When setting life goals, what areas of life should you look at?
As it turns out, among all the personal development suggestions in this are, there only seems to be about half a dozen really crucial areas of life that you need to remember when you set your life goals.
In this episode, I talk about the six areas of life you should include when setting your life goals.
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When setting goals for your life, what are the areas of life that you focus on?
This is actually a more important question to ask than you think. The answer may determine if you have a balanced life or if you accidentally leave something very valuable out of your life plan. One strategy to achieve happiness is to ask, “What do I need in my life take to make me happy?” Or asking the question, “What usually makes people unhappy that I can avoid?” People usually find that they need to either meet certain needs or be making progress in certain areas of life. Most notably are health, relationships, finances, work, free time, and other areas like those. So, what are these areas of life that we should make sure we have a look at when setting our life goals?
Example of Life Areas From Books and Other Sources:
- Tony Robbins Pyramid of Self Mastery: 7 Areas of Constant Growth for an Extraordinary Life are as follows: (1) Physical Body, (2) Emotions & Meaning, (3) Relationships, (4) Time, (5) Work/Career/Mission, (6) Finances, and (7) Celebrate & Contribute / Spiritual Sense (see Unleash the Power Within seminar material)
- In the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, for example, he refers to the different areas of life as finances, health, business, personal development, and relationships. Get through amazon affiliate link: http://amzn.to/2yb1hgC
- The Five F’s from Mary Bennett’s website: (1)Fitness, (2)Family & Friends, (3)Finance & Work, (4)Fun, and (5)Faith. Here is the link.
- Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People lists (1) Family, (2) Friends, (3) Work, (4) Church/Community Service, etc. (see page 146 in Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind).
- I’ll add life categories as I encounter them here.
Here is an example of Tony Robbins Life Areas (source: https://www.tonyrobbins.com/leadership-impact/tie-it-all-together/)
Wondering what all the different permutations there were out there, I carried out a brief survey of the internet and discovered the following 62 possible life categories:
CATEGORIES FOR LIFE GOAL AREAS (in alphabetical order):
Adventure, Attitude, Body, Business, Career, Character, Community, Connection, Contribution, Educational, Emotional, Enjoy Life, Environmental, Experiential, External, Family, Financial, Fitness, Freedom, Friends, Fun, Giving Back, Health, Hobbies, Home, Intellectual, Leisure, Life Vision, Lifestyle, Live, Love, Meaning, Mental, Mind, Mindset, Mission, Money, Parenting, Passions, Personal, Personal Growth, Physical, Profession, Psychological, Purpose, Quality of Life, Recognition, Recreation, Relationship, Rest, Romance, Self-Care, Social, Spiritual, Stewardship, Time, Travel, Vision, Wealth, Wellness, and Work.
However, as you read through these, you’ll find that many of them are saying the same thing or are referring to the same things in life. Grouping these together, I found that there were about 6 unique, non-combinable categories. Here they are:
INNER LIFE AREAS | OUTER LIFE AREAS | ||||
CHARACTER | WELLNESS | WEALTH | RELATIONSHIPS | CONTRIBUTION | LIFESTYLE |
Intellectual
Education Spiritual Attitude Mindset Life Vision Meaning Personality Growth P. Development Vision
|
Health
Fitness Body Mind Mental Emotional Physical Psychological Self-care |
Financial
Money Net worth Investments Stewardship Ownership Retirement Financially free |
Family
Friends Parenting Love Romance Connection Social Community External Recognition |
Work
Career Calling Profession Business Giving Back Mission Passion Life’s Purpose Vision |
Quality of Life
Freedom Enjoy Life Hobbies Fun Live Leisure Home Environment Experiential Adventure Travel Recreation Rest Time freedom |
Of course you can categorize your life areas for goals however you want, but the important things to remember is to not leave an area of live out or unaccounted for. Imagine if you remembered everything in life except relationships. That would likely lead to a bit of unhappiness in life. Imagine if you left our your health, or your finances, or your character or whatever it is in your life. A survey of personal development stories, however, indicate that as long as these six areas are addressed, you are very much likely to avoid the unhappiness that comes from neglecting an area of life.
- -People naturally set goals in areas of life
- -Many personal development works/books/programs have “areas. of life” to set goals for
- -These are important for ensuring you don’t neglect anything in life
- -Looking at all possibilities, it seems there are only really a few important areas of life
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