Blessed to Be a Blessing: The Five Capitals
In this powerful conclusion to our Rogue Collective series, we’re diving deep into the fourth foundational principle of living a purpose-driven life: being blessed to become a blessing.
The Paradigm Shift
At the heart of this episode is a profound paradigm shift that challenges our cultural norms. While society often teaches us to accumulate blessings for ourselves, I want to suggest a different approach—seeing ourselves as conduits through which blessings flow to others.
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” This Winston Churchill quote captures the essence of the message: your life isn’t defined by what you receive, but by what you give to others.
The Five Capitals
Let me make this practical. There are five capitals we all possess that can be used to bless others:
- Financial Capital: Your money, assets, and financial resources. Even if limited, there are always ways these can flow through you to bless others.
- Intellectual Capital: Your knowledge, creativity, and expertise. Whether you know how to fix cars, raise children, or solve complex problems, this knowledge wasn’t just given to you for your benefit alone.
- Physical Capital: Your time, energy, and health. When properly managed, these resources can be invested in others to transform their lives.
- Relational Capital: Your network, connections, and relationships. These connections can open doors for others when you see them as resources to share rather than possess.
- Spiritual Capital: Your wisdom, purpose, and spiritual insights. As Daron reminds us, “The gospel always comes to you on its way to someone else.”
Your Call to Action
Take inventory of your five capitals and identify who in your life needs what only you have to offer. Which capital do you have the most of? Where do you need to grow? And most importantly, who around you needs what’s flowing into your life?
Remember: “We’re blessed to become a blessing.” When we shift from being reservoirs to becoming rivers of blessing, we not only transform lives—we transform culture.
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To connect or learn more about joining a Rogue Collective band, visit RogueCollectiveCoaching.com or email me directly at DaronEarlewine.com.
Episode Summary:
What if your resources, your relationships, your gifts—and even your pain—were never just for you? Daron lays out a compelling vision for the final foundation of love: that you were blessed to be a blessing. In this episode, he teaches how to assess and activate your “Five Capitals” so that everything flowing into your life flows through your life. This is how you live a life that’s not only meaningful but transformational. He also shares a powerful, heartbreaking story about the importance of seeing and blessing others before it’s too late.
Key Takeaways:
⚡️ You are not a reservoir—you are a conduit of blessing
⚡️ The Five Capitals: Financial, Intellectual, Physical, Relational, Spiritual
⚡️ You don’t need wealth to bless—just awareness and intention
⚡️ Culture says “get”—Jesus says “give”
⚡️ People around you need your blessing more than you know
Notable Quotes:
⚡️ “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill
⚡️ “The gospel always comes to you on its way to someone else.” – Alex McManus
⚡️ “Your spiritual life grows when it flows.”
⚡️ “To live this way is countercultural—but it’s also transformational.”
⚡️ “What if your life could save someone else’s?”
Episode Resources:
Connect with Daron on Social Media:
Links to the Daron Earlewine Podcast
YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Libsyn
TRANSCRIPT
If we’re going to embrace this, if we could become a person that lived this way, we would live counterculture, but we would also live as a transformer, someone who transforms the culture around them. Back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. So stoked to have you on this episode as we land the plane, as I like to say, on this rogue collective journey through all the content we’re creating and have created.
to help people become where they were born to be in the marketplace around the world and their lives. And I just want to say thank you. I want to say thank you if you’re new to this journey. Maybe you’re in a road collective band right now. You’re going through the personal development, purpose development content, and you’re checking out the podcast to go, man, I just want a little more content in this process. You’re new. Welcome. So glad you’re So glad you download the episode, whether it’s the audio or it’s the video version over on YouTube.
And I want to thank you, say thank you if you’ve been with us forever, if you’re like a podcast OG and you’ve been like, oh, wow, Daron’s doing, they’re doing something different again. And we are. And for those that have been on this journey with us, I hope that you have been awakened, hope you’ve been inspired, hope you’ve been equipped by kind of watching the journey of me just trying to chase down who God’s created me to be.
trying to chase God into his ideas and his burdens for what he wants to see in the world. And I hope that inspires you to do the same. We started Black Permission, our nonprofit, back in 2012, and that was coming right on the heels of us launching our first endeavor, which was called Pub Theology. In Pub Theology, we were trying to take the lovages outside the walls of the church and put it back in the everyday spaces and places of life.
And those everyday spaces and places at that time were local bars and restaurants. And even after that, we started in 2009, I think it was doing that, and we’re still doing it today. And it’s been amazing to see the opportunity to add blessing and value to people’s lives through that process. Alongside that, we were always doing the spiritual DNA workshops and turned into a I mean, an online course and had the amazing blessing to take thousands of people through DNA. And then we changed the name and redid it again as the purpose paradigm. And we’ve been doing that in local schools and jails. That’s continuing. Then somewhere in there, we started a radio show. Some of you are part of that here in Indiana, or you may have listened around the country online. But radio theology, we did that for three and a half years. And the whole purpose of that was could we bless people.
in the everyday spaces and places of life, like their car as they’re driving around with a message of faith and hope and love. And I love what we’re doing with that. And then somewhere in there, I wrote a book trying to help people to recover from the death of a dream they’ve gone through. And I think almost all of us have gone through something like that, where we thought this is where my life was gonna be, and then my life became my life.
and try to help people not get stuck in that and find the courage and the healing to dream again. And then in the past year, we’ve launched this Rogue Collective, which I think is kind of the culmination of everything that we’ve done. And so encapsulates so much of my passion that I want to awaken people to become what they’re born to I want to bless people with all of the good that God’s given me into their life so that they live the life they were created to live. And…
I just can’t say thank you enough for those that have been on the journey with us, whether it’s just you listen, whether it’s you pray for us, whether it’s you serve with pub theology, you listen to radio theology, you’ve gone through spiritual DNA, you’ve purchased the book, or maybe you’re in a road collective band right now. Maybe you’ve financially helped the nonprofit stay vibrant for the past 12, 13 years. I can’t thank you enough for allowing us to do that, to actually do our best to do exactly what we’re talking about today, which is to be blessed, to become a blessing. That is our fourth foundational principle, to live a life of love, to live a life to become who we’re born to be. That we’re blessed to become a blessing. You’ve heard us talk about this before. This was one of our four core, our four noble quests in our life, to be a blessing. It’s also what we talked about in that session.
that it is what I believe is our divine vocational calling as human beings. As God was establishing this partnership, this connection back with humanity, we see that He came to a man who He was near, right? He wasn’t far away. He was for Him, He was not against Him, and He had created Him on purpose and for purpose. And He comes to Him and He says, here’s how this is going to work. I’m the source. I’m the source of all life and love and hope, all these…
I am the source and here’s what I’m going to do because I’m for you. I’m going to begin to bless you. The signal path of life is that God is for you and he wants to bless you. He’s bringing good into your life. We have this kind of factory defect where we get stuck. We’re beginning to think, okay, it means things come into my life and I get to accept them. I get to receive them and then I hold them and I try to build everything I can for myself.
It makes me think of this quote by Winston Churchill, right? Where he says that, that we make a living by what we get, right? But we make a life by what we give. And I think we get caught up in this, in this paradigm that my life is about, I do what I do so I can get. And that’s how we might make a living, but, the paradigm shift has to become, if I’m going to create a great life, my life is not going to be defined by what I get. My life is going to be defined by what I give. I am blessed.
to become a blessing, right? The scriptures say it like this in Acts chapter 20, it’s more blessed to give than receive. And I think we all get that, we would agree with that. I think it’s tough to live that. I think it’s tough to live that. And it makes me think of, I was listening to Alan Hirsch a couple of weeks ago at a conference and…
Alan’s one my favorite authors. I’ve kind of been a distant mentor of mine for about 15 years in the content that he puts out. And he’s got a new book called Metanoia. And Metanoia is the Greek word for repentance. And he broke down in this session, if you break down the word Metanoia, the two parts of that Greek word, right, it literally means like higher thinking. And the way that Alan broke it down is the idea that it’s a great way to say paradigm shift.
Your paradigm is the lens in which you see the world. And if our lens is, I live and I do what I can to get, to contain, to be a reservoir, if you will, of blessings and what I want for my life. If this is your paradigm, what I believe that Jesus is inviting us into and I’m asking you to consider is a paradigm shift to begin to repent of the way you think, to begin to agree with God that actually,
The way that I was created, the best way I lived my life is not to just get, but to receive, to be blessed, to have the joy, the happiness, the opportunities that blessings give, but I don’t ever receive them just for me, but they’re always coming to me on their way to someone else. This is the paradigm shift that we have to embrace. We have to change if we’re going to ever live a life of love.
Yes, there’s great blessings that come into my life, but they’re never meant just to be received and contained. But my life becomes, we like to say this, a conduit. What am I? I’m a human being who God has near and fore and created me on purpose and for a purpose. And my life is to be a conduit. Everything flows through me to bless others. Like I said, it’s one of our noble quests. It’s one of our vocational, I think that our vocational calling as a human being.
And to live this way is unbelievably counter-cultural. I also think it can be absolutely cultural transforming. If we begin to be people in our lives and our relationships, we’re created by a relationship for relationships, right? As we talk about here, ton on the podcast, Gary Smalley’s quote, life is relationships, everything else is just the details. If we’re going to embrace this, if we could become a person that lived this way, we would live counter-cultural, but we would also live as a transformer.
someone who transforms the culture around them. And I want to make this easy in the podcast today. I want to give us what I’ve been taught are the five capitals of life. You break it down and say, okay, well, okay, I’m in Daron, I want this paradigm shift. I want to be a person who blesses others. But what does that look like? Like, what does that practically look like in my life? Does this mean I’m nice? Yeah, it doesn’t. It means you’re not a jerk, right? Does it mean that I just like, I affirm people? Like we just talked about, like I the power of my words. Yep, it’s that, right?
So, but we can break it down and say, well, what’s in my hand? What are the capitals that I have that I can actually begin to look at as a way that how do these things flow through me to bless others? And if you look at the word capital, it’s this, capital is the physical, mental, relational, spiritual or financial resources used to produce value. Let me say it again. The five capitals, right? What is a capital? Your capital that you possess in your life.
is the physical, mental, relational, spiritual or financial resources that you possess that have flowed into your life that you can use to produce value to bless other people. So let’s break these down real quick and take a look at what they look like in your life. First one is financial capital. Okay. We’re talking about cash. We’re talking about assets, right? Anything that gets you paid. They could be shares, bonds, the stuff that’s in your wall. This is your financial capital. And I think this is a part where a lot of us usually start, like, want to bless people. Okay, well, it’s gonna be tough for me to bless people there. And because I work a minimum wage job, I’m barely making ends meet. And so I’m just, can’t be a real person that blesses. Cause my only, my only, you know, my only paradigm, if you will, of what blessing looks like is people that write other people checks or people that give big tips when they’re out to eat or, and that’s one of them. And if you have a lot of financial capital,
You have the ability to bless people in that way. And you’ve probably learned that if your life is just about how much money you can make, right, it’s causing more problems and more stress in your life. But as you begin to see yourself as a conduit, all of a sudden things begin to change and begin to open up. And you still have the blessings that are flowing, but now they’re flowing not just to you, they’re flowing through you. So that first capital is financial, okay? Second one is intellectual capital.
This is your creativity, your knowledge, and the smarts that set you apart.
And I wonder, have you ever really thought about this of what intellectual capital do I have that I could allow to flow through me into the lives of other people?
And I think if we understand the concept, the paradigm that Jesus tried to give us, if He was inviting people to come be apprentices of Him in a sacred space we call this discipleship, this is also what we’re called to. Jesus literally told us that the command was like, hey, here’s what you’re to do, go make disciples. So take all the intellectual capital you’ve received from me, right? Maybe you know how to fix cars, maybe you know how to cook food, maybe you know how to parent.
Maybe you how to raise good kids. Maybe you know how to do math really well. Whatever is the intellectual capital you have, have you begin to ask God to say, could you expand my imagination for how I could use this to actually bless other people? I can tell you what it does for me is I love to learn. My friends and my counselor joke that I’m like a self-help junkie. Like I’m always reading four or five books. And when I’m reading,
When I’m learning, sometimes I feel like I probably need to soak in what I’m learning for myself a little bit longer than I do. But I get so inspired by it. If I learn something that is very helpful to me, the first thing that starts to pop into my head is, who can I teach this to? How can this intellectual capital that I’m getting, how can it bless someone else? And I can tell you this, the greatest joy that I ever have in my life.
is what I’m getting to do here on the podcast, what I get to do in road collective coaching, what I get to do when I’m teaching, what I get to do when I’m speaking on a stage, what I get to do when I’m discipling someone is, man, I have this intellectual, I’ve learned something that is good for life and it’s not just for me to have a better life. is the beauty of it is when it can go from me to we. It’s gonna be something that begins to flow into someone else’s life. So what’s your intellectual capital look like? Is that high? If not, right? I would encourage you to start growing in it.
not just so you’re a smarter person, but so you can bless others in greater capacity. The next capital is this, physical capital. This is your time, this is your energy, this is your health, right? The fuel of your life that keeps your engine running. And if we look at this, this kind of comes back to that idea that we talked about in the last episode of what does it look like to affirm people, we talked about those, the five love languages, right? Which is quality time is,
As I look at my physical capital, my time, my energy, my health, how is it something that I can use to help flow into the lives of other people? I think a lot of us fall down in life in these three categories, time, energy, and health. If our health is struggling, usually our energy is lacking, and when our energy is lacking, we usually misuse our time. If you’ve grown in this and you say, you know what, I’ve actually learned this, I actually am a healthy person.
I have a lot of energy. I have a lot of time. The reality is you didn’t just stumble upon those. You didn’t learn some kind of magic trick. You’ve put structures and systems, discipline around your life to grow in that physical capital. And you’re enjoying the benefits of it. You can still play with your kids and coach your kids. You can still play basketball. You can still go on walks. You have energy to actually get through your day, right? You have margin in your life.
And this is something that has been a blessing to you. But how many people just look around your life that you look at and you go, man, there’s an 18 year old kid who if I’m taking a look at, he doesn’t have any financial capital. He has very little intellectual capital. And if I’m paying attention to his life, there’s not a lot of physical capital in his life. How could I invite him into a relationship and begin to bless him by teaching him or her how to grow in the physical
Capital of their life here’s what you could do. You could transform their life and bless them for the rest of their existence You don’t have to write a check You just got to give them your time Right. The next one is this this is your relational capital This is the quality of your crew, right your tribe your hive your band your connections The people who they’ve got your back right then they they help your life happens you look around your life
This could be expressed when you say something like, you know what, I got a guy or I got a girl. If you look around your life, you may have amazing connections that could be door openers to people that you could change their life. But if you see this as something that is a scarce resource, like, I can’t let them know, I can’t let them meet that person because they’re my guy for…
what I need out of that or I can’t tell them I can’t make this connection let them have that friendship because I’ll have less. But if we have that thought that’s our paradigm what we’re embracing is a very scarce mindset. But if we live in a world of abundance if we live in a world of freedom which we’ve talked about is one of our noble quests we go I’m connected to the source who is has all resources he never runs out of resources and he’s given me some of these so guess what if I can actually take
People that I know, right? The crew that’s around me, the connections I have, and I can see that they’re not just for me, but who can I bless by connecting people to people and people to resources? What you’ll find is you don’t run out of resources, you just continue to get more. Because I believe from the bottom of my heart that God is looking for people that he can trust with more resources, that he can trust with more capital. And how does he know he can trust you with capital? Is that it flows through you. You don’t just possess it.
Look at your relational capital. You may have a friend that could change someone’s life. You may have a friend that could get somebody the job that they need. You may have a friend that could get somebody in the house that they’ve dreamed of living in. You may get somebody a friend, a connection, right? That could save someone’s marriage. As you look around your life, what resources in relational capital have been brought into your life, not just for you to possess, not just for you to enjoy, but to flow through your life and bless others.
Next one is this, your spiritual capital. This is your fifth capital. This is the wisdom. This is the purpose, right? This is knowing who God created you be, who God created you to be. This is what gives you the fire in your soul to keep pushing forward. Alex McManus taught me this a long time. He said this, the gospel always comes to you on its way to someone else. The gospel meaning good news.
Any spiritual truths that you have learned, that you have embodied, that have transformed your life were never sent into your life just for you. They came into your life on their way to someone else. If you’re feeling spiritually stuck right now, if you feel like, haven’t really grown spiritually in years, like I’m just doing the same stuff, like I’m getting up, I’m having a quiet time, I’m praying, I’m journaling, like I’m doing these spiritual disciplines, but it just feels
old. Here’s what I want to ask you. Is anyone on the receiving end of what you are learning? Does your spiritual life have a flow to it? We talked about this, right? As we went through the flow console, we went through that and then the Four Noble Quests, your life is created to flow. And if you want to stay in a flow state of your life, which I know we all do, it has to flow through us. So as you look at your life, what
is your spiritual capital look like? If you’ve got a ton of it, it’s time for you to start pouring it into the lives of people around you. How do you do that? You invite someone in to a relationship, right? You eat with them, you share life with them, you talk with them, you work to see and know and affirm, and you bless them out of your spiritual capital.
Those are the five capitals. That’s a practical way we can look at how do I bless people. So I want you to look at your life right now. Which one is the highest? it financial, intellectual, physical, relational, spiritual? Which one do you have? If you look at the gauge, and this could be a great activity, this could be a great call to action, get a piece of paper, get your journal out, write those five capitals down and go, okay, on a scale of the one to 10, where am I at? I might only be at two at financial capital, but if I’m looking at it, man, mean, relational capital, got about, I’m looking at about a nine and a half here. We’ll start there.
Who’s around your life right now that needs the resources that have been poured into your life? Who needs to be blessed to the excess capital that you have? Right? Because we’re not called to just do, right? We’re called to be, we’re created by relationship, for relationship, and we’re created to be a blessing. All how does this actually look when we see it happen in life? And for me, the first story that comes to my mind is my friend Lucy.
My friend Lucy, she’s in college right now, but just a few years ago, she had a dream her whole life. She had gifts and abilities, talents that God had given her in fashion and clothing design. She was really good and it was her driving passion of her life. She pursued that dream. She got an opportunity to go to a very prestigious university out of state from where her parents lived. And if you know about out of state tuition, which I’m learning about because I have two sons,
One’s going in-state, one’s going out-of-state. If you’ve gotten to that place in your life, you know out-of-state tuition is really, really expensive. And our parents had to figure out, what are we willing to sacrifice as far as our capital to give life to our child’s dream?
They got her into the college and they realized we can get through year one. Our financial capital will allow us to give life to her dream for one year, but we cannot afford to finance the rest of her dream. What other capitals do we have that we could use as a blessing? And they used them all. Okay. They looked at their financial capital, right? They looked at their physical capital and they said, okay.
Here’s what we could do. She’s our youngest child. We’re now empty nesters. We hadn’t planned on selling our house, but we did actually have a dream of living in the state when we retired that she’s going to college. So what if we sold our house and bought a house in that state to get her in-state tuition? That’s a big sacrifice. That’s leveraging capital for the blessing of other people. Well, what?
What relational capital do we have? Well, we have people there. We people that could help us sell our house. We have people that could help us buy house. And we would have to leverage all of our relational connections to make this happen. Right? What physical capital do we have? Well, we could figure this out. We have the time and energy. We could work from home, from here. We could do these things. We could structure our time where we go back and forth between these states. They begin to leverage every element of capital, spiritual capital.
Right? Seeking God’s direction. God, what do we need to do? How can we sacrifice? How can we love like you have loved us to give life to our child’s dream? And they went all in, blessed to be a blessing. They sold their house. They moved to this state. They set up there. They made their jobs work where they could, you know, figure all that place, that situation out. They began to give wisdom and direction and intellectual capital, you know, to their daughter. And I’m happy to report.
She spent this last semester actually overseas in the fashion capital of the world and she is excelling. She is chasing this dream and her dream is coming to life and it had no shot of happening without her parents loving her by saying, you know what honey, we see you. We see what God’s putting you. We know you. We know your gifts and abilities and your dreams. We affirm you in what you’re doing.
And we’re going to go all in with all the capitals of our life to bless you in the pursuit of your dream. And their daughter is becoming who she was born to be. And I can’t wait to come back on the podcast 20, 25 years from now and talk to you about the ripple effect of what this life has produced in the world.
And I can tell you right now, when I sit down with them, they don’t sit around and cry about the old house they had. They don’t sit and cry about, oh, we had to change this and we lost some friends and we had to make new friends. And they’re not sad.
They’re full of blessing upon blessing upon blessing because they have begun to live their life as a blessing. I’ll tell you another story as we close that doesn’t end so well. This story actually breaks my heart. It’s about a friend of mine named Bill. And Bill was a brilliant writer. He had amazing ability to put great thought and insight into his words.
But his whole life, Bill struggled with pretty debilitating depression. And through his high school years and into his twenties, depression led to some substance abuse issues. And you had good season and some bad seasons. And he struggled. had a great family around him. But in the past few years, he began to turn the corner in a positive way. He got a good job. He began to grow in relationship. His capitals began to grow, but he still had
this great struggle with depression. And a couple years ago, he no showed and no called to work.
He’d never done that before. The next day, no show, no call to work, and his job fired him. And it made me wonder.
Did anyone see Bill? He worked in the underground mine, which is a tough job, drove a truck. And I wonder for the people that worked around him, was he just Bill, the guy that drives the truck, and when they didn’t see him and didn’t hear from him for two days.
Not that you don’t have consequences for actions, I get it, if there’s a policy of that, but did anyone see him for who he was? Did anyone know him? Like really know him to know that Bill is not just somebody who works for us, but he is a dearly loved son of God. He is an image bearer of God. I know what’s true about him.
And I know he’s had these struggles. know somewhat of his dreams and aspirations are, I know something about his family. I know something about his financial situation. I know what’s going on in his life. I’m just wondering, did anybody see and know him and what he was going through? Another question I have is, did anyone affirm him? Did anybody take it as their thing? Here’s how I’m going to bless though. I’m going to see him, I’m going to know him. I’m going to try to affirm him every day because I know some of the struggles he’s going through. So when I see him in the morning, I’m going to take 10 seconds. I’m going to really affirm him.
When he shows up and he works hard that day, I’m going take some time, I’m to ask him how he’s doing. I’m going to affirm what I see him becoming. I’m going to affirm the gifts and the abilities and the character I see him. Did anyone affirm him? And did anyone bless him? Was there anybody on the crew that was like, you know what, I’ve got some financial, I’ve got some intellectual, some spiritual, some physical relational capital that I’m going to make sure that Bill has. I don’t know if it happened. Here’s all I know happened is one day I got a phone call that Bill had taken his life.
And it broke my heart, it broke his family’s heart. Because that was not God’s plan for his life. He had so much to give this world and I just wonder, I just wonder what would, how the story would be different if the people that were around him that worked with him, that he worked for, I’m just wondering what would happen if they would have said, know what, my job here is not to keep the project on time and on budget.
I’m not just in the mining business, I’m in the people business. And here’s what I’m do today. I’m gonna see, I’m going to know, I’m going to affirm, I’m going to bless everyone that comes into my life.
I’m wondering if it would have saved his life. And here’s my question, is who’s in your life right now that your life could save? That your life could bring them to freedom, that your life could bring them into love, that your life could be an awakening blessing that changes the course of human history.
Those are our four foundations. And here’s what I’d like you to do. Here’s a little call to action. I want you to take some time and look at your five capitals. What do you have the most in? Where do you need to grow in? And who is right in your life right now that you could say, you know what, I’m hooking up with that person. What I’m going to do is I’m going to begin to be a conduit of blessing into their life. Okay. Take a look at that. Ask God for some direction and get in the game to be a conduit.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Would love to hear your thoughts and questions. You can email me, Daron at DaronEarlewine.com. And if you’d like to join a band in the Rogue Collective and begin to go through this process with a group of folks, just go to RogueCollectiveCoaching.com, set up a 30 minute discovery call with me, and we’ll do our best to get you in a band as quick as we can. If you own a business or you run a business and you say, we got to get our people developed.
We got invest in our people because of the greatest resource we have. Reach out to me, go to roadcollectivetecoaching.com, schedule discovery, call this talk about awakening your people to become who they were born to be. God bless you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I appreciate you. And remember, until the next time we talk, God is for you. He’s not against you. He’s near you, not far away. And he’s created you on purpose and for purpose.