Our philosophy

Everything we do at Ripple Out grows from the seed of Wela™: the idea that wealth is made up of six dimensions, and money is just one of them. All six exist together, and a change in one can affect the others, in good ways and bad. That's what we mean when we say every action ripples out.

Where the idea comes from

Ask most people what it means to be wealthy and they'll talk about money. That's a reasonable way to judge how materially secure someone is, but it's a narrow way to describe a wealthy life.

Money matters, of course. After all, I spent a long time helping people build that security. It can give you choices you might not have without it, and a lack of it can seriously affect your safety and security.

But the more I've worked with people, and the more I've watched a society with consumerism at its heart chase more while mental ill health keeps rising, the more I've come to believe we need to change how we think about wealth. We lean on money as the measuring stick for a whole life, we strive for an arbitrary and undefined “more”, and too often we confuse net worth with self-worth.

The word itself used to cover a lot more ground. Wealth comes from the Old English wela, which stood for riches but also for prosperity and wellbeing, and once you start looking, you notice traces of that older meaning everywhere. We say we’re doing well when we mean life in general. Welfare is about how people are faring, not what they own. And the word commonwealth originally meant the common good, the wellbeing of everyone.

You don’t have to be anti-capitalist to notice that as money took over, we narrowed the word down to the part that’s easiest to count, and we’ve been measuring our lives with it ever since.

People have questioned a life judged by riches alone for thousands of years. Aristotle saw wealth as useful only for getting you to something else, and the Dhammapada calls contentment the greatest wealth.

At Ripple Out, we use Wela to bring attention to all six dimensions of wealth, and more awareness and balance to the lives of the people we work with.

How they connect

You can give each dimension attention on its own, but the energy we put into each one, or the lack of it, affects the others, often without us noticing.

It’s normal for one area of your life to need more attention than the rest at times. What matters is knowing that you’re choosing it, what it’s costing you elsewhere, and having at least a loose plan for coming back to balance.

Small changes in one place can ripple out across a whole life, and our choices reach further than we expect, including into the lives of the people around us. That works for better and for worse, and it all starts with awareness.

Try the Wela Dashboard →

Where we work

Ripple Out doesn’t provide therapy or financial advice, though its work sits comfortably alongside both. It focuses on the psychology, habits and behaviours underneath how we live, to bring balance and awareness across the whole of a life.

Everything we do is rooted in one or more of the six dimensions of wealth, and soon ripples into the others. The Conscious Currency®, our flagship methodology, is a good example. It starts with money, but money conversations soon turn into conversations about time, health and meaning.

If your own work touches any of the six dimensions, you can join the Wela Collective.

Explore The Conscious Currency →