The invisible authors the visible

The impact of relationships on long-term health and long-term wealth

Fifty years ago, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Watergate Scandal, Secretariat gave the public something to cheer about when he won horse racing's Triple Crown – The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.

His record-setting times in each race remain to this day.

In the 1¼ mile Kentucky Derby, Secretariat ran each quarter mile of the race faster than the one prior – a feat never accomplished before and not matched since. His successive quarter mile times (in seconds) were 25.2, 24.0, 23.8, 23.4, and 23.0. Secretariat was accelerating throughout the entire race.

In the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat won by a staggering 31 lengths, a record that is likely to stand for lifetimes. Although Secretariat had only four competitors that day, all were high caliber. The footage of the race is awe-inspiring – certain to give you goosebumps whether you’re a racing aficionado or not.

Here’s the link:  Secretariat - 1973 Belmont Stakes.

Thoroughbreds are bred for speed and stamina. The champions who rise to the top are most-often gifted with superior physical confirmation – usually the result of strong bloodlines. Secretariat’s hindquarters were a differential source of his power. When in full stride, his back legs were able to extend abnormally far underneath him, resulting in tremendous drive and powerful acceleration.

What made Secretariat truly remarkable wasn’t his mighty build, it was something even more extraordinary. Something that wasn’t discovered until his death.

The heart of a typical thoroughbred weighs about nine pounds. At peak exertion it pumps about 65 – 75 gallons of blood per minute. Secretariat's heart weighed approximately 22 pounds – about 2½ times normal. Thomas Swerczek, the veterinarian who performed Secretariat's necropsy after his death said, "We just stood there in stunned silence. We couldn't believe it. His heart was perfect. There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine."

With a gigantic heart pumping twice as much blood than his rivals, it’s hard to imagine Secretariat not manifesting his genius – running so fast that his record-setting times still stand fifty years later.

Secretariat’s heart, invisible to the naked eye, was the primary source of his brilliance.

The invisible authoring your health

Despite an ever-quickening pace of life, the aim for humans is not to run as fast as we can. Most of us would probably say our hope would simply be to live a long, happy, and meaningful life.

This being our goal, what might the key ingredients be? The usual suspects would include a healthy diet, moderate exercise, satisfying work, close friends, and a tight knit family. Meditation, periods of stillness, and communing with nature would also be great candidates.

What obstacles could pull us in the opposite direction? Culprits would include an unhealthy diet, smoking, excessive alcohol, inactivity, and more recently “doom scrolling” on our phones.

In 1938, researchers at Harvard kicked off a first of its kind longitudinal project - the Study of Adult Development. By following participants for their entire lives, the researchers sought to discover clues that contributed to longevity and positive mental health.

Still going strong at 85 years and counting, study directors Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz gave an update just last month.

It turns out there really is a quantitative answer to the proverbial question.

“Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health, and longevity. Contrary to what many people might think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. Don’t get us wrong; these things matter.

But one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: good relationships.

In fact, close personal connections are significant enough that if we had to take all 85 years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a variety of other studies, it would be this: good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period. If you want to make one decision to ensure your own health and happiness, it should be to cultivate warm relationships of all kinds.”

Close personal connections. Warm relationships of all kinds.

Knowing the answer, the question becomes: How do we cultivate warm relationships and personal connections?

The answer leads back to Secretariat: With our hearts.

Relationships are nurtured and sustained through heartfelt connection. And the blood flow of heartfelt connection – the oxygen – is love. Love connects us. To our families. To our communities. To ourselves. To nature. To anything we wish to be connected to.

How can we best utilize the magnificent heart we are born with? How can we increase our capacity to love?

Through our generosity. When we give from the heart, without conditions or attachment, we say to someone, I see you, I value you.  Giving generously – with our time, with our resources, and with our spirit is life-giving to the giver and to the receiver. Have you ever experienced being with someone where you felt like you were the only person in the world as they asked questions, listened past the information, listened for your feelings, and then asked even deeper questions – questions of the soul? The deepest forms of generosity have little to do with the giving of money and a great deal to do with the giving of ourselves.   

Through our understanding and acceptance. Understanding might be the purest form of listening. It doesn’t mean listening from our point of view. It means listening with no point of view. It means being genuinely curious about a world outside of our own. It means accepting what we hear, accepting another as they are and as they are not, instead of how we might wish them to be. True understanding has nothing to do with us.

Through our forgiveness and with our humility. Relationships aren’t perfect because we aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. We say things we don’t mean. Other times we’re offended. Forgiving ourselves and apologizing, forgiving others and accepting apologies, even accepting apologies we never receive keeps us in relationship when our egos wish to retreat. We’re not right all the time, not even most of the time. Our imperfections and faults are gentle reminders to not take ourselves so seriously while granting grace to others.  

Our hearts, visible through relationships, are the primary source of living long, happy, and meaningful lives. 

The invisible authoring your wealth

When Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby in 1973, a shrewd $10,000 investment in the S&P 500 index would be worth about $1,460,000 today, compounding 10.5% annually.

We seldom realize that when we invest in companies, we are really investing in the people who work for the companies. People with brilliant minds. People with big hearts. If all the people quit their jobs, if they left the buildings, if their hearts stopped beating and their blood stopped pumping, the innovation would cease. The value creation would stop.

People enter the workforce; others exit and retire. A majority change jobs or careers several times. New companies are formed, others go away. When Secretariat was setting his records, Kodak and Sears occupied two of the top ten spots in the S&P500. Steve Jobs was only eighteen and hadn’t yet dropped out of college to start Apple.

The big difference between relationships that contribute to our health and relationships that generate our wealth is one of depth. When it comes to our wealth, we’re best served by keeping our relationships shallow. Not warm. Not deep. And certainly not personal.

Deep relationships, with a single company and a small number of people is high risk – concentrating many eggs in one basket. Deep investment outcomes can be stratospheric or catastrophic. And stratospheric returns one year often result in catastrophic returns the next. The experience can be harrowing.

Just ask Bitcoin holders. Or Peloton investors. Or Amazon, Netflix, Tesla, and Meta investors in 2022 when these firms all fell more than 50% each.

Shallow relationships aren’t thrilling, nor are they agonizing. Ironically, shallow relationships protect us by ensuring we participate in the gains of stratospheric winners and the losses of the catastrophic losers. Historically, with the added ingredient of time, we experience generous compound returns as the winners more than offset the losers.

How do we keep our investing relationships shallow?

By owning thousands of companies – 99.99% we’ll never hear of.

By empowering hundreds of millions of employees – 99.9999% we’ll never meet.

Shallow relationships, invisible to the naked eye, are the primary source of our long-term wealth.

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For Further Reading:

Good genes are nice, but joy is better

Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | TED

The Lifelong Power of Close Relationships

The 8 Habits of Love - Ed Bacon