So we all have a lot going on in our lives with a variety of roles that we play on a day to day basis. Have you ever stopped to consider how you are truly doing in all of these areas of your life and whether or not you are intentionally taking the right steps to drive things forward as you envision? There are a lot presuppositions baked into the aforementioned questions here. We’ll come back to a few these in a future post.
For now, what if you were to consider how happy you are with various areas of your life? Would this give you an indication as to where you are unfocused, overly focused, and perhaps not even self aware that this was a dimension or domain of your life?
For now, I’ll run through the 13 Dimensions of Life (DOLs) that you can consider as you evaluate your current level of happiness – each of these areas warrants a post unto itself. These are listed in no particular order…
Professional – Career & Work – Are you an employee and/or working for someone else as part of a career trajectory that you have? If so, this is the area of focus that many are actively managing with full blown plans, schedules, and stated goals tied to compensation levels. Do you have a plan for the current month? The next three months? How about a career plan over the next 18 months? Many consider this area of their life in terms of the next 12 months, long range planning in this area is many times a deficient dimension. Fundamentally, are you happy at your job?
Entrepreneurial – Business Plans/Delivery – Are you self employed and/or working on a side hustle where you are providing the direction in an independent manner? This is an area that has you as the CEO for your own businesses endeavors where you are aiming to bring in cash/profit for yourself.
Emotional Health and Well Being – Are you mindful of your emotional state and happy with how you handle your choices of emotions and of your emotional reactions? Do you care for your emotional health and well being? Are you overly stressed out and prone to quick emotional reactions?
Character, Discipline, and Integrity – Do your actions on a daily basis align with your values of integrity and of your fundamental character? Are you employing daily, weekly, monthly, and annual routines that you stay true to? How disciplined are you when you make a promise to yourself? Do you do the same thing when ‘nobody is looking’ or do you cut corners? You know in your heart if you are being true to yourself in this regard. This is a dimension that can fuel many of the other areas with the proper focus and a lack of attention here can tear apart your life just as powerfully.
Energy & Spiritual – What is it that you believe in? Whatever it/who it is – are you actively tapping into this faith and belief set or are you neglecting it? Are you mindful of your energy output and is it where you would like it? Many focus on their spiritual lives, but do not acknowledge the energetic elements of our lives that underpin as much as our faith. It is my belief that both are interlinked and that your energy awareness and out put is directly tied to your level of consciousness. Consciousness encompasses both the spiritual and energetic worlds, and they fuel for me anyway – everything in my day from the time i wake in the morning through my sleep patterns at night.
Financial – Money and Finances – Are you in control of your cash? Do you have an intentional savings plan? Do you need to retire ‘bad’ debt as a next step? Are you stressing about your money? Do you know how much money you need to have the desired lifestyle you envision?
Health & Physical Fitness – Are you happy with your naked body? Are you happy with how you feel inside? Are you dominated by pain? Are you doing the recommended health checks annually across all of your body systems? Can you run a mile, right now? As a man, do you know your max lifting capacity on squats, dead lifts, and bench presses? If you do not – I have some strong words for you in a future post. For now, you should stop sitting there reading this, and get a gym membership and commit to doing some weight training – today. Weights are so fundamental to your longevity and happiness. Way more to come on this.
Intellect – Education & Skill Development – This area of life can span many other domains in your life. Perhaps you wanted to brush up on some hardcore Excel advanced techniques (this is a current goal of mine) or you wanted to take a cooking class at a local community college or a wine tasting course aiming at increasing your knowledge of Italian red wines. Whatever you are intending to learn – are you actually following through on this?
Family, Inner Circle, Social, and Romantic Relationships – How is your level of connectedness as a human being with those closest to you? You good bruh? How about those social contacts you neglect because you are too busy watching Netflix on a Tuesday night? Then there are those romantic relationships – whatever your level of commitment to your partner – are you being true to yourself and to them? You happy with the level of attention you are paying in this area of your life? Would the other people in this area of your life agree with you?
Play – Adventure and Creativity – For some, another few domains could also be considered ‘play.’ What I’m talking about here is bucket list worthy items and those things you like to do with chid-like abandon and wonder. Are you doing things that truly bring you joy that are outcome independent? When was the last time you actually did something for yourself – just for fun? For me, it was two nights ago. I can say it wasn’t always that frequent, but as someone close to me says often – ‘life is shorter than you think’ – are you living accordingly?
Values, Purpose, Legacy – How do you want to be remembered? Remembrance can be the ultimate memory when you pass along or it could be as mundane as a monthly volunteer gig that you do – which you know influences a single person in a positive way. You choose your time horizon, ultimately are you being true to yourself and setting the stage for the legacy you intend for yourself and for those that are closest to you as they talk about you when you aren’t around?
Location & Tangibles – Do you enjoy your physical world and associated surroundings? Are you absolutely in love with your home? What about the town you live in? Do you have a couple towns/locales where you spend time? Are you doing so intentionally and is it an arrangement that makes you smile?
Productivity & Organization – This is another domain in life that can fuel so much else. I have found that your ability to keep the other parts of life aligned with your priorities and intended level of happiness can be partially traced to your ability to stay organized and to free up time to get your focus on with the areas you are prioritizing. The interplay here is amazing, as you unlock your limiting behaviors here in this domain — you will be freed to invest more time and attention in other focused areas to really drive progress and increased happiness.
So these are the 13 Dimensions of Life that I’ve recently landed upon that we will spend more time on as future posts round into form. For now, get to the gym and start lifting some weight. Give yourself some time to reflect on each area and score your level of happiness in each area with 1 being just miserable and 10 being ‘world class awesome sauce being poured out.’ By the way, is this score for a given area higher or lower as compared to a month ago? Trends are something else that we will hit…
Until next time.
Our level of happiness is controlled by several factors but I believe the 13 Dimensions of Life gives an analysis of the factors that often affect our level of happiness. I’m too emotional and can tell that my happiness is often controlled by this factor. Nice article!
Sometimes, I sit and wonder what makes one happy but this post has the answer to that. Being happy largely depends on the aforementioned Dimensions of Life. If we can control these DOLs, then we can control our level of happiness.
As I was reading this post, I began to wonder if the 13 DOLs are just the factors that affect our level of happiness because I can quickly think of other factors. Are these the only factors?
I can’t talk about my current level of happiness without attributing it significantly to the skill I finally mastered last week. I’ve been bent on learning website design for a while, and I achieved this last month. I can tell it has raised my level of happiness though I haven’t started earning from it yet.
Most persons tend to forget the need to be happy while they go after material things. Unfortunately, I’m a victim of such act. When it comes to money, I often neglect the fact that I should be happy while making the money, and this has been detrimental to me. I’m glad I read this post, now I can consciously adjust my lifestyle and make things work while I’m happy.