do not like to interact with), reducing your amount of dislike for these interactions or even trying to like these interactions will also increase your wealth. Some specific actions would be, focusing more on their positive attributes, trying to understand why you do not like to interact with them, etc.

Step 3. Increase time spent with existing positive social connections.

Increasing the amount of time you spend with the people you like in your life will also increase you social wealth. Some specific actions are to find more time to do more activities with the the people you like the most, spend more time talking or interacting with them, etc.

Step 4. Reduce the number of negative social connections or the time spent with them.

People that you dislike to interact with count as a social debt and reduce your social wealth. If you really do not like interacting with some people and can’t change that feeling, then you should try to either not interacts with them all or reduce and minimize the amount of time you spend interacting with them. This is like reducing debt and will increase you net social wealth.

These are the main general steps for increasing social wealth . There are further details within each that would need to be thought about further. Future posts will delve further into many different specific and practical details.

What are some of the specific ways that you increase your social wealth? Please leave comments below.