One of the most common questions I get asked is regarding how I choose which monthly experiment to do. I usually follow-up that question with another question, what areas of your life are causing the most damage or limiting your potential? Experiment with that part of your life.
Having done five years of experimentation, I have made the mistake of choosing experiments that were relatively easy to do. If you truly want significant change, you must be able to face the truth and ask yourself the tough questions.
Asking yourself those tough questions should reveal one of the following categories of your life that need improvement;
- Relationships
- Career and Work
- Finances
- Health
- Contribution
- Spirituality
- Living Environment
- Planning Your Life
Let’s go over each one of them so you can better identify them and understand their importance.
Balancing different Areas of Life is key to sustainable satisfaction.Relationships
Relationships are arguably your single most important area of your life that influences all other factors. Beware, it is also the area of life that gets de-prioritized when things get hard. Relationships include your friends, family, coworkers, mentors, or any other human being that interact with you on a daily basis.
Having good relationships and being around people that make you happy is probably the single most important factor in your long-term success and happiness. In fact, Harvard conducted a research to decode keys to a healthy life and came back with one of the answers for long-term happiness – quality of your relationships.
Are you wondering how strong your relationships are? Take this quiz to figure out where you stand or see some experiments I have done with relationships.
Career and work
Career and work play the second most important role in your life. Not only does it give you a sense of identity, it is also your source of income. Unfortunately, despite its importance, many of us are in jobs that we truly don’t enjoy or don’t make an effort to enjoy.
It is important that each individual takes the time to find deeper meaning in their work – regardless if there are carpenter or a doctor. Being satisfied with your work and knowing how your work contributes to improving the world is key to a successful and happy career.
If you’re wondering how satisfied you are with your career and work, I encourage you to take this quiz to figure out where you stand or see some experiments I have done with career and work.
Finances
I am beginning to get better (or even take responsibility) at this area of life, thus, I will post learnings when I have made shareworthy progress. Meanwhile, you can read some of my “finance” reflections from 2016.
Health and Wellness
It is hard to isolate health and wellness from all other areas of your life as it influences each and every one of them or vice-versa. For example, if you are not healthy and don’t feel your best, you’re not going to put your best effort into relationships, work, or any other initiatives that you take on.
In our daily hustle and bustle, we rarely take time to improve and nurture our health. Being healthy is simply an act of eating healthy food, exercising, meditating, and doing things to love yourself. Yes, that is easier said than done.
A good way to find out how you rank in your health and wellness is to take this quiz or see some of the health experiments I have tried.
Contribution to the world
Do you ever wonder why people who amass great fortunes usually give it away? These people include Bill Gates, Warren buffet, and countless others. It is because us humans are wired (but many of us ignore it) to help others around us in whatever capacity we can.
We see this in all walks of life from homeless people helping each other to even the rich contributing to each other’s philanthropy goals.
Do you currently feel satisfied with what you contribute to the world? Take this quiz that will let you know how you rank in this category or see some of the experiments I have done to try to contribute to the world.
Spirituality
Spirituality means different things for each one of us. For some of us it may be our religion, God, meditation, or even yoga. Any activity that allows you to find a deeper purpose and meaning in life is a vehicle for enhancing your spirituality.
Spirituality is important because it’s what you have left if everything is taken from you. It allows you to unplug from the worldly worries and find inner peace.
If you want to evaluate how strong your spirituality is, I encourage you to take this quiz that will let you know just that or see some of the spirituality experiments I have been doing.
Living Environment
Have you noticed the dramatic difference between when you spend time in nature versus spending time in your messy bedroom? Yes, the living environment that surrounds you has a big impact on how you feel and hence your productivity.
For example, if your room is clean and organized, you do not waste energy trying to locate the item but you spend that time trying to do what you originally intended to do.
I encourage you to take this quiz to find out if you are guilty of having a living environment that is sucking your energy or see some of the experiments I have done with my living environment.
Planning your life
Back in the caveman days, we used to plan each week, month, and even the year in advance. Because if we didn’t that could mean the difference between life and death. We had to plan our hunts for food, plan for winter, and even take into account animal migration that might run us over i.e. the elephants.
However, once we came into urban cities we became lazy and none of us really had to plan our life – our lives were not on the line. If you want to grow through life, planning is essential. Life is too short to always be dreaming. Plan ahead and get it done.
If you want to evaluate how well you are planning for your life, please take this quiz and find out. Also, you can see some of the experiments I have done with planning my life.
I hope this blog post not only helped you identify various areas of your life that you can experiment with but also evaluate each one of them through the quiz. I hope to hear from you guys as you improve various areas of your life!
13 comments On 8 Different Areas of Life to Improve
Pingback: Analyzing How I spent my time in 2016 – and how to save some in 2017 ()
Pingback: Re-Visiting the Pages of my Journal – 2016 ()
Pingback: Experiments ()
Pingback: Should I have a structured or a free flow journal? ()
Pingback: 4 Insights from Einstein’s Journals ()
Jawwad, what about personal development? Shouldn’t that be on this list? For example, are we becoming more virtuous?
Manny, interesting question. I believe “personal development” is too broad of a field on its own. I see the “six” areas as ingredients (inputs) to personal development. Thus, if you focus on the six areas you will end up improving your life (i-e personal development).
Very interesting article. I will be sharing with my class.
Cool, but your many of your experiments links no longer work:(
It is fixed now! Thank you for catching it, Ann.
Great list .Creating action steps for the same.💥💪🏻
Interesting perspective. It really helped me to understand more about the importance of balance in the areas of life to have a full existence. Besides, personally, to reinforce that self-evaluation I used a life balance pyramid as a method.
Thank you for this article. It helped me think about and write about the current status in these different areas and how I can improve. It’s a great tool. Thanks for helping. I appreciate it.