Portfolio Rebalancing
2026-10-16
Having recently rebalanced my financial portfolio, I remembered that I've been meaning to write about the ways in which I periodically rebalance my life portfolio, too. I first sketched out the idea of a life portfolio about eight years ago, asserting somewhat arbitrarily (because the areas of life can be sliced and diced in a variety of ways) that for my own purposes I think of my life pursuits as consisting of Health & Vitality, Wealth & Achievement, Love & Caring, Character & Self-Improvement, Wisdom & Sagacity, and Beauty & Creativity. As my life circumstances change, I tend to modify the weightings I assign to these different areas. Here are a few examples:
- When I retired from the tech industry almost five years ago, I de-emphasized the Wealth & Achievement part of my portfolio.
- As my wife Elisa was struggling with chronic health issues in the last year or two of her life, I became very concentrated on the Love & Caring area of my life.
- During Elisa's illness my own Health & Vitality suffered somewhat, so I have been more focused on that over the last six months (eating a pescatarian diet, exercising more, losing weight, lowering my cholesterol, etc.).
- Periodically I identify character traits that need correction or improvement, which I then zero in on over the course of a few months or years (a past example is my effort to cultivate greater empathy).
- Lately the Beauty & Creativity portion of my portfolio has received more attention as my friend Manuel and I have been making music several times a week in preparation for performing in public.
- Although Wisdom & Sagacity is pretty much a constant in my life, it can become more intense when I'm in the midst of writing one of my books on the great thinkers, as I'm doing now on Aristotle.
I've observed similar portfolio rebalancings among friends and loved ones, so the idea seems to be generally applicable even though the particulars may differ. As always, your mileage may vary...
(Cross-posted at Beautiful Wisdom.)
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