Rethinking the Priority of Spiritual Capital in the Modern Family Office
By Mo Lidsky and Sylvia Solit
Executive Summary
In an era where wealth is abundant but genuine connection is scarce, affluent families and family offices are awakening to the need to shift their gaze from the finite and superficial to the infinite and intimate. This shift is transforming the very heart and soul of the family office. Instead of asking, “How do we preserve our capital”, the most thoughtful families are asking “How can our capital help us to amplify and expand that which matters to us most?”
This whitepaper explores how purpose, presence, spirituality, and shared meaning can serve as powerful unifying forces across generations. Drawing from empirical research in psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and organizational leadership, we explore the often-overlooked spiritual governance of the family.
The Essence of Spiritual Governance
It is important to note that “spirituality” in this context does not require adherence to a specific faith or religious institution. It refers to an individual or collective sense of connection to something larger than the self or something more meaningful and sacred than the mundane. Whether expressed through meditation, ethical commitment, gratitude, nature immersion, or prayer, spirituality nurtures the soul of the family. Religious traditions may support this, but spirituality transcends dogma and may have little to do with any organized religion.
At its core, spirituality is about how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the larger story of life. It is mindfulness or the practice of being fully present to our experience. It is joy and gratitude, basking in the appreciation of the preciousness of life. It is the spark of purpose and enthusiasm that fuels our passions and unites us around something greater than ourselves. It is also acceptance, and having the grace to embrace what is, rather than constantly resisting it. And above all, it is love. It is the recognition that we are all part of something larger and that our true wealth is measured in the connections we create.
What Is the Soul of the Family?
The soul of the family is the unseen thread that holds together its identity, values, and emotional resonance. It’s not documented in estate plans or expressed in tax strategies, but in how family members make meaning together. It’s how they suffer, celebrate, give, forgive, and define what matters most.
It lives in the stories we tell and those we never say aloud. It’s the values that remain constant even as roles and assets shift. It’s the rituals, pauses, and conversations that echo across generations.
When families forget their soul, governance becomes mechanistic, wealth becomes isolating, and succession becomes transactional. When remembered, the soul provides the why beneath the what, transforming wealth into a force for coherence and growth.
Throughout history, the most enduring family legacies, from the Rothschilds to the Rockefellers, have recognized that wealth alone cannot secure continuity. The proverb “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” echoes across cultures for a reason. Financial capital, when untethered from shared purpose and emotional resilience, dissipates.
In today’s world of unprecedented technological acceleration and societal upheaval, the need to cultivate the soul of the family, as the source of shared meaning, connection, and conscience, has never been more urgent. It is not a sentimental add-on to governance. It is its future-proofing core.
The Silent Crisis of Affluent Families
Over the past two decades researchers have stumbled upon the painful paradox that children of privilege, who are surrounded by abundance, safety, and opportunity, are often more (not less) vulnerable to emotional distress than their less affluent peers.
Dr. Suniya Luthar’s (2002) research on affluent youth revealed significantly higher rates of anxiety, depression, and substance use, compared to low-income urban youth. Robert D. Lyman (2014) went so far as to categorize youth in high-achieving schools as a new “at-risk” group, citing elevated risk of cheating, anxiety, substance abuse, and reduced ethical functioning. Richard Weissbourd (2009) found that well-intentioned parents often undermine their children’s moral and emotional development by prioritizing achievement over character.
Despite having every external advantage, many affluent children feel emotionally neglected, spiritually undernourished, and fearful of not measuring up. The pressure to achieve, paired with an absence of inner grounding, leads to fragile identities, entitlement, and silent suffering. Why is this true?
Why Wealth Alone Doesn’t Bind
Money can buy access, opportunity, and security, but it cannot buy meaning, trust, or shared identity. In our society, self-worth is often tragically confused with net worth. In fact, when left unmoored from purpose, money often becomes a transactional force of fragmentation, where shared business interests can divide siblings, prompt inter-generational power struggles, and make heirs feel burdened by expectations, rather than inspired by possibility.
Capital alone has proven to be a weak binding agent because what binds a family is not shared ownership, but shared purpose. It is not the size of the estate that sustains a family, but stories, rituals, and the character of its members. Money can create comfort, open doors, and fund some dreams, but it cannot forge unity on its own.
Wealth, without spiritual capital, leaves the family vulnerable to “affluenza”, a condition of relational disconnection, anxiety, and erosion of intrinsic motivation.
How Do We Change This Dynamic?
For decades, spirituality was seen as personal, even private. But today, rigorous science confirms that spiritual development is essential for psychological and relational health, particularly in the context of affluence.
In research (2012) conducted by Dr. Lisa Miller, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, and founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, she demonstrated that youth with a strong spiritual core are up to 90% less likely to experience depression. Furthermore, families that integrate spiritual reflection and shared meaning-making practices display greater resilience, empathy, and cohesion. (2021) This practice of spirituality activates neural circuits associated with compassion, intuition, and inner peace, often referred to as the “awakened brain”.
Additional research from Dr. Kenneth Pargament (2001) shows that people who rely on positive spiritual frameworks during life crises experience greater psychological recovery and relational closeness. And in the emerging field of neurotheology, Dr. Andrew Newberg (2009) has mapped how meditation, prayer, and mystical experiences reshape the brain, strengthening networks tied to emotion regulation and connectedness. Furthermore, a University of Zagreb (2017) study found that families participating together in religious activities reported higher levels of family cohesion and satisfaction with family life.
The scientists are just confirming what spiritual leaders have long promoted. Spirituality is no longer optional. It is a core form of capital in families who don’t wish just to survive, but to thrive, across generations.
Entrainment and Emotional Synchrony
There’s a phenomenon called entrainment, which describes two or more systems beginning to synchronize with the dominant rhythm. A famous, practical example of entrainment is from Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist in the 17th century, who noticed that two pendulum clocks mounted on the same wall would eventually synchronize their swings, without any mechanical connection between them. The reality is that entrainment can be biological, emotional, or relational. In families, the “strongest signal” (whether it’s anxiety, joy, purpose, or fear) tends to set the tone for the system.
This is supported by the scientific community, with examples like Ruth Feldman’s work on neural synchrony (2007), showing how parent-child interactions can biologically attune brains, influencing long-term emotional regulation. Studies conducted at Shenzhen University in China on adolescent-parent brainwave synchrony (2022) confirmed that greater family cohesion correlated with more synchronized brain activity, especially in emotionally attuned families.
In family systems, entrainment happens unconsciously. For example, a patriarch’s emotional dysregulation can become normalized, or a matriarch’s grounding presence can calm intergenerational conflict. Family meetings that begin with speed and tension often stay in that frequency. In fact, the level of consciousness of parents is the primary force of their parenting. Culture is not built with rules. It’s built with rhythm. And while most governance plans define the decision-making structure, entrainment dictates the atmosphere.
Conscious Capital: When Money Reflects Meaning
It is our view that spiritual capital may be the most overlooked form of intergenerational wealth.
When a family’s capital reflects its soul, every investment becomes an extension of their values. This is conscious capital, the deliberate alignment of financial deployment with ethical, spiritual, and social intentions.
Some common examples include a family shifting its investment committee mandate to prioritize mental health, environmental regeneration, and other pro-social activities. Other examples include a second-generation leader introducing a “soul-return” metric alongside ROI, asking, how will this investment elevate our family, our community or our stakeholders in the years ahead?
These types of activities aren’t just a passing fad or a trend. They represent a transition from wealth as an asset to wealth as an expression of identity and the soul. And the time has never been more urgent to address this.
Why is Spirituality Absolutely Vital Now?
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to permeate every corner of our world, it will change everything, from the way we live to the way we work to the identities we carry. According to the World Economic Forum (2023), 44% of workers’ core skills are projected to change in the next five years due to AI disruption.
As we saw during COVID, any change to the way we work and study has a profound impact on the mental health of communities. The disruption of AI is projected to far exceed the disruption of stay-at-home work. It won’t just change where we work from, but even how we think about everything we do, and (more importantly) who we believe ourselves to be.
For hundreds of years, we’ve identified with what we knew (e.g., law, medicine, accounting) and what we do (e.g., accountant, doctor, barrister). AI has already eclipsed the most knowledgeable of doctors, and Artificial General Intelligence (strong AI or AGI) is projected to eventually eclipse the most capable of them. As technical knowledge becomes increasingly automated, human flourishing will rely more on identity, values, adaptability, and spiritual grounding.
This type of disruption will shake the very foundation of our identities as humans and force us to confront the question of, “What are we, really?” This will force a shift from an achieving mindset to an awareness mindset. Questions about what truly matters will ring ever louder, and spirituality will be the last refuge for offering answers to these difficult questions, allowing for the exploration and preservation of the family’s soul.
What does a Soulful Family Office Look Like?
A soulful family office doesn’t abandon technical excellence. It builds the technical mastery and then transcends it by integrating emotional fluency, ritual, storytelling, and purposeful governance.
Features might include “legacy salons” and intergenerational gatherings focused on personal storytelling and collective meaning. Families have employed “ethos compacts”, or agreements about how decisions are made and discussed, rooted in shared values. A family can employ a more conscious onboarding, where new in-laws or rising gens are welcomed through personal narrative sharing, not just structural briefings.
In this way, soulful families don’t just transfer assets. They transmit meaning and spirit. Though, the question many may ask is, how?
Immediate Practices to Cultivate the Soul of the Family
There are many simple, scalable, and sacred strategies families can use to awaken the soul of the family. Below are just a handful of examples that we’ve seen, and have been privileged to facilitate with families around the world.
- Legacy Journaling – A practice where family members reflect on their life experiences, values, pivotal moments, and hopes for future generations, transforming individual memories into collective wisdom and strengthens emotional inheritance, with prompts such as, “What do I hope my grandchildren will most remember from me? And what will they feel, because of the choices I make today?”
- Purpose Mapping – This can involve simple exercises like each family member writing their top 3 life values, then sharing how they relate to the family mission.
- Gratitude Anchoring – At each quarterly meeting, begin by sharing one meaningful non-financial moment from the past 90 days that each participant is grateful for.
- Annual Soul Summits – Dedicate one retreat per year not to numbers, but to narrative. What did we learn? What are we growing toward? Are we clear on our purpose? How do we ensure all our core relationships are in alignment?
- Philanthropic Story Circles – When giving, every member shares why this gift matters to them, to the family, and to the world.
- Presence Practices – A family can change the character of a meeting when it begins all their family meetings with a moment of stillness, some breathwork or a short meditation.
- Spiritual Participants – Inviting inspirational teachers and mentors to guide segments of family meetings.
Although all of the ideas above are pleasant, powerful and inspiring, perhaps the most impactful and fulfilling moments almost always involve some kind of challenge or discomfort. It is in these moments of pain, heartbreak, effort, and vulnerability that we grow. Shared struggle often deepens family ties more than shared luxury ever could. In this way, pain and joy are not opposites but partners in our human experience. The families who can hold and navigate both are the ones who will truly thrive across generations.
Conclusion & Invitation
If you are reading this, chances are your family has achieved extraordinary things. But the next chapter in your story won’t be written by the prudent management of financial capital alone. It will be written by the courage to align your wealth with your purpose, by the honesty to ask the hardest questions, and by the wisdom to choose what truly matters.
When families remember their soul, they stop asking how to merely preserve their wealth and start asking how their wealth can preserve what matters most. They start reflecting on the very things that give our lives meaning, exploring whether at the heart of one’s financial success lies a far more valuable asset – i.e., the soul of the family – that’s worth remembering.
We have walked alongside countless families, helping them design strategies that reflect not just their assets, but their essence.
If these words resonate or if you sense a deeper calling for your family and your capital, we invite you to reach out. Let’s explore how together we can help your family craft a legacy that is not only enduring, but transformative.
Because the true legacy of any family is not found in the assets they own, but in the spiritual impact they leave behind. That is the legacy that endures.
We’re here for you.
- Mo Lidsky, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer – mlidsky@primequadrant.com
- Sylvia Solit, Senior Consultant, Governance and Spirtuality – ssolit@primequadrant.com
- Rebecca Nicholson, Foundation Director and Wellness Advisor – rnicholson@primequadrant.com
- Nancy Marshall, Head of Family Office Services – nmarshall@primequadrant.com
- Lili Marmurek, Chief Experience Officer, Konnect Better – lmarmurek@primequadrant.com
- Trish Wilson, Consultant, Family Office Solutions – twilson@primequadrant.com
Appendix
Citations
- Luthar, S. S., & Becker, B. E. (2002). Privileged but Pressured? A Study of Affluent Youth. Child Development, 73(5), 1593–1610.
- Lyman, R. D. et al. (2014). Youth in High-Achieving Schools: Challenges to Mental Health and Ethical Functioning. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(7), 1145–1160.
- Weissbourd, R. (2009). The Parents We Mean to Be. Harvard University Press.
- Feldman, R. (2007). Parent–Infant Synchrony: A Biobehavioral Model of Mutual Influence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(6), 340–345.
- Berc, G., Blažeka Kokorić, S., & Dučkić Sertić, A. (2017). Strengthening family cohesion through shared participation of family members in religious activities in Croatia. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 36(3), 277–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/15426432.2017.1322931
- Deng, X., Lin, M., Zhang, L., Li, X., & Gao, Q. (2022). Relations between family cohesion and adolescent-parent’s neural synchrony in response to emotional stimulations. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 18(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12993-022-00197-1
- Liu, T., et al. (2022). Neural Synchrony and Family Cohesion. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 18(1), 3.
- Miller, L. et al. (2012). Spirituality and Depression Risk in Offspring of Depressed Parents. JAMA Psychiatry, 69(10), 967–974.
- Miller, L. (2021). The Awakened Brain. Random House.
- Newberg, A., & Waldman, M. R. (2009). How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist. Ballantine Books.
- Pargament, K. I. (2001). The Psychology of Religion and Coping. Guilford Press.
- World Economic Forum. (2023). The Future of Jobs Report 2023. Geneva: World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/
Additional Resources
Books
- The Awakened Brain by Lisa Miller
- The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
- The Seven Stages of Money Maturity by George Kinder
- The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
- New Earth by Ekhart Tolle
- Faith and Finance by Charles Lee
- Firms of Endearment by Raj Sisodia et al.
