Diversification As a Coping Asset For Resilience
Across work, love, health, and play
It’s a Bear Market. Trade Wars. Volatility. Global Stocks Plummet. Impending Recession.
These are some of the phrases dominating the news cycle. Enough to spike your blood pressure.
If you’re in finance already, have ever sat down with a financial advisor, or picked up a book on financial security and weathering economic storms, you know the mantra: diversify.
Diversification
Diversification is a principle of building wealth and protecting against loss. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” they say. “Spread your investments” across geographies: the US, international, as well as emerging markets. And across asset classes like ETFs, bonds, and real estate.
Diversification isn’t just about maximizing gains; it’s about managing risk. It’s a long-term play that builds resilience against recession, geopolitical tension, or personal upheaval.
So what if you applied the same principle to your life?
Diversify Your Life
A vital life, one that is rich with meaning, connection, and energy, isn’t built by overinvesting in one area. Success in your career alone can’t sustain you when other parts of life are shaken. A sudden breakup. A layoff. A health scare.
When you’ve invested everything into just one role, whether it’s your job, a single relationship, or even something seemingly healthy like a rigorous fitness routine, those unexpected changes can feel even more destabilizing. Without a broader foundation, even the most disciplined focus can leave you vulnerable when life shifts.
Resilience comes from spreading your attention, time, and care across four key areas:
Work. Love. Health. Play.
The Expansive Diversified Life
A diversified life is expansive, open, and it involves some amount of risk-taking. To move toward what matters without guarantees or certainties. It’s not constrictive. Such a life can offer buffers and dividends over time. It can help reduce suffering. When one part wobbles, the others can sustain you. A fulfilling hobby can soften the blow of a tough week at work. Close friendships you’ve worked at building can keep you afloat during heartbreak. Spending time in nature can ground you in times of emotional turbulence.
If you’re reading this, you’ve most likely figured out Work. You’ve built purpose, structure, and success there or you’re well on that path. So let’s explore the other pillars that hold up a vital, diversified life, starting with Love.
Love
Relationships, romantic, familial, platonic, communal, offer grounding, joy, and resilience. Yet for many, it’s often deprioritized, postponed, or taken for granted. We assume it will always be there or that it can wait until we “make it.”
But love and emotional support don’t flourish passively. Like any long-term investment, they require consistent, intentional deposits of time, attention, and vulnerability. It means checking in, being present, repairing ruptures, and creating moments of shared joy and understanding.
Diversification here means not relying solely on one relationship, whether that’s a romantic partner, your kids, or a single close friend, for all your emotional needs. It means cultivating a network of connections. That could be a joining a men’s group, a sibling bond, rekindling a college friendship, or a neighbor you actually get to know.
The return on relationships often shows up not in grand gestures but in the quiet endurance of being seen, supported, and reminded that you’re not alone.
Health
Health is the foundation beneath all else. Often invisible when it's working and glaringly urgent when it’s not. Yet it’s one of the most commonly under-invested areas until crisis hits.
Physical and mental health are deeply interconnected, and both require ongoing maintenance, not just rescue operations. That doesn’t mean chasing extremes or perfection. It means making consistent, sustainable choices.
Diversification in health might look like moving your body regularly in ways that feel good, not just performative. Eating to nourish, not punish. Seeing a therapist or coach before things unravel. Spending time more regularly in nature that help regulate stress.
It’s easy to sacrifice health in the pursuit of achievement. But over time, it becomes painfully clear that without it, everything else is harder. Health is not a given. It’s leverage.
And..
Play: The Overlooked Asset
Play is perhaps the most overlooked asset in adulthood, especially when chasing goals, metrics, and outcomes are incentivized. But play doesn’t end with childhood. It’s been shown to be an essential biological need. It brings a whole range of benefits including joy, spontaneity, creativity, and resilience.
Play can take many forms: humor, banter, curiosity, being silly with a pet, art, exploring new places without a rigid plan, storytelling, and actual games. It’s less about what you do and more about how you do it. Are you engaging with life in a way that allows room for exploration, lightness, and surprise?
Many resist play because it doesn’t “produce” anything. But that’s the point. Play is where innovation and renewal can happen. It’s where we reconnect with our vitality or aliveness.
To diversify your life through play, seek out experiences that bring delight or spark wonder, even if they feel silly or unproductive. Spend time with people who help you laugh. Engage your senses. Let yourself be bad at something just for fun.
Play doesn’t ask for perfection. It invites presence.
Playfulness, the “predisposition to engage in playful activities and interactions,” can feel foreign to many. But playfulness isn't reserved for the young or the unburdened. While playfulness is a mindset that may come more naturally to some, it can also be cultivated.
Even when our internal wiring leans toward risk aversion or self-preservation, play can still be something we learn to nurture.
Who in your life embodies playfulness? Spend time with them. Observe how they engage with the world. Then try it for yourself.
Here are a few inspirations: Painter Etel Adnan’s childlike abstract figures. Octogenarian actor Miriam Margolyes’ mischief and irreverence. Taika Waititi’s absurd and touching storytelling in the Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit. And Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon’s personal joy of DJ’ing.
Photo by Arthur Sasse. 1951.Rebalancing in Practice
Reviewing your life “diversification” doesn’t require an overhaul. It begins with awareness and tracking.
Ask yourself:
What area of my life am I over-investing in? At what cost?
Where have I been under-investing?
What’s one small action I can take this week to rebalance?
Maybe it’s a walk without your phone or actually logging off when the day ends for Health. Saying “yes” to a spontaneous plan for Play. Making that apology to the person who matters for Love. Starting a monthly card or boardgame night—yes more Play and Love.
Small steps compound. Your future self might just thank you.